[Peace] help/ideas needed to promote speaker

[Sandra Ahten]

Peace.
I have a friend coming to Urbana on June 3 and 4.  He is Dr. Robert Lipton,
of Berkley CA.  He has just returned from the West Bank where he was on a
mission with the International Solidarity Movement's Campaign Against
Occupation. Dr. Lipton was involved in several different aspects of the ISM
endeavor, participating in non-violent marches, living in refugee camps and
organizing humanitarian aid.  Lipton photographed events in Bethlehem during
the standoff at the church of the Nativity, acted as a human shield to
protect civilians in a refugee camp outside of Bethlehem, and brought a
shipment of medical supplies into Aida refugee camp.

Dr. Lipton is a Jewish American and a long time activist and a co-cordinator
for of an organization called Jewish Voice for Peace.

I am booking speaking engagements for Dr. Lipton while he is here. I have
contacted Jack Brighton the producer of Focus 580 on WILL and Jim Turpin of
Penny for your Thoughts on WDWS. I am waiting to hear back.   I am thinking
of having a dinner on Tuesday night where he will be the speaker.  I know
that the IMC is available. but maybe a more well know venue might be better.
It needs to have a kitchen area that I can serve from. though I will be
arranging the food to be primarily be brought in.  Any ideas?  I'm thinking
of an Italian dinner.  Anyone wanting to volunteer bring a pan of lasagna, a
salad, bread etc.  Please let me know.
This will be a fundraiser for the International Solidarity Movement.
Any ideas for what he might do on Monday night. Any ideas of how to get
co-sponsers for the Tuesday night dinner? Any one can help with promotion?

Sandra


Sandra Ahten
217-367-6345

Following are two stories about his trip (including an AP story).
-----------------------------
By CELEAN JACOBSON, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - Jewish American Rob Lipton spoke emotionally Thursday about the
resilience he saw among the Palestinians and how he served as a human shield
for the besieged people as Israeli troops threatened their West Bank refugee
camp near biblical Bethlehem.

Lipton - a peace activist from Berkeley, California - was among about 20
foreigners who were evacuated from Bethlehem on Wednesday. They are part of
a larger group of about 100 international activists who are in Israel
showing solidarity with Palestinians.

After a series of bloody suicide bombings, Israel launched its weeklong
offensive in the West Bank, seeking to wipe out militant networks. The
foreign activists decided to go into various Palestinian refugee camps,
hoping their presence would deter the Israelis from bombing the areas.
Lipton, 43, said he spent two nights in the Aida refugee camp, where he
witnessed the Israeli invasion. "The first night in the camp there was very
heavy machine gun fire. The Palestinians did not return fire. They do not
have heavy weapons, although I could hear the occasional pop pop of some
small guns and then the giant roar
of tank fire," he said.  The next day, the Israeli tanks and armored
vehicles moved in closer and
Lipton spent a sleepless night waiting for an attack. "I was really afraid.
But the reason I got through the night was I knew the Palestinians go
through this every day," said Lipton, the co-ordinator for Jewish Voice for
Peace, a U.S. organization calling for an end of Israeli's occupation of
Palestinian territories and for America to suspend military aid to Israel.

"There were such wonderful people everywhere around us," he said. "The thing
I admire the most is their fortitude and civility under duress." He stayed
in the home of a biologist who was born and raised in the camp and who
recently returned from a stay in France. "He was a wonderfully urbane man
living in a crowded but clean house, who writes poetry in French. He is
soft-spoken and we had long discussions late into the night," he said.
Lipton stayed with the biologist's elderly parents in a children's center
attached to the house. He slept on mats, was welcomed by neighbors and was
treated to small but excellent meals.
"People were really pleased to have us there and provided us with wonderful
food and hospitality," he said. Fortunately Lipton said the expected attack
never came and a few days later he decided to leave Bethlehem. As a Jewish
person, Lipton thinks many Israelis are "trapped in an ideology of fear,"
and he felt that his Jewishness has been turned into support for Israel.

He condemned the suicide bombings, but he said Israel's response to the
attacks was wrong. "Just because there is violence coming from one side, it
is in no way comparable to the unbelievable state violence coming from the
Israelis," he said.
---------------------------------
`I felt like a New Yorker on Sept. 11th'

By Orly Halpern

Two American men met in the elegantly appointed sitting room of St. George's
College in East Jerusalem. Both had come on humanitarian missions to the
Middle
East- to act as "human shields" protecting Palestinians from Israeli
violence. Both
were Jews.

But neither Dr. Robert Lipton of Berkeley, California, or Steven Quester of
Brooklyn
knew when they bought their plane tickets that they would find themselves in
the
middle of the most massive Israeli military operation in years.

The two had come to join the International Solidarity Movement's (ISM)
two-week "April 2002
Campaign Against Occupation." Established in 2000 and led by two women, a
Palestinian
American and an Israeli, the ISM believes in using nonviolent means to
defend Palestinians from Israeli military actions, and to help bring an end
to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The goals of the current
campaign are to enlist foreigners to provide humanitarian aid, and also to
report to the press
and demonstrate against Israeli activities in the territories. "You just
returned from the Al-Azzeh camp [in Bethlehem]?" Lipton asks, upon meeting
Quester for the first time at the college. "How was it?"

"Tough. Soldiers are passing by, shooting randomly into the entrance of the
camp," answers Quester, 39, a teacher of children with special needs, who
had just arrived in East Jerusalem from Al-Azzeh, where he
had lived for one week.

Tall and a bit unkempt, Lipton, a 43-year-old researcher in the field of
public health, nodded. He had just spent 10 days in another Palestinian
refugee camp near Bethlehem.

When the two men were asked if camp residents knew they were Jews, Lipton
says: "I would tell people after I knew them a little, `I'm a Jew.' They
would be surprised, but I never felt a threat." He had stayed
with the family of a biologist who teaches at Bethlehem University, who was
born in the camp and educated in France.

Quester, a clean-cut man known as "Tzvi" by his Israeli friends, says he
spoke to many Palestinians in the camp in Hebrew: "One of the men in the
home I stayed in didn't speak English. It became known in the
camp that I am a Jewish Hebrew-speaker. People who didn't know English spoke
with me in Hebrew. It
was inconceivable," he asserts, "that the Palestinians would hurt a hair on
the head of the internationals."

On the edge

Upon arriving in their respective camps, the two men quickly had to adjust
to a new reality. Says Quester, "My first night, I felt like a New Yorker on
September 11th. We were glued to the TV, flipping between
Al-Jazeera and the Middle Eastern channels. I didn't sleep ... When the
electricity was out in Bethlehem
and I couldn't recharge my [cell phone] battery, I felt so lost. Now, it's
hitting me. I can't believe I have to be back at work in 36 hours."

"It was strange becoming accustomed to the shooting and shelling. I think a
lot of the shooting by soldiers is just to keep you on the edge," says
Lipton, who is co-coordinator of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a
six-year-old, San Francisco-area organization that opposes Israeli
occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip as well as U.S. military aid to Israel.


"I've been involved in the anti-occupation issue for 15 years, but [JVP] is
the first place I've worked with Jews on this issue in an organized way," he
continues. "We're not screaming anarchists. We just believe the end of the
occupation will bring peace to the region."

Quester's political activism began more recently: "When I went to Hebrew
University in the early 1980s, I was a Zionist with Peace Now views and not
very involved. The turning point for me was the outbreak of
the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It forced me to assimilate information I've
accumulated over time and to come to
conclusions ... Since then I've been working for a free Palestine."

Quester joined Jews Against the Occupation, a New York-based organization:
"I feel [the Jews in New York] are really relieved to know about us. There
are Jews whose stomachs turn when they hear what's going on here, but
they're afraid to say so ... I feel ordinary people have a responsibility to
make the world better so, I reacted to this situation by coming here."

Lipton: "I am a Jewish American and feel intimately involved because of my
identity. [The occupation] seems like a very obvious wrong that needs to be
righted and it's in my own backyard, culturally and
religiously. For the first time, at Jewish Voice, I have felt like an
insider - it's a place where I could feel
comfortable with other Jews about articulating my opposition to the
occupation. People often say [we are] `self-hating Jews,' but we're actually
helping Jews live here better because the occupation has distorted
Israeli and Jewish American societies. It's not that I'm discounting
violence toward Israel, but it doesn't
happen by itself."

Lipton, seemingly media-savvy, hopes the world will become aware of their
cause. "Our evacuation got the highest TV press coverage," he says,
referring to the evacuation on Sunday of a number of foreigners,
including himself, from some of the camps near Bethlehem by a consular
convoy.

Quester disagrees: "I insisted on staying and not leaving earlier [with the
convoy]. I didn't want the U.S. and UK consulates make it seem like some
rescue mission. I feel the Israelis and U.S. used the evacuation for their
own propaganda."

Jewish roots, Xmas trees

While Lipton comes from a Conservative-affiliated family that had a
Christmas tree, Quester, whose father is not Jewish, defines his upbringing
as Reform and secular.

Do you consider yourself a Zionist?

Quester: "Well, I had Zionism inculcated in me by my Jewish education. It
took a long time for me to find a way to think of a Palestine that conforms
to my deeply held beliefs in justice. I feel very connected as a
Jew, but not organizationally, to the Jewish community ... I met in Al-Azzeh
Palestinians who just want a state in the West Bank and Gaza. But I
personally think `one person, one vote, one country.' I don't think Jews
need to control the land in order to keep their cultural and religious ties
to it."

Lipton: "I probably agree with you about a one-state solution -
intellectually."

Do you believe you actually acted as so-called human shields?

Quester: "I don't use this terminology. I stood between soldiers and
Palestinians. I stood in solidarity with Palestinian civilians under siege."

Lipton: "I think I acted as a human shield. Palestinians told me that they
think my presence made a difference. Bearing witness is an important part of
this."

Does the ISM make a difference?

Quester: "I think the situation in the Jenin camp would've been different if
internationals were there."

Lipton: "I'm not sure. I think the catastrophe there is because Jenin is far
away."

Quester: "Ultimately, we'll never know. But, thank God they hadn't entered
our camp."

What surprised you the most during your stay?

Lipton: "I noticed how unbelievably dignified these people were despite the
profoundly oppressive conditions."

Quester: "I am personally reeling from the sadistic behavior I have seen.
These are soldiers in uniform representing Israel. I don't care if it's
some, or all, or a few, bad apples ... We were a group of internationals at
one of the checkpoints and an Israeli soldier asked us, `How are you
enjoying
your stay?' The soldiers treated me nicely and it made me furious because
they are treating another
people so wretchedly."