Protesting 40 Years of Occupation in Washington, D.C.
Life Under Occupation: What Would You Do?
ISM Turns Six, NorCal ISM Five
Setting Sail to Break the Siege of Gaza
Labor Solidarity Versus the Occupation
Volunteers Urgently Needed in Palestine
By Henry Norr, June 2007
To mark the Occupation’s fortieth anniversary, we proudly present this well-researched summary of how it began. Examining the Zionist narrative and reframing history with a human-rights perspective is an essential step toward a just peace. We encourage you to share this article with friends and coworkers who only know the one version.
—Eds.
To most Israelis and Americans, the history of the June 1967 Middle East war is a classic David-and-Goliath tale.
Plucky little Israel, the story goes, was peacefully minding its own business until the neighborhood bully, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (heavily armed by the Soviet Union), suddenly massed his troops and, in cahoots with Jordan, Syria and the rest of the Arab world, prepared to launch an attack intended to wipe out the Jewish state. Backs to the wall and abandoned to their fate by the rest of the world, the Israelis had no
choice but to strike out at their enemies. By dint of courage, cleverness, and determination – and with the Judeo-Christian God clearly on their side – they pulled off a military miracle: in just six days they not only shattered the enemy’s forces but also quadrupled their territory, capturing the Sinai Desert and Gaza Strip from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Crafted originally by Israel’s then Foreign Minister and chief mouthpiece to the West, Abba Eban, and in recent years retold in a best-selling book and countless interviews and op-eds by the American-born Israeli historian Michael Oren, this story is repeated endlessly in the mainstream media. But from the outset Nasser’s decision to send his troops into the Sinai on May 15, 1967, precipitated the crisis that led to war, but his move was preceded by a series of aggressive Israeli attacks on its neighbors – and numerous indications that Israel was preparing a major offensive against Nasser’s ally, Syria.
The previous November, for example, 4,000 Israeli soldiers had assaulted the town of Samu’ in the West Bank (then under Jordanian control), killed 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians, and methodically destroyed at least one hundred houses, a school, and a clinic. The attack was in response to the planting of a land mine that killed three soldiers and other cross-border raids by guerrillas from a then-new organization called Fatah, but, as U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg told the United Nations, the Samu’ raid’s toll “in human lives and in destruction far surpasses the cumulative total of the various acts of terrorism conducted against the frontiers of Israel.”
Another demonstration of Israeli belligerence came a few months later along the Syrian border, the site of frequent skirmishes – 80 percent of them deliberately provoked by Israel, according to Moshe Dayan. On April 7, 1967, one of these battles escalated, and by the end of the day Israel had shot down six Syrian planes, including one near Damascus.
By May the Israeli media were filled with calls by editorialists and politicians for a fullscale attack on Syria. Yitzhak Rabin, then chief of staff of the Israeli “Defense” Forces, declared, “The moment is coming when we will march on Damascus to overthrow the Syrian government.” The Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Jerusalem Post all reported that Israel was preparing to attack. Then the Soviets shared with Egypt an intelligence report – apparently erroneous, but in context easily believable – that the Israelis were massing troops for an attack on Syria.
In this situation Nasser, who cast himself as the leader of the Arab world but had been criticized, even mocked, for not responding to the November and April incidents, began moving troops into the previously demilitarized Sinai; shortly afterwards, he demanded the removal of a UN peacekeeping force along Egypt’s border with Israel and declared the Straits of Tiran, a waterway leading to the Israeli port of Eilat, closed to Israeli shipping.
Exactly what Nasser’s intentions were, and even whether the Egyptian leadership shared any coherent plan, is not known. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol told his cabinet that the Egyptians’ goal was to deter Israel from carrying out its threats against Syria. US intelligence agencies insisted that the Egyptian troops were in defensive positions and were not about to attack Israel.
But Israel’s generals, confident of their military superiority (an assessment shared by the CIA), saw a chance to knock out Nasser and demanded an immediate preemptive attack. Most of the Israeli public and media joined their call – largely, according to Tom Segev’s new book 1967, out of fear that Nasser planned a new holocaust. Eshkol refused for a while to give go-ahead, mainly because the Johnson administration was initially, and vehemently, opposed. As Segev shows, however, Israel mounted a multi-front campaign – enlisting Jewish donors to the Democrats, Jewish members of the administration, and Jewish friends of LBJ, as well as ultra-rightists within the CIA such as the legendary James Jesus Angleton – to win Washington’s approval for war
By early June, that campaign had succeeded, and with a green light from the Americans, Israel launched a surprise attack on the morning of June 5. Flying French Mirage jets low over the Sinai, under Egyptian radar, the Israelis managed to destroy most of the Egyptian air force on the ground – the outcome was actually determined in the war’s first minutes. When Jordan and Syria joined the fight, Israel decimated their air forces, too. By all accounts Arab ground forces put up a tough fight on many fronts, but without air support, they stood little chance of success.
Records of the deliberations of Israeli leaders show that their primary goal going into the war was not to expand their territory, but to shatter the military power of Egypt and Syria and to humiliate Nasser, thus undermining the Arab nationalism he represented. With those goals accomplished, however, and with Arab defenses crumbling on all fronts, the leaders couldn’t resist the temptation. Giddy with success and patriotic and (in some cases) religious exaltation, they proceeded to grab the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and finally, in the final hours of the war, the Golan Heights. Dayan called it “fulfilling Zionism.”
Almost overnight, then, the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbors were confronted with a new political landscape, one that in most respects hasn’t changed since. (Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt under the 1979 Camp David agreement.) Another 200,000 to 250,000 Palestinians became refugees, mostly fleeing to Jordan. Palestinians who remained in Gaza and the West Bank began strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of resistance within weeks. The Israelis moved quickly to suppress it, using such tactics as military raids, arrests, torture, land seizures, curfews, and home demolitions – and constant recruitment of collaborators.
Among Israeli and American Jews, the war brought a dramatic upsurge in religious and Zionist fervor, while the “special relationship” between their governments grew tighter than ever – regardless of the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, which occurred on the fourth day of the war.
Within days of the war’s end, Israeli leaders began debating what to do with the Palestinian territories. Among Israeli Jews there was what Segev calls “a wide and virtually unchallenged consensus” that “Jerusalem is ours,” and on June 27 the Knesset annexed the eastern part of the city.
As to the rest of the territories, there was more debate. Dayan advocated setting up military outposts and Jewish settlements on the mountaintops of the West Bank. Gen. Yigal Allon wanted to annex Gaza, Bethlehem, Hebron, and the Jordan Valley, but to keep down Israel’s Arab population by setting up a Jordanian-controlled or “quasi-autonomous” zone on the remnants of the West Bank. Menachem Begin rejected every proposal: as Segev summarizes his position, “Martial law was working, and it was sufficient to let the United States know that Israel was working on solutions.” What the leaders never discussed were the only two solutions that could have brought lasting peace and justice to the region: creation of a single state with full equality for Palestinians, or withdrawal of Israeli troops to pre-1967 orders, a truly independent Palestinian state, and a settlement acceptable to the Palestinians on the status of the refugees and Jerusalem.
In short, the occupation had begun. Forty years later, not much has changed.
Henry Norr has spent six months in Palestine in UNRWA Archives – 1967 recent years, starting with a visit to the Gaza Strip under ISM auspices in May, 2002.
Protesting 40 Years of Occupation in Washington, D.C.
By S. Bloom, June 2007
On June 10th, 2007, thousands of demonstrators from all over the U.S. converged on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol to protest 40 years of Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. The rally and march to the Washington Monument which followed were sponsored by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and United for Peace and Justice, two major national coalitions. More than 300 organizations nationwide took part in the demonstration; these included the Northern California ISM support group and many Jewish groups from across the country.
The following day, I and hundreds of other activists participated in a day of lobbying our Congressional representatives. I was able to join a large delegation that visited the offices of Barbara Lee, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. Of the many things we discussed, one of the main points was that ‘an overwhelming number of Americans believe in peace, justice and human rights.’
An important purpose of these historic events was to show that more and more Americans embrace world opinion, which overwhelmingly rejects the Israeli occupation of Palestine. “This day has global importance,” stated Phyllis Bennis, of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. “While we say no to US support for Israeli occupation, our counterparts from all around the world are saying the same message to their own governments, from South Africa to Brazil, from Australia to Canada, from Britain to Maylasia, Ramallah to Tel Aviv.” Thousands of Israelis protested the Occupation, from demonstrating in Hebron, where Jewish settlers are terrorizing Palestinians on a daily basis, to rallies in Tel Aviv; there Anarchists add red paint to the water in two central fountains in Masaryk Square and Dizzengof Square, representing blood of Palestinians killed by the IOF.
2007 is also the fifty-ninth year since the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 which marked the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in Palestine. To this day, Israel denies its responsibility for the Nakba, and the refugees continue to have their right of return denied by Israel, which contradicts UN resolution 194, the UN Charter, and all relevant Inter-national Law. The growing 40/60 Campaign is focusing on this conjunction of anniversaries, and the steps needed to address the continuing suffering of Palestinians; as 4th class citizens of Israel, under military occupation in Palestine, and as internal and external refugees for the past 59 years
S. Bloom is an ISM volunteer from the Bay Area.
Life Under Occupation: What Would You Do?
By Ella Minnow, June 2007
Did you know that YOUR tax dollars are helping to deny basic human rights to 3.5 million people? Take a minute to imagine what life would be like for you and your family in such a place.
■ Soldiers calling YOUR great-great-great-grandparents’ lands a “military zone” control every aspect of your life: whether and where you can travel, work, or attend school on any given day.
■ YOU and YOUR children face daily humiliation, beatings and shootings at an ever-growing maze of blockades, tunnels, and trenches.
■ YOUR land is further crisscrossed by highways that only your oppressors can travel on—while you have to leave your car and walk on rocks and dirt to reach your destination.
■ YOU are separated from your work, your school, your neighbors, by a 32-foot-high wall. Its prison-like towers house heavily armed 19-year-old soldiers watching your every move.
■ To keep your family alive, YOU must work to build this wall for your oppressors.
■ When you do manage against all odds to harvest a crop for export, YOUR truck is detained at a blockade for weeks—until the crop rots.
■ YOU live every day with the threat of your home being demolished by huge, armed bulldozers on the grounds that it is not “permitted.”
■ YOUR ancestors’ ancient olive groves are uprooted and replanted in the oppressors’ new, deluxe housing developments.
■ YOU are forced to pay high prices for inadequate amounts of trucked-in water, while nearby you see your oppressors’ green lawns and hear their children splashing in swimming pools.
■ YOUR son, brother or neighbor is hauled away to prison.
■ Soldiers enter YOUR house, shout orders in their foreign language, stick their rifles in YOUR children’s faces, lock you all in one room, and rip apart the house.
THIS IS LIFE IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES TODAY
Ask yourself: What would YOU do? Do you think YOU might be called a “terrorist” for resisting the occupation? Who would YOU think were the real “terrorists? ”
As Americans, we understand justice and fair play, and we know unfairness when we see it. All children—Palestinian, Israeli, and every child on Earth—deserve a safe, wholesome homeland in which to grow and learn. Yet our country gives $13 million every week to support this genocidal system. It’s not anti-Semitism to speak out against the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza , and East Jerusalem. Many Jewish Israelis (and Jewish Americans) acknowledge that the land Israel took in 1967 should, legally and morally, be returned to the Palestinian people. Educate yourself and others about the real situation. Forty years is too long.
For more information on the impact of the Israeli Occupation, please see http://www.ifamericansknew.org
Ella is an active member of the NorCal ISM Support Group.
ISM Turns Six, NorCal ISM Five
By Paul Larudee, June 2007
Six years may not seem very old, but given the threats to ISM, many of us are gratified that it remains an effective movement. If anything, the need for nonviolent resistance and solidarity with Palestinians has increased, and volunteers andsupporters continue to step forward.
In the past year, ISM-Palestine has reformed itself with a steering committee, which has vastly improved our decision-making ability, previously hampered by the difficulty of convening the membership across the more than 500 barriers and closures in the West Bank. We remain committed to consensus procedure and to the leadership and guidance of local Palestinian community organizers, but the new com-mittee allows us to respond more effectively.
Today, ISM volunteers participate in the Tel Rumeida Project in Hebron, where they accompany Palestinian children and document the abuses of Israeli settlers and soldiers. They also stay with Palestinian farmers in the south Hebron hills, to prevent the destruction of homes, rebuild the ones that are destroyed, and resist the confiscation of Palestinian land. In addition, we continue our Palestine Freedom Summer and Olive Harvest campaigns to resist the Annexation Wall that steals ever more Palestinian land, and the denial of one of the most precious agricultural traditions remaining in the Palestinian culture and economy.
ISM-Palestine is supported by an international network of support groups, of which NorCal ISM in the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most active. We have traditionally provided 15-20 % of the ISM-Palestine budget through our fundraising, which we combine with educational and recruitment activities. Our popular olive oil bottling parties are typical in this respect. They bring the community together, generate markets for the high quality oil still produced by Palestinian farmers, raise funds for ISM, and spread the word through informative bottle labels. In addition we sponsor speakers, both independently and through ISM-USA, the coalition of US support groups.
There are, however, many projects that we are unable to do for lack of volunteers, both in Palestine and locally. We are therefore always eager to add newcomers who are ready to offer their time and skills. Will you be next?
Paul Larudee first went to Palestine in 1965 and began volunteering with the ISM in March, 2002.
Setting Sail to Break the Siege of Gaza
By Paul Larudee, June 2007
Can unarmed civilians break the siege of Gaza with a few sailing and fishing vessels? That’s the plan of the Free Gaza Movement, a group of Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Asians. They include Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists. On board will be clergy, celebrities, members of parliament, farmers, fishermen, language teachers, piano technicians, and Nakba and Holocaust survivors.
For forty years, Israel has controlled the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel says Gaza is no longer occupied, yet it denies Palestinians access to jobs, travel, visitors, commerce, education, health, and medical care. It has made the Gaza Strip into a prison controlled by land, sea, and air. Israel forces Palestinians to live on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Food, people, medicine, and supplies often wait for weeks at the only three crossings, and often do not cross at all. Is it any wonder is that economic activity is negligible?
The small flotilla will travel to Gaza at the invitation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations. It will enter Gaza territory directly from international waters and not travel through Israeli territory nor seek Israeli permission to enter. If impeded, it will nonviolently challenge Israel’s blockade through civil resistance. The voyage is expected to take place in September.
ISM endorses this movement, and the Northern California ISM group has supported its expenses to the extent that we can. However, much more is needed. While ISM still needs your support, therefore, we also encourage you to send tax-deductible contributions to the Free Gaza Movement at: PCWF – Gaza Human Rights, 201 W. Stassney #201, Austin, TX 78745, Website: www.freegaza.org
Labor Solidarity Versus the Occupation
By D. Wurkur, June 2007
ISM set up an information booth at the National Labor Anti-War Convention in Cleveland, Ohio in December 2006. The convention was sponsored by US Labor Against the War (USLAW), which represents 150 labor organizations with millions of members. USLAW has been raising awareness and seeking to mobilize the labor movement to end the occupation of Iraq.
At this gathering, for the first time, USLAW began to view US policy across the Middle East in a broader context. An evening rally featured Phyllis Bennis, a founder of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a fellow of the US Institute for Policy Studies. She spoke to the need for US labor to support the Palestinian people in their just struggle against the apartheid wall and other aspects of the Occupation. She also discussed the CAT divestment campaign, and, in a later workshop, spoke in support of ISM. She suggested that delegations to Palestine were an excellent way to raise awareness about the Occupation as well as a means of expressing solidarity.
ISM TEAMING UP WITH LABOR
Much work preceded the conventionin Cleveland. Our work with the Communications Workers Local 9415 here in the East Bay, and with the Labor Committee for Peace & Justice (LC4PJ) was held up as an example to learn from.
Members and officers of the local contributed financial and moral support and monitored my trip to Palestine in late 2005. In return, they received much education in the form of videos, photos and real-time reporting. Local 9415 went on to condemn the invasion of Lebanon and to work with the Labor Committee and others to encourage USLAW to embrace the Palestinian struggle for justice and for an end to the Occupation.
Together, Local 9415 and the Labor Committee created a resolution for this Cleveland Convention. The resolution called for: a focus on education within labor about the Israeli Occupation of Palestine; divestment from Israel; and sponsorship of a labor delegation to Palestine that would bear witness to the US-financed Occupation confronting the working people of Palestine.
When the floor opened to speakers, ten people had already eagerly lined up at the microphone to speak on this proposed resolution. More than a dozen spoke to the issue, which was passed along to the steering committee to refine and implement. The resolution was well received, and the entire organization arrived at a broader and deeper understanding of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.
OLIVE OIL & KAFFIYEHS DISTRIBUTED IN THE HEARTLAND
The ISM table generated wonderful conversation and brought in $500. A laptop featuring video footage from Palestine attracted folks to the table and allowed them to see olive trees being uprooted to build the wall, as well as what the wall itself looks like. Elizabeth
Kucinich stopped by to view some video foot-
age and share words of encouragement while her husband Dennis conversed nearby with USLAW officials.
The labor movement has always espoused international ideals. Holding to those ideals, we are asking American labor leaders to travel to Palestine to bear witness to the occupation and to express our solidarity with the working people of Palestine.
The Histadrut (Israeli Labor Federation) has constantly ignored the call for solidarity from their Palestinian cousins in the occupied territories. We in USLAW are seeking to open dialogue between the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the Histadrut. The Israeli unionists have long enjoyed close relations with their American counter-parts, while the Palestinian unionists have largely been ignored. We hope, through this work, to encourage the Israeli Labor Movement to open dialogue and negotiation with the Palestinian Labor Movement concerning the critical issues affecting working people.
It was exciting to be a part of the important work being accomplished by the USLAW network. In the struggle for peace with justice, ISM and USLAW make a great team. For more info on US Labor Against the War, see: http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/
D. Wurker is a Bay Area labor activist who traveled to Palestine with ISM in 2005 as part of the Olive Harvest Campaign.
By Jonas Moffat, March 2007
While riding my bike one magnificent afternoon here in Ramallah, I saw an announcement that made my eyes light up: “The East Jerusalem-YMCA’s ’Youth to Youth Initiative’ is organizing the Palestine International Bike Race, aimed at promoting peace and tolerance among ethnic, religious and national groups in the region.” An important goal of the ride was to bring Palestinians and international activists together in a new form of non-violent protest against Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These restrictions amount to a significant violation of human rights that Palestinians have to endure every day.
I arrived at Al Bireh around 8:45 am to see 350 bicyclists ready to pedal the 30-some down-hill miles to Jericho, near the Dead Sea. The YMCA issued us T-shirts and allowed us to choose from among hundreds of bikes. Many nationalities were represented among the cyclists: hundreds of Palestinians, thirty or so Israelis, and assorted Danes, Americans, Spaniards, and Canadians–all coming together to bike in solidarity against Israel’s current system of apartheid.
As the race began, the Palestinian police did their best to keep traffic to the side. Dodging the potholes and ditches (the Israeli government will not permit the road to be maintained), I made my way past the atrocious Qalandya checkpoint, one
of the biggest in the West Bank. Built by the Israeli army and equipped with an eight-meter-high wall, the Machsom (Hebrew for ‘blockade’), looks more like a fortress. From its sniper towers, Israeli soldiers keep watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Machsom separates Palestinian towns from Palestinian villages and prevents access to Jerusalem, the economic, social, and spiritual center of Palestinian life, which is 10 minutes away from the Israeli-controlled fortress. To get around the checkpoint, Palestinians must take a time-consuming route through rugged terrain to reach hospitals, schools, and family members—destinations otherwise reached in a matter of minutes.
Making a slight turn onto the road to Jericho, I was filled with joy. The fresh spring weather hitting my face, the rocky cliffs and bright green grass on
either side of me, Palestinians at crossroads cheering us on – this was a Tour de Freedom. Those wheels of justice came to a screeching halt further down the road. The Israeli army was stopping the freedom racers at a checkpoint, Israeli flags were waving above army jeeps and police vehicles. As the rest of the 380 bikers accumulated there at the checkpoint, so did the traffic, for miles it seemed. Apparently, a bunch of Palestinian, Israeli, and international bicyclists were too big a threat to the Israeli army. Bikes versus bombs.
The Israeli soldiers called for backup. While we waited, they pulled some caution tape from their trunks and sealed us into a makeshift sty, like pigs on bikes. Some negotiating between both Palestinian and Israeli bikers and the army ensued, but the army wasn’t budging. For over an hour, we were forced to stand at the side of the road. The energy was starting to bubble over. A woman from Holland had had enough with waiting. She crossed the tape and started heading to Jericho. The soldiers began to push her around, and a Palestinian journalist biked over to the woman to try to protect her. The soldiers roughed him up and detained him.
A spokesperson from the YMCA arrived. Some soldier handed him a bullhorn and the race was officially declared finished. There was no trophy ceremony, no speeches about different nationalities coming together for freedom, as planned for the finish line in Jericho. Instead, the scene was filled with anger, despair, and hundreds of empty bikes lying at the side of the road. The adrenaline that had been overflowing just two hours before had evaporated. All that was left was the stench of apartheid. And thus, sadly, our attempt to pedal in solidarity with the Palestinians against Israel’s system of racial discrimination, against their walls and snipers, tanks
and jeeps—the day of Bikes Versus Bombs came to an abrupt end.
Jonas is from the Bay Area and now residing in Palestine as a long-term volunteer with both ISM and the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians.
Volunteers Urgently Needed in Palestine
With each passing day Israel’s apartheid-wall project confiscates more and more Palestinian land, and the impact on Palestinians living in the West
Bank grows worse and worse. Brave Palestinians are using nonviolent resistance to protest the theft of their land for the wall and other “security” measures. ISM volunteers are needed in places like Bil’in, Budrus, Bethlehem, and Hebron to support Palestinians’ efforts to save their land and end the Occupation. Your presence helps to deter the violation of human rights, slows the removal of Palestinians from their land, and shows them that you care about their plight.
ISM is a Palestinian-led movement of Palestinian and international activists working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end to the Israeli Occupation. We utilize nonviolent, direct-action methods of resistance to confront and challenge illegal occupation forces and policies. The first ISM campaign took place in August, 2001. Since that time, thousands of volunteers from Europe, North and South America, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa have come to participate in ISM campaigns in Palestine. Come join us in the Occupied Territories and support the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, truth, and justice.