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Click on image below for full interview with

Norman Finkelstein

Finkelstein: If we are serious about trying to resolve the conflict, we should not get sidetracked by abstract ideological questions. We should take Zionism as an ideology out of the debate. Rather, we should focus on political issues. The right question is not, “Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist.” The questions should be, “Do you support the demolition of homes and torture?” “Do you support Jewish-only roads and Jewish-only settlements?” “Do you support a political settlement embraced by the entire world apart from the U.S., Israel and some South Sea atolls?”

In view of recent articles about Prof Shlomo Sand (or Zand)

of Tel Aviv University, concerning his thesis that, in the words

of Ha'aretz, "attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to [Sand], are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions", I thought it worth copying this extract from John Rose's fascinating and very readable 2004 book, The Myths of Zionism

Extract from “The Myths of Zionism” by John Rose (Pluto Press, 2004). Chap 1, “The Bible is our Mandate”, pages 22 – 25.

[John McCarthy, former hostage, met teams of] archaeologists, like the one led by [Israel] Finkelstein [one of Israel's leading archaeologists], who had also been looking for [‘Ancient Israel’] in vain. McCarthy became so fascinated that he decided to make a television documentary about it: It Ain't Necessarily So. Now his producers must have panicked at its radical content because the six half-hour transmissions were given a midnight slot with minimum publicity and hardly anyone watched them.

A flavour of the devastating impact of the documentary is given by the translation from the prophet Jeremiah, which opens the narrative of each half-hour programme:

“God's Bible? Look at it - it was made as a lie by the false pen of scribes. (Jeremiah VIII. 8; Sturgis 2001: 186)”

Rather like the Philistines, Jeremiah has had a very poor press over the last two millennia and dismissed as the prophet of doom — another example of the way the Bible and its prejudices haunt the modern imagination.

Actually, it is possible that Jeremiah may have been a very honest witness in the tiny city-state of Judah (about which more in a moment), at the time when some books of the Bible were possibly taking written form.

McCarthy based his series on the work of Israeli archaeologists like Finkelstein and his colleague, Professor Ze'ev Herzog. In October 1999, Herzog summarised their discoveries in a sensational article in the magazine of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz ('Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho', Ha'aretz Magazine, 29 October 1999: 6-8). In the article, Herzog described how what he calls the 'crisis stage' in Israeli archaeology has matured in recent years. He described it as nothing less than a scientific revolution. It is a process well known to all research scientists familiar with the dynamic of scientific breakthrough:

“A crisis stage is reached when the theories within the framework of the general thesis are unable to solve an increasingly large number of anomalies. The explanations become ponderous and inelegant, and the pieces do not lock together...

“This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David &: Solomon described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom... (Ha'aretz, 29 October, 1999)”

In other words, no Abraham, no Moses, no Joshua; David and Solomon at best pagan tribal chieftains. He goes on: ‘And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort ...'. Her name is Ashera and she has her own programme in John McCarthy's series. As Matthew Sturgis, who wrote the book accompanying McCarthy's series, explains:

“Asherah is identified as another Canaanite deity. She was a fertility goddess and the recognized consort of the chief god El (and later of Baal). Many small figurines representing her have been found at Canaanite sites. The statuettes, with their large breasts and well defined sexual organs, are closely related to those found at the slightly later Israelite sites. It is a relationship that has led scholars to suggest that Israelite fertility figurines may represent Ashera too. (Sturgis 2001: 186).”

Notice how archaeology is now compelled to shake off significant distinctions between Canaanite and Israelite sites. At some point +after+ the biblical fiction known as the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, perhaps about two centuries later, very roughly 800-700 BCE, a historical entity called Israel did emerge, though in its first incarnation it was distinctively pagan, with a pagan god, Jehovah, and goddess, Asherah. Furthermore, Jerusalem was not its spiritual centre.

In the late 1960s, the archaeologist Bill Dever discovered Asherah, in inscription form, written in ancient Hebrew, when he was carrying out excavations at- Khirbet el-Kom near Hebron. On the wall of a late Iron Age tomb, dating from the mid- to late eighth century BCE, he discovered a bold drawing of what appeared to be a hand together with an inscription that ran: 'Blessed... by Yahweh [Jehovah] ... and his Asherah.' Dever recalls:

When I first discovered it, I didn't really want to publish it, as a young scholar. It was too controversial. But then in the 1970s a second site was found by Israeli archaeologists - also in the eighth century in Sinai. And you have the same expression: 'may X be blessed by Yahweh and his Asherah'. (Sturgis 2001: 173)

This discovery was made at Kuntillet Ajrud, in northeastern Sinai. The inscription, written in ink on an old storage jar, was accompanied by a drawing of two curious figures, one apparently male, the other female, and both crowned. As Dever remarks, 'It seems that Yahweh did have a consort, like all the other gods of the ancient Near East - at least in the minds of many Israelites.'

Like all the other gods of the ancient Near East ...

As Herzog has argued, the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention pairs of gods, Jehovah and Asherah, much later than the United Monarchy period, throws wide open the question of exactly when monotheism was adopted. And it seems likely that the small tribal kingdoms of David and Solomon, if they existed at all, worshipped polytheistic pagan gods.

Now, archaeologists like Herzog and Finkelstein are not particularly politically minded, but they are very conscious of the implications of their research for modern Israel's ideological claims to the biblical past.

Herzog reports that the Israeli public are trying to ignore the findings despite the fact that they have been known for decades. He goes on:

“Any attempt to question the reliability of the biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine 'our historic right to the land' and as shattering the myth of the nation that is renewing the ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements constitute such a critical component of the construction of Israeli identity that any attempt to call their veracity into question encounters hostility or silence ... The blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is apparently too threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind eye. (Ha'aretz, 29 October 1999)”

How progressive Israeli archaeologists like Herzog and Finkelstein are now beginning to explain the origins of the Bible is beyond the scope of this book. But one intriguing irony deserves further comment. They argue that the 'real' Ancient Israel was a pagan state, with Samaria its 'capital' or spiritual centre. Readers will be familiar with the modern Zionist claim on Judaea and Samaria on Palestine's West Bank. Less well known is the explosively bitter religious feud between Judaea and Samaria, or rather to use their biblical names, Judah and Israel.

Herzog and Finkelstein argue that it is this feud that partly lays the foundation for the Bible stories and for the real birth of Judaism. It is a feud in which Judah, or Judaea, its Roman name, became the ultimate victor. Samaria (the real 'Ancient Israel') became an outcast. By the first century CE, Samaria, with its own temple far away from Jerusalem and home to the 'Good Samaritan' of Gospel fame, was considered not properly Jewish at all by the priestly authorities at the Temple at Jerusalem in Judaea. In other words, 2,000 years ago, the century of the great Jewish revolt against Rome, the 'real' Ancient Israel was not considered Jewish.

In the next chapter we will explore the damaging implications of this for modern Zionist claims on Palestine when we look at the Jewish Diaspora in the Roman Empire. But we should not leave this chapter before we have paid our unqualified respects to the great Jewish Bible writers of ancient times. The Bible is most certainly not a mandate for modern Jewish chauvinist claims on the land of Palestine, but, with Finkelstein and Silberman, we can most certainly agree that it is a

“sacred scripture of unparalleled literary and spiritual genius ... an epic saga woven together from an astonishingly rich collection of historical writings, memories, legends, folk tales, anecdotes, royal propaganda, prophecy and ancient poetry... the literary masterpiece would undergo further editing and elaboration (so that it would) become a spiritual anchor ... for communities all over the world. (Finkelstein and Silberman 2002: 1-2)”

LATEST ARTICLE FROM JEFF HALPER

THE PALESTINIANS: WAREHOUSING A “SURPLUS PEOPLE”

Jeff Halper

So rapid is the pace of systemic change in that indivisible entity known as Palestine/Israel that it almost defies our ability to keep up with it. The deliberate and systematic campaign of driving Palestinians out of the country in 1948 was quickly forgotten, the plight of more than 700,000 refugees becoming an invisible “non-issue.” Instead, a plucky, European, “socialist” Israel arose as the darling of even the radical left, completely eclipsing the campaign of ethnic cleansing which enabled its creation.

Likewise Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, which remained a virtual non-issue until the outbreak of the first Intifada in the last days of 1987. The only part of the conflict which did appear on the public radar was the equation of Palestinians with terrorism. Until the start of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, even the mention of the word “occupation,” not to mention “Palestinians,” would have gotten you labeled an anti-Semite – terms that until today are seldom used in Israel. Even when the conflict, if not the Occupation per se, became an international issue, Israeli ruled the all-important realm of PR. The most telling argument against the Palestinian struggle is the widespread notion that Arafat refused Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” at Camp David. The facts of the matter – that there never was a “generous offer” and that even if Barak had offered 95% of the Occupied Territories (as Olmert has recently “offered” 93%), a Palestinian state would constitute little more than a truncated and non-viable South African bantustan on less than 20% of historic Palestine – disappear in the spin. All that remains is a re-demonized Arafat. Sharon’s subsequent imprisoning the Palestinian president in a dark room of his demolished headquarters, eliminating him politically and, I believe, physically, raised virtually no opposition or even criticism in the international community.

For all that, a determined effort of civil society groups around the world – human rights and political organizations, church and critical Jewish groups, trade unions, intellectuals and even certain political figures, in Israel as well as abroad – succeeded in the past decade or so in raising the Occupation to the status of global issue. No sooner had the concept of Occupation taken hold, however, than Israel’s feverish expansion of the “facts on the ground” overtook that term. For an occupation is defined in international law as “a temporary military situation.” The establishment of more than 200 settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories, organized into seven large settlement “blocs” anchored by more than 20 are major urban centers, all tied inextricably into Israel proper by a massive network of Israeli-only highways and, most recently, the Separation Barrier, have rendered the Occupation permanent. No longer either temporary or security-based, one indivisible system, an Israeli system, has grown up between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Before our eyes those willing to look unflinchingly saw the truth: whether committed to a two-state solution or not, the Occupation has been transformed into a permanent state of apartheid. It is as yet an de facto reality. If the “Annapolis Process” works out according to Israel’s plan, it will become a de jure system of apartheid, cleverly sold as a “two-state solution” and approved by a Palestinian collaborationist-leader.

Annapolis does not really matter, however. Israel knows that neither the Palestinians nor the international civil society will accept apartheid. Its function is what all the other “political processes” of the past four decades were intended to do: put off any solution that would require Israel to make meaningful concessions while giving it the political cover and time to create irreversible facts on the ground. Israel’s “Occupation” has moved beyond apartheid, a term that has become outmoded almost as soon as it began gaining acceptance amidst great protest and clamor. What has evolved before our eyes, something we should have seen but lacked a reference for, is a system of warehousing, a static situation emptied of all political content. “What Israel has constructed,” argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine,

is a system,…a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity….Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized….This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade….In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).

Israel’s facts on the ground are merely the physical expression of a policy that seeks to de-politicize and thereby normalize its control. The Israel/Palestinian conflict is not presented as a conflict with “sides” and a political dynamic. Instead it is cast as a “war on terrorism,” a fight with a phenomenon that eliminates – or presents as irrelevant – any reference to occupation, which Israel officially denies having. Since “terrorism” and the “clash of civilizations” which underlies it is portrayed as a self-evident and permanent “given,” it assumes the form of a non-issue, a status quo (Israel’s official term for its policy towards the Palestinians) immune to any solution and or process of negotiation. If the terrorists and their ilk – jailed prisoners, illegal immigrants, slum dwellers and the poor, the discontented victims of “counter-insurgency,” adherents to “evil” religions, ideologies or cultures, to name just a few – are permanent fixtures to be dealt with rather than people whose grievances, needs and rights should be addressed, then prisons, including prisons-writ-large such as Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a whole and entire populations and continents, are the penultimate solution.

Warehousing, then, is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is in many ways worse than the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. The ten non-viable “homelands” established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing around 15% of historic Palestine – but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel. Having discovered a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens, Israel can afford to lock them out even while withholding from them a viable economy of their own with unfettered ties to the surrounding Arab countries. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.

Since warehousing is a global phenomenon and Israel is pioneering a model for it, what is happening to the Palestinians should be of concern to everyone. It may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, and as such should be subject to the universal jurisdiction of the world’s courts just as are other egregious violations of human rights. In this sense Israel’s “Occupation” has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: “One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza.” In other words, a Global Palestine.

This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel “get away with it.” Instead of presenting the international community with thorny issues that must be resolved – violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself on international politics and economy – it is instead seen as providing a valued service: developing a model by which “surplus populations” everywhere can be controlled, managed and contained.

Israel, then is in complete sync with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Our mistake, encouraged by such terms as “conflict,” “occupation” and “apartheid,” is to view Israel’s control of the Palestinians as a political issue which must be resolved. Instead, it will be “resolved” when the Palestinians are “disappeared,” just as people were “disappeared” in Latin American under its military regimes. Dov Weisglass, the architect of the Sharon government’s “disengagement” from Gaza, said as much in a revealing interview (“The Big Freeze,” Ha’aretz Magazine, Oct. 8, 2004):

The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula [that Israel can retain its settlement “blocs,” including a Greater Jerusalem] so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.

Is what you are saying, then, is that you exchanged the strategy of a long-term interim agreement for a strategy of long-term interim situation?

The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, “What do you want.” It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote….

Warehousing is the starkest of political concepts because it represents the de-politicization of repression, the transformation of a political issue of the first degree into a non-issue, a regrettable but unavoidable situation best dealt with through relief, charity and humanitarian programs. It is a dead-end, a “given,” for which no remedy is available. This, of course, is not the case, and we cannot let it be presented as such. Warehousing is a policy arising out of particular interests of the most powerful. Our use of the term “warehousing,” then, should be to “name the thing” in order to give us a grasp of it, all the better to combat and defeat it. Again Israel provides an instructive (and heartening) example. Despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, including the active support of the US, Europe and much of the international community, including some Arab and Muslim regimes, it has failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp. The conflict’s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily, so that it may eventually force the international community to intervene. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) are able, despite their overwhelming power, to force on the Palestinians the outcome they seek.

The term “warehousing,” then, though referring to a real phenomenon, is also meant as a warning. We must continue our efforts to end the Israeli Occupation, even if this is means, ultimately, the creation of a genuine Palestine/Israel or a wider regional confederation, rather than apartheid-cum-two-state solution or warehousing. Looking at Palestine as a microcosm of a broader global reality of warehousing enables us to more effectively identify those elements appearing elsewhere and grasp the model which Israel is developing, all the better to counter it. Regardless, our language and the analysis it generates must not only be honest and unsparing, it must keep pace with political intentions and ever more rapidly developing “facts on the ground.”

(Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)

Click on image for freegaza.org site

WORDS

Apartheid - Nishul - Hafrada

The Afrikaans word apartheid has often been used to describe the situation obtaining in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and often within Israel itself. From the point of view of campaigning, there have been problems with the use of this word in the Israeli-Palestinian context: its descriptive accuracy has been called into question¹ and to use it can end up letting apologists for Israeli brutality employ diversionary tactics, expressing outrage at the use of a word whilst ignoring or denying, certainly obscuring the very real Palestinian sufferings to which the word refers.

Apartheid may well, despite Machover's warnings and objections, be the appropriate word to use, but sometimes it's not enough to be right: in campaigning, as in diplomacy, you often have to be right in the right way. We want to persuade people with the words we use, not make them stop up their ears in some sort of defensive conditioned reflex.

I am therefore grateful to Deborah Maccoby² for reminding me that at his recent talk in London, Jeff Halper of ICAHD 'mentioned that he has met South Africans who object to the phrase "Israeli apartheid", not because what's going on doesn't resemble South African apartheid, but because they think the word "apartheid" was specific to their own situation and they think a specifically Israeli word should be used to describe the Israeli/Palestinian situation'. (Email communication.)

I am also grateful to Richard Kuper, who clarified for me that the word Jeff used was nishul - dispossession (variant spelling, nishool). A related Hebrew word is hafrada, which, like the Afrikaans word "apartheid", means literally separation. These are the words used by the Israeli government to describe its own policies. (By email.)

These words could become just as highly charged, and with the same results, as did the Afrikaners' own word to describe their policies. If we started to use them at every opportunity in our own campaigning, they could hardly be challenged for accuracy, since they're the Israeli government's own terms, and they would deny our opponents the chance of time-wasting obfuscatory tactics.

¹ See Moshe Machover, Is it Apartheid? in Jewish Voice for Peace, 10 Nov 2004

² See report of London meeting here

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

SEE LATEST GOOD NEWS ON THIS PROJECT HERE (CLICK)

Sources of information

Websites:
Physicians for Human Rights – Israel - www.phr.org.il

“Holding Health to Ransom: GSS Interrogation & Extortion of Palestinian Patients at Erez Crossing” as well as articles on health care and the use of torture in Israel
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions – www.icahd.org

“An Israeli Jew in Gaza: A Statement by Jeff Halper”
“Born to Demolish” & article on the Matrix of Control

B’Tselem - www.btselem.org
The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

Council for Arab-British Understanding – www.caabu.org
See education – Israel/Palestine fact sheets

Palestine Solidarity Campaign – www.palestinecampaign.org
See About Palestine – PSC fact sheets and booklets

Medical Aid for Palestinians – www.map-uk.org
See Resource Room

United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – www.un.org

Gaza Community Mental Health Programme – www.gcmhp.net

See Palestinian International Campaign to End the Siege
Al-Haq – Palestinian Human Rights organisation founded by Palestinian lawyers – www.alhaq.org

Amnesty International – www.Amnesty.org
Learn about human rights – select Palestinian Authority

The Foundation for Al Quds Medical School – www.fqms.org

Wiam – Palestinian Conflict Resolution Centre – Bethlehem – http://alashah.org/presention.ppt

Machsom Watch - Women against the Occupation and for human rights – www.machsomwatch.org/en

Palestine Medical Relief Society – www.pmrs.ps

Public Committee Against Torture – www.stoptorture.org.il/en

Defence for Children International – Palestine Section - www.dci-pal.org

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – www.ochaopt.org
See latest publications and weekly reports – maps

The Medical Committee for Boycott of the Israeli Medical Association – www.boycottima.org

Articles
On the Occupied Territories, two articles by Richard Horton on the New York Review of Books, 2007: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19974 and http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20281

McGirk about Gaza published on the Lancet in February 2008, can be found on Rete ECO's website: http://www.rete-eco.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1110:gazas-humanitarian-crisis-deepens&catid=35:riflessioni&Itemid=35 )

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673608601853/fulltext

Amnesty "Gaza: A Humanitarian Implosion" published by Amnesty International; Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (AI); CARE (CAFOD); Christian Aid; Médecins du Monde; Oxfam; Save the Children Alliance; Trócaire on 6th March 2008. http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/downloads/oxfam_gaza_lowres.pdf
International development Select Committee have just published their report assessing the UK position on aid etc to the OPTs
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmintdev/522/522i.pdf

Books
The Iron Wall – Avi Shlaim (Penguin Books)
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine – Ilan Pappe (Oneworld Publications)
The Question of Palestine – Edward Said (Pantheon)
An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel – Jeff Halper (Pluto Press)
Obstacles to Peace – Jeff Halper (ICAHD)
Blood & Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish & Democratic State – Jonathan Cook (Pluto Press)
Israel & the Clash of Civilizations – Jonathan Cook (Pluto Press)
Israel & Palestine: Competing Histories – Mike Berry & Greg Philo (Pluto Press)
Bad News from Israel – Mike Berry & Greg Philo (Pluto Press)
Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict – Sara Roy (Pluto Press)
The West Bank Wall: Unmasking Palestine – Ray Dolphin – (Pluto Press)

DVDs
The Iron Wall – Mohammed Alatar (available from www.icahduk.org)
Jerusalem – East Side Story – Mohammed Alatar (available from www.palestinecampaign.org)

For advice on travelling to Israel and the Occupied Territories
See the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - www.fco.gov.uk/travel

Note: In many ways I regard the DISCUSSION about a boycott as being

probably of more importance than any actual moves to implement

such a move. I think that some of the ways in which the discussion has

been held to date have actually not been helpful in terms

of securing justice for all involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Certainly the Israeli Medical Association needs to be sure that it

has fully investigated the claims made by groups such as

PHR-I, B'tselem, Amnesty and others, and acted in full

accordance with medical ethics.

-- Brian

See an interesting pros-and-cons discussion from a contra position (from 2007) here:

http://www.workersliberty.org/system/files/wl3-12.pdf

Email from Dr Derek Summerfield

Thu 31/07/2008 15:05

Dear colleagues

Thanks to the efforts of Dr David Halpin and his friend Bill we now finally have a website to serve as point of reference for people who are concerned about health and human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and about medical ethics — in particular the systematic complicity over years of the Israeli Medical Association and of individual Israeli doctors with torture as an instrument of state policy, and with violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention which guarantee a civilian population in a conflict zone unfettered access to services vital to life (including health services) and guarantee health professionals and facilities immunity from military action. On this account, and with the ‘normal’ channels having long since shown to be blocked, we have called for a boycott of the IMA and its suspension from the World Med Assoc, as well as allying ourselves with the academic boycott campaign spearheaded by the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP). There is further material to be added of course.

Please publicise as widely as possible or if circumstances present consider submitting material for possible posting up.

The site is: boycottima.org

Best wishes Derek

See my note above in relation to calls for a medical boycott. I currently support

BRICUP because I think this issue needs to be discussed fully and openly. Calls for

counterproductive (as well as being open to misinterpretation as to intent). But there

are grave injustices against Palestinians and discriminatory practices - medical,

Palestinians than they were even a year ago. And for example, the illegal settlements

are expanding. So if it's true that "nothing so far has persuaded Israel to change

See an interesting pros-and-cons discussion from a contra position (from 2007) here:

From Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place
Essays on politics, culture and ideas about Israeli-Arab peace and world music

J Street Poll: American Jews Prepared for U.S. to Pressure Israelis, Arabs to Attain Peace

Jul 17th, 2008 by Richard Silverstein | 3

J Street has commissioned its first opinion survey seeking to determine the level of support among American Jews for territorial compromise and a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict (summary). There will be those of my right-wing readers who may doubt the results given J Street’s clear political commitments. But the poll actually dovetails nicely with the AJC annual survey results on similar questions.

One of the more interesting survey results was a mixed finding: when asked whether Israel played a “big role” in their election vote, 58% answered “yes.” But when listed among a group of other issues, Israel came out in the bottom tier of issues and only 8% noted Israel was one of their two top issues in determining their vote for president or Congress. This interesting outcome indicates that theoretically Jews believe Israel is an important political issue. But when push comes to shove there are other bread and butter issues like the economy and Iraq war which are far more important. To me, this indicates that support for the Israel lobby is quite shallow among the Jewish community outside that 8% who are driven by the issue.

It’s no surprise that Jews disapprove of Bush’ job performance though the 16% rating is even lower than I thought it might be. Obama beats McCain in the poll by 62% to 32%. This is a respectable showing by McCain compared to past Republican presidential races, but still quite low.

Respondents disapproved of Bush’s Middle East policy and believe he should be much more engaged in lobbying for peace. 61% believe Israel is “less secure” than it was before his presidency. Only 26% believe it is more secure.

When asked whether the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict involved negotiating peace agreements or relying on military force alone to achieve security, the survey endorsed the former over the latter by 50% to 34%.

Fully 75% of those polled believe that the U.S. should play an aggressive role in promoting a negotiated peace even if it meant disagreeing publicly with the positions of the parties to the conflict. 70% were even willing for the U.S. to exert “pressure” on those parties it saw as impeding progress toward a settlement. This has to be bad news for the Republican Jewish Coalition which lamely attempts to claim every election cycle that Democrats are soft on Israel because they are more likely to support U.S. policy saying that Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace. This poll shows that American Jews would not have a problem with any Administration that took an assertive role in defending this position.

Joe Lieberman isn’t going to like the following results. Only 7% of poll respondents view evangelical Zionist leader John Hagee favorably. Only 19% have a favorable impression of Christians United for Israel. Only 1 in 4 said Jewish groups should form alliances with CUFI (are you listening Joe, or do you care?). Finally, Holy Joe himself only earns a 37% favorable rating (48% unfavorable).

Regarding Iran: 69% said they were more likely to support a candidate who called for negotiations with Iran and resorting to sanctions if they failed.

Several results I found alarming: 48% were more likely to vote for a candidate who called for supporting Israel if it launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran. That indicates not enough American Jews understand that our national interests may diverge from Israel’s.

65% were more likely to support a candidate who said (falsely by the way) that Arabs have repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers. Only 44% support the idea of declaring East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

58% support Israeli withdrawal from the Golan in return for peace with Syria. 59% support withdrawal from “most” of the West Bank. 52% believe the U.S. should tell Israel to “end settlement expansion.” 76% believe Israel should negotiate with Hamas on behalf of peace. 54% believe that IDF killings of Palestinian civilians lead to more terror. 61% are opposed to collective punishment (Israel’s current policy toward Gaza). 81% will support “any peace deal” agreed to by Israel with its Arab neighbors. One should keep this fact in mind when listening to the geshrei from the Orthodox community, which calls any territorial compromise on Jerusalem a betrayal of the Jewish people. Only a very small minority of American Jews agree.

Quite frankly, I was shocked that AIPAC itself earned only a 38% favorable rating (21% unfavorable). 60% say it does not bother them when American Jews disagree with Israeli government policy. When asked whether traditional Jewish groups in general do a good job of representing the community’s views on Israel 49% agreed. When asked specifically whether AIPAC did a good job that number fell to 34%. All this again showing the weakness of the AIPAC when it is viewed in the context of the overall Jewish community.

JTA once again produced bizarrely skewed reporting on the survey which focussed largely on Obama’s alleged lack of support among Jews:

American Jews are less supportive of Barack Obama than previous Democratic nominees, a new poll found.

The lack of support comes despite overwhelming unhappiness with the Bush administration.

I find it interesting that 62% constitutes a “lack of support.” Would you say JTA is telegraphing its own prejudices or just guilty of sloppy journalism (or both)?

I’ll give anyone who discovers the weakness of the following claim honorary membership in the Tikun Olam fan club:

Al Gore and Bill Clinton both drew approximately 80 percent of the Jewish vote in their respective runs for the presidency, while John Kerry garnered about 76 percent in 2004.

The correct way to make this comparison would be using the percentage of support for each candidate AT THIS STAGE in the campaign, and not to compare Obama’s ranking now with Gore, Clinton’s or Kerry’s on Election Day. I’ll bet JTA that Obama’s ranking by Election Day will be significantly higher than it is now and come close to, match or exceed Kerry’s.

Finally, not a word in the JTA story about the survey’s findings regarding the I-P conflict. Strange that a poll, 95% of whose questions dealt with that subject and 5% of whose questions dealt with presidential candidates focussed laser-like on the latter and ignored the former. But it’s what we’ve come to expect of JTA.

I enthusiastically endorse this statement which concluded the poll summary:

J Street has enormous opportunities to give voice to a Jewish public that holds beliefs and values which are very different from the positions regularly conveyed by many Jewish leaders and organizations.

The J Street poll is yet another indication that the hawkish policy pronouncements of the Israel lobby and specifically AIPAC represent no one but themselves and their members when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict. The majority of American Jews don’t go along.

See Summary Findings National Survey of American Jews

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Israeli occupation soldier shoots blindfolded, handcuffed Palestinian detainee

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

J Street Poll: American Jews Prepared for U.S. to Pressure Israelis, Arabs to Attain Peace