City of…

Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire
by Howard Zinn

Narrated by Viggo Mortensen
Art by Mike Konopacki
Video editing by Eric Wold

Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire
by Howard Zinn

Narrated by Viggo Mortensen
Art by Mike Konopacki
Video editing by Eric Wold

Narrated by Viggo Mortensen
Art by Mike Konopacki
Video editing by Eric Wold

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.

(A map of our Walled World)

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…

Rev. Heber Brown’s Faith in Action blog is always one of my favorites….even when saying so isn’t blatant self-promotion.

This time it is–check out his post about the Baltimore Vigil for Gaza.

Here’s video of me at the Baltimore vigil–I think I make up for the “supporting injustice and violence” slip of the tongue with my stellar plug for the Motorola boycott at the end:

And here’s video of the Heber, Paul Verduin of Friends of Sabeel, and some of the awesome Women in Black at the same vigil:

Here’s Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies explaining why Yemen is one of the latest outbreak spots of the Global Violence Pandemic on the Huffington Post:

“Barack Obama is not the first US president to find Yemen a challenge. And the current $70 million package of military and security assistance is not the first $70 million US aid program to Yemen.

Two decades ago, in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush was preparing for his looming invasion of Iraq - what would become Operation Desert Storm. Like his son in 2002, Bush was eager to force a unanimous vote in the United Nations Security Council endorsing his war. But unlike George Junior who abandoned the UN when the Council stood defiant against his illegal war, the first President Bush was willing to pay - in expensive bribes and political concessions - to win what the great Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad called “a multilateral fig-leaf for a unilateral war.”

For poor and weak countries on the Council, the United States offered new economic assistance, access to cheap Saudi oil, and crucially, military aid packages to governments long denied such support because of civil wars and/or widespread corruption and repression in their countries. So the governments of Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zaire all took their kickbacks and voted yes. For China, which had threatened to veto the war-backing resolution, the Bush administration offered diplomatic rehabilitation and the resumption of long-term development aid, both of which had been cut in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre the year before. China abstained.

Two countries were left. One was Cuba, which refused on principle to endorse the US-led invasion, although Cuba had joined in the Council’s unanimous condemnation of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as illegal. The other “no” vote came from Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. Yemen was serving as a Security Council member largely in recognition of its reunification after 10 years of a brutal civil war. With the Arab world divided down the middle by the threat of a U.S. attack and only one Arab country on the Council, there was no way Yemen could endorse an invasion of its region.

Yemen voted no. And no sooner had the Yemeni ambassador, Abdullah al-Ashtal, put down his hand, then a U.S. diplomat moved to his side, telling him “that will be the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast.” The remark was picked up on an open UN microphone and immediately broadcast throughout UN headquarters and soon throughout the world. Journalists and analysts excoriated the U.S. diplomat for not knowing the mike was on and being caught in such an embarrassing situation. I was at the UN at the time, and I always thought he knew exactly what he was doing - because the message was not really aimed at Yemen. No one in Washington knew or cared at that time about what Yemen or Yemenis did or thought. The message aimed much broader, at every country in the UN that might consider defying U.S. power. The message was clear: if you cross us on an issue important to us, you will pay a price.

The people of Yemen paid a huge price. Three days later Washington made good on its threat and cut its entire aid budget to Yemen, an already measly $70 million. And today, 20 years later, diplomats and staff around UN headquarters still refer uneasily to the “Yemen Precedent.”

This week the Obama administration announced plans to send $70 million in aid to Yemen. But it won’t be for medicine, building homes, or job training. And the accompanying U.S. experts won’t be hydrologists or doctors or midwife instructors. The $70 million will be for “counter-terrorism” and “security” purposes - and the U.S. experts will be military trainers and various kinds of special forces.

But a strengthened Yemeni military will not reverse Yemen’s legacy of anti-Americanism and the support for anti-U.S. violence that sometimes accompanies it.

What if - just imagine - the United States had not used Yemen to broadcast the price of defiance to other wavering governments? What if the United States had not reprimanded the Yemeni government by punishing the entire Yemeni population and then largely ignoring the impoverished people for most of two decades? What if, instead of cutting its entire aid budget, the United States had flooded Yemen and its people with agricultural assistance, training for midwives and doctors, access to the latest hydrology technology to recover scarce water, and lots and lots of money for Yemenis themselves to use to build up their own country’s social and physical infrastructure as they chose, not as US “experts” imposed?

Today, twenty years later, things might just be a whole lot different.”

I never had a chance to post anything about the Nobel Peace Prize, but Eric Stoner did a better job of it than me at Foreign Policy in Focus anyway, so here  it is….

Also, for Gaza Freedom March updates check out the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation blog, we’ve been trying to compile updates there. Mondoweiss is also carrying updates, and of course there’s the Gaza Freedom March site itself.

Here’s Eric Stoner:

I promise you that I am much more articulate in person than this interview with IslamOnline makes me out to be. They sort of…paraphrased me. Oh well. Media is media.

I sound way more impressive (I hope) on this interview that I did a little while back with BBC Radio’s “Up All Night” program.