Methodist missionary to Israel: having portrait of Golda is "not very American"

In honor of the Fourth of July holiday, Janet Lahr Lewis, the United Methodists' chief liaison for Methodist visitors to Israel and Palestine, has published a column on the Methodists' official website in which she complains that the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Israel has on its walls

"portraits of ... Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, even Theodore Hertzl -- not very American in my view."

She goes on to write that

"For me, though, the Israel independence day evokes visions of slaughter and destruction, of forced marches and imprisonment. The U.S. Independence Day evokes thoughts of “freedom fighters” and “patriots.” ... Why don’t we refer to Palestinians fighting for the same rights as “freedom fighters” and “patriots,” instead of as “terrorists” and “extremists”?"

Lewis' column is published in the July 13, 2009 edition of the "Faith in Action" newsletter published by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, which can be read here.

Lewis serves as the coordinator of Methodist missionaries working in Israel and Palestine. A biographical statement on their website states that

"Lewis ... educates visitors about the realities of the situation, organizes conferences, develops media campaigns, offers worship opportunities, hosts delegations to the area and oversees other special events ... (She) is the main contact for Volunteers in Mission teams and United Methodists who wish to follow the recommendation of the denomination’s General Conference to spend a significant amount of time in the area with local Christians."

While serving as the United Methodist liaison to Israel and Palestine, Lewis simultaneously served for many years as one of the leaders of the Palestinian organization Sabeel, working in Sabeel's Jerusalem office and organizing their international outreach. Sabeel is one of the main promoters of the anti-Israel boycott and divestiture movement. (Read here.)

The Methodist church may have their reasons for questioning how "American" their countrymen are. They should make those reasons explicit, rather than snipe in an offhanded manner. If they consider having portraits of Israeli leaders to be un-American, they should explain exactly why. If they cannot, they should apologize for promoting the view that friendship with Israel represents disloyalty to the United States.

Moreover, the United Methodist church needs to explain why their liaison in Israel and Palestine, charged with facilitating both missionary visits and church tours to the area, would characterize the founding of the State of Israel in such a biased, distorted manner.

Lastly, the United Methodists should clarify whether they agree with Lewis' characterization of Palestinian military actions against Israel as patriotic freedom-fighting.

Do these views represent the official policy of the United Methodists or are they only the personal views of their chief missionary representative in Israel?

Neo-Nazi conspiracies from Israel boycotters: UK academic edition

Harry’s Place has the story of Sean Wallis, a British research fellow and academic union leader who's promoting neo-Nazi conspiracy theories concerning "Zionists" being responsible for the world financial crisis.  Sean Wallis wielded some pretty wacky far right disinformation as part of a bizarre argument in support of the British academic union boycotting Israel and blacklisting Israeli academics.  His gist, as I understand it, is that the move to blacklist Israelis operates at a disadvantage since, he claims, "Zionists" looted Lehman Brothers of $400 billion dollars.  He thinks that opposition to his bigoted activism is rooted in this vast imaginary pot of gold.  

As an academic, he should adhere to his professional responsibility to cite sources.  He may be embarrased to do so however, since his source appears to be Stormfront.

Read it here: More neo-Nazi conspiracies from Israel boycotters

Sean Wallis, UCL UCU 

Much more from David Hirsch at Engage here.  It turns out that the story may have its origin in Willis Carto's Barnes Review.  Read the JC article on this here.  More on this later.

Brooklyn Food Co-op Weighs Israel Boycott

UPDATE: I was interviewed (briefly) by Fox News in connection with this story.  In case I don't make the cut on what they broadcast, here's what I said: "It's a ridiculous double-standard to penalize Israel for doing what any nation would do to defend itself."  

The co-op has about 14,000 members, most of whom don't bother to vote on resolutions brought up at general meetings, although this one may prove to be an exception.  So far, the only person I know to support it is the person who propsed it, who has declined to state her last name.  (In fairness to her, the negative publicity around this makes her decision to remain semi-anonymous seem understandable.)  

My sense is that this boycott will not be approved, although it has the potential to attract some support.  It's effect may be to spur rancorour debate which will create pointless divisions and hurt feelings within the co-op.  

No other nation, with the exception of South Africa, has been boycotted by the co-op.  The co-op has, over the years, sold products from nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa with histories of human rights abuses.  It does, however, make a good faith effort to stock fair trade, environmentally sound products from small producers.

By the way, the boycott proponents have not asked the co-op to stock Palestinian products, which seems to me to be more likely to actually improve the lives of Palestinians.  Funny ... now that I think of it ... boycott / divestment advocates rarely do push for investment in Palestinian businesses.  If they, and if the Palestinians themselves, had focused more on positive moves to grow the Palestinian economy, just think where it could be today.

from the Forward: Food Fight: Brooklyn Co-op Mulls Israel Ban, by Lana Gersten

Located in the heart of Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, the Park Slope Food Coop is at the nexus of the borough’s many diverse Jewish populations. From the liberal Jews of Park Slope to the Hasidic Jews of Crown Heights, the coop is one of the few places in Brooklyn where Jews of all denominations converge in a shared mission: to buy natural foods at reasonable prices.

But the co-op’s unusual Jewish character is being tested by a proposal to ban products bought from Israel, such as the persimmons and red peppers that are currently in the produce aisle.

Since Israel’s Gaza operation, there has been a rash of campaigns around the world to divest from Israel and to boycott the Jewish state. At Hampshire College this month, a spat ensued when a pro-Palestinian student group erroneously announced that the school was the first American college to divest from Israel. Israeli tennis star Shahar Pe’er was denied a visa to play at a major tournament in Dubai, and Britain has experienced ongoing efforts to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

The proposal at the co-op is not likely to be economically meaningful; perhaps a few shipments of vegetables are at stake.  But the debate is taking place in a rare hotbed of diverse Jewish life.

“There are so many Jews who shop there, there are so many Israelis who shop there, there’s a huge number of frum people from all over Brooklyn who shop there,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman of Brooklyn’s largest and most active reform congregation, Beth Elohim, “so my guess is that if it passes, and I want to emphasize that I don’t think it will, they will lose a lot of members.”

Bachman’s congregation is known as a hub for Brooklyn’s progressive Jews, and it has served as a home for the co-op’s monthly meetings, including the one at which the boycott proposal was first raised.

Bachman said he received several e-mails on the subject, a few of which came from congregants asking if the synagogue was taking any action.  Bachman said that his only plan is to attend the meeting when the ban is discussed, and place his name on a list of people who would like to speak.  He said that if the ban does pass, it is likely that the synagogue will ask the co-op to find a different space to rent for its general meetings.

“It will remain an irrelevant gesture to 5 million Israelis and 2 million Palestinians, but it will make someone in Park Slope feel really good about themselves,” he said. That’s what this is about; it’s about the political purity, which is part of Park Slope’s unique self-absorption.

“Bachman does not, though, speak for all Brooklyn Jews, despite having founded an organization with that name. Carol Wald, a Jewish co-op member living in the area, was one of two people to send letters to the co-op’s home-grown newspaper, the Linewaiters’ Gazette, encouraging the boycott discussion.

“All points of view really need to be heard,” she said. “If we start proposing things like boycotts, it’ll prompt more discussion, and that’ll help educate people.”

Since it was founded in 1973, the co-op has grown into a neighborhood institution with a membership of nearly 15,000.  All members are required to work monthly shifts.  According to Allen Zimmerman, general coordinator and produce buyer at the co-op, that philosophy attracts people from all walks of life.

“A lot of people are here for the tofu, but a lot of people are here for the beef and pork,” he said.

On the Jewish side, the co-op has its own kosher committee, which vets purchases of kosher meat and other products.

The push for an Israel boycott adds to the co-op’s long history of political action.  Nestlé products were voted out by the membership, because of the company’s campaign to promote infant formula instead of breastfeeding, and members rallied around a ban of South African goods during the apartheid regime.

The proposal to boycott Israeli goods was first raised by a woman who gives her name as Hima B., a co-op member of South Asian decent, during the “open forum” at the general meeting in January.  She faced no vocal opposition, according to people who were there, and was told to create an agenda item for a general meeting in the future.

“She spoke for less than 60 seconds, and nobody questioned it,” said Zimmerman, who was in attendance that night, along with an estimated 275 others.

Hima said she has since recruited 10 other members and hopes to put the issue on the agenda for an upcoming general meeting.

“There have been other attempts in the past to call for a boycott of Israeli goods. I don’t think it went anywhere,” she said.  A member for nearly five years, Hima was motivated to take action after learning more about the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.  “Economic sanctions worked in South Africa. Why shouldn’t we ask for an end to practices that are violating human rights?” she said.

Though many members are unaware of the proposal — only the most active go to the general meeting, or read the Linewaiters’ Gazette — Jewish groups and synagogues have been sending e-mails and making phone calls.

Many believe that such a boycott could never pass, given the co-op’s diversity.

Michael Barrish, a 48-year-old Web developer who was shopping on February 17, said the ban is absurd. He believes it would be shouted down by Jews who support Israel, and laughed at by those who find a ban of this nature preposterous. But, Barrish said, “I like being a member of a place in which you can propose what you believe.”

London Starbucks attacks linked to boycott Israel movement, conspiracy theories

In recent days, there has been a wave of anti-Israel violence and vandalism in reaction to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Most of that has been directed at innocent third parties who are thought to have connections to Israel. One of the odder manifestations of this trend has been the sudden morphing of a campaign to boycott Starbucks shops into actual attacks on two shops in London and demonstrations at several others in Britain, Europe and the Middle East.

JTA has published a brief piece with more information on the violent attacks on two London Starbucks shops by people who had participated in a rally at Trafalgar Square which featured various pro-Hamas and anti-Israel speakers. Read it here. It directly links these violent attacks to calls to divest from and boycott businesses alleged to be connected to Israel. It also tracks the origins of conspiracy theories motivating the attacks. (Also read this piece by Brendan O'Neill which provides greater detail.) The allegations behind these boycotts and the nature of their supposed remedy are vague and subject to interpretation. The rioters in London provided one form of interpretation.


from the JTA:

Calls to boycott Starbucks, based on false claims that the company helped finance Israel’s military operation in Gaza, led to violent attacks on two of its cafes in London.

In the past two weeks, the call to boycott Starbucks have been circulating by e-mails and SMS messages with the claim that Starbucks and McDonald’s were donating their next two weeks' revenues to Israel. Some claimed the donations are to the “Israeli military.”

On Jan. 17, during an anti-Israel rally at Trafalgar Square in central London, the rapper Lowkey attacked companies, including Starbucks, that have "Zionist" links." "You say you know about the Zionist lobby," he told the crowd, "but you put money in their pockets every time you’re buying their coffee." After the rally, two groups of a few dozen people each smashed the windows of two branches of Starbucks cafes and looted the shops.

Those calling for a boycott of Starbucks claim they have a letter from 2006 that proves their claim about company CEO Howard Schultz's support of Israel. Apparently the letter was published on an Internet site by an Australian anti-Zionist, who made it clear that he wrote the letter as a parody. Statements by Starbucks denying the claims did nothing to stop the campaign against the “Zionist coffee.”

Starbucks does not operate in Israel. In 2003 the company closed its branches there after being unable to break into the extensive cafe market.

One of the groups behind Britain's boycott campaign is Inminds, an Islamist group which works to support the Iranian dictatorship. Inminds issue a list of corporations and products which they assert are linked to Israel and are therefor "support(ing) baby killers". Their flyer is available on their website in Word format here. The website says the flyer is intended "to accompany the family on shopping trips, etc., to ensure guilty brands are avoided." (They don't specify whether "etc." includes vandalism of shops and attacks on workers.) The list of products to be boycotted includes clothing, food and cosmetics; not a single arms manufacturer is on the list. The connection of these products to Israel is not indicated.

Inminds has also published a flyer and webpage baselessly accusing Starbucks of complicity in violence against civilians. (Their flyer, entitled "Starbucks contribution to violence", is readable here in pdf. The Inminds anti-Starbucks webpage is here.) Their flyer features a bloody graphic portraying the following equation: U.S. flag + Israeli flag + Starbucks logo = horrific image of dead baby. It (ungrammatically) claims that "(b)y boycotting Starbucks, we're engaging in an essential key role to stop funding the Israeli and American Governmental Terrorism taking place worldwide and especially in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan!" (According to their website, Inminds' allegations concerning Starbucks role in Iraq and Afganistan deal with Starbucks collaboration with the Red Cross to provide free coffee to troops. The connection to Lebanon goes unstated.) The unfounded allegations of Starbucks' complicity in violence, the conspiracy theories and the violent imagery promoted by Inminds may have played a role in motivating the recent attacks on London Starbucks.

I was disturbed to discover that Inminds' anti-Israel boycotts are currently being promoted on Talking Points Memo, a highly reputable U.S. blog. (Read here.) The author of that post, Salman Ranaw, gives some background to the attacks in London, stating that "(a) few Muslims in Birmingham got together and paid for the printing of 10,000 colour boycott leaflets (which they approached us to design). The leaflets were distributed through out (sic) the UK."

(More on the London attacks at Harry's Place here and here. Other U.K. reports here and here. The story of an attack on a Starbucks in Beirut can be read here, on a blog of the L.A. Times and here, on a leftist French blog.)



The idea of anti-Starbucks activism connected to opposition to Israel has been floating around for quite some time. As I discussed here in a piece about Seattle's proposed anti-Israel divestature measure last year, Starbuck's has been a target of anti-Israel boycotters in the U.S. as well as in Europe and the Muslim world. Here (about a third of the way down the page) and here (in a pormotional flyer in MSWord) is a 2002 example of three boycott-Starbucks demonstrations staged in New Brunswick, N.J. by a local ISM (International Solidarity Movement) affiliate called New Jersey Solidarity, which is based at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. (As an aside, I noted with interest that, concurrent with their anti-Starbucks campaign, the Rutgers group hosted -- on campus -- an infamous anti-Semitic web polemicist who calls himself Joachim Martillo. The flyer for that event is available in pdf here. To cite a recent example of his writing, Martillo recently wrote here that not blaming Jews as a group for the world financial crisis "is comparable to Holocaust denial". To get the gist of the ISM agenda, check out the New Jersey ISM group's flyers for its 2002-2003 events here.)

The website ziopedia.org coninues to diseminate the phony 2006 Starbucks letter discussed in the JTA piece above. (Read here. WARNING: the ziopedia.org website features violent, disturbing imagery and language. It also promotes Holocaust denial.) Ziopedia also diseminates the following anti-Semitic image



[NOTE: Since this was written, the ziopedia website has taken this material offline. I've found this archived version of the phony letter, with a confession by Andrew Winkler, ziopedia's publisher, that he was its true author. A larger version of the below image, which was formerly linked to from ziopedia above, has since been removed from that website.

>


The website arabnews.com promoted the boycott of Starbucks in this 2006 post. This 2006 report from the Jewlicious website concerns an Arab blogger who adds his own twist to the usual Zionist conspiracy: he believes that the Starbucks logo depicts Queen Esther. This string on an Arab bulletin board connects Starbucks to Zionism to saturated fats.

According to one Arab-American blogger (read here), these rumors and conspiracy theories have recently found fertile ground in the U.S. Arab community in reaction to the fighting in Gaza. Jamal Dajani writes:

BTW, did I mention that here in the U.S. Arab Americans in solidarity with Gaza have been boycotting Starbucks? For the last couple of weeks, internet conspiracy theorists have been spreading a story that Starbucks is funding the Israeli attacks on Gaza!

With respect to the various internet and text message campaigns spurring anti-Starbucks actions throughout the world, we have the following from ynet.com (read here):

The Starbucks coffee company, which operates many stores in the Arab world, especially in the Persian Gulf, also issued a statement denying the message, and also denied rumors that the company's Jewish CEO Howard Schultz expressed support for the military operation in Gaza. Similar rumors about Shultz were spread during the Second Lebanon War, sparking a greater row than the present one. Starbucks ... denied (those) reports ... as well.

Note to readers: if you know of more conspiracy theories involving Starbucks and Israel and feel like posting them to the comments section of this post, be my guest...

UPDATE: According to MEMRI, al-Jazeera is promoting the boycott and the whole Protocols of the Elders of Starbucks conspiracy theory. (Read here.)

Intemperate, rancorous reactions to Obama endorsements

Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who has endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency (read here), has a blog post detailing the venomous attacks she's received from Republicans in response (read here).

I have been inundated with emails that are replete with all sorts of idiocy. They are, by and large, too stupid to recount. There is a sense of real hysteria in them. There may be good reasons to support McCain but these people are off the wall.

I have been told that Obama is: pro-Muslim, anti-American,pro-Farrakhan [that Farrakhan is a close associate of Obama], anti-Israel, (and) a Manchurian candidate [this from a nameless person who was described as a top U.S. analyst in DC... ].

I have been told that I have spun and skewed, engaged in major distortions, shown a lack of critical scholarship,offered arguments with no intellectual credibility [all of the above came with no examples of how I did so... just the charges], am a self-hating liberal Jew, (and that I) don't know Jewish law.

Then today these folks really hit bottom: they sent an email out contending that the O people form with their two hands [it is akin to the three fingers people used to hold aloft as a sign of support for George W.] is the same as a Hitler salute..... This is hardly worth comment... are they suggesting that Obama and Hitler were in cahoots? Maybe they don't know that Hitler had been dead 15 years when Obama was born.... that neo-Nazis are behind his campaign?

Finally, many of these emails repeat [in exactly the same language... as if it came out of a mimeograph machine... if you remember what that is] that I told people to vote for Obama because he is Black. Give me a break. Anyone who can read that into my last paragraph smells to me like a latent racist or maybe like someone who can't read.

Jews have prospered in this country in countless and unimaginable ways. America has given us tremendous opportunities. While no one should vote for Barack Obama because he is black, the fact that a black man is a nominee for the highest office in the land constitutes an affirmation of the fact that at long last, some of the final barriers of discrimination are crumbling. For Jews it is yet another reminder of the blessings this country has offered them and other minorities.

I wonder if these folks will say the same thing about Gen. Powell's statement this morning on Meet the Press

And I can't deny that it will be a historic event for an African-American to become president. And should that happen, all Americans should be proud--not just African-Americans, but all Americans--that we have reached this point in our national history where such a thing could happen. It will also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world.

* * *

Professor Lipstadt need wonder no longer whether General Powell will be similarly slandered. Here's historian Judith Apter Klinghoffer writing at George Mason University's History News Network (read here):

Do you believe that Colin Powell would have endorsed a WHITE DEMOCRATIC Candidate for president? Me neither. Do you believe Colin Powell would not have run for president had he been WHITE? Me neither. Do you believe that Barack Obama would have offered Powell or any other black man who failed to endorse him a seat at the table? Me neither.

To be honest, I never liked the man. He struck me as a coward. Yes, he was a general but he let fear of assassination prevent him from running for the presidency and he betrayed those who gave him a seat at the table in ill timed books.

Well, the two man deserve each other. Honor, gratitude and loyalty are not values familiar to either of them. Throwing old friends under bus is a common sport for them. All we can hope is that the American people will see through the media hype and give them their just dessert. A defeat in the polls.

Disgusting.

Klinghoffer's intemperate statement stands in sharp contrast to General Powell's thoughtful, well-reasoned one (view here). Klinghoffer is unable to mount a coherent argument against General Powell's endorsement of Obama, so instead slings senseless insults. On the other hand, in his statement, General Powell details the strengths of both McCain and Obama, explains why he supports Obama, and explicitly disavows the sort of racial bias Klinghoffer imputes. He also explicitly condemns the rancor of the Republican campaign. Klinghoffer, in her angry response, senselessly calls General Powell "a coward" in spite of his distinguished record of service in combat. Equally senselessly, she calls Powell "disloyal" in spite of his loyalty -- excessive loyalty, in fact -- to the Bush administration, who, it must be said, used him very badly indeed. Most senselessly of all, Kilinghoffer also tells us, as if we should care, that she "never liked" Powell. Her ad hominem argument (such as it is -- it's more invective than argument) tells me that, in addition to having a problem with anger management, she's also a very poor judge of character.


This blog has received a comment similarly accusing General Powell of being motivated by racial bias to endorse Obama. Here's part of my response:

(W)hy are you suspicious when one African-American supports another? Are you similarly suspicious of whites supporting other whites, or do you take that for granted? You need to examine your own racial bias. I believe that psychologists call what you're doing "projection".

* * *

Harvard University Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, a notable supporter of Israel, and, like Professor Lipstadt, a backer of Hilary Clinton's run for the Democratic nomination, has also come out in support of Barack Obama (read here). He has subsequently come under attack from the left.

Blogger Richard Silverstein, whose idealistically titled blog Tikkun Olam has a reputation for being harshly combative (especially behind the scenes), is especially harsh in his critique of Dershowitz' endorsement statement (read here).

Though Dershowitz is a nominal Democrat, I still find it odd and off-putting that he’d endorse Obama. He’s clearly far out of sync with Obama’s world view. Dersh endorsed Hillary in the primaries and certainly seems much more comfortable with her hawkish, slavishly pro-Israel line.

Hardly "out of sync" with Obama, here's what the life-long Democrat Dershowitz actually said in his endorsement:

I support (Obama) on policies unrelated to Israel, such as the Supreme Court, women's rights, separation of church and state and the economy. But I also prefer Obama to McCain on the issue of Israel ... because I think it is better for Israel to have a liberal supporter in the White House than to have a conservative supporter in the oval office. Obama's views on Israel will have greater impact on young people, on Europe, on the media and on others who tend to identify with the liberal perspective. Although I believe that centrists liberals in general tend to support Israel, I acknowledge that support from the left seems to be weakening as support from the right strengthens. The election of Barack Obama -- a liberal supporter of Israel -- will enhance Israel's position among wavering liberals.

For Silverstein, a harsh critic of Israel with no interest in enhancing Israel's position among liberals, that's a bit too much. Silverstein, who refers to Dershowitz as "Dersh" (maybe he's using the Norman Finkelstein style guide), claims without any evidence or supportive argument, that the timing of the Dershowitz endorsement was cynically based on a desire to be on the winning side. In a moment of venting, he admits his bias, stating "I can’t tell whether I despise Marty Peretz or Alan Dershowitz more," and questions why Harvard would allow Dershowitz on its faculty.

Silverstein appears to be operating under the misimpression that Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are at opposite ends of a political spectrum, the nature of which he does not spell out. If he truly believes that Clinton and Obama disagree so completely about Israel (or, for that matter, about the economy or globalization or a wide range of other issues), I'm afraid that it's Silverstein and not Dershowitz who's in for a severe disappointment should Obama win.

By the way, Silverstein has already been disappointed by Obama's support for Israel. Silverstein advocates divesting stock in corporations doing business in Israel, and earlier this year supported a deceptive anti-Israel divestment referendum aimed at the Seattle municipal employee pension fund (read here) -- a referendum which was subsequently struck down by a Washington State judge as illegal (read here). When Obama gave his well-received speech at AIPAC in June of this year, Silverstein accused him of "pandering to his audience's prejudices", without specifying what he thought these prejudices were. Silverstein then complained that Obama linked anti-Israel divestiture (which Silverstein supports) with anti-Israel boycotts (which Silverstein claims to oppose). (Read here.) It seems to me that Obama's inclination to connect divestment and boycott is entirely rational, while Silverstein's attempt to differentiate between the two is either salesmanship or wishful thinking.

Something tells me that Silverstein and others on the left are in for more severe disappointments if they're hoping for Obama to demonize Israel.

Canadian Labor Union's Defense of Israel

from Canada's Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (pdf original here) via Z-word (Canadian Union Rejects Boycott) and Yahoo! Finance (Canada's Carpenters' Union Unanimously Passes a Historical Resolution in Defense of Israel):

Canada’s Carpenters’ Union, meeting at the 7th Biennial Canada Council of Carpenters Convention in Victoria, has voted in favour of a new resolution that will have a profound effect on organized labour around the world.

With a membership of more than 60,000, the Council unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing the characterization by a limited number of other Canadian unions of Israel as an apartheid state. The resolution calls for greater understanding of the plight of Israeli citizens, who face continual waves of attacks and threats from the vast majority of their neighbours.

"Unlike many neighbouring countries, Israel has an active trade union movement that participates freely in Israeli society," explained Ucal Powell, President of the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario. "Supporting a boycott or sanctions against Israel risks reinforcing terrorist groups and does little to encourage the wellbeing of workers in the region."

The resolution, believed to be the first from a union in defence of Israel, was developed in consultation with various groups, including Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a respected Canadian-based NGO that takes its name from the famed Holocaust survivor and international justice pioneer Simon Wiesenthal.

"The road to lasting peace can only be paved on a foundation of tolerance and security, which isimpossible to achieve given the current terrorist activities of Hamas and Hezbollah," said Avi Benlolo, president of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. "Resolutions such as this one are needed to counter the animosity toward Israel which is inherent in recent union activity – a situation which encourages further threats and violence from terrorist groups in the region. Our organization and its more than 25,000 members wholeheartedly support the Carpenters’ resolution and believe it will resonate with Canadians and other labour advocates."

The leadership of the Carpenters’ Union and local community leaders in attendance at the convention are hopeful this new perspective will encourage other unions to issue similar resolutions.

Anti-Israel extremists disrupt Jerusalem Quartet concert in Edinburgh

From Harry's Place comes the infuriating news that the Jerusalem Quartet concert in Edinburgh was interrupted repeatedly by hecklers led by Mick Napier, head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. (Read here and here and here. My earlier piece on the protest plans can be read here.)

Napier justifies his actions by portraying the Quartet as Israeli agents when traveling overseas and as overzealous IDF soldiers who "put down their rifles (to) hold violins" when in Israel. (Read here.) Neither is true. In fact, three of the four members of the Jerusalem Quartet participate in a joint Palestinian - Israeli orchestra founded by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim, and sponsored by the Barenboim-Said Foundation. This orchestra, called the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, exists to foster artistic cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Napier and his cohorts deliberately spread distortions and lies to encourage those who would disrupt concerts, deny freedom of expression and stifle attempts to foster international cooperation. What the world needs more of is precisely what Napier acts against. May he continue to fail in his mission, only, one hopes, more quietly.

Jerusalem String Quartet faces U.K. boycott threat

The Jerusalem Quartet is planning to perform in Edenburgh's Queen's Hall on August 29 (read here). They're planning to perform the Haydn String Quartet Op 76 No 5, Smetana's String Quartet No 1 ‘From my Life', and the Brahms String Quartet Op 51 No 2 in A minor.

Now the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) is promoting a boycott move against their concert with a scurrilous sort of propaganda which must be seen to be believed. (Read here.)

In case anyone has any doubt about the bigotry behind this boycott, they should be aware that Kyril Zlotnikov, the Jerusalem Quartet's cellist is a student and friend of musician and peace activist Daniel Barenboim (read here). In fact, Barenboim has loaned Jacqueline Du Pre's ‘Sergio Perresson’ cello to Kyril Zlotnikov for this tour. Read pdf here.) Zlotinikov is also a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (read here). This orchestra, founded by Barenboim and Edward Said and managed by the Barenboim-Said Foundation, includes both Arab and Israeli musicians. Its reason for being is to campaign for peace and cooperation between Arabs and Jews through artistic cooperation. With that in mind, would someone remind me of the reason for being for the group boycotting the concert?

I've written about a similar boycott effort against an Israeli Philharmanic concert in Los Angeles by the groups Women in Black -- Los Angeles and Jewish Voice for Peace (read here). That boycott was, in some respects, worse in that it entailed a demand that the musicians sign a sort of loyalty oath drafted by the boycotters. When the musicians understandably did not comply with this demand, the boycotters protested outside the concert hall with signs reading "Boycott Israel".

Here's a suggestion for groups such as Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Women in Black and Jewish Voice for Peace which advocate boycotting Israeli artists. Rather than working for that, why not emulate the Jerusalem Quartet's Zlotnikov and work to encourage Arab-Israeli cooperation in the arts?

Jewish Voice for Peace: for freedom of speech except when they're against it

I recently wrote about a move among anti-Israel activists in Seattle to put a referendum on November's ballot which would mandate that the city's pension funds divest stock in corporations doing business in Israel (read here). Divestment advocates have been using the endorsement of a group called "Jewish Voice for Peace" (or "JVP") to deceive Seattle voters into believing that progressive, pro-peace Jews consider divestment a legitimate tactic. In fact, there is no indication that this is true.

JVP is an extremely small group. They do not make their membership figures public, but there are some indications that actual membership in the group is in the range of 500 - 1,000. A recent petition drive by JVP collected 4,000 signatures, and a recent letter writing drive collected 1,400 signatures. Assuming that their mailing list is larger than their formal membership, and that their petitions are forwarded to others by those on their mailing list, 1,000 members would be a very generous estimate of their formal membership. Assuming that JVP's membership is 100% Jewish, the organization represents between 0.008% - 0.015% of American Jews. In spite of this, JVP's leaders and their political associates portray the group as having a wide constituency.

JVP has made a name for itself as a supporter of divestment from companies doing business in Israel. In doing so, they, on the one hand, associate with extreme anti-Israel groups like ANSWER (read the ADL's take on ANSWER here), and, on the other hand, market themselves to groups that actually have mainstream, moderate constituencies like the United Methodists. Depending on their target audience, they sometimes represent themselves as mainstream and moderate themselves, saying to those audiences that they advocate very limited divestment targeting only corporations providing direct material support to the so-called "occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza and "East Jerusalem", sometimes naming specific individual corporations. The truth, however, is that JVP has a history of calling for a complete boycott of Israel, including of Israeli artists wishing to perform in the United States.

In one instance, JVP supported the group called "Women in Black-Los Angeles" (or "WIB-LA") in demanding that the individual members of the Israel Philharmonic sign a sort of loyalty oath with respect to their views of the political situation in the Middle East if they wanted to avoid a boycott of a planned concert in Los Angeles. WIB-LA sent, and JVP's leaders co-signed, a very polite letter to the orchestra's musicians, referring to the musicians as "representatives of the State of Israel", and giving them an ultimatum to sign a letter of support for the views of WIB-LA and JVP and return it three months prior to the concert in February 2007. (The letter containing this demand bore the closing "Peace and blessings". Nice touch.)

When the musicians did not sign this loyalty oath, WIB-LA picketed outside the concert with signs reading "BOYCOTT ISRAEL".




(Read about the protest action supporting a complete boycott of Israel at Women in Black - Los Angeles. Read the letter demanding the musicians sign a loyalty oath here at the so-called "OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN".)

Now, JVP (via their blog, "Muzzlewatch") is protesting two institutions (Spertus Museum and the University of Michigan Press) banning intellectual content deemed to be biased against Israel and, in the case of one, overtly anti-Semitic (read JVP's views on this here, a press report here, and the views of Stand With Us here). JVP's reasoning? They believe in freedom of expression. Their action against the Israel Philharmonic has apparently been forgotten.

JVP did not mention their push to boycott Israeli creative artists on "Muzzlewatch", the hypocrisy of doing so being too apparent. Maybe they need to have an alternate blog for such actions. They could call it "Muzzle".

Seattle's deceptive anti-Israel referendum

A coalition of Seattle activists calling itself Seattle Divest from War and Occupation (SDWO) is petitioning to get an anti-Israel divestment referendum on November's ballot and they are attempting to deceive voters in the process. The referendum's sweeping anti-Israel provisions are concealed both in the text of the petition and in the statements of its supporters, both of which highlight its other provisions calling for divestment in companies profiting from the war in Iraq. The anti-Iraq War provisions of Initiative 97 are touted in its title ("DIVEST FROM WAR Initiative") which is printed in a large font headline above a description of the referendum in smaller print. The full text of the referendum appears on a separate page which appears after the petition's signature page, potentially deceiving voters who don't read all the way through to see the less popular anti-Israel language. (View a PDF of the petition here.)

The fact that the proposal's authors have chosen to link the potentially popular anti-war proposal to the less popular anti-Israel one raises questions as to their priorities. Are they more interested in promoting an anti-Zionist agenda than they are in ending the war? If not, what practical reason do they have to link the two issues making passage of the anti-war provisions less likely? Why don't they give voters the option of signing separate petitions, one concerning Israel, the other Iraq? Why do they conceal the anti-Israel provisions of this referendum within the Trojan Horse of the anti-Iraq-war provisions?

In addition to attempting to conceal its anti-Israel provisions, SDWO have also lied about how sweeping they would be. Some supporters of the referendum (read here) have implied that it would target only companies providing military equipment used in the West Bank and Gaza. Some have even claimed that the bill would only effect Halliburton and Caterpillar. This is patently false. Here's a quote from the proposed referendum:

The city of Seattle shall not invest its employees’ retirement funds in ...(c) corporations that provide direct material support for activities of the Israeli government within the occupied and besieged territories of West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights (and) (d) corporations with a presence (including but not limited to offices, manufacturing plants, franchises, and significant trade ties) in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights.

Please note the vagueness of the term "presence". The referendum pointedly does not limit the word "presence" to "offices, manufacturing plants, franchises, and significant trade ties". In fact, it does not define the limits of the term "presence" at all. A law with language that vague would provide bureaucrats with arbitrary power with respect to deciding which corporations to punish. In effect, any corporation doing business in Israel could be deemed by the administrators of the pension fund to be "present" by dint of some connection to the areas specified and subject to divestment.

Although the Seattle divestment proponents like to cite arms manufacturers as their targets (except Boeing, see below), in fact, this measure would mostly effect corporations doing business in completely non-military fields such as software, retail, agriculture, banking and pharmaceuticals, many of which employ and serve Arabs as well as Jews. Corporations specifically targeted by previous divestment initiatives include: Ahava, Boston Scientific, Domino's Pizza, GM, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lehmann Brothers, Lucent, McDonald's, Merck, Motorola, Pizza Hut, Teva, Texas Instruments and Volvo. Under the terms of Initiative 97, all of these corporations would be subject to divestment. Corporations which operate under contract with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, such as Caterpillar and Cement Roadstone would be subject to divestment as well.

In fact, this measure is so vaguely written that it could actually apply to corporations doing business with relief agencies providing services to Palestinians insofar as they act in concert with the Israeli government or provide services to Israelis. It could also apply to the corporations whose equipment is used to provide fuel or even water to Palestinians if Israelis also used that fuel or water in the regions named in the law. Many of the potentially effected corporations actually employ Palestinians and/or provide Palestinians with goods and services.

The literature produced by the New England United Methodist Conference (NEUMC), the group which spearheaded the anti-Israel divestment movement in the U.S. and provided the model the others follow, is helpful in understanding exactly how broad the intentions of the divestment movement really are, and why the provisions of Initiative 97 are so vague. (Read here and here) Take Blockbuster Video as an example. The NEUMC goes so far as to target Blockbuster for punishment because it

has kiosks in illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. These settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Companies providing services to these settlements, which violate international law, contribute to their growth and appeal for Israelis. They make it harder to withdraw Israelis from the occupied territories, an essential step for any lasting peace agreement with Palestinians.

"(O)ccupied Palestinian land" in this instance refers to places such as French Hill (a neighborhood in Jerusalem), Maaele Adumim and Ariel. Just how video kiosks interfere with lasting peace is unclear. The theory seems to be that Israelis with access to DVDs are less likely to leave.

The fact that completely harmless commercial activity such as this has been specifically targeted by the divestment movement would seem to portend that, if Seattle were to implement this measure, the definition of "presence" would be very broad indeed. Any business whose goods or services are sold to or even used by Israelis beyond the pre-1967 "Green Line", including within Jerusalem, could be subject to divestment.

In fact, the inclusion of "East Jerusalem" in this measure also broadens the referendum's scope beyond any practicable definition. Jerusalem has effectively been unified for 41 years, since Israel removed that city's barbed wire barricades and walls which were erected by the Jordanians in 1948. Targeting a business with a "presence" on a particular block or in a particular neighborhood would be completely unworkable. Would the pizza delivery guy have to consult a 1967 map of Jerusalem to determine if he was subjecting Pizza Hut to divestment? Would he have to ask if the recipient of the pizza were Arab or Jew? And if an Arab and a Jew shared the pizza...

The measure would even punish commercial activity in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. If a publicly traded corporation produces religious articles such as siddurim, tallitot, or kipot used at the Western Wall, it would be subject to divestment.

Here's the bottom line: any corporation whose goods or services are used in Israel could be subject to divestment under this measure, depending on the interpretation of its vague language.

Local Impact

This measure has local implications specific to Seattle voters concerned about local businesses, complicating matters for its advocates. Seattle-based corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks could be subject to punitive divestment, and the divestment people are anxious to spin this aspect every which way but loose. The Seattle Post Intelligencer has reported that the measure's backers claim that the measure would somehow not effect Boeing, although they don't explain why not (read here, fourth paragraph). A local pro-divestment activist named Richard Silverstein has claimed (here, in the last sentence) that Boeing would be exempt because, in his words, "the company is not involved in any commercial enterprises in the settlements". However, both the NEUMC (here) and the Seattle Palestine Solidarity Committee (here) specifically name Boeing as subject to divestment because it supplies aircraft used by Israel in the Palestinian territories. Boeing also does business with the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems (ESLT) (read here) which would fall under the "direct material support" provision of the referendum. Yet Silverstein and the referendum's unnamed "backers" maintain that Boeing's business in Israel somehow wouldn't be considered either "direct material support" or a "presence" under the referendum.

In fact, not only would Boeing's military presence fall under the aegis of this measure, such innocuous activities as Microsoft's sales, user support or training programs in the areas specified in the referendum would subject that Seattle-based corporation to divestment as well. Furthermore, Microsoft acquires several Israeli startups every year and has R & D facilities in Haifa (read here) and Herliya (read here). If the referendum passes, it would remain to be determined by whoever would determine such matters whether these operations have a "presence" in the relevant areas. Transportation or other programs for employees living in the targeted areas, subcontracts with other businesses, or contracts with the Israeli government might well open the door to Seattle being forced to divest its Microsoft stock under the broad terms of Initiative 97.

Even Starbucks, which does not have any stores in Israel (read here), might be subject to the measure, based on their "presence" as a funder of various Jewish and Zionist charities. In fact, anti-Israel activists have specifically targeted Starbucks for a boycott because of the support of its CEO Howard Schultz for Israel (read here and here). The boycott Starbucks movement has produced virulent anti-Semitic propaganda such as this. If Initiative 97 passes, Seattle's pension fund administrators may be forced to rule on whether charitable donations to Jewish institutions in Jerusalem constitute a "presence".

Seattle has relatively few Jews and little connection to Israel, but SDWO has attempted to capitalize on one local connection. The Seattle area was the home of Rachel Corrie, the Palestine Solidarity Movement activist killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza. SDWO has played on this connection, blaming the Caterpillar corporation for Corrie's death and going so far as to claim that Initiative 97 would only mandate divestment in two companies: Halliburton and Caterpillar.

One local connection to anti-Israel terrorism took place just two years ago in 2006 when the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle (located in the 36th LD) was the subject of a horrible terrorist attack by a Muslim proclaiming opposition to Israel (read here and here). Six women were shot in that attack, including one who was 17 weeks pregnant. One of the victims died.

The Referendum's Sponsors

Initiative 97's organizational sponsors (listed here) have a history of opposing Israel's existence, supporting a "one-state solution" and advocating complete boycott of Israel. Some of them have even come out in favor of suicide bombing and terrorism. This advocacy is not at all reflected in the literature they've published in support of the petition or on the petition itself.

One of the initiative's main sponsors is the Seattle Green Party, and one of the main endorsers is the Washington State Green Party. The Washington State Greens, like the U.S. Green Party, has a history of anti-Israel activism in addition to it's better known pacificism, anti-globalization and environmentalism. With respect to the presidential election, the Washington Greens voted for Cynthia McKinney, who is now the Green Party's presumptive presidential nominee (read here and here). (McKinney is still listed as a Democrat, not a Green, on the SDWO website, here.) McKinney, who has built her political career largely around her opposition to Israel, recently advocated the "Palestinian right of return" (a code word for a "one state solution") in a speech to an anti-Israel rally at the UN on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding (read here: "Cynthia McKinney on Israel: ‘Not in my name’"). McKinney has formally endorsed the Seattle divestment referendum and promotes it on her website, albeit in deceptive terms. Her website states that the referendum "would block the city from investing its pension funds in corporations that benefit from the Iraq war, or from certain other Middle East military occupations." (Read here.)

The Greens elsewhere advocate a complete boycott of Israel in more open terms. In November 2005, a resolution (read here) of the national Green Party called for:

"civil society institutions and organizations around the world to implement a comprehensive divestment and boycott program (i.e. against Israel). Further, the party calls on all governments to support this program and to implement state level boycotts."

The U.S. Green Party is apparently extremely ambitious with respect to their influence on "all world governments".

In October, 2007, the U.S. Green Party again called for a complete "economic boycott", as well as an end to aid for Israel (read here). They made similar calls for a complete boycott in March 2008 (read here) and, in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, here.

Considering the Green Party's history as the spoiler in the 2000 presidential election, one can only speculate as to their motivation in Seattle in 2008. A ballot measure such as this would almost certainly attract the attention of Republicans who would seek to tie it both to the Obama campaign and Washington State Democratic candidates.

Initiative 97 is also sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). This group has made the divestment movement their focus, especially with respect to groups such as the United Methodist and Presbyterian churches. Divestment advocates frequently cite Jewish Voice for Peace to counter charges that opposition to Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism (read here and here and this pdf). JVP, like the Green Party, goes so far as to call for a complete boycott of Israel (read here), a position which they do not generally reveal in their pro-divestment advocacy. They also recently sponsored a "Nakba" commemoration on the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel (read here). Liat Weingart, one of the groups leaders, recently lobbied the United Methodists to divest their pension funds from Israel. In the course of her speech to the United Methodist General Conference, she said “(i)f you haven’t been accused of anti-Semitism yet, you haven’t been doing the work of Justice.” The audience reportedly "gasped and laughed". (At that same conference, the Methodist Federation for Social Action voted against resolutions opposing anti-Semitism and calling for human rights in Muslim nations.) (Read here.) The Methodists, to their credit, ultimately voted against divestment and in support of the measures opposing anti-Semitism and for human rights.

Another of Initiative 97's sponsors, Palestine Solidarity Committee, Seattle, actively opposes a two state solution and opposes Israel's existence (read here), stating

We demand ...establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital toward the establishment of a secular democratic state in historic Palestine.

Nothing on the SDWO website or in the pro-referemdum literature indicates this sponsor's opposition to the existence of Israel.

Similarly opposed to Israel's existence is Initiative 97 sponsor ANSWER. (Read about ANSWER here.) That group's record of opposition to Israel's existence is simply too extensive to cover in this forum. Suffice it to say that their extremism on this issue even got them on the fighting side of such anti-war groups as United for Peace and Justice and the War Resisters League (two groups notably absent from the list of sponsors of Initiative 97). (Read here and here.)

Fight within local Democratic Party

One of the petition's main sponsors, Amy Hagopian, is actively campaigning to win the measure the Democratic Party's endorsement in Washington's 36th Legislative District. Hagopian, who is listed on the SDWO website as being unaffiliated to a political party (read here), is also attempting to get the Democratic Party to provide workers to gather signatures for the petition. If she succeeds in getting the local Democratic Party to approve her proposals, this would certainly be fodder for the Republicans in the upcoming presidential election. It would inevitably be tied to Obama. Whatever the ultimate fate of the petition, the actions of Democrats in this small legislative district in Washington State may have national importance.

The voters in the 36th LD tend to vote to the left. Seattle's Jewish population, and its awareness about Israel, is relatively low. Support for Israel in this sort of area is frequently portrayed as intrinsically neoconservative, pro-Likud or pro-Bush. The idea of progressive Zionism is a bit of a foreign concept there. The liberal voters of the 36th LD, who are being currently being lobbied quite intensely by the divestment advocates, would seem fertile ground for support for Initiative 97. On the other hand, local opponents of the measure are organizing to oppose supporting the measure and they're putting up a good fight to tying the Democratic Party to such an extreme anti-Israel measure.

Now the good news

A coalition of Jewish groups has filed suit to prevent the measure from reaching the ballot. In the first phase of the litigation, which dealt with the deceptive language of the petition, the judge decided that the language was "unclear" but not "misleading". He also decided that, while the language of the petition should be clarified, the signatures to the earlier, unclear version should still be counted in order to protect the rights of those who signed. My question concerning that is what about the rights of those who signed based on unclear language, but would not have signed has the meaning of the petition been plain?

Now here's the good part: an upcoming phase of the litigation deals with the question of whether the resolution would be enforceable even if it were to be placed on the ballot and approved. Seattle's pension funds are administered by a board which, while appointed by the City Council, operates independently of the council. This board is not subject to referendums, City Council resolutions, executive orders by the Mayor, etc. Under the statute which established the Pension Fund board, when deciding where to invest its funds, the board can consider only factors relating to the performance of its investments. The divestment advocates, for their resolution to pass judicial muster for their resolution, will have to prove that the broad range of companies which the referendum covers will actually have perform poorly as investments. In other words, they need to prove that stock in companies like Microsoft or Pizza Hut (both of which qualify for divestment under the plain language meaning of the referendum) will lose value as the result of their business with the State of Israel or in the specified geographic area. According to Robert Jacobs of Stand With Us Northwest, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the divestment advocates may find this extremely difficult to prove.

The Seattle City Attorney, which sided with the divestment advocates in the first phase of the litigation involving the deceptive language of the petition, has joined with the petition opponents in this phase of the litigation, further improving the odds that this referendum won't be on the November ballot. The question of what damage the divestment movement will do to the Democratic Party in the process remains to be seen.

British attorney Anthony Julius, has said with respect to the British academic union's Israel boycott resolution: "Going for a boycott is gesture politics in the first place but a resolution that comes close but avoids actually spelling it out is a gesture wrapped up in a gesture - it's nothing more than a bad smell." (Read here.) This is equally true of Seattle's deceptive divestment initiative. It just doesn't pass the smell test.

The Forward's May 21 report on Seattle's anti-Israel referendum is an excellent backgrounder: "Seattle Activists Try To Put Divestment Measure on City Ballot (by Rebecca Spence).


[As an aside on another issue: in researching the Washington State Greens for this story, I was surprised to discover the extent to which they promote "9/11 truth" conspiracy theories. I have a post on that subject here, cross-posted here. Cynthia McKinney has made "9/11 truth" a main plank of her platform (read here).]

THIS ARTICLE IS CROSS POSTED AT DAILY KOS (READ HERE)

Methodist Board of Global Ministries Are on a Mission To Demonize Israel

from the Forward

"Some Methodists Are on a Mission To Demonize Israel" (Opinion, by Yitzhak Santis)

n 2004, the United Methodist Church passed a resolution calling for “members of each congregation to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from all perspectives.” The call for impartiality by the largest mainline Protestant church in the United States was a laudable one, but it has since become clear that for some Methodists fair-mindedness is not on the agenda.

Within the church there are various bodies that address specific subjects of concern to the whole denomination. One of these, the General Board of Global Ministries, embarked on a yearlong, church-wide “mission study” program on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To date the perspective presented by the program has been so predominantly Palestinian, and the effort to vilify Israel so transparent, that one can only conclude there is a campaign underway to persuade Methodists to support divestment at the denomination’s quadrennial General Conference next year.

The centerpiece of the mission study is a slick 220-page volume written by Reverend Stephen Goldstein. The book, which is published by the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, is available for purchase on the United Methodist Church’s official Web site.

The pattern of presenting biased opinions against Israel repeats itself over and over again in the mission study — as it does in the resources and links offered on the Web site of the General Board of Global Ministries.

Take, for example, the mission study’s bibliography, which is available for downloading from the board’s Web site. The first item listed is an article titled “Remember the Liberty.” Published by a group called Americans for Middle East Understanding, the article claims Israel deliberately attacked an American Navy ship during the Six-Day War in 1967. No countervailing view is included.

Indeed, in his book Goldstein describes the incident as having been “covered up for 30 years.” To get what he calls the “full story,” Goldstein directs readers to none other than the Web site of Americans for Middle East Understanding.

In both the bibliography and the book itself, some of Israel’s harshest critics — including Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, George Ball, Robert Fisk and Ilan Pappé — are given overwhelming representation. And the bibliography’s list of recommended videos, available from Americans for Middle East Understanding, feature titles like “Children of the Nakba,” “Palestine is Still the Issue” and “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land.”

One section of the bibliography is titled “Jewish Religious Fundamentalism and the Place of Religion in Judaism and Israeli Society.” No comparable section addressing Islamic religious fundamentalism in Arab societies — let alone the role of radical Islamists in fomenting terrorism — is to be found.

Study mission participants are directed to download photos from the United Methodist Church’s Web site. The photos of Israelis focus on soldiers, tanks and the “wall.” The photos of Palestinians feature hugging children, a woman sewing and men smiling.

Absent from the Web site are photos showing the effects of Palestinian terrorist bombings on Israeli civilians. The message is clear.

Meanwhile, Goldstein’s narrative is plagued by severe factual errors. For instance, it describes “Baruch Goldstein’s assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in February 1994.” Rabin was shot by Yigal Amir in November 1995.

The mission study takes the view that Israel and Zionism are mostly at fault for the elusiveness of peace. It assumes the mantle of psychoanalyzing an entire society, and its tone and tenor are suffused with hostility and group stereotyping.

One example: “To this day there is a latent hysteria in Israeli life that springs directly from [the Holocaust]. It explains the paranoiac sense of isolation that has been a main characteristic of the Israeli temper since 1948…. And it has been the single most significant factor in Israel’s unwillingness to trust their Arab neighbors or the Palestinians…. Since 1948 the Holocaust and the fear of antisemitism have also created a consciousness that has contributed significantly to preventing Israel from making peace with its Arab neighbors.”

Or another: “The viewpoint of the early settlers was that of Western European colonialists. Today we would surely judge that outlook as basically racist, and it still is.” As proof of this assertion, Goldstein quotes at length the infamous “Zionism is Racism” 1975 resolution passed by the United Nations in 1975 and rescinded in 1991.

The study guide’s overall effect is to demonize Israel and those who support it. It is filled with glaring omissions, outright factual errors, misinformation and half-truths.

For example, Goldstein distorts a quote by David Ben-Gurion to supposedly prove that expelling Palestinians was always part of a Zionist master plan. In 1937 Gurion wrote a letter to his son Amos. Goldstein describes the letter as follows: “[Ben-Gurion] had written that if the Palestinians could not be removed from the country by negotiations, then ‘we will expel the Arabs and take their place.’”

In fact, Ben-Gurion wrote exactly the opposite: “We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place.” Had Goldstein done his homework, he would also have read in the same Ben-Gurion letter, “All our aspiration is built on the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.”

Goldstein gives scant attention to Palestinian terrorism, while condemning the security barrier that has reduced Israeli deaths by terrorism from dozens each month to practically none. He takes Yasser Arafat’s side in the failure of Oslo at Camp David. He sympathetically discusses Palestinian refugees, but never mentions that hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to flee Arab countries as refugees.

For Goldstein, it seems, Israel is solely responsible for the Palestinians’ circumstances, while Palestinians have no active role in this conflict. Palestinians, he appears to suggest, are only victims. He patronizes them by giving their leadership, which has failed the Palestinians time and again, a free pass. And, he discounts the considerable role played by others in the region.

What can explain such deliberate distortion? Perhaps Goldstein’s own words give a strong clue.

In the study guide’s opening pages he includes an in-depth personal history, in which he shares his story of alienation from Judaism and conversion to Christianity. Raised a Jew in Brooklyn and New Jersey, he speaks of managing “to get myself expelled from Hebrew school” and walking “away from my bar mitzvah.” He describes himself in high school as “attempting to deny being Jewish. If I were an adult, I would have been labeled a self-hating Jew.”

That an important mainline Protestant denomination such as the United Methodist Church is promoting this distorted and inaccurate program reopens a troubling set of issues in Christian-Jewish relations. We must frankly ask the Methodist church’s leadership how a yearlong study that is so flagrantly insensitive and biased could have been allowed to get past a first edit — let alone endorsed, implemented and distributed.

With divestment resolutions already emerging from several regional Methodist conferences, it is difficult not to view this study mission as an effort to ensure that if, as expected, divestment is voted on at the church’s national conference next May, delegates will have been prepared to cast their votes correctly.

Under these circumstances, the Methodist leadership should now engage seriously with the Jewish community, which overwhelmingly opposes divestment from left to right. Such engagement, if it leads to a truly fair presentation of the issues, could prevent a major setback in interfaith relations.

But talk is not enough. It would be an appropriate first step for the United Methodist Church to immediately suspend this flawed and fraudulent study mission, and restart it only after a serious review of the process has taken place. The church needs to ensure that materials representing a broad spectrum of mainstream Israeli and American Jewish perspectives are fully allowed into the discussion. Not only would this be in line with the church’s own policy of studying the issue “from all perspectives,” but it would support, rather than erode, the recent decades of Jewish-Christian rapprochement.

Yitzhak Santis is director of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council’s Middle East Project.

Of Boycotts and Exceptionalism (by Shalom Lappin)

from normblog:

The debate on the academic boycott of Israel that appears in the British Medical Journal (BMJ, July 2007; 335: 124, 125) brings into sharp relief the extent to which the boycott campaign, and the movement in British public opinion that it reflects, are an exercise in exceptionalism. In response to the charge that the boycott is discriminatory in singling out Israel for collective punishment, while passing over in silence countries with far worse records of current human rights abuse, Tom Hickey says the following:

But whether a boycott is appropriate in such places depends on the merits of each individual case. In the case of Israel, we are speaking about a society whose dominant self image is one of a bastion of civilisation in a sea of medieval reaction. And we are speaking of a culture, both in Israel and in the long history of the Jewish diaspora, in which education and scholarship are held in high regard. That is why an academic boycott might have a desirable political effect in Israel, an effect that might not be expected elsewhere.

The absurdity of this 'defence' is painfully obvious. Hickey does not address the fact that the boycott which he promotes applies its sanction selectively, deliberately choosing to ignore far worse cases of occupation and repression than the one he seeks to punish. Such arbitrary distinctions in the wielding of a sanction undermine the credibility of the principle on behalf of which the sanction is used. If a law were applied in this way, the police and the prosecution service would be open to the charge of unwarranted discrimination. Hickey's attempt to justify his selectivity is cringingly silly. He trades on a cultural stereotype of Jews, and by extension Israelis, as the 'people of the book', who place a supreme value on learning and education. This 'fact' leads him to conclude that a boycott against Israeli academic institutions stands a better chance of influencing Israeli government policy than if such a boycott were directed at other nations.

The 'argument' is offensive on two grounds. First, it is racist in its suggestion that other cultures (Arab, Chinese, Russian, American, African, etc.) value learning less than Jews and Israelis do, and so they would be less inclined to take such a sanction seriously. Would Hickey be prepared to protest Mugabe's reign of terror through a boycott of Zimbabwean music on the grounds 'that Africans have rhythm'? Or perhaps he would suggest a ban on Russian vodka to support the rebels in Chechnya because heavy drinking is an integral feature of Russian society.

Second, it entails that one launches a boycott only when one believes that it will succeed in altering the policies of the country at which it is directed. On this reasoning, the larger and more powerful a country is, the more immune it becomes to boycott. Russia, China, and the United States, for example, escape an academic or a consumer boycott because such a campaign stands little chance of having any impact on their policies. But then precisely those countries that are guilty of the greatest human rights abuses are exempt from a sanction intended to express moral opprobrium. Only small and comparatively vulnerable countries amenable to external pressure need be targeted. Surely this is a perverse conclusion for a campaign that purports to champion the universal and consistent application of human rights.

In fact, Hickey's comment shows very clearly that he simply has no substantive reply to the argument that the boycott against Israel is arbitrary and discriminatory. He is not alone here. No other advocate of the boycott has yet succeeded in offering such a reply, nor have they felt the need to do so. That they are not embarrassed by this fact but are happy to continue to promote their programme in the face of a thoroughly lethal objection, indicates that they regard Israel as a unique case. Apparently, in their view it is a case in which the usual requirement that one must provide compelling reasons for the differential treatment of agents responsible for the same type of misdeed may be safely set aside without further discussion.

Read the rest...

U.S. Unions Organize Against British Unions' Israel Boycott

from the venerable Forward (by Rebecca Spence)

Leaders of some of America’s most powerful unions are said to be considering whether to pull support for a top British union official, Keith Sonnet, in his bid to lead a major international service workers union, Public Services International. The American union leaders are responding to last month’s passage of a resolution proposing a sweeping boycott of Israeli goods by Sonnet’s union, Unison, which represents 1.3 million public service workers.

The group that Sonnet is looking to lead, PSI, is a global federation of more than 600 unions from around the world, but the American labor movement has traditionally wielded significant power in its ranks.

As the number of British labor unions passing Israel boycott resolutions has snowballed in recent months, American trade union officials have raised alarms over the growing phenomenon, which encompasses boycotts of Israeli goods and academic institutions. Last week, nearly every top union leader in America signed on to a statement drafted by the Jewish Labor Committee decrying the raft of boycott proposals as non-constructive.

Avram Lyon, executive director of the JLC, said that Sonnet, who is running against Danish candidate Peter Waldorff for the international union post, had given assurances to American labor leaders in advance of his group’s national delegate conference that the Israel boycott measure up for consideration would either be voted down or have its teeth taken out. But the opposite came to pass, causing Sonnet’s American counterparts to feel misled, Lyon said.

“That has raised questions among some American unions as to whether or not they will support Keith Sonnet’s candidacy,” Lyon said. “The concern is based on the fact that Sonnet put forward a resolution which American unions would consider to be divisive.”

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David Hirsh, who is the editor of Engage’s Web site and a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, said that while he lauded American anti-boycott efforts, the leaders of the boycott movement in Britain are unlikely to be swayed by American complaints.

“It should be a powerful statement that all of these leaders of the American labor movement are making against the boycott campaign, but I’m skeptical as to how effective it will be,” Hirsh said.

The roster of 29 signatories to the JLC’s statement included a broad spectrum of union leaders, who cut across religious and ethnic lines. Among the signatories to the statement were Ron Gettelfinger, president of United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union, which tends to stay out of the geo-political arena; William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and Larry Cohen, president of Communications Workers of America.

Absent from the list of signatories was Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents some 1.8 million service workers. An SEIU spokesman said Stern lent his support through Change To Win, a coalition of seven American unions, which signed on to the statement.

Whether or not the Americans’ robust condemnation of the British unions’ boycott measures has an effect, labor leaders here say that the concerns over Sonnet’s handling of the issue could have real consequences for his candidacy. A handful of signatories to the JLC’s anti-boycott statement — including the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — are members of PSI, which represents more than 20 million workers from 160 countries. PSI’s election is set to take place during its World Congress, held in Vienna from September 24 to 28.

At least two past PSI presidents — legendary labor leader Victor Gotbaum and AFSCME’s William Lucy — have hailed from American unions.

A source at AFT, who requested anonymity because authorization to speak for the union had not been granted, said that its four delegates to the PSI congress would weigh the Israel boycott issue heavily. “I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people asking questions about Keith Sonnet’s view of the resolution adopted by Unison,” the source said.

According to Lyon, another American effort to stymie the British boycott movement met with success this week, when American unions torpedoed efforts by the UCU to introduce an Israel boycott resolution at the world congress of Education International, a worldwide federation of teachers’ unions, held this past week in Berlin.

It's enough to make me say: "Union, yes!"

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