[Peace-discuss] Summary and Implications of Refuser tour

[David Green]

Dear friends:

Following is a message from Steven Feuerstein, one of
the founders of Not In My Name (Chicago) and the
organizer of the "Courage to Refuse" Tour. Most of
this message will be of interest only to those
concerned with the intra-Jewish intracacies of the
anti-occupation movement. While I do not necessarily
profess to be one of those, comments are of course
welcome.

David Green

Message: 1
   Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 08:30:07 -0700
   From: Steven Feuerstein
<steven at stevenfeuerstein.com>
Subject: Report and proposal regarding Courage to
Refuse campaign

Friends,

My apologies in advance for this rather long message.
Everything you see below is also in the attached PDF,
so you may find it easier to read/print that. This is
a report on the Courage to Refuse campaign (in summary

form), plus my suggestions for moving the campaign
forward. If possible, it would be great if we had time
at the upcoming membership meeting to discuss the 
issues raised in this report/proposal. NIMN has some
decisions to make regarding the campaign and those
decisions really need to be taken by the end of July
(next membership meeting).

If you have any questions or comments, please feel
free to get in touch with me directly (cell:
773.454.8397).

Warm regards, Steven

The Courage to Refuse Campaign: Phase 2

A report and proposal by Steven Feuerstein (with
another report from Diane Horwitz at the end)

In March 2002, Not In My Name conceived of and
launched the Courage to Refuse campaign, with the
objective of building support for and visibility 
of Israeli military refusers. Since that time the
campaign has quickly notched up successes -- and
encountered challenges.

It is now time to take this campaign into "phase 2",
and to do this we have to look very honestly at what
has happened to date and be clear about how to move
forward the objective of increasing support for the
refusenik movement in Israel.

Successes

In three short months, the Courage to Refuse Campaign
has achieved the following

·       We organized the tours of Haggai Matar, Ram
Rahat-Goodman and Ishai Sagi, who altogether visited
Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento,
Indianapolis, West Lafayette, Minneapolis, Madison, 
Champaign, Louisville and New York City. Altogether,
these refusers spoke to over 4,000 people directly and
to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, more 
through extensive media work, including a live
interview on CNN International.. Perhaps most
importantly, the organizing efforts "on the 
ground" led to presentations at three synagogues in
Chicago and also seeded local community organizing
efforts in Hyde Park, Oak Park and Evanston, as 
well as youth organizing in support of Haggai. This
very difficult, yet rewarding one-on-one activity was
able to open doors within the Jewish community in a
way that has been completely impossible for NIMN. Now 
the challenge is to figure out the best way to follow
up on those new contacts, activists and potential.

·       The campaign has raised over $42,000, of which
over $20,000 has been sent to Israeli refuser groups
to support their work directly. Another major chunk of
that money was spent by publishing a series of ads in 
Chicago-area media demonstrating strong support in the
Jewish community for the refusers.

·       The www.couragetorefuse.org website offers an
elegant and effective way for people around the world
to publicly support the refusers; contribute to the
campaign and refuser groups; learn more about the 
refuser movement; obtain resources to help them
organize; and take action to help imprisoned refusers.
Close to 900 people have added their name to our 
list of supporters on the website.

That's quite a lot for three months, and we have good
reason to be proud of what we have achieved. It is
very clear now that we in NIMN were right to 
identify the refusers as a crucial, strategic element
of the Israeli peace movement, and one that could
potentially shift the terms of debate here in 
the United States. It is also clear that it would have
been very difficult for this campaign to have come
together as quickly as it did without the support of
NIMN at a number of levels. In particular, NIMN
provided a bank account and bookkeeper, website
developer resources and database capabilities, lead
organizers, and a number of volunteers.

We have also, however, run into some challenges, and
we need to address these before we can take the
campaign to a new and higher level of impact.

Challenges

Confusion of Names

Back when we started the campaign, Ometz Le'sarev (the
"seruv" group) was very new and focused entirely
within Israel. They did not have a presence 
internationally, and that was very intentional. We
decided to use the English translation of their
group's name ("Courage to Refuse") as our campaign
name because it is such a powerful name. Ometz was
initially fine with that, but they have now expanded
their presence internationally (they now speak to
international media, are pursuing tours aggressively
and so on) -- and this has led to confusion.

Ometz would very much like to (and needs to) claim
their organization's name in English as well as in
Hebrew, and they also feel strongly that the 
www.couragetorefuse.org domain name should be used to
represent their group and not an international support
campaign that works with Ometz and Yesh Gvul and New
Profile and the Shiministim.

Beyond that, it really is important that the
international support campaign that we have started
maintain a clearly distinct identity from any single 
refuser group. The bottom line is that we need to
rename our campaign and give the domain name to Ometz.

NIMN involvement as obstacle

For all that NIMN brought to the campaign to help make
it successful, it also became clear in the process of
carrying out C2R that NIMN involvement was also an
obstacle in the following ways:

·       Our reputation within the affiliated or
congregational Jewish community and, actually, broader
progressive Jewish circles. For many in the refuser
movement, particularly Ometz Le'sarev, their top
priority is to bring their message (which can be
summed up succinctly as "Support Israel, end the
occupation now") to the Jewish community, to
synagogues, religious leadership, and so on. In
addition, Ometz is striving to be very careful 
about how they project their message, who they speak
to, who sponsors them, and so on. They believe that
they can have a significant impact within more 
mainstream forces, both in Israel and internationally,
particularly in the United States. In this regard,
NIMN's connection to C2R caused serious problems.
Rabbis and other leaders who would have supported C2R
and the refusers were unwilling to do so because of
the NIMN connection. This situation is the result of
our common ground (ie, that we do not take a 
two state position) and the way we have organized over
the past year, sometimes unnecessarily antagonizing
people who could or should have been allies, not 
doing the necessary ground work to build
relationships, often being very "tone deaf" about how
to present our arguments for a just peace to Jews, 
etc.. This all came back to haunt us full force as we
sought engagements for Haggai, Ram and Ishai.

·       Organizational limitations. We have grown
quickly in terms of our membership numbers, but we
have not been able to transform that growth into 
solid organizational functioning. It was difficult to
identify and recruit volunteers to help carry out the
work. Once again, too few did too much. It also became
clear that while we have lots of members, we have very
few experienced and effective organizers, people who
are able to reach out beyond our immediate circle,
work with and bring over new people, organize 
the work of large numbers of people, and systematize
what is being done.

·       Ometz Le'sarev has made fairly clear that
while they very much appreciate the work of the
campaign and strongly desire an active international
support effort, if it is closely tied to NIMN it will
be difficult for them to work with the campaign.

The somewhat ironic bottom line is that NIMN got
Courage to Refuse off the ground, but it has become
clear (to me and other C2R organizers) that 
it doesn't make much sense for NIMN to continue to be
the organizing force behind refuser support work,
either in Chicago or nationally/internationally.

Blurring of local organizing and the international
campaign

It is important to distinguish between two aspects of
the campaign: local organizing and resource
coordination or international campaign coordination.
Local Organizing consists of hosting speakers, taking
out local ads, organizing letter-writing campaigns
to/for prisoners, establishing adoption groups, and so
on. Resource Coordination involves the multi-city
coordination of tours, creation of resources that can
be used by all participants in the campaign (FAQs,
brochures, etc.), and the development and maintenance
of a powerful website.

In this first phase of the life of C2R, these have
been blended together by centering the work out of an
essentially local (Chicago-area) group, Not In 
My Name. This was hard to avoid given the speed with
which we wanted (or felt we needed) to move.

Yet this blur has also introduced many tensions, some
mentioned above regarding work within the Jewish
community. Other tensions are related to how NIMN
manages allocation of resources and volunteers: to 
NIMN-specific activities? To C2R? And what about all
those people signing up for C2R? We can't just recruit
them into NIMN; that's not what people signed up 
for. So we could end up potentially with two different
sets of volunteers, organizational structure, etc. It
became very challenging to figure out how 
to do this in the context of the tour. It will be more
troublesome as we settle into ongoing activity of the
campaign.

Looking ahead, we need to evaluate the impact of
keeping both aspects of this campaign within NIMN. Is
it appropriate for NIMN to maintain control 
and make all the decisions about what needs to, should
and can be a much broader effort? It is possible for
NIMN membership and leadership to handle the
complexity and decision-making responsibility for this
campaign when it is working so hard just to figure out
what its own structure and program should be?

Moving Forward

The objective of the Courage to Refuse campaign is to
build support for and visibility of Israeli military
refusers. To truly achieve this goal, we believe that
NIMN needs to agree to a number of fundamental changes
in the campaign.

Change Name/Clarify Identity of Campaign

We must "give up" the Courage to Refuse name and
identity. We need to clearly establish the campaign as
being a support community, and not a refuser group. We
need to be "agnostic", not tied to any particular 
group, but supporting all Israelis who refuse to serve
because of the occupation. The coordinating committee
held discussions with the refuser groups and others
active around the US, and we have decided on the
following change in identity/name:

Refuser Solidarity Network: www.refusersolidarity.net

We will be announcing this name change in the next two
weeks. In the process, we will also "tighten up" the
website so that it more clearly explains our
relationship to the various refuser groups and is 
acceptable to all the groups in terms of content.

Restructure the International Campaign

If the campaign remains centered in and organized by
NIMN, it will be constrained by the politics,
reputation and capacity of NIMN. This is especially
true of the national/international aspect (but also
applied to local organizing, which is discussed in the
next section). There are two basic options, so far as
I can tell.

1. Establish RSC as its own organization that owns the
website, coordinates tours nationally and perhaps
internationally, provides resources to groups 
and individuals who wish to work on this issue,
maintains the growing list of supporters and so on.
This organization would likely be established 
as a non-profit in Illinois and a 501(c)3 group. It
would have a national board of directors consisting of
widely known and respected individuals.

2. Move RSC to another organization with politics
within the Jewish community that is more acceptable to
all the refuser groups and less likely to cause the
slamming of doors in one's face when approaching 
synagogues and Jewish groups about the campaign. One
possible candidate is Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, a new
national Jewish membership organization that is 
developing quickly and has a set of guiding principles
that makes it a better home for refuser support (vis a
vis the Jewish community). It is not at this 
point clear that BT could effectively "house" the
campaign, but I am starting to hold exploratory
discussions (without any commitments, of course).

It is my feeling at this time that shifting the
campaign to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom is the best option. I
am concerned that I personally will not have 
the time to marshal the resources to launch a
completely independent initiative; a number of people
have also raised questions about the advisability of
forming yet another group.

The decision about which of these approaches to take
does not need to be taken immediately. It would be
important, however, for NIMN to discuss the 
issues we have encountered and also come to an
agreement that some a change is needed, and that the
campaign needs to move outside of NIMN in order 
for it to reach its potential. I would also be very
interested to hear any ideas you have about this.
Please feel free to contact me directly at 
steven at stevenfeuerstein.com or 773.454.8397.

NIMN must decide ongoing work on refusers

Even if/when the website and international
coordination efforts are spun off from NIMN, NIMN
still needs to decide what role it wants to play in 
promoting the cause of the refusers. This is an issue
on two levels: 
first, the entire NIMN network (with members around
the country and some level, though fairly minimal, of
national presence) and second organizing here 
in Chicago.

And let's be honest with ourselves: for all that NIMN
has a presence and reputation beyond Chicago, the vast
majority of its membership and its work 
takes place right here. It is also here in Chicago
that NIMN encounters the stiffest resistance and
antagonisms, and pays the heaviest price for 
our mistakes in the past year. We simply must deal
with the reality that there 
are many in the Jewish community who very much support
the refusers but will not or cannot engage in a
campaign that is led by NIMN. For example, I 
believe that we could easily have a half dozen or more
rabbis signed on the campaign right now from Chicago,
if it had been launched differently and 
was not tied to NIMN.

So what do we do about that? We can simply say "the
heck with them!" and continue doing what we are doing
(which has actually yet to be determined). And this
could be very satisfying for NIMN at some level, but
it may not be serving the needs of the refusers very
well.

Another approach to consider is that NIMN to step away
from the refuser work. As we go through our renaming
and change in identification of the campaign, NIMN
could (and I believe, should) also very consciously
hand off the local campaign activities to either
another group or, more likely, a collection of
individuals who were active in organizing the tours
who could convene much broader support for the
refusers.

NIMN could (and should) still organize its own
adoption group (or maybe even more than one, given the
size of our membership) and thereby play an 
active role in supporting imprisoned refusers, but
that is very different from being on the "front lines"
of the public campaign on behalf of refusers.

By the way, as we have this discussion and make a
decision (I hope no later than the July membership
meeting), those active in the C2R organizing 
in Chicago will be working to get adoption groups (and
other follow-up activities) going in Hyde Park, Oak
Park and Evanston, as well as with youth in support of
Haggai Matar's upcoming imprisonment.

AN APPENDIX OF SORTS:

Refuser Tours in Chicago: A report from Diane Horwitz

[Diane and Steven were co-coordinators of the C2R
campaign for the duration of the tours.]

Chicago organized two refuser tours.  Haggai Matar ( a
signer of the Seniors Letter) from May 5th to May
10th, and two Yesh Gvul representatives, Ishai Sagi
and Ram Rahat from May 24th through May 31st.  A
coordinating committee was set up to oversee the work.
 This included organizing all events, materials
development, action/direct support work, web site,
fundraising and media.

Another small committee organized the speakers events.
 Here are the basic principles that guided this work:

The first priority was outreach to the Jewish
community.  We felt that now more than ever, a larger
Jewish voice is critical in shifting the 
debate in the U.S.  We approach individuals in
synagogues and youth groups and agreed 
that if they desired meetings would be private or
semi-private events, open to membership and friends. 
We operated on the principle of respect for privacy,
and building trust, openness and dialogue.

We were interested in creating ownership of the issues
raised by the refusers among the hosting groups, so
decisions about program, type of publicity, outreach
and fundraising was left to them.  Each hosting 
group had a liaison from the speakers events
committee.

We also were interested in reaching a general
audience, and planned one large public event with Yesh
Gvul that could reach the church peace and justice
community, the Palestinian community, progressives and
others.

We saw these educational meetings as organizing
events.  Our goal was to develop small groups who
could continue their work after the tours.  We 
also wanted to have a clear, thoughtful action
component in place by the time of these meetings.

Haggai Matar spoke at the following events:  A NIMN
and CTR signers reception, four high schools
(including classes and social awareness clubs), one
temple youth group and two universities.  We had
difficulty getting him to speak at other synagogues or
local college Hillels and felt that NIMN (reputation
and work) was an obstacle to broader outreach. 
The importance of having strong ongoing solid
relationships with potentially interested
constituencies in the Jewish community cannot be 
overemphasized. Still, hundreds of young people heard
a new viewpoint from Israel, and there is good
potential for youth support work (particularly if and 
when Haggai goes to prison).

Ishai Sagi and Ram Rahat- Goodman from Yesh Gvul spoke
at the following events:  two synagogues, a large
public meeting at North Park Covenant church (about
500 in attendance), in the Oak Park community, the 
University of Chicago, DePaul University, the westside
Medical Center community, at a private reception
hosted by the Jewish Peace Forum, and two  private 
fundraising receptions.   The Yesh Gvul tour was a big
success, in terms of attendance, money raised,
discussions started , mobilization of people 
to host and work on events, and potential for ongoing
work.  In particular their message of "support Israel
by ending the occupation," had particular 
resonance for a Jewish audience and we found that many
people were open to listening to their stories of
moral courage and individual responsibility.  If the
organizing effort had not been associated with 
NIMN, it might have been possible to have the refusers
speak in other synagogues. This was a major missed
opportunity and an important lesson for the future of
this campaign.  To get heard by the widest possible 
Jewish audience, people with ties, with relationships
and credibility need to be involved and doing the
outreach work.

We distributed and talked about (at most events) a
"What You Can Do To Support the Refusers" leaflet.  
The potential exists to immediately begin 
three or four Yesh Gvul adoption groups.  A few of the
coordinating committee members will continue to be in
touch with people who hosted events to begin this
process.



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