[Peace-discuss] Letter to "Humanistic Judaism"

Sat Jul 20 10:24:46 CDT 2002

This message is from Joel Finkel, of Not In My Name
(Chicago), and contains a letter from his brother
David Finkel, who edits "Against the Current", a
radical journal published from Detroit:

Message: 5
   Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 10:01:25 -0500
   From: "Joel R. Finkel" <finkel at sdi.com>
Subject: FW: Letter to HUMANISTIC JUDAISM

Friends, 

I post this letter, written by my brother, because it
is filled with
excellent links to important organizations.

-Joel

 The Spring/Summer issue of HUMANISTIC JUDAISM,
published by the Society
for Humanistic Judaism, contains an article titled
"Twelve Ways You Can
Help Israel," promoting the activities of AIPAC.  This
material should
be available at the website www.shj.org 

July 19, 2002

Humanistic Judaism
28611 W. 12 Mile Rd
Farmington Hills MI 48334

To the editor:

Bernard Kaplan's "Twelve Ways You Can Help Israel"
(Spring/Summer
2002) was unfortunately mistitled. The more accurate,
though
longer, title would have been: "Twelve ways you can
help AIPAC
[American Israel Public Affairs Committee] organize
the American
Jewish leadership to support colonial occupation,
apartheid,
settlements and assassinations in the name of Israeli
security,
thereby ensuring the next cycle of suicide bombings,
hideous
terrorist attacks, deep intercommunal hatred and the
growth of
Jewish as well as Islamist totalitarian-religious
fanaticism,
culminating in Balkan-style ethnic cleansing and the
mutual
destruction of both Israeli and Palestinian society."

As an antidote I offer a brief outline of "Twelve Ways
You Can Help
Promote Peace and Justice for Israel and Palestine:"

1) Learn about the growing network of Jewish
organizations speaking
out against the occupation, and consider forming such
a group in
your community. A good place to start is Not In My
Name
(www.nimn.org) or Jews Against the Occupation
(www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org).

2) Contact your political representatives to make sure
they
understand that Jewish opinion in the United States as
well as
Israel is diverse. Urge them to study the
Palestine/Israel crisis
in all its complexity and form their own judgments,
and above all
not to be intimidated by the thuggish tactics of AIPAC
and its far-
right Christian fundamentalist allies. (For an account
of how the
Israel lobby works, read the important book by former
Republican
Congressman Paul Findlay, They Dare to Speak Out.)

3) Support the hundreds of Israeli reserve soldiers
refusing to
serve in the Occupied Territories. Periodically some
of them visit
American cities under the auspices of the Courage to
Refuse
campaign (www.refusersolidarity.net, www.seruv.org.il
and www.yesh-
gvul.org <http://www.gvul.org> ). Ask your
congregation to invite them
to speak.

4) Join the campaign to boycott goods produced in
Israeli
settlements and then illegally imported into the
United States as
"Made in Israel." You can also help build the boycott
of U.S.
companies that do business in the settlements (these
include Burger
King and Starbucks. See list at
www.gush-shalom.org/archives/eng
list.doc <http://www.list.doc> ).

5) Learn about the human rights and social situation
in Israel and
Palestine through the following websites, among
others: B'tselem,
the Israeli Human Rights Information Center,
www.btselem.org; Al-
Haq, Palestinian Human Rights Center, www.alhaq.org;
Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions, www.icahd.org;
Health,
Development, Information and Policy Institute
(Ramallah),
www.hdip.org; Rabbis for Human Rights
(www.rhr.israel.net); Human
Rights Watch report, www.hrw.org/reports/2000.Israel/

6) When you make donations to Jewish community
organizations,
stipulate that no part of your contribution be used to
support,
directly or indirectly, the activities of the Jewish
National Fund,
which holds over 90% of the land in Israel and
prohibits its use by
non-Jews even if they are Israeli citizens. Donate to
Ta'ayush
("Partnership"), an organization of Jewish and Arab
Israeli
citizens working to bring solidarity relief caravans
for besieged
West Bank towns (taayush.tripod.com).

7) Arrange meetings between members of the Jewish and
Palestinian
communities in your area. The intention should not be
to arrive at
an agreement, but to learn to listen to each other.
Learn how Arab
American and Muslim communities are feeling in the
post-September
11 climate.

8) Join the campaign to stop the United States from
launching its
next war against Iraq, which will not only destroy
that country in
the name of liberating it, but may give the
Sharon-Peres-Ben
Eliezer government the opening for a substantial mass
expulsion of
Palestinians. Support Voices in the Wilderness
(www.nonviolence.org/vitw), the brave group of U.S.
citizens
risking prosecution and heavy fines in defying the
sanctions by
bringing medical aid to the Iraqi people.    

9) Learn about the International Solidarity Movement
(www.palsolidarity.org), a
campaign that brings activists to the Occupied
Territories for non-
violent confrontations with blockades and closures, to
ride in
ambulances to deter soldiers from shooting at them,
etc. If someone
from your community is going on an ISM delegation,
help support 
them.

10) Write op-ed articles for your local newspaper,
explaining why
the four to five billion dollars in annual U.S.
military and
economic aid to Israel enriches the arms industry
while destroying
the possibilities of peace and underwriting the
expansion of
Israeli settlements. Ask that this aid be ended until
Israel
withdraws from the Occupied Territories.

11) Speak out when prominent figures, especially
Jewish
personalities such as Alan Dershowitz, call for
allowing torture of
prisoners in the United States under interrogation for
terrorism
and for the government of
Israel to kill the families of Palestinian suicide
bombers.
Remember what's at risk: not only the destruction of
Palestine and
Israel, but the moral degradation of Jewish life in
the United
States.        

12) Above all, do not refrain from speaking out
against the growth
of Israeli apartheid for fear of being called
"anti-semitic" or
"self-hating." The window of opportunity to stop the
consolidation
of this new apartheid system is closing. Failure to do
so now will
mean decades of misery with Israel playing the role of
the new
South Africa--with American Jews mobilized on the
wrong side.

                         Sincerely Yours,

                         David Finkel 

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