Editor’s note: The following is adapted from a speech delivered Jan. 5 at the Gaza rally in St. Paul.
Saalam/Shalom and thank you/shukran to my Muslim brothers and sisters who organized this event and invited me to speak. To all of you listening, I say: Do not be silent about Gaza.
I come before you today as both a Jew and a citizen of the United States. I am outraged, sick to my stomach, and aching in my heart. First and foremost, I say that it is not anti-American to criticize the U.S. government, just as it is not anti-Jewish to criticize the Israeli government. Secondly, I say that there is not one monolithic Jewish community or voice in the world, the U.S., Minnesota or the Twin Cities, though mainstream Jewish organizations that are Pro-Israel get the most media coverage.
There are many Jews all over the world who do not unequivocally support Israeli government policy. I am a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; we support a free Palestine that can determine its own future, and an end to Israeli apartheid of Palestine. We stand in opposition to the ideology of Zionism, a politics that has resulted in Israeli government policy to remove all Palestinians from Israel, and an ideology that you have seen dramatically in action over the past week. It has resulted in the killing of over 500 people in Gaza, injuries to over 2,500, and now the ground war that has cut Gaza in half and an air war that the London Times speculated today includes the use of phosphorus shells — weapons supposedly being used “legally” as smokescreens for Israeli troops, when in reality they cause horrific burns on the bodies of their victims.
Do not be silent about Gaza.
I was in Gaza in December 1991 with a women’s peace brigade 15 days before the first Gulf War started. I met with Palestinian peace activists, mothers, day-care workers, teachers and doctors. The poverty was dramatic. Children played in crowded alleys as open sewage ran between their legs. The people wanted peace, and did not hate Jews. And I thought that the conditions I witnessed then were horrendous. I visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum on that trip, and when I saw the photos of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, I started to shake. They looked like the Palestinians I had just visited in Gaza.
The Zionist government policy of Israel today gives me, an American Jew, the right to “return” to Israel and get immediate citizenship, even though it is not my homeland. However, Palestinian families who have lived on the land for generations, and were removed in 1948, have no right of return. Nor do they have any recourse when the wall put up by the Israeli government separates them from work, family, access to water and highways — and even divides Palestinian villages themselves.
The Israeli government says that it is acting to end Hamas’ rule in Gaza. Remember, both the U.S. and Israel supported democratic elections in Palestine, and Hamas was democratically elected. When countries negotiate with their enemies to end conflicts, they do not sit down with friends. The U.S. and Israel have no right to determine that Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas are satisfactory negotiation partners, but Hamas is not.
Do not be silent about Gaza.
The government of Israel says it has attacked Gaza because Hamas soldiers have shot thousands of rockets at Israel. I do not condone this bombing, but let me ask you, what would you do if you were part of a population of over 1½ million people in the most densely populated place in the world? Your borders have been closed by Israel for 18 months. You do not have access to enough food for your family, or medical care, or electricity, water or gasoline. You have no income, you live under constant curfew, and your olive and vegetable fields have been bulldozed by Israel. When a people are treated inhumanely and violently, it is no surprise that they fight back. And today, it is no surprise that the Israeli government will not allow foreign journalists into Gaza to report on its destruction.
Again, the Israeli government justifies the war because of the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel. However, since September 2000, here is some startling data that we do not read about:
• 1,062 Israelis killed AND 4,876 Palestinians killed;
• 123 Israeli children killed AND 1,050 Palestinian children killed;
• 8, 341 Israelis injured AND 33,034 Palestinians injured;
• 1 Israeli political prisoner held AND 10,756 Palestinian political prisoners held;
U.N. resolutions targeting Israel between 1955 and1992: 65. None targeting Palestinians.
And for us in the United States, perhaps the most important number: During fiscal year 2007, the U.S. government gave $6.8 million a day to Israel (and less than $300,000 to Palestine).
Do not be silent about Gaza.
The headline today in Haaratz, the largest Israeli newspaper, quotes Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni: “Israel will no longer show restraint when attacked.” This is the person who is hoping to be the next prime minister of Israel in elections happening in a month. If 18 months of total lockdown of Gaza was showing restraint, what in God’s name is going to happen to the innocent people of Gaza — the child playing in his yard killed, the ambulance driver and doctor killed by a bomb that targeted the ambulance, the Muslims praying at mosques that have been bombed, the students studying at the Islamic University? Israel says they are terrorists.
I ask you, who gets to define the word terrorism? Terrorism is the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against governments, the population as a whole, or foreign societies in the pursuit of goals that are political, religious or ideological. Do you agree? This is the FBI’s definition.
Do not be silent about Gaza.
What must we do? We must demand that our elected officials call for an immediate ceasefire and an opening of Gaza’s borders. Let them refrain from using the word “terrorism.” We must challenge the Israeli government by hitting it where it hurts — financially. We call on Gov. Tim Pawlenty to cut our trade and investment ties with Israel. We must support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee. Read the labels on all the products you buy and don’t buy anything from Israel. Ask restaurants where their produce comes from before you decide to eat there. Ask your workplace where it invests your retirement money, and demand that your money is not invested in Israeli bonds. Hold Israel responsible for its violations of international law and Palestinian rights. And hold our elected officials responsible.
Do not let mainstream Jews and their organizations call you anti-Jewish. Have courage and speak out. Do not be silent about Gaza. Salaam/shalom.
Lisa Albrecht is an activist educator and writer. She is an associate professor and Morse-Minnesota Alumni Association Distinguished Professor of Teaching in the school of social work at the University of Minnesota, where she founded and directs an undergraduate program in social justice. Previously, she taught writing in the General College at the U of M for 19 years. She is the recipient of the Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award.
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Please address Hamas’ stated denial of the state of Israel’s right to exist.
We have only 11 days or so before the U.S. government changes it’s tune. Again as an American, I was ashamed of the policy put forward at the U.N. council last night supporting the Israel incursion into Gaza.
Anyone ‘looking the other way’ in favor of supporting Israel is guilty of a moral sin.
Thank You Lisa for making this issue more public.
Mr. Brandon: I would guess Hamas was speaking of Israel’s illegal appropriations of Palestinian lands and their subjugation of the Palestinian people.
As this assault upon essentially helpless people continues day and night after day and night (even during the “pause” today that was supposed to allow aid to reach Gaza City’s wounded and starving population), the list of the horrifying results of Israel’s violence have been noted by the U.N. and the Red Cross. The four hungry and terrified children found in a house full of the corpses of their parents and others that were not found for days because Israel would not let aid agencies enter Gaza, for instance,
I hope that these agencies, and perhaps others, will ask the International Criminal Court to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute for war crimes the officials have killed hundreds of innocent Gazans and their children. And shame shame shame on America for financing Israel’s every attack on its neighbors.
Ms Vetsch
Your “guess” is wrong. It is part of the Hamas charter to ELIMINATE the state of Israel, and nothing less will satisfy Hamas.
The immediate question remains, how to stop the bloodshed NOW. It will take sanity on both sides, but stopping the rockets seems like a rational first step, worthy of a try …IF Hamas truly wants to protect its people from devastation.
Agian “guessing” Hamas, I don’t think they care about devastation, indeed it provides them with a PR opportunity at the expense of a few hundred of their people’s lives. If this seems cynical — this region has lived with cynicism, stupidity, lies and dishonor for decades now.
Mr. Spicer: The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and homes, hundreds of dead children and other innocents dead, almost everyone starving and hundreds (or even thousands in desperate need of medical care, constant attacks by air and sea and ground operations with tanks for 10 days, aid workers killed during so-called “pauses” and hospitals and safe houses for refugees bombed — all these and more are A PR OPPORTUNITY???
Cynical, yes. Revealing an Israel good/Arabs bad attitude (much like the US civil war general who said “The only good Indian is a dead Indian), yes. We must stop turning a blind eye to Israel’s violence. As Lisa Albrecht says above, critizing Israel’s actions is not Anti-Semitic. And criticizing the U.S.’s support of that violence is a necessary step toward getting it stopped.
Mr. Brandon and Mr. Spicer: Hamas can change its mind. In November they agreed to accept a Palestinian state at the 1967 borders and to a long-term truce, if Israel would accept the Palestinians’ national rights.
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