A helping hand : Palestine

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Christian organisations in India give a fillip to the Palestinian resistance by highlighting the harsh realities of Israeli occupation.

PIETY and sightseeing make for good business. Last year, a leading tour operator in Kerala organised trips for some 3,000 people to the “holy land”, 25 per cent more tourists than in the previous year. The biblical lands of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been drawing many visitors from India these days, more so from the southern State where Christians constitute more than 20 per cent of the population. The swelling number is thanks partly to pilgrimages fostered by individuals and groups within the Church. The pilgrims’ progress gets a further push from politically expedient decisions such as the ones by the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh governments to give financial assistance to Christians for a religious trip to Jerusalem.

But unlike for the tourist, for a person living in Bethlehem in the West Bank, be it Christian or Muslim, to make the eight-kilometre trip to Jerusalem is not easy. What it means to be a Palestinian is to get a permit to cross over and then get stopped and searched. Fr Jamal Khader, Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Bethlehem University, Jerusalem, cites the examples of several young people in his university who have not gone to Jerusalem despite their earnest desire to do so.

Everyday reality here is hard: the wall erected on Palestinian territory, separating people from one another (61.8 per cent of the planned 708 km is complete); the inhuman conditions in which people live under a permanent blockade; Israeli control of natural resources, including water and agricultural land; the daily humiliation of people at military checkpoints (522 of them) on their way to workplaces, schools or hospitals; administrative detention of Palestinians in prison without charge or trial for up to six months, which can be extended, for security reasons; the problem of refugees living in camps; and prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons. According to the Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, a community-based non-profit organisation in the West Bank, 67 per cent (7.1 million) of the Palestinian population (10.6 million) could be categorised as forcibly displaced persons as of 2008. Among them, 6.6 million were refugees and 427,000 were internally displaced persons (IDPs).

But many pilgrims from India are unaware of these facts, if not indifferent. They undertake the 5,000-km journey with a flawed understanding of history provided by the Christian interpretation of the “promised land” in the Bible. Some even equate metaphoric Israel with political Israel.

As the historian Ilan Pappe expounds in a review of Michael Prior’s Western Scholarship and the History of Palestine, the reinvention of the Jewish people as an ancient nation of Israel was an important product of the European, and Christian-centric, scholarly effort. “It played an important role in shaping the founding myth of Zionism: a people without a land returning to a land without a people.”

But for the natives of the land, who consider it to be an ongoing nakba (catastrophe) for the past 64 years, tourism that legitimises the occupation of their land is the last thing they want. Along with the civil society in Palestine, local churches actively promote a “fair trip to the holy land” and many other initiatives to end Israeli occupation in Palestine.

Recently, these groups got a boost from some Christian bodies in India when consultations that they held in Chennai and Delhi dealt with the question of Palestine. The Chennai consultation called on Christians to differentiate between biblical Palestine and the current socio-political realities of Palestine. It urged Churches to use alternative tourism partners in Palestine so as to facilitate visits to the Palestinian side of the country too.

The consultation was organised by the Board of Theological Education of the Senate of Serampore College, West Bengal, and the Church of South India in coordination with the Indian Solidarity Ecumenical Network-Palestine (ISEN-P) from July 12 to 14 and was attended by 40 men and women from different churches, theological colleges, secular educational institutions and civil society. The ISEN includes the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI).

The consultation drew attention to the Kairos document brought out by the Churches in Palestine in 2009, which called on the worldwide Church “not to offer a theological cover-up for the injustice we suffer, for the sin of the occupation imposed on us”. Kairos is an ancient Greek term that means “a propitious moment for decision or action”. Kairos Document Palestine (KDP) is modelled on the South African Kairos document brought out by the Church in 1985 at the height of apartheid in that country.

The KDP sought to mobilise and galvanise churches the world over to act. But the responses were mixed. Latin American churches saw parallels and similarities with the experience in their country. “For instance, the separation wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is similar to the one being built between Mexico and the United States. The Gaza embargo is similar to the one experienced by Cuba from the U.S. for half a century,” wrote Samuel Pagan, a theologian from Latin America. There has been opposition within the Church, too, on the issue of making hasty comparisons with South Africa under apartheid, though the KDP has consciously avoided the term.

Popular resistance

Civil society groups in Palestine are happy with the fillip the KDP has given to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign they launched in 2005. The KDP clearly calls for “the beginning of a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel”.

“The Kairos document put it [the movement] on a higher level. Now the Palestinian Christians have finally, after 64 years, a public opinion, a written statement, on the issue in Palestine. And with it endorsing the BDS movement, the Christian community all around the world have to take a stand. Either you are for the rights of the Palestinians or you are against it. You cannot tell us you stand in solidarity with us but you are against the BDS movement,” says Amjad Alqasis, the legal advocacy coordinator of Badil, who was in India recently. Badil (meaning alternative) is the founder-member of the BDS network.

The BDS movement was launched exactly a year after the decision of the International Court of Justice that the wall built by Israel on occupied Palestinian territory was illegal. “It was very much oriented on the BDS movement in South Africa and launched with three main demands: ending Israeli occupation; the return of Palestinian refugees; and the self-determination of the Palestinian people,” said Alqasis. “We will only boycott Israel as far as it violates international law. The moment Israel stops violating international law, which goes hand in hand with stopping the full-out occupation, letting Palestinian refugees to return and granting self-determination to the Palestinians, the BDS movement will cease to exist.”

Since the civil society’s call for action, the BDS movement has got support from different countries. Academics boycotted Israeli universities, local authorities began to exclude companies from tendering for multi-billion contracts, film-makers pulled out of festivals, and churches across the world began examining investments they held in Israeli companies. The World Council of Churches (WCC) also “encourages member-churches to avoid investments or other economic links to illegal activities on occupied territory and to boycott settlement products”. In India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has supported the international campaign for BDS against Israel.

BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP

Outside Jerusalem, The West Bank village of Walajeh, left, and the Jewish settlement of Har Gilo, separated by a wall, on April 5, 2011.

Participation in the BDS movement has also generated intense controversy. For instance, the prominent intellectual Noam Chomsky has said the BDS harms the whole movement and that it is a gift to the hardliners. “It is convenient, particularly for Westerners, to regard it as an ‘anti-Israel movement’,” he said in an interview. “There are obvious temptations to blaming someone else, but the fact of the matter is that Israel can commit crimes to the extent that they are given decisive support by the U.S. and, less directly, its allies. BDS actions are both principled and most effective when they are directed at [the] … boycott of Western firms contributing to the occupation, working to end military aid to Israel, etc.”

But Alqasis says the hardliner does not need any excuse from Palestinians. “In Palestinian popular resistance history, we underwent different forms of resistance in different periods of time. There was the armed struggle of the [19]60s and [19]70s. There was the non-violent disobedience movement in the [19]80s. There was the negotiation in the [19]90s. Diplomacy in the 2000s. Every time the answer of Israel was military might and killing of Palestinian people. Israeli aggression is not connected to Palestinian resistance. It is connected to their vision of ethnic cleansing [of] the territory of all non-Jewish inhabitants. Palestinians have the right and even the obligation, I would say, to resist the occupation and the oppression by all means necessary.” And the BDS, he says, is the leading and most successful resistance strategy of the Palestinian people at the moment.

Fr Jamal Khader, a Catholic priest (of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem) and co-author of the KDP, makes it clear that the BDS is directed at Israeli policy and not against the Jewish people. “The BDS is not to delegitimise Israel, it is to delegitimise occupation,” he says. The KDP condemns all forms of racism, whether religious or ethnic, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Scholars like Pappe have said the BDS is one of the foremost avenues in promoting the Palestinian cause. Along with individuals like him, there are also “non-Zionist” Jewish organisations in Israel that Badil is collaborating with, Zochrot and ICAHD being the most prominent among them.

But with the Knesset passing a law last year to penalise Israeli individuals and organisations advocating the BDS, they have been having a hard time putting forth their point of view.

Maybe the boycott movement is shaking up the Israeli establishment. “Not for nothing has Israel adopted this law,” says Alqasis. “Normally, they don’t do that. Israel’s main interest is to keep up the charade that they are democratic. And this shows how successful this movement is.”

Commonalities

The meetings in Chennai and Delhi also drew parallels to the Indian context and how religion was used to justify the politically exclusive claims of the Hindutva ideology. “Hindutva and Zionism are two ideologies that are strikingly similar in content and orientation. Both are ideological constructs that prompt and promote division and suspicion of ‘the other’. They have grown into forms of nationalism that are intolerant of pluralism and seek exclusivist identities for their followers,” said a statement released by the NCCI in connection with the Delhi consultation.

The participants also found commonalities in the experiences of Palestinians and the oppression of and discrimination against Dalits in India, particularly Christian Dalits, both by the Church and by the state. One of the primary concerns raised was the constitutional guarantees available to Dalits in general and Dalit Christians in particular but not accessible to them.

An important point of discussion was the struggles for sovereignty and selfhood of Adivasi and tribal communities in India and the struggles of people to protect and reclaim the lands that have been forcibly taken away from them for nuclear plants, development projects and the industrial expansion of multinational corporations, and the impact of all this on the environment. “Somehow, the rights of Adivasis to land have always been a problem in spite of the fact that it is the Adivasis who have cared most for the land. That has been denied to them. There is a lot of similarity between India and Palestine in how the land being taken away from [natives] is destroying the lives of people and their livelihood,” says Aruna Gnanadason, who was executive director for planning and integration in the general secretariat of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

But will all this remain an academic exercise? “If this process encourages Christian groups to rethink the way in which they look at the Palestinian struggle, I think we have a success story. We just have to keep this discussion on in our churches and in the community,” she says. “I think change will come and public opinion will grow.”

Perhaps change is already in the offing. “Until 2007 we used to have the advertisement of EL AL, the official airlines of Israel, in CSI Life, the official magazine of the Church of South India. It was a conscious decision not to extend or renew the contract,” said Rev. Viji Varghese Eapen, director of the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Ecological Concerns of the CSI, who is also in charge of its communications department.

“Unfortunately, we seem to foster some kind of geo-piety, forgetting the fact that every rupee we contribute towards our so-called ‘holy tours’ goes for the ‘unholy war’ by Israel against the Palestinians,” he said.

 

[Solomon2]

As the historian Ilan Pappe expounds -

Pappe was discredited years ago by his former colleague, Benny Morris. No need to read further. As for the "inhuman conditions" it takes a very dishonest person not to acknowledge that the reason for the separation wall and checkpoints (which Jews must suffer as well) is to reduce terror attacks on Jews - and that this has succeeded brilliantly.

 

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Interview with Fr Jamal Khader, a co-author of Kairos Document Palestine.



O many people, the Palestine problem calls forth the idea of a conflict between the Judaeo-Christian civilisation and Islamist terrorism. But Fr Jamal Khader of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem dispels this notion as invidious. Recently in India, he said the real cause of the Palestinian problem was occupation. He is also a co-author of Kairos Document Palestine (KDP), a statement calling on the worldwide Church to help the Palestinian people win back their freedom. Excerpts from the interview he gave Frontline:

You said Kairos Document Palestine was inspired by Kairos Document South Africa. In a predominantly Christian population like South Africa’s, leveraging ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ for resistance would have been easy. But in Palestine, where the Christian population is just 2 per cent, how do you propose to make it a political tool?

First of all it is important for Christian Palestinians themselves when they are faced with the text in the Bible. They need to understand it better. And when the Palestinian Christian community feels what is its role in the Palestinian cause, [it is] an answer to young Christian Palestinians that that they have a responsibility to resist occupation. And we suggest that resistance be non-violent resistance.

The second part of the Kairos document is that much of the support for Israel, especially by Western countries, comes for religious reasons, and we wanted to challenge that support. OK, they [the Jews] were persecuted in Europe, and that is something the Europeans have to take responsibility for, but on the basis of the Bible we cannot support an occupation of the Palestinian people. We address all Churches around the world to make them refuse their way, theology and their support and we ask them to show their solidarity in a clear way to the Palestinians. We have a lot of responses from Churches around the world.

We were inspired by Kairos Document South Africa, but the context is different. They had apartheid, we have occupation. To challenge religious support for oppression, that is common between South Africa and Palestine. We say occupation is a sin, whereas in Kairos Document South Africa they say apartheid is a sin.

Civil society activists speak of apartheid...

Now, if we look at the laws in Israel, there are laws for Jews and laws for us. If you go to a court, if you are a Palestinian you will be treated in a different way than a Jew. This is [like] apartheid. Even in the road system in the Palestinian territory, there are roads only for Jews. This is a clear sign of apartheid. We can see clear laws and practices of apartheid on the ground, but we believe that the real cause is occupation. Once the military occupation ends, the whole situation will change, we will be free, we will be equals. We will control our lives, our destiny, our future, our economy, and it will change the paradigm of apartheid right now.

Why does the document stop short of stating a solution, like the two-state solution?

This is not a political document. If it is a political document, we need to say what kind of a solution we want, two-state or one-state, etc. And then we have to talk about refugees, talk about the water, about borders, Jerusalem or everything else. But this is a document of faith and action. It is about our faith, but at the same time what kind of action we need to take to end the occupation. That is the first priority for us. And it is up to politicians to decide the kind of solution. We are doing our own work as people of faith, and encourage everyone to resist occupation in Palestine.

But your call for an action to boycott itself is a political statement.

It is. We suggest, … it is enough with words, it is time for action. And we suggest Boycott, Divestment and Sanction [BDS] as an effective way to end the occupation. It proved effective in the case of South Africa. In our case, we say that resistance is a creative [process], solidarity with the Palestinians is creative. We don’t limit it to the BDS. We have many ways, for example, for us as Palestinians working on our infrastructure, on civil society, on preparing structures of a state, working on our culture, on our economy as much as possible, etc. This is a kind of resistance. When we went to the U.N. last year asking to be recognised as a state, we said we had done all the work we had to in order to be ready for statehood. This is resistance.

There is a whole range where we can resist occupation, and for our friends around the world, for Churches, we suggest the BDS. And the kind of reaction they receive from Israel and the Jewish communities around the world shows how effective the BDS is.

How do you expect to galvanise Churches and civil society outside Palestine?

Churches have been silent for a long time. So we need them to speak out and be clear about their position, that they cannot support oppression and occupation. We also need to raise awareness.

Associating Palestinian [struggle] with Islamic terrorism gave the wrong impression around the world, especially in the media, that the conflict in Palestine is a conflict between the Judaeo-Christian civilisation and Islamic terrorism. This is not the case. This is wrong presentation of the conflict. There is occupation.

So to raise awareness is very important. So we decided, with many other NGOs in Palestine, to raise awareness among the grass roots, among associations, organisations, Churches, and so on, hoping that they will influence their own governments.

How do you go about it?

We have many connections, kind of networks. We have now around 15 countries where there are Kairos groups. Kairos South Africa, Kairos Netherlands, Kairos Norway…, etc.

Is there one in India?

We are encouraging a Kairos India and a Kairos Sri Lanka also.

What is the response to your call for BDS?

It is gaining ground, and we see more and more people adopting BDS. And we cannot imagine how much Western money is invested in settlements. What we are saying is, don’t make the occupation profitable for Israel. When you buy products from the settlements, you gain from occupation; when you invest in companies that work directly in occupation, you are supporting occupation. So do not make occupation profitable for Israel.

We had a reaction from Germans. They said, you are reminding us of the 1930s, when it was said ‘do not buy from Jews’. That is a racist thing. I understand very well, but the situation is totally different... and the Jews are not a minority persecuted by the Christian majority but the majority who are persecuting Christians and Muslims, the Palestinians.

The BDS is not to delegitimise Israel, it is to delegitimise occupation.

Pappe was discredited years ago by his former colleague, Benny Morris. No need to read further. As for the "inhuman conditions" it takes a very dishonest person not to acknowledge that the reason for the separation wall and checkpoints (which Jews must suffer as well) is to reduce terror attacks on Jews - and that this has succeeded brilliantly.

Read it all. You won't get brainwashed.

 

[Solomon2]

O many people, the Palestine problem calls forth the idea of a conflict between the Judaeo-Christian civilisation and Islamist terrorism. But Fr Jamal Khader of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem dispels this notion as invidious. Recently in India, he said the real cause of the Palestinian problem was occupation.

Arabs were killing Jews in Palestine with great joy long before Israel existed, long before there was any "occupation", just because in doing so they wanted to establish Arabs as being on top. Saying otherwise is re-writing history.

Do Pakistanis really need more of this? Hasn't anyone considered what advantages Pakistan would accrue by acknowledging the truth?

 

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Arabs were killing Jews in Palestine with great joy long before Israel existed, long before there was any "occupation", just because in doing so they wanted to establish Arabs as being on top. Saying otherwise is re-writing history.

Do Pakistanis really need more of this? Hasn't anyone considered what advantages Pakistan would accrue by acknowledging the truth?

The article is about illegal occupation Solomon. No point talking about decades old oppression of jews. Hitler died long ago. Now Israel is the opressor and not the victim. Saying otherwise is just propaganda. Repeating thousand times doesn't make occupation legal or right.
Have anything to say on the article? And about gain of momentum of BDS by Churches all over the world?


Israel accused of pillaging Dead Sea resources in occupied territory

Cosmetics firm Ahava singled out for criticism in report by Palestinian human rights organisation
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Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem The Guardian, Monday 3 September 2012
The Dead Sea. Almost two-thirds of the western shore is in the occupied West Bank.
Israel is "pillaging" the natural resources of the Dead Sea which lie in occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law, a report which singles out the cosmetics firm Ahava for criticism.

According to the Palestinian human rights organisation al-Haq, the "appropriation and exploitation of Palestinian land and natural resources in the occupied Dead Sea area by Israeli settlers and companies … meet the requirements of the crime of pillage".

Its report, Pillage of the Dead Sea, says Israeli restrictions on planning and movement "have severely hampered the ability of Palestinians to use and access their land and other natural resources in the region. The presence of settlers who directly utilise and profit from the Dead Sea wealth has severely exacerbated this situation and contributed to the over-exploitation of the area, resulting in severe environmental damage."

Almost two-thirds of the western shore of the Dead Sea lies within the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. The remaining area is in Israel, and the eastern shore is in Jordan. At the lowest point on Earth, 410 metres below sea level, the inland sea is a magnet for tourists keen to float in its salt-saturated waters and for industries which extract its minerals.

Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, which manufactures and markets beauty products based on Dead Sea minerals and mud, is located within the Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem in the West Bank. It is licensed by the Israeli government to mine Dead Sea raw materials. According to al-Haq, almost 45% of its shares are owned by Mitzpe Shalem and another Israeli settlement on the Dead Sea shore, Kalia.

Within two decades of its launch in 1988, Ahava's annual global sales had reached almost $150m (£95m). The company has been the target of boycott campaigns by anti-settlement activists, which contributed to its decision to close its store in Covent Garden, London, a year ago.

The al-Haq report says Ahava is "unlawfully utilising the Palestinian natural resources of the Dead Sea area for its own economic profits and therefore can be considered directly responsible for the pillage of the occupied territory's natural resources in clear violation of customary international law".

However, in a letter circulated in 2010, Ahava said: "The mud and minerals used in Ahava's cosmetic products are not excavated in an occupied area. The minerals are mined in the Israeli part of the Dead Sea, which is undisputed internationally."

Ahava did not respond to a request for comment on the al-Haq report.

The land along the Dead Sea shore was classified as "Area C" in the 1993 Oslo accords, in which Israel has full military and administrative control. Much of the land has been declared or registered as "state land", which has "dispossessed Palestinians of extensive portions of the Dead Sea land, effectively depriving them of the possibility of benefiting from [its] natural resources," according to the report.

Al-Haq says "Israel is openly in violation of its obligations under international and humanitarian law as an occupying power … because it is encouraging and facilitating the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources and actively assisting their pillaging by private actors." It cites The Hague regulations and the statute of the international criminal court.

In a statement, the Israeli foreign ministry said that, under the Oslo accords, Israel had territorial jurisdiction that includes land, subsoil and territorial waters in Area C. It "therefore would be entitled to licence a company to excavate mud in that area if it chose to do so".

The al-Haq report calls on the European Union to adopt restrictions on the import of Israeli products originating from settlements, and urges cosmetic retailers to provide clear information about the origin of products they sell to allow consumers to make an informed choice about purchases