[Peace] help/ideas needed to promote speaker

[jamendoz]

Sandra,
I can cook something for that Tuesday night, and if I'm in town, would like to 
help you serve.

Jean

>===== Original Message From "Sandra Ahten" <spiritofsandra at hotmail.com> =====
>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."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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