Is Stevie Wonder No Longer a Supporter of Freedom and Justice?

November 28, 2012

Robert L. Harris, Jr., Professor of African American History, Africana Studies & Research Center at Cornell University

Stevie Wonder, the staunch advocate of freedom and justice in the United States and South Africa, is scheduled to headline a benefit concert in Los Angeles, December 6th, for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The organization was formed some thirty-one years ago by Holocaust survivors. I question whether they are aware of the role that the IDF plays in the occupation and suppression of Palestinians and whether Stevie Wonder knows about it.

Just about a month ago, I visited Israel/Palestine with a group of African American and Jewish leaders through the Interfaith Peace Builders and the Dorothy Cotton Institute. I was taken especially by the testimony of Palestinians who described the violation of their human rights as confirmed in statements by former Israeli soldiers. With impunity, Israeli soldiers invade Palestinian homes on the West Bank, seize and blindfold residents, even children, and take them to police stations for interrogation. The children are snatched from their homes and questioned for as many as three days without the presence of their parents. Former Israeli soldiers told us about the intimidation of Palestinians and the use of what I can only describe as “psychological warfare” to terrorize them.

There are Israelis and Palestinians engaged in dialogue through the principles of non-violence to end the conflict and to establish a comprehensive and enduring peace. I would think that Stevie Wonder, an admirer and supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, would seek to advance the work of those individuals and groups seeking to end the conflict rather than the forces that perpetuate it. Many Palestinians are refugees in their own land, which was forcibly taken from them and is now occupied by Israelis. The Israeli occupation intrudes into almost every area of Palestinian life.

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank cannot reunite with their families. They face onerous restrictions and roadblocks to travel within their own territory. Israeli settlers, many from the United States, seize Palestinian land and uproot their olive trees, a symbol of their heritage, tradition, and family. We saw olive trees estimated to be hundreds of years old that Israeli settlers uproot and often burn as an insult to Palestinians on their own land. Hopefully, Stevie Wonder and his sponsors will become aware of the Israeli descent into apartheid with a separation wall, electrified barbed wire, and guard towers perpetuated by the IDF.

Mideast peace — one chick pea at a time

By Alice Rothchild

 November 21, 2012

While fears of a large Israeli invasion of Gaza mount and representatives of Hamas threaten not to “back down,” there is much frustration and weariness with the lack of any positive developments coming out of Washington. Despite President Obama’s inaction, there is growing awareness that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the intense blockade of Gaza are serious impediments to peace and that US military and political support make this all possible. At the same time we have a cautious president, not willing to expend his newly earned capital on this morass, a fractious Congress, and an increasingly belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu, threatening to extract a “heavy price” if Palestinians renew their bid for observer status at the UN, as he also seeks reelection.

One positive development in this evolving catastrophe is the growing citizen activism that is turning to grassroots organizing, merging socially responsible investing, food justice, and peace activism to create another voice that offers a way forward. Universities, businesses, investors, and citizens are increasingly interested in their social responsibilities, from investments to grocery shopping. Consumers are beginning to understand that supporting a corporation that not only makes cell phones but also high level security apparatus, makes the consumer complicit in the use of that equipment and its consequences.

Internationally, boycotts in Europe have caused several important industries to move out of the West Bank settlements, pension funds have divested from military companies, universities have severed ties with Israeli universities that work on military research and development. Agrexco, Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter is facing bankruptcy because the company markets 60-70 percent of the fruits and vegetables grown in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Nationally, Quakers, United Methodists, and Presbyterians have debated and moved toward ethical investing, divesting from companies that directly profit from the Israeli occupation. Universities are increasingly debating these issues, with student groups taking the lead. These efforts are supported by a number of trade unions as well as outspoken members of the African American community, like Angela Davis, who are drawing parallels between a segregated and discriminatory Israeli society and US civil rights struggles. Spearheaded by Jewish Voice for Peace, there is also a national campaign to pressure TIAA CREF, one of the largest financial services in the United States, to divest from a similar list of companies.

Mirroring a campaign in Philadelphia, a coalition of Boston area groups focused their efforts on the Harvest Co-op, a food co-op that prides itself in its social responsibility. The group collected signatures for a referendum to deshelve Sabra Dipping Humus. Sabra operates under an Israeli company, the Strauss Group, which proudly supports a brigade in the Israeli Defense Force, the Golani Brigade, known for particularly egregious treatment against Palestinians. Members of the coalition stood outside the Co-op for over a year and talked to thousands of shoppers, the vast majority grateful for information regarding Sabra and its ties to human rights abuses. Many Co-op shoppers pledged to stop buying Sabra, to tell their friends, and to learn more about the US and corporate ties to Israeli violence. While the call for a referendum was recently rejected after a less than open process, the Co-op also announced that it will no longer stock Sabra Humus because of lack of consumer demand; shoppers voted with their pocket books.

All these actions are responding to a call from over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions until the Israeli government abides by international laws. The efforts serve to educate the public about realities on the ground, to create economic and political pressure, and ultimately to reach a tipping point in public discourse and political behavior.
The campaign offers a welcome, nonviolent, creative grassroots challenge to the status quo. It is based on a long tradition, a form of resistance that has been used by people of conscience going back to the antislavery movement. After all the dialogue groups and peace songs, the calls to congress-people, letters to the editor, agonized conversations in temples, standouts in front of AIPAC, what progress has been made?

Ultimately, respecting human rights and honestly addressing long simmering conflicts that threaten to explode within Israel and the territories, rather than defending Israeli exceptionalism, can only enhance the security of all Israelis and Diaspora Jews, as well as improve life for Palestinians. I just spent two weeks in the region with the Dorothy Cotton Institute, a US civil rights organization rooted in the work of Martin Luther King. We met with Palestinians and their Israeli allies engaged in nonviolent resistance, working to protect village lands from the encroaching Jewish settlements and the separation wall; working to change Israeli policy one bulldozer, one olive tree, one chick pea at a time.

Alice Rothchild is a Boston-based physician, author and filmmaker. Her book, “Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience,’’ was published in 2010.

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/11/21/podium-gaza/QAqDZqdvt373hOWNr3cz1N/story.html

 

MEMBERS OF CIVIL RIGHTS DELEGATION TO WEST BANK URGE PRESIDENT OBAMA: END THE VIOLENCE AND SECURE A JUST PEACE

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For Immediate Release

November 21, 2012

MEMBERS OF CIVIL RIGHTS DELEGATION TO WEST BANK URGE PRESIDENT OBAMA: END THE VIOLENCE AND SECURE A JUST  PEACE

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

                                                                             Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An immediate end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” matters. An immediate end to the violence—the onslaught of missiles, rockets, drones, killing, and targeted assassination—matters. An end to Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza matters.  An end to Israeli’s 45-year occupation of Palestine matters. A resolution of the issue of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948, many of whom live in Gaza matters.  Equality, security, and human rights for everyone matters.

We write as individuals who recently traveled to the West Bank with the Dorothy Cotton Institute’s 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation, organized by Interfaith Peace-Builders.  We cannot and will not be silent.  We join our voices with people around the world who are calling for an immediate cease-fire. Specifically, we implore President Barack Obama to demand that Israel withdraw its forces from Gaza’s borders; make U.S. aid to Israel conditional upon Israel’s adherence with relevant U.S. and international law; work with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to bring an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and to secure a just peace that ensures everyone’s human rights.

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”  As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared in 1993, “Enough of blood and tears.”  Enough!

We deplore the firing of rockets on civilian areas in Israel.  We also deplore and are outraged by the asymmetry, the disproportionality, of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, evidenced by the growing number of Palestinian civilian deaths and casualties.  This is not a conflict between equal powers, but between a prosperous occupying nation on one hand, armed and sanctioned by 3 billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid, and on the other, a population of 1.7 million besieged people, trapped within a strip of land only 6 miles by 26 miles, (147 square miles) in what amounts to an open-air prison. 

United States military support to Israel is huge.  From 2000 to 2009, the US appropriated to Israel $24 billion in military aid, delivering more than 670 million weapons and related military equipment with this money.  During these same years, through its illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, Israel killed at least 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities.

During our trip to the West Bank, we witnessed for ourselves the injustice and violence of the Israeli occupation and the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, in violation of international law and UN resolutions.  

In the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, for just one example, we observed a weekly nonviolent protest.   The neighboring Israeli settlement of Halamish was illegally built on Nabi Saleh’s land.  This settlement has also seized control of the Nabi Saleh’s water spring, allowing villagers to access their own spring water for only 7-10 hours a week.  Demonstrators of all ages participated in the protest, including several who, in recognition of the civil rights veterans in our delegation, carried posters with quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  We watched in horror as heavily armed members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded to this peaceful assembly with violence, strafing the demonstrators with a barrage of tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, gas grenades, and even a round of live ammunition.  

The IDF assault in response to these weekly nonviolent demonstrations can be deadly.  Rushdi Tamimi, a young adult Nabi Saleh villager, died this past week while he was protesting Israel’s attack on Gaza.  The IDF fired rubber bullets into Rushdi’s back and bullets into his gut, and slammed his head with a rifle butt.

Israel’s assault on Gaza is exponentially more violent than what we witnessed in the West Bank, but the context--the oppression of the Palestinian people—is the same.  Most of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees expelled from their homes in Israel in 1948.   This dispossession of the Palestinians that they call the Nakba (The Catastrophe) continues on the West Bank where Israel has built extensive Jewish settlements on confiscated Palestinian land. We saw with our own eyes how this settlement expansion and the systemic discrimination has further dispossessed the Palestinian people and is creating a “silent transfer” of Palestinians who are either forced or decide to leave because of the oppression.   This injustice—Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people—has to be addressed by honest and good-faith negotiations and a genuine agreement to share the land.  The alternative is a future of endless eruptions of aggression, senseless bloodshed, and more trauma for Palestinians and Israelis. This surely matters to all people of good will.

To President Obama, we say, use the immense power and authority United States citizens have once again entrusted to you, to exercise your courage and moral leadership to preserve lives and protect the dignity and self-determination, to which the Palestinian people and all people are entitled.   Israel relies upon the economic, military, and strategic cooperation and support of the United States.  You have the power to not only appeal to Israel to show restraint, but to require it.

Feeling ourselves deeply a part of “We the People,” sharing so much of your own tradition of organizing for justice and peace, we believe it is just, moral and in keeping with the best spirit of Dr. King to urge you to: 

§  Call for an end to violence by all parties and an immediate cease-fire for the sake of all people in the region.

§  Use your power to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF cease the bombardment of Gaza and withdraw their armed forces immediately. 

§  Join with the international community in using all diplomatic, economic, and strategic means to end Israel’s illegal, brutal siege of Gaza.

§  Insist that the United States condition aid to Israel on compliance with U.S. law (specifically the U.S. Arms Export Control Act) and with international law.

§  Work with the leaders of Israel and Palestine to secure an end to Israel’s occupation and to negotiate a just peace.

As citizens of the United States, we are responsible for what our government does in our name, and so we will not be silent.  Justice, peace and truth matter.  The future of the children of Israel and Palestine matter.  We cannot be silent and neither can you. 

Members of the The Dorothy Cotton Institute 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation:

donnie i. betts, Filmmaker, Denver, CO

Rabbi Joseph Berman, Chair, Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston, MA

Laura Ward Branca, Senior Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

Prof. Clayborne Carson  Director Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Dorothy F, Cotton, Distinguished Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY.
Rev. Richard L. Deats, Ph.D.  Editor Emeritus, FELLOWSHIP magazine, Nyack, NY

Kirby Edmonds, Senior Fellow and Coordinator, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

Jeff Furman, National Advisor, Dorothy Cotton Institute

Prof. Alan Gilbert, University of Denver, Denver, CO

Dr. Vincent Harding, Historian, Activist, Friend and Colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Denver, CO

Robert. L. Harris, Jr., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Sara Hess, Ithaca, NY
Aljosie Aldrich Knight, Atlanta, GA

Rev. Lucas Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Atlanta, GA

Dr. Marne O’Shae, Ithaca, NY

The Rev. Dr. Allie Perry, Board Member, Interfaith Peace-Builders, New Haven, CT

Dr. Paula M. Rayman, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Watertown, MA

Dr. Alice Rothchild, American Jews for a Just Peace, Cambridge, MA

Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Freeman Fellow, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Boston, MA 

Dr. James Turner, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Rabbi Brian Walt, Palestinian/Israeli Nonviolence Project Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY

For More Information:

Rabbi Brian Walt

Palestinian/Israeli Nonviolence Project Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute

508 560-0589

rabbibrianwalt@gmail.com

or

Kirby Edmonds

Coordinator, Dorothy Cotton Institute

tfckirby@aol.com

607-277-3401

We are Building Up a New World

by Rabbi Brian Walt

We are building up a new world, we are building up a new world,

We are building up a new world, builders must be strong.

Courage brothers don’t be weary, courage sisters don’t be weary,

Courage people don’t be weary, though the road be long. 

  new lyrics and title by Vincent Harding

This is one of the many songs I sang as I participated in a remarkable delegation of US Civil Rights Movement leaders, young human rights leaders, prominent Black academics and educators and several Jewish activists that traveled through the West Bank two weeks ago.  

Our delegation was a project of the Dorothy Cotton Institute, an organization dedicated to human rights education and to building a global human rights community. Dorothy Cotton served as the Director of Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was the only woman on the executive staff.  She led the Citizenship Education Program that empowered the disenfranchised to exercise their rights as citizens. 

The goals of this historic delegation were:

- to create and build an ongoing relationship between leaders of the US civil rights movement and the leaders of the growing Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement on the West Bank and their Israeli allies;

- to increase the visibility of this movement in the US and internationally;

- to learn from one another about nonviolence, effective solidarity and social transformation;

- and to educate Americans about the role the United States plays in supporting the status quo on the West Bank.  


Our delegation spent two weeks on the West Bank.  We visited three Palestinian villages – Budrus, Bil'in, Nabi Saleh – that have engaged for many years in a popular nonviolent struggle to reclaim land expropriated by the Israeli military.  We met several young Palestinians who are building the Coalition for Dignity, a grassroots, youth-led nonviolent movement. 

And we met Israeli allies who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian nonviolent movement and who work in their own society to end militarism and human rights violations against Palestinians.  We learned from many Israeli and Palestinian nonviolent activists about their work, their vision and their dreams. 

In short, our delegation saw and learned about realities that the overwhelming number of visitors to Israel never see or hear.  

Singing was an essential part of the spiritual and political life of our trip.  Dorothy has a beautiful spirit, a powerful voice, and loves to sing.  Throughout the delegation, she always reminded us that singing was a critical tool for energizing the civil rights movement.  She told me,

“We had songs for different occasions. We sang at mass meetings, and we sang at funerals … We sang, ‘I'm gonna do what the Spirit says do’ and our singing inspired us to do just that.”  

And so our new civil rights delegation sang as we traveled through the West Bank.  Singing was just one powerful way in which our delegation made a connection between the Black-led struggle for civil rights in the US and the Palestinian struggle for justice, peace and security for all. 

This, for instance, is the song we sang at the grave of a young man in Budrus who was killed in a nonviolent demonstration to protest the confiscation of his village’s land:

Come by here my Lord, come by here.

For our brother, my Lord, come by here.

For his courage my Lord, come by here.

Standing around the grave, delegates spontaneously composed the lyrics. It felt like we were praying, acknowledging the courage and the profound cost that the struggle for freedom demands.  

We sang before we joined the weekly nonviolent demonstration in Nabi Saleh, another village on the West Bank fighting to reclaim their land.   The residents of the village had made special signs composed of quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King in honor of our visit.  “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” read one of the signs. 

And we sang:

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round, turn me 'round, turn me 'round.

I'm gonna  keep on walkin', keep on talkin', marching up to freedom ground.

We sang to express our appreciation and to provide support after hearing activists tell us their stories - Palestinians and Israelis who told us of their amazing work and the toll it has taken on their lives, and sometimes even their spirits and souls.  One such occasion was after Israeli activist Gaby Laski told us of her work to defend children from villages like Nabi Saleh who are arrested at night. 

"We’re gonna keep on marching forward, keep on marching forward, keep on marching forward, never turning back, never turning back." (by Pat Humphries)

We sang after standing next to the thirty foot high Separation Wall in Jerusalem dividing a Palestinian neighborhood in two.  And we sang on the bus as we went through a checkpoint on our way to the airport at the end of our trip, encouraged by our Palestinian guide to keep singing even when the soldier boarded our bus.  (Our bus was pulled aside for a security check because it was a Palestinian bus while Israeli buses and motorists were waved through the checkpoint).

We returned to the United States both inspired and disturbed by our experience.  We were inspired by the determination, vision and commitment of so many Palestinians and their Israeli allies, working tirelessly day after day, year after year, often at great personal and communal cost, for justice, freedom and equality for all.  Now that we are home, we look forward to sharing the stories and vision of these courageous civil rights activists with our friends and communities.

But our trip was not simply inspiring.  It was profoundly disturbing to witness the harsh realities of life on the West Bank that are so invisible to the discourse in America.  Every day we saw and heard about a systematic denial of human rights in countless ways: land confiscation, extensive restrictions on movement, humiliation at check points, home demolition, the arrest of children, the revocation of residency permits and many other violations. 

The delegates were profoundly shocked. Several American civil rights veterans  commented that the discrimination, humiliation and injustice they witnessed was “frighteningly familiar.”

While we were on the West Bank the two presidential candidates tried to outdo one another in their public declarations of support for Israel in the final presidential debate.  They mentioned Israel 31 times with only one passing reference to Palestinians.  The contrast between American policy and what we witnessed is stark.  Now that we have returned, we are determined to share this disturbing reality with our communities; to challenge the ways in which our country funds, provides diplomatic cover, and enables these injustices. 

I have visited the West Bank before but never for more than a day or two, and almost always with progressive Israeli groups.  On this visit, however, we spent virtually all out time in the West Bank - on the other side of the Separation Wall.  For me personally, it was a transformative experience.  It was a privilege to travel with such a special group of people and to see the profound impact of our delegation on the activists that we met.  

Before we left on our journey, I was struck by a comment made by Dr. Vincent Harding, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, a person with a long history of involvement in the struggle for freedom and a very close life-long connection to Jewish teachers, fellow travelers and co-workers.  Dr. Harding talked about “encouragement” as one of his primary goals for the trip.  I was struck by the word and the simple power of his intention.  He wanted to meet activists on the West Bank and to “encourage” them. 

And that is exactly what happened. The people we met commented how encouraged they felt by meeting people who had spent their entire lives fighting for freedom in the US.  Dr. Harding and others would repeatedly ask all our presenters to tell us about themselves, their families and what motivated them to do what they were doing. 

He and others always shared how much he appreciated their work and how important it was for all of us and for our collective future.  After hearing an inspiring talk by Fadi Quran, one of the young leaders of the Palestinian nonviolent movement, Dr. Harding said, “Fadi, I want to tell you how proud I am and how grateful I am for you, and want to encourage you to keep on going.”

It felt like we were building a new world.  On the very first day of our trip, Dorothy Cotton sang and danced with three women activists, Israeli and Palestinian, who had spoken to us. It was a joy to see the profound gift she was giving them and that they were giving her in return. Those who had spent their lives building a new world in America were creating a relationship with those who were building a new world in Israel/Palestine. 

Towards the end of the trip we realized that we were just beginning to build a new world in another way by creating a new possibility for the relationship between Jews and Blacks in our own country.   Historically, Israeli policy has been a source of tension between the African American and Jewish communities.  While many African Americans on the delegation have deep and positive connections to Jews, it is often difficult for Blacks and Jews to have honest conversations about Israel. 

There were eight Jews on this delegation.  On this trip we joined together as a group of Blacks, Jews, Christians and people with varied faith commitments, united in our commitment to nonviolence and our dedication to justice, freedom and equality in Israel/Palestine, in our own country, and around the world.  We are renewing an alliance between Blacks and Jews, an alliance rooted in our shared values.

We are building up a new world, we are building up a new world,

We are building up a new world, builders must be strong.

Courage brothers don’t be weary, courage sisters don’t be weary,

Courage people don’t be weary, though the road be long.

For more articles about the trip, check out other postings on the DCI blog and the postings by Alice Rothchild, one of the delegates here.