(H/T to Peter Miller, who sent this to me under the caption, “In case you were confused by American politics.” For more details on what I’m talking about re: Jonah, click here, or come here me speak on Sunday at the 10:30 am worship service at Granville UMC, 1307 West Granville Avenue, Chicago, IL 60660)
Check out what some of my DC and Chicago peeps put together for me. You folks rock:
Talking to Your Church About Israel/Palestine
David Hosey
Young Adult UMC Missionary Intern with GBGM in Jerusalem and
National Media Coordinator for the US Campaign to End the Occupation
Hosted by the NIC End-The-Occupation Task Force of C&S
Noon, Friday, March 19, 2010
First United Methodist Church of Elmhurst
232 South York Street
Elmhurst, IL 60126-3414
Bring your own lunch or call 630-834-1461 by Wed, March 17th to order a box lunch for $10.
(Turkey, Ham, Roast Beef, Tuna Salad, Veggie)
Leave a message w. Name(s) and order
Bring a friend or two, or more!
Questions? Call 630-363-7713
Please come to support this young man who dedicated three years of his life serving as a UMC missionary intern spending half of that time in Jerusalem. David is also currently working as the U.S. Campaign to End The Occupation National Media Coordinator.
David is meeting with United Methodists to talk about actions we can take to help end the occupation in Israel/Palestine. How can we most effectively talk to our congregations about the issue? What are Christians in the Holy Land asking of us?
Can’t come to this event? See David at:
Sunday, March 14th
10:30 a.m. Worship Service
Granville UMC
1307 West Granville Avenue
Chicago, IL 60660
870-826-1858
Wednesday, March 17th
6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Lenten Soup and Salad Supper and Worship
Church of the Incarnation, UMC
330 West Golf Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60005
847-956-1510
Thursday, March 18th
Noon
Brown Bag Lunch
Garrett Theological Seminary
Main building #105
2121 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60201
562-208-6574
A free will offering will be collected for the UMC Missionary Itineration Fund.
We’re ok with nonviolence, as long as it doesn’t make anybody uncomfortable.
That’s the lesson I’ve learned from this otherwise relatively positive post on the Sojourners blog, sent to me by my generally-badass housemate, Jen. The post, in turn, is in reference to the National Catholic Reporter article on the Kairos Document that I wrote about in an earlier post. Yeah, the one that quoted me. This is getting obnoxiously self-referential.
Anyway. The Sojourners post is sort of a fascinating study. It’s a generally positive response to the NCR article and to the Kairos Document itself, but contains some caveats that are worth looking at as examples of the sort of “whitewashing” of nonviolent struggle that I’ve noticed a lot of in certain circles.
What am I talking about? A few examples, courtesy of Ryan Rodrick Beiler of Sojourners:
“Injustice does indeed fuel violence. But even without the occupation, I have little doubt that extremists from both sides would likely continue to commit sporadic acts of violence against the other, however diminished in frequency or popular support — just as splinter groups have struck as recently as last year in spite of the overall peace in Northern Ireland, followed by massive protests by both sides against the violence.”
So, what do we learn from this seemingly benign (and I’m sure it was really meant well, and benignly) paragraph?
1) Violence is caused by extremists. There is no systemic violence, no structural violence. The problem is extremists, not policies and systems that have been promoted and advanced by successive Israeli governments since 1948, and in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.
2) The problem is overt violence. So as long as there isn’t overt violence, then there is peace. So if resistance can be crushed, that’s just as good an outcome as a just peace with steps toward reconciliation.
Ok, I’m being hard on Ryan. I’m sure he wouldn’t actually say any of those things, and wouldn’t mean them either. But they are assumptions that I think need to be brought out into the light and critiqued.
But here’s a better example:
“Perhaps most controversial is the document’s endorsement of boycotts and divestment campaigns “of everything produced by the occupation.” NCRquotes Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, a pro-Israel, ecumenical organization based in New York city, as saying, “I understand that it comes from a place of deep Palestinian suffering. But we will not advance peace by placing all the blame on Israel’s shoulders, or by promoting the false idea that boycotting Israel will solve this conflict.”
Because of the complexity of boycotts and divestment as a means of nonviolent protest against the Israeli occupation, Sojourners has not supported them, but been careful to present several sides (there are more than two!) of the issue in our coverage, as evidenced by these commentaries by Don Wagner, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Haim Dov Beliak which ran simultaneously in our magazine a few years back.”
This to me is really fascinating. The author of this piece obviously believes–or believes that he believes, which I think is something that can be said about many of us, often including me–in nonviolence. But what does he mean by nonviolence?
Well…not violence. That’s what he means. Not actually nonviolence. Or maybe a sanitized version of nonviolence. A version of nonviolence in which nobody feels uncomfortable, in which there is no controversy, and in which there is no economic and moral pressure actually put on anybody.
–
Let’s just look back a bit at the history of nonviolent resistance to oppression, and then maybe what I’m saying here will make a bit more sense.
During the absolute oppression of slavery in the United States, slaves resisted (something we don’t learn about much in school) using work slow downs and other forms of economic sabotage. Black slaves took advantage of white stereotypes of them–slow, stupid, lazy–to resist oppression using economic means. See James Cone’s “Spirituals and the Blues” for a good overview of this.
As African Americans continued to struggle for freedom in this country, economic measures took center stage. The most famous of these is the Montgomery bus boycott (which was plenty controversial, but certainly wasn’t “anti-bus” or “anti-White”), but Montgomery was actually preceded by a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, LA which achieved a partial victory against bus segregation. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, economic means, including the boycott of segregated stores, continued to be integral to the movement. At one point after a church bombing in Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. considered calling for a boycott of all items produced in the state.
The example of apartheid South Africa is the one most commonly cited by modern day boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) activists, but there are other examples of boycotts and divestment utilized by faith communities and civil society activists to work for justice and peace. From farmworker rights in the United States to the boycott campaign against Nestle for their unethical baby formula practices internationally, from oil companies in the Niger Delta to regimes committing human rights abuses in Sudan and Burma/Myanmar, BDS has been and continues to be a centerpiece of nonviolent struggles (an interesting tidbit: according to Gal Beckerman of the Jewish Daily Forward, Soviet Jewry activists used cultural boycott tactics to protest the Russian Bolshoi Ballet in the 1970s, tactics that were in turn used in protests of the government-funded Israel Ballet in its recent East Coast tour as part of the newly launched “Brand Israel” campaign).
–
Why bring all this up? Because nonviolence makes people uncomfortable. Because nonviolence without moral, economic pressure to change bad behavior isn’t really much nonviolence at all.
Looking back, we like to sanitize nonviolence. We like to think what sets it apart is that it “isn’t violent”–unlike those scary Black Panthers/Communist members of the ANC/Hamas operatives–instead of remembering that nonviolence is always controversial, viewed as “rabble rousing” and “trouble making,” and designed to make people with power and resources (who often look often like, say, me) uncomfortable.
So according to Ryan Beiler of Sojourners, nonviolence is OK, but BDS is controversial. And you know? I think he’s right. “Nonviolence” has become increasingly emptied of meaning, has come to mean simply “no violence” instead of meaning consistent, persistent, moral, economic, and political pressure to influence behavior toward justice and the dismantling of unjust systems.
Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions. These are the nonviolent measures called for by Palestinian civil society, by the Palestinian Christian community, and by an increasing number of Israeli Jews and international activists. This–not just marches, not just calls to members of Congress, although these are important and right and vital–is what nonviolence looks like. It will certainly cause controversy. Sometimes it will cause controversy among allies (or among “moderates,” the sort of moderates that King wrote to in his letter from Birmingham Jail). Sometimes people, good people, caring people, people like Rabbi Arthur Waskow (who debated Omar Barghouti on the topic of BDS on Democracy Now recently), will disagree with serious nonviolent efforts.
(Rabbi Waskow, incidentally, claims that BDS seeks to demonize Israel and its vibrant culture, but participated in BDS activity against South Africa…making me wonder whether he thinks that South Africa had no culture or whether BDS is only demonization when directed against Israel. He also claims that he would support the equivalent of freedom rides in Israel/Palestine, but the only actual equivalent that I can think of would be Israeli Jews nonviolently accompanying Palestinian refugees back to their homes.)
Sometimes, people will go one step further, as in a recent Washington Post op-ed that accused people with my viewpoint of being anti-Semitic liars (you can read my response to that here). The same day that article appeared, I got a message in my inbox calling me a “faggot” and telling me that I should care about the dispossession of American Indians instead of spending so much time worrying about Palestinians. The irony (a) of someone using a homophobic slur to attack me and then telling me I care about the wrong people’s rights and (b) of me receiving the message while at an event featuring Omar Barghouti that focused precisely on the links between Palestinian oppression and historic dispossession and oppression of First Nations and African people in North America wasn’t lost on me.
Thanks to Jess for this photo from Al-Ma'sara, Bethlehem District
Regardless of all of this, though, if we are going to say we believe in nonviolence, we better know what we are saying. We better not sanitize it. And we better be ready for some controversy.
This is from Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian Christian and past Steering Committee member of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation:
“Some 100 people gathered at Ush Ghrab in Beit Sahour to pray for peace and protest the planned military presence there. As we were gathering in peaceful contemplation and prayer, Israeli army jeeps quickly rolled in between us and one officer barked orders in Hebrew. We explained to them in Arabic and English that we do not understand Hebrew (later we realized they also knew Arabic and English) but they immediately started throwing concussion grenades and tear gas at the elderly, women, children, the priest doing the prayer, other town people and internationals (Christians and Muslims). A translator who reviewed our video footage later in the day said that their orders meant we have one minute to disperse! The priest’s words, delivered as the army was attacking, was to plead to God to teach us to live in dignity based on morality and speak out for what is right (then we gave the Lord’s prayer together). But considering the unusual circumstances, we persisted and succeeded in holding our ground. One image captured on video that sticks out in my mind is Issa, which is Arabic for Jesus, holding his child in his arms while kicking the teargas canister. His other child had started crying with the noise of a concussion grenade. The tape done by IMEMC.org professional photographer Ghassan shows the rest of it:
My thought to the people receiving this: If after watching this, you are not outraged, then you have no humanity. If you are outraged and is able to do something about it, but don’t, then you have abrogated your moral responsibility. Doing something about it means joining us next week if you are in the Bethlehem district or, if you are not, pressuring your government and the 101 other ways you know about that can make a difference.
The popular committee will continue and asks all of you to join us at 11 AM at Ush Ghrab next week where will have better organization and ensuring that young children and elderly who join us will be away from any potential area of conflict (we just did not expect the speed and viciousness of the Israeli
attack this time). Despite the arrayed forces against us (including both Israeli and unfortunately some supine Palestinians), we believe in the power of popular resistance to move conscience and achieve results. The examples from our town of Beit Sahour during the first uprising of the late 1980s and
places like Bilin in the past few years should be ample proof. The fact that Bilin retrieved over 1500 dunums of its land thanks to its popular resistance in ALL its forms. They are still going on strong five years later and they grew from a handful to thousands.The attack on peaceful demonstrations fit a pattern of pathology (psychosis) indicative of the bankruptcy of the apartheid state. Israeli forces shot at a private vehicle in Husan near Bethlehem yesterday injuring three civilians including one critically. Their insults to foreign countries, demeaning the Turkish ambassador, use of foreign passports in sending hit squads are all telling: mafia like actions. Acting irrationally and lashing out helps show the rest of the world the true nature of this sick regime.
I am so proud of the people who came and joined together with us and for those of you who did not join us, you missed something rather amazing. The best of humanity is on the march with love. Those of us who were here are energized and wish you would come and join us in “joyful participation in the sorrows of this world”. You can’t be neutral on a moving train. You are either on the side of justice or you are contributing to the injustice.
Silence is complicity.”
From my friend Joy of Christian Peacemaker Teams:
CPTnet 18 February 2010 AT-TUWANI REFLECTION: Mona’s partyby Joy Ellison
“This morning,” my neighbor Mona* said to me, “I told my husband that since the kids are out of school and he didn’t need to go into town, I would cook something special and we would have a party.” Mona has a wry sense of humor and I started to wonder what the punch line would be. “We were going to invite you, but instead we had a little party with the soldiers and the settlers.” Mona cocked her head to one side and shrugged, smiling ironically.
The “party” to which she was referring wasn’t nearly as fun as the party that Mona had planned. At about 9:00 a.m. on 26 January, a settler from the Havat Ma’on settlement outpost entered the village of At-Tuwani, accompanied by the Israeli army and the Ma’on settlement security guard. The settler then entered the homes of my neighbors and searched their animal pens. “What is he looking for?” my neighbors asked the soldiers. “If he thinks we’ve stolen something, bring the police and conduct a normal search. Where’s the rule of law?”
Between fifteen and twenty settlers then joined the first, along with more soldiers. Mona’s husband tried to convince the soldiers to make the settlers leave the village. “We’ll go back into our houses if they leave,” he said. But then the settlers started throwing stones at a group of Palestinian women and children. The next thing I knew, the soldiers were pointing their guns at my neighbors. One of them drew back his fist and punched someone in the face. It was Mfaadhi, the quietest, least imposing man in the village. His nose was bleeding. Another soldier raised his gun and fired. For a moment, I was stunned and dumbly wondered why no one seemed to be shot. Then I realized that he had fired a percussion grenade** and that the soldiers were likely to start using tear gas next. I saw the same soldier pull out another canister. “Don’t do it,” I started screaming. “There are women and children here. Don’t shoot that!”
Later, when the soldiers and settlers had left the village, Mona told me that Mfaadhi’s nose was broken and he would need an operation. She also said that the soldiers told her and the women that if they did not leave the area, they would arrest all of the men of the village and kill at least one. “We didn’t leave,” said Mona. “One of the girls told them they could take her whole family to jail if they wanted to. She said that there wasn’t much food in her house. At least there’s lots of food in prison!” Mona laughed.
Mona told me about the party she had wanted to have, until the settlers and soldiers prevented it. I started to wonder how many other parties were canceled because of the occupation that day. But then Mona smiled. “Maybe we’ll have our party tomorrow,” she said. Sure enough, the next afternoon I sat on Mona’s front porch laughing and sipping tea. As we ate the food that Mona had promised, I imagined the celebration she will throw when the occupation is finally over. Soldiers and settlers can’t cancel that party – only postpone it.
*Name changed.
** Also known as a sound bomb, percussion grenades make an extremely loud noise, designed to cause panic. Percussion grenades have caused serious injury after striking civilians when soldiers have used them at short range.
–
And a post from the US Campaign blog, with video by Sam Nichols over at Do Unto Others:
Last month we reported on the Israeli army attacking Palestinian shepherds and representatives of US Campaign member group Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank.
The National Catholic Reporter is carrying a great article entitled “Palestinian Christians urge nonviolent resistance” which is well worth checking out. The article covers the Palestinian Christian Kairos Document, modeled after the South African Kairos Document which called for solidarity from the global church in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
From the NCR: "Israeli soldiers scuffle with a protester during a protest against the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah Sept. 25. (CNS/Darren Whiteside, Reuters)"
Here’s a quick excerpt from the article, which you can read in full here:
The leaders of the thirteen Christian communities serving in the Palestinian territories — including Latin and Orthodox patriarchs — have declared the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories a “sin against God and humanity” and urged Christians everywhere to nonviolently intervene to end its injustices….“The decision-makers content themselves with managing the crisis rather than committing themselves to the serious task of resolving it,” the document says. “The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the church.”….The 12-page call-to-action details the consequences of the Israeli occupation for Palestinians and advocates for a Christian response that reflects the church’s universal mission “to bear witness to God and the dignity of human beings.” Such a response, the authors wrote, includes civil disobedience, boycotts, and divestment campaigns. “Resistance is a right and duty for Christians. But it is resistance with love as its logic,” they said.
The article also quotes, well…yours truly, on the role of U.S. churches in divestment from companies profiting from Israeli occupation of Palestinian land:
David Hosey, media coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a missionary with the United Methodist Church, said members of the New England conference of that church are in correspondence with the targeted companies, the first step in “phased divestment.” The Methodists adopted a resolution in 2004 opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. Various regional conferences are now debating whether or not to express that opposition with divestment campaigns.
In December 2008, the Church of England divested 3.3 million dollars from Caterpillar. Church officials said the withdrawal was purely for economic reasons. But it was not publicly announced until February 2009, a month after the Israeli invasion of Gaza and a day before the British newspaper The Guardian was scheduled to publish a letter signed by twenty-three Anglican clergy condemning the Church’s “unethical” investment policy.
As for action from the Roman Catholic Church, Hosey said members of the Sisters of Loretto, a U.S. order of Catholic women religious, were pushing for shareholder resolutions urging Caterpillar to stop its sale of militarized bulldozers to Israel.
Christian calls for divestment have sparked criticism from various Jewish organizations and, at times, strained inter-religious dialogue. But Hosey thinks that could change as more Jewish and Israeli groups endorse using economic pressure to change Israeli action in the Occupied Territories.
So, this is sort of old news, but did you hear the one about the Bible verses on the gun sights?
The story, so far, in brief, courtesy of ABC News:
“Trijicon, the gunsight maker that has imprinted Bible verse numbers on its scopes, has announced that it will no longer imprint the verses on the sides of scopes intended for the U.S. military, and will also provide clients with the kits to remove the Bible verse numbers from existing scopes.
An ABC News report earlier this week revealed that the Michigan-based company, which has a contract to provide up to 800,000 scopes to the U.S. military, prints references to New Testament chapters and verses in code next to the model numbers of its scopes. The scopes are used by the U.S. Marine Corps and Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by U.S. allies in those countries, and for the training of Afghan and Iraqi troops.”
–
But here’s what I think is a more intriguing response from David Wildman, Exec. Secretary for Human Rights and Racial Justice of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church:
‘What is most upsetting is not that scripture references are being placed on weapons. …’
Wildman’s comment refers to an ABC News investigation that reported a Michigan company inscribed coded references to Bible passages about Jesus Christ on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military. Wildman, who is executive secretary for Human Rights & Racial Justice at the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries Mission Contexts & Relationships, made his remarks in an e-mail to Peace with Justice advocates. He said three other things are far more upsetting:
- “That a company which identifies itself as Christian believes making weapons, primarily for use against other children of God, is somehow an expression of its faith.”
- “That Christians use such weapons as somehow an expression of faith. The Social Principles make clear: ‘War is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ.’”
- “That more energy goes into opposing scripture references than opposing war funding and war making. Perhaps, the texts should remain on the weapons until we in churches have put an end to the use of weapons in the name of God.”
Wildman says that “sadly” the biblical text which best describes the United States today is from the prophet Joel:
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war, stir up the warriors. … Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears” (Joel 3:9-10).
Wildman points out that the U.S. administration will soon propose over $2 billion/day of resources be beaten into swords.
“I pray we may together find the courage to work against this madness,” Wildman said.”
I shared this bit with Elrig at Living Between Worlds, here’s his response:
“We in churches” is not a coherent entity. So “we” will never put an end to the use of weapons in the name of God. Neither will “we in Synagogues” put an end to the use of weapons in the name of Hashem, or “we in Mosques” put an end to the use of weapons in the name of Allah.
But “we”–people of conscience and people of peace–need to stop being polite and staying within church bodies which tacitly or explicitly worship greed-driven and nationalistic-driven violence and warfare.
We don’t have all to be fully ‘non-violent’. I am not, or not yet. But we certainly all can agree that jingoism, racism, greed, false pretense, colonialism, empire building, revenge, and murky rage-stimulated rationales absolutely do not lead to “just wars” in any case.
And we can all agree (if we’re people of conscience and of peace) that — even if some of us may leave room for ‘just war’ in our concepts — we should value and do an awful lot more to avoid and resist war. And certainly even more to work at the root causes of war. And oppose the ideologies –which make war attractive, glorious, and appealing.
Today, I am going to a roller derby bout–the perfect antidote to a week stuck inside due to SnowNo Not Again.
(In all fairness I spent last weekend digging cars out and then cross country skiing, falling on my butt, then down hill skiing at Seven Springs, with occasional sitting by the fire interludes in between, so I don’t have a whole lot to complain about).
My friend Audrey sent me an email explaining how roller derby works. I think it’s a masterpiece of modern literature, so I’m sharing it here. Also, if you can, you should join me to see the DC Rollergirls All-Stars mercilessly crush the life out of Pittsburgh’s Steel Hurtin’. It’s the best thing to do on a Valentine’s Day weekend, ever:
“Anyway, I noticed that knowing the fundamental rules made a *huge* difference in my enjoyment as a spectator. Hence, I am giving you all a rundown so you’ll be lovin every minute of the game! I will try to keep this as concise and clear as possible, but I’m a lil long-winded by nature and the official rulebook of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association is about 40 pages long, so bear with. (Or skip my rules breakdown entirely, because the spectacle of befishnetted chicks brawling on wheels is still pretty entertaining. But it is even more exciting if you get what’s going on, I promise. ANYWAY.) HERE GOES.
The basickiest basics—the derby track kinda looks like this: 0 . That is, it’s oval-ish, but the curved ends are connected by straightaways. Game play is made up of “jams,” little races to score points, that last 2 minutes or less. One jam follows right after another unless a timeout is called.
Now, as for the actual play—when it’s time for the action to start, members from the two opposing teams assemble on the track. Each team has 14 players per game that rotate in and out of play, but they only send 5 to the track at any one time—so 10 players, total, take to the track at once.
8 of those 10 players—4 from each team—comprise THE PACK. All of them have to stay clumped closely together to keep play valid, so you’ll see members from both teams all skating next to or near each other. Uniforms come in handy for tellin em apart.
They all get into formation behind a line at the front of a straightaway, look terrifying, and wait for the whistle. They are riiiiight about here on the track: 0*
Meanwhile….
The JAMMERS, one from each team, get into position. They line up next to each other at the back of the same straightaway. They are more like here on the track: 0- (Oh, email, why are you not a whiteboard…). Jammers wear helmet covers with big stars on them, so you can spot them easily during play.
Ok. Everyone’s in position. A ref blows the whistle and starts the clock, and ONLY the pack starts rolling at a moderate pace. The jammers stay put. Once the very last pack member crosses the start line, the ref blows the whistle twice, and the jammers take off—at a much less moderate pace.
The jammers catch up to the pack as fast as they can and start fighting their way through. The ladies in the pack (mysteriously called “blockers”) participate defensively but also offensively: they get in the way of the other team’s jammer, and at the same time try to open up holes or be a human ladder for their own jammer. You really want your jammer to be the first to make it through the pack, because….
The first jammer through wins SUPERPOWERS! Sort of! She becomes lead jammer, a status which lasts for the duration of the 2-minute-or-less jam, and means she gets to call off the jam at any moment—like, before the other team has a chance to score. So, with her opponent still mired in the fray of the pack—or just through and hot on her heels—she sets off around the track to do some scoring of her own.
And how does she do that? By busting her way through the pack, again. She laps the pack, catching up to them again from behind, and jumps right back in. THIS time through she wins a point for her team every time she passes someone on the other team—so now those blockers are working extra hard to hold her back, and her teammates are working just as hard to pull her through.
There’s no limit to the number of times a jammer can lap the pack and pass opposing teammates. Sometimes, a jammer laps everyone on the track 2 or even 3 additional times and scores a crapload of points. Sooner or later, though, the jam will end: either the 2 minutes will run out OR the poor, beleaguered second jammer will finally get clear and come around in position to start scoring, and the lead jammer will call off play by signaling the refs, thereby quitting while she’s ahead. You’ll hear a series of 4 short whistles which mean the jam is over. Players get back into position (usually with some rotations in and out), and it all starts again!
And that’s it! Note, however: It doesn’t always look exactly like this, and penalties are usually to blame for that. Penalties have a way of fouling up these nice, simple, crystal-clear rules that i just explained and making them uber complicated. The announcer should keep you abreast of any weirdnesses based on penalties, though—just know that sometimes only one jammer will be on the track, or fewer than 8 blockers will be, or nobody will get lead jammer status and the jam will have to go on for the full 2 minutes, etc etc—and the reason will just be that a penalty got called on a player and the team is bearing the consequences.
The teams will play as many jams as can be started within the allotted time period (usually 20 minutes, sometimes 30). Periods are separated by a 5-minute break, and then the action starts again. Whichever team has the most points at the end of all periods (one or two periods per game)….loses! No, no, wait.That team wins. And because it’s such a high-scoring sport, and the huge advantage of lead jammer status goes up for grabs every two minutes, it can get very very exciting because of how easily the tables can turn.”
Wow. Once a month seems about as much as I can muster these days on the ol’ City of… blog.
Here’s the deal: I’ve been posting regularly at the End the Occupation blog, and that’s a good place to go if you’re looking for updates about U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine and developments in the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. It’s also good to keep an eye on the website of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation for action alerts and policy updates.
I’m going to put a couple of posts up, but here are some Palestine/Israel updates, in brief, that I want to share:
1) At-Tuwani, the village in the southern West Bank that I’ve written about a lot here, has been having a really rough time, both with settlers and the Israeli military. Here’s an update about one recent incident of repression, which included the arrest and torture of a Palestinian shepherd, Musab Musa Raba’i. And here’s news of an attack in At-Tuwani on Tuesday.
2) I’ve written a lot here about the Israeli military’s use of “administrative detention“–that is, imprisonment without trial or charge–especially targeted against leaders of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid, such as my friend Mousa Abu Maria. The Israeli government has really been cracking down on nonviolent opposition to its policies, both within Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. We were at turns worried and than elated at the administrative detention and then release of our friends Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma’ of Stop the Wall. Find out more here–and take action to release Abdallah Abu Rahmah and other imprisoned activists by clicking here.
3) 54 members of Congress recently signed on to a letter calling for the end of the ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and referring to the blockade as “de facto collective punishment.” Find out more and “cheer or jeer” your member of Congress by clicking here.
4) We’ve had some big divestment wins, and some exciting energy around campus divestment. Click here to find out more.
Ok, for self-promotion stuff, see posts below.
–
But one more thing here:
Howard Zinn, activist, academic, people’s historian, and a member of the Advisory Board of the incredible Jewish Voice for Peace, has died at the age of 87. He will be sorely missed. I first read Zinn while traveling to Cuba with a group from my college (shout out to Dr. Christine Wade). He opened my eyes to a history of this country that we don’t learn about in our power-center-and-war-centric text books. Here’s an article in the Boston Globe, and some excerpts below:
“Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87–which didn’t keep him from hooking us up with some awesome, radical comics.
….
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, “A People’s History of the United States” (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers — many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out — but rather the farmers of Shays’ Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.
….
Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were the novelist Alice Walker, who called him “the best teacher I ever had,” and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children’s Defense Fund.
During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.
Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.
The focus of his activism now became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at countless rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and another leading antiwar activist, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.
….
On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did so.”
Here’s to you, Dr. Zinn. May we all become part of that hundred. And may you rest…in rabble rousing.
I’ve been promising a longer piece on the OnFire/BorderLinks trip that a bunch of us took to the U.S./Mexico border. here it is. Emphasis on the “longer.” This was originally posted on the OnFire blog.
“For Christ is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in Christ’s flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create one new person out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” — Ephesians 2: 14-18
I have a vendetta against walls.
For some reason, it has taken me months to write this. Sentences and phrases have been floating in my brain that whole time, surfacing occasionally to disturb the waters. Sometimes it takes an outside push, a rock dropped in the pond.
The other day a friend asked me, “What did you think when you went to Mexico and saw the Wall?” It wasn’t just a casual question. She knew that it wasn’t my first experience with a wall built to divide.
(Me at the Wall in Abu Dis)
I lived in Jerusalem from September 2007-December 2008. If the early church considered Jerusalem to be the center of the world, I wonder what they would think of the city today, divided as it is by a massive concrete wall, some 25 feet high, studded with watchtowers and barbed wire and defiant graffiti, broken in places by checkpoints that serve as choke points on the movement and access of Palestinian civilians. In urban areas, the wall is twice as high as the Berlin Wall, and its total length stretches four times as long. Its route snakes deep in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. More than 75% of its projected route is inside the West Bank, rather than on the internationally recognized border between Israel and the hoped-for Palestinian state.
(The Wall at Qalandia Checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah)
(A map of the route of the Wall in the West Bank)
The Wall divides not only Israelis from Palestinians—a problematic enough separation if there is ever to be peace in the land that is called Holy—but Palestinians from Palestinians. In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis, close to where I lived, it runs right up the center of the street, cutting Palestinians off from family, work places, places of worship, schools, and clinics that used to be just across the way. In villages like Bil’in, Jayyous, and Ni’lin, it cuts Palestinian farmers off from land and water resources that they have had access to for hundreds of years. A July 9, 2004 advisory ruling from the International Court of Justice declared the route of the Wall to be illegal under international humanitarian and human rights law. Palestinian communities, with the solidarity of Israeli and international human rights defenders, have worked and marched and demonstrated and struggled against the construction of the Wall. 19 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army during protests against the Wall. The youngest of these, Ahmed Husan Youssef Mousa, was only 10 years old. Hundreds more protestors, Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals, have been wounded. One U.S. citizen, Tristan Anderson, was shot in the face with a high velocity tear gas canister and remains hospitalized with brain damage almost a year later. If he had been Palestinian, he likely would have died—prevented from reaching necessary care because of restrictions on Palestinian movement.
(Unarmed protesters against the Wall in the village of Bil’in are violently dispersed by the Israeli military. Photo by ActiveStills, an Israeli organization)
So when our OnFire/BorderLinks group got to the border crossing in Nogales, and got our first sight of the U.S./Mexico Border Wall, it seemed an oddly familiar sight. Nogales used to be one community, straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Now it is cut in two—separated, divided by that ugly wall.
(Photos of the Wall in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The crosses memorialize those who have died making the border crossing)
It sounds strange to say, but compared to the massive Apartheid Wall in Jerusalem (the Hebrew word for the wall, “Hafrada,” means separation—just like the term “Apartheid” in Afrikaans) the U.S./Mexico border wall looks a bit…dinky. Constructed largely out of scrap metal from the United States’ first foray into invading Iraq, the Wall left me with the impression that, given enough momentum, enough people, we could just push it down.
But it’s no less solid, no less insurmountable for those with the wrong passport, than any other wall that’s ever been built between people with economic resources and hands on the machinery of global power and those without. It’s no less environmentally catastrophic, interfering not only with human migration but with animal migration routes that are threatened with permanent disruption. It’s no less symbolic of separation and exploitation, of our inability to live into the vision of Beloved Community offered to us by so many prophets over so many thousands of years. Our own home grown Separation Barrier is an ugly, rust colored reminder of our failure of imagination when it comes to our relationship with our neighbors to the South.
(A political cartoon from BlackCommentator.com lampoons the hypocrisy of our Border Wall)
–
Walls across the world are remarkably, banally, similar. Walls that are built to divide are almost always built between populations “with” and populations “without.” Walls that are built to divide are never constructed by communities coming together—the only walls built in that way are shelter walls, walls of houses and community centers and places worship and education. Walls built to divide are built by governments, by corporations, by power brokers—not by grassroots communities. Not by love.
The Walls in Palestine and the U.S./Mexico Border have more in common than symbolism, though. Both are being built, in one way or another, by U.S. taxpayer dollars. The West Bank Wall is subsidized and made possible by the more than $3 billion in military aid that we pour into Israel each year, by loan guarantees and political support and UN vetoes offered without precondition. (The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has recently begun constructing another massive Wall, this one on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt). There’s a direct corporate connection, as well. Elbit Systems, an Israeli company that produces surveillance and military equipment, is responsible for much of the detection equipment on the West Bank Wall and has half of the contract on the Border Wall.
Elbit, by the way, is one example of the way that people power continues to exert itself against the power of Walls. Elbit’s role in the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank has made it the target of international divestment campaigns. In response to a call from Palestinian civil society groups, human rights advocates around the world have spoken out—and acted out—against companies that profit from the ongoing conflict over and occupation of Palestinian land. The Palestinian Christian community has issued a Kairos call for churches around the world to join in these and efforts. Recently, a Norwegian government pension fund, a Danish bank, and a Danish pension fund have pulled millions of dollars in investments from Elbit because of the company’s violations of international law and human rights. Divestment campaigns in the United States, including in many churches and college campuses, are targeting Elbit and creating alliances with groups working for the rights of migrants. Campaigns like these begin to expose the cracks in the seemingly monolithic Walls that divide us—cracks that we can get our fingers in, to steady us or to climb up or to pull down.
–
Walls, to me, have become so symbolic of what it is that we are struggling against, of the break down of the community we are called to, our inability to cross borders and barriers and find common ground.
What we are up against is separation—separation of so many kinds. The Dividing Walls of the world literally separate us from our neighbors, entrenching the divisions of economic or political apartheid. Our own personal struggles and alienation make us feel separated—from each other, from God’s infinite and incredible love for us.
Those of us who have taken the first stumbling steps in the prophetic walk toward justice and peace are up against separation, too. So often we get caught up in the narrow lanes of “issues” or “causes,” missing the Beloved Community created by our common struggle. There’s an organization called Jobs With Justice that asks supporters to take a pledge to show up, five times a year, for someone else’s struggle—for a cause or an issue that is not “my own.”
The only tool we have to dismantle the Walls that separate us is our collective imagination, that Spirit that invites us to create communities across dividing lines. It is exactly this collective imagination, unrestricted by borders, that we see in the Palestinian villages of Bil’in, Jayyous, and so many others, where Palestinian communities invite Israeli and international human rights defenders to join them in their nonviolent struggle against the Wall, and to take the message of justice back to their governments and to the corporations behind the construction of separation. It is this collective imagination that our OnFire group experienced when we spoke to Lupe Serrano at the Wall in Nogales, and he showed us the art that he and others have created on the Wall—something that is not allowed on the U.S. side—in a prophetic refusal to be contained. It is this collective imagination that we see as people of faith and hope join hands across borders and issues and identity groups, join hands and feet and voices in the great global uprising of people’s movements dedicated to justice, peace, and a more equitable sharing of the resources of this incredible world.
(Me with some of Lupe Serrano’s art on the Wall in Nogales)
What we are up against is separation. But separation, as powerful as it is, is remarkably susceptible to the steady, patient work of the candle-lighters and the border-crossers and the Wall-defiers.
We can build very tall Walls and very long Walls and very deep Walls. The Wall that is being built on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is deep enough to cut off tunnels that are the only means of commerce for the Palestinians in Gaza. The Wall that is being built on our southern border will supposedly be able to stop the wave of migration brought about by severe economic inequality. The Wall that the Israeli government builds in Palestine is supposed to be so high and so long that it will somehow be able to contain the anger of people who have been denied their freedom and their rights and their land.
But no matter how tall and how long and how deep we build these Walls, cracks begin to appear. Cracks that light can shine through. Cracks that voices can whisper through. Cracks that are big enough for our fingers, for our hands, for holding and for pulling and for climbing.
(A group of Palestinians from the village of Ni’lin pull down a section of the Wall on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November. They are met with tear gas fired by the Israeli military)
Together, we will pull down these walls. And imagine, just imagine, what beautiful things we can build instead with the leftover reminders of our former separation.
David Hosey is a mission intern with Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. From September 2007-December 2008 he worked with the Sabeel Ecumencial Liberation Theology Center, a Palestinian Christian organization based in Jerusalem. During that time he was blessed with the opportunity to meet, learn from, and walk alongside Palestinian Christians and Muslims, Israeli Jews, and international human rights defenders struggling for justice, peace, and reconciliation. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he serves as the National Media & Coalition Coordinator for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 325 organizations working to change those U.S. policies toward Israel/Palestine that violate international law, human rights, and the principle of equality for all. He blogs (regularly) at the End the Occupation Blog and (more sporadically than he’d like) at City Of…
