Jewish Voices for Palestine

IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
We seek the return of all Palestinian refugees to their rightful land.
We seek to live in the land of Palestine as anti Zionist Jews. To reside as loyal and peaceful Palestinian citizens, in peace and harmony with our Muslim Brethren. Just as our ancestors lived in Palestine for centuries before the usurpations of this tragic century.


IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE



WHY ORTHODOX JEWS ARE OPPOSED TO A ZIONIST STATE
First some introductions:

1) What is "The People of Israel" ?

The People of Israel have existed for thousands of years.
They have their own particular, essential nature.
The Torah is the source of their essential nature.
Without Torah and Faith there is no People of Israel.
Whoever denies the Torah and the Faith is no longer part of the People of Israel.
The purpose of the People of Israel in this world is Divine Service.
Their salvation is occupation in Divine Service.

2) What is Zionism?

Zionism is a relatively new thing.
It has only existed for a century.
Zionism redefines the true essential nature of the People of Israel, and substitutes for it a completely contradictory and opposite character - a materialistic worldly nation.
Their misfortune is lack of what other nations possess, i.e. a state and army.
Their salvation is possession of a state and army etc.
This is clearly spelled out in the circles of Zionist thought, and among the leaders of the Zionist State, that through changing the nature and character of the People of Israel and by changing their way of thinking they can set before the People of Israel "their salvation" -- a state and an army.

The People of Israel oppose the so-called "State of Israel" for four reasons:

FIRST -- The so-called "State of Israel" is diametrically opposed and completely contradictory to the true essence and foundation of the People of Israel, as is explained above. The only time that the People of Israel were permitted to have a state was two thousand years ago when the glory of the creator was upon us, and likewise in the future when the glory of the creator will once more be revealed, and the whole world will serve Him, then He Himself (without any human effort or force of arms) will grant us a kingdom founded on Divine Service. However, a worldly state, like those possessed by other peoples, is contradictory to the true essence of the People of Israel. Whoever calls this the salvation of Israel shows that he denies the essence of the People of Israel, and substitutes another nature, a worldly materialistic nature, and therefore sets before them, a worldly materialistic "salvation," and the means of achieving this "salvation" is also worldly and materialistic i.e. to organize a land and army. However, the true salvation of the People of Israel is to draw close to the Creator. This is not done by organization and force of arms. Rather it is done by occupation to Torah and good deeds.

SECOND -- Because of all of this and other reasons the Torah forbids us to end the exile and establish a state and army until the Holy One, blessed He, in His Glory and Essence will redeem us. This is forbidden even if the state is conducted according to the law of the Torah because arising from the exile itself is forbidden, and we are required to remain under the rule of the nations of the world, as is explained in the book VAYOEL MOSHE. If we transgress this injunction, He will bring upon us (may we be spared) terrible punishment.

THIRD -- Aside from arising from exile, all the deeds of the Zionists are diametrically opposed to the Faith and the Torah. Because the foundation of the Faith and Torah of Israel is that the Torah was revealed from heaven, and there is reward for those who obey it and punishment for those who transgress it. The entire People of Israel is required to obey the Torah, and whoever doesn't want to, ceases to be part of the congregation of Israel.

FOURTH -- Aside from the fact that they themselves do not obey the Torah they do everything they can to prevent anyone they get under their power from fulfilling the commands of the Torah, the claims to freedom of religion are lies. They fight with all of their strength to destroy the Faith of Israel.

The Zionists claim that they are the saviors of Israel, but this is refuted by twelve things:

FIRST -- If one contemplates the two thousand years of our exile, take any hundred years even the hardest, one will not find as much suffering, bloodshed, and catastrophes for the People of Israel in the period of the Zionists, and it is known that most of the suffering of this century was caused by the Zionists, as our Rabbis warned us would be the case.

SECOND -- It is openly stated in books written by the founders of Zionism that the means by which they planned to establish a state was by instigating anti-Semitism, and undermining the security of the Jews in all the lands of the world, until they would be forced to flee to their state. And thus they did - They intentionally infuriated the German people and fanned the flames of Nazi hatred, and they helped the Nazis, with trickery and deceit, to take whole Jewish communities off to the concentration camps, and the Zionists themselves admit this. (See the books Perfidy, Min Hameitzor, etc.). The Zionists continue to practice this strategy today. They incite anti-Semitism and then they present themselves as the "saviors". Here are two replies given by Leaders of the Zionists during World War II, when they were asked for money to help ransom Jews from the Nazis. Greenbaum said "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland." (G-d forbid).Weitzman said, "The most important part of the Jewish people is already in the land (of Israel) and those who are left, are unimportant" (May we be spared).

THIRD -- We see that most of world Jewry lives in security and under good physical conditions, and have no desire to go live in the Zionist State. Whereas many people have left the Zionist State to live under better conditions in other lands.

FOURTH -- The Zionists make a great deal of propaganda to induce people to immigrate to their state. If their state is so beneficial why do they have to make so much propaganda.

FIFTH -- Because nobody wants the Zionists to "save" them. The only way they can get immigrants is by promising poor people material benefits, and even then very few people respond.

SIXTH -- The Zionist State is always threatened by the dangers of war. Whereas the rest of world Jewry live in peace and security, (Except in a few places where the Zionists have undermined their security and fanned the flames of hatred)

SEVENTH -- The Zionist State could not continue to exist without economic support from Jews living outside of the Zionist State.

EIGHTH -- The Zionist State is on the verge of economic collapse, and their money is nearly worthless.

NINTH -- The Zionist State persecute all Jews who are loyal to their Faith.

TENTH -- They start wars that endanger the Jewish People, for the sake of their own political interests.

ELEVENTH - According to the Torah the path of safety is following ways of peace not starting fights with other nations, as the Zionists do.

TWELFTH -- Even if the Zionists could and would provide physical security it would be at the expense of our Faith and Our Torah the true People of Israel prefer death rather than life at such a cost.It is therefore clear that Zionism is not the savior of the people of Israel. Rather it is their greatest misfortune.
Even though there are some observant Jews and rabbis, who approve of the Zionists, this is not the opinion of the Torah.

The Zionists have enough control over the American news media to make sure that only their side of the story is heard.

They make it look like all Jewry and their rabbis are Zionists, but this is false propaganda.

The most important Rabbis and the majority of religious Jewry are opposed to Zionism, but their voice is not heard because of Zionist control of American news media.

The Zionists terrorize everyone who speaks out against them.

That part of the Jewish masses which is fooled by Zionist propaganda puts pressure on their Rabbis not to speak out.

Between the terror and the pressure of the masses most of the Rabbis are prevented from speaking out.

We bring three testimonies of the true opinion of the Torah.

1) In the past two thousand years of the dangers and sufferings of exile not once did any of the Sages of Israel suggest that we make a state to protect ourselves. In every generation we had thousands of Sages well versed in the Torah.

2) We have thousands of legal work of Torah law that have been handed down to us by the Sages of all generations. Not once do we see a word suggesting the establishment of a state. What we do find is warnings against it.

3) The founders of Zionism were all atheists who denied the Torah. All the Torah Sages of that time opposed them and opposed Zionism, saying that Zionism would lead only to destruction.

However the true People of Israel will never change their nature or give up their Faith because of the strength the Creator gives them.

Zionism is a foreign growth in the body of the Jewish People. The end will be that it will rid itself of this foreign growth and remain pure.

Zionism has overcome the Jewish people by force, fraud and terror, but none of this will help them because the truth will always remain with the help of the Creator.
Zionism will not replace the Jewish People. The Jewish People will remain strong in their faith and the Zionist State will cease to exist.

It is therefore, our demand that the State that calls itself ISRAEL, should cease to exist. Since this won't be done, we demand that they cease to call themselves "Israel", because their entire being is in complete opposition to the true People of Israel. The true People of Israel deny them permission to call themselves by that name. The Zionist leaders have no right to set themselves up as the representatives and spokesmen of the true People of ISRAEL.

Since we know they will not fulfill this demand either we feel that at least we cry out the truth. The truth will always remain the truth. By no means or force can the truth be changed. Even if all the world would say that one and one is three, the truth will remain that one and one is two.

Let the truth be declared. The use of the Name "ISRAEL" by that State is a complete falsification. The People of Israel have nothing to do with that State. Zionism and its State have no share and no part in the true ISRAEL.

Copyright 2003, Neturei Karta International

WHY ORTHODOX JEWS ARE OPPOSED TO A ZIONIST STATE

From the Interior of the Prison: Gaza Routines


Jennifer Loewenstein 

by Jennifer Loewenstein

15 Apr 2002

...the traffic starts to move, slowly, evenly and we pass the checkpoint in 30 minutes. A good day. The only tense moment coming when the driver of an IDF jeep escorting a bus from the Gush Katif settlement slams his hand down on the horn warning us to get out of his way so his privileged passengers can get on to their exclusive road without delay; without having to plug their noses as they cross the path of the human garbage they're hoping to eventually completely displace.

Tank fire, machine gun fire, and roosters crowing; explosions, more tank fire, more gun fire, and those stupid all-night roosters with no sense of timing: How Not to Sleep in the Refugee Camp at Rafah - at least if you're a visitor and listening to the "low intensity war" rage on the borders of the Gaza Strip all night still frays your nerves. Two year-old Haia and 4-year-old Sharaf sleep peacefully, unperturbed. "They got used to it," their father says. "And anyway, this is nothing."

Nothing? Any school child can tell you which noise is the tank, which is the gun, what type of gun, whether the explosion was serious or just loud, how to tell the difference between the sound of Apache and Cobra helicopters, and which planes are F-16s and which are not. I remember war novels and war movies where the seasoned soldiers would teach the new recruits how to tell what noise was what and when to worry, when to run. Kids growing up in the Gaza strip would make excellent trainers.

In addition to the military expertise of the average Gazan comes the street-wise know-how of refugee camp living: where to walk or when Not to walk in certain areas; where the latest tent-city can be found, thanks to UN help for the families whose homes are heaps of stone and twisted metals thanks to Israeli home demolition experts; which families are most in need of community help so they can eat or get medical care. Poverty is increasing everywhere. Unemployment has reached 75%. Human traffic at the weekly Saturday market in Rafah has declined noticeably because fewer goods from Egypt are allowed in causing the prices of those items that make it to rise. Fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the lowest priced goods around.

Much like the refugee camps in Beirut, the camps in the Gaza Strip host their own ecosystems. Competition for the garbage rages between the chickens, the goats, the sheep, the cats, and the rats. Rats are the boldest, helping themselves to anything digestible, including the boney-thin cats that slink away from the garbage pits when the rats are out in force. In a dark alleyway on the way back to my hosts' home a huge brown rat races out in front of us. Worried that I'll shriek in terror, Mahmud attempts to chase the rat down an alternate pathway, but she's undeterred and comes tearing towards me. He kicks her with his foot and she squeals grotesquely, irritated that her evening stroll has been disrupted. The rats come into people's homes, invading their kitchens, crawling over sleeping children on their bed mats. Nothing keeps them away. They are a real problem, he says. The flies and crawling bugs don't merit much attention as a result. I wake up with bites on my face and ankles so from now on I'll wear socks to sleep and keep the blanket over my head. Or so that's the plan. Rafah's fairly warm at night.

It's time to return to the office in Gaza City, so I'll have to wake up at 6am - early enough to make sure I arrive at the checkpoint south of Deir al-Balah in time to get through. It'll stay open for an hour or so today. The usual convoy of taxis, cars, trucks, carts crowd at the entrance. Tempers flare. The smell of rotting produce permeates the hot taxi I'm stuffed into, which is idling behind a diesel-fuming truck. But the traffic starts to move, slowly, evenly and we pass the checkpoint in 30 minutes. A good day. The only tense moment coming when the driver of an IDF jeep escorting a bus from the Gush Katif settlement slams his hand down on the horn warning us to get out of his way so his privileged passengers can get on to their exclusive road without delay; without having to plug their noses as they cross the path of the human garbage they're hoping to eventually completely displace.


For Those Who Haven't Noticed: Watching the Dissolution of Palestine


Jennifer Loewenstein 

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Oxford, England. February 24, 2006

For those who haven't noticed, Israel opposes a two-state solution. It has been doing everything in its power to prevent a Palestinian state from emerging and will continue to do so as long as it can count on the complicity of its powerful friends and on abundant popular indifference. Under such circumstances, it is incumbent upon ourselves to ask why Hamas has therefore been ordered -- by Israel and its powerful friends -- to accept "the two-state solution" especially when, unlike Israel, it has stated clearly and repeatedly that it would accept a Palestinian state on the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Indeed, all of its key spokespeople have said this:Zahar, Haniye, Meshal, and Yassin and Rantisi before they were murdered.

Judea and Samaria which are, or were, the northern and southern West Bank, have been subdivided and parceled out over decades to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers for their houses and orchards and gardens. They have been crisscrossed and circled with Jewish-only roads that bind the land, the houses and orchards and gardens, to Israel. They have been manned with guards and gunmen and tanks and blue and white Israeli flags that defend, protect and assure the settlers, their houses and orchards and gardens, that they are in fact Israelis belonging to a single Jewish state.

The settled lands with their settler families, their houses and gardens, shops and schools, clubs and cafes and pools, have been mapped and assigned, seized and secured from the Arabs in the shabby clothes in the rundown villages who live outside of, or have been forced to leave, the protected colonial zones. The projected frontiers, the future borders, depend on the disappearance of these Arabs, which is anxiously anticipated and actively encouraged. Most of the eastern perimeter of the current state is a concrete wall erasing from view that Other Side, which is unmentionable in polite company. The eastern perimeter wall will soon be the western perimeter wall because the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has just announced that the rest of the unincorporated West Bank land will soon be annexed to Israel: The Jordan Valley, the West Bank's border with the state of Jordan, now to be Israel's eastern border with the state of Jordan, will also be secured by the wall and off-limits to "non-Israelis," meaning Palestinians, who will then be fully encircled in their stagnant reservations unable to access the outside world.

In the same breath as he announces this latest unilateral declaration of confiscated lan d for a Jewish State, Olmert announces a sanctions regime against the Palestinians of the occupied territories for refusing to believe that this land transformation in which one society is strengthened and expanded and the other is dissolved into a thousand pieces is actually the two-state solution.

Israel allots to itself first use of the natural resources, especially water, from the territory it has appropriated or surrounded. An army of thieves and wreckers has turned the remainder -- the pot-holed roads, the untended groves, the homes, the schools, the mosques and churches, the hospitals, universities, shops and remaining civil institutions -- into a series of impassable mazes, a legal no-man's-land, where travel restrictions, permits, coded IDs, passes, random searches, incursions and arbitrary accusations reduce the inhabitants into suspicious beings without names, faces, addresses or rights; a collective villain to be de-educat! ed and de-nationalized and, one day perhaps, deported for the sake of the Israeli raison d'etre. It is becoming as difficult for travelers from abroad to visit the occupied territories as it is for the rightful inhabitants to move freely among them. It is therefore more difficult for outsiders to corroborate that the dangers they are warned against come directly from Israel, not the hapless people they have besieged. The daily threat to life and property is growing not abating.

For those who haven't noticed, there is no sign of this process coming to an end. Instead, in addition to the bizarre demand that Hamas accept the two-state solution that Israel has categorically rejected and each day renders even more geographically impossible, another two demands are added to it: Hamas must recognize Israel and it must renounce violence. In other words, it must recognize a state whose policies and whose leaders have worked tirelessly for decades to deny, undo, renounce, prevent and reject the existence both of Palestinians and of Palestine --not only in the present and future but also through erasing the past. Still, our media take it upon themselves to show the world a circus-mirror reality, grotesque in its distortions, in which a democratically elected government-without-a-state and its trampled, largely destitute people are made out to be holding hostage the hoodlums that are busy stomping them to death.

While they are being stomped, shot, beaten, demolished, assassinated, intimidated, robbed, despoiled, starved, uprooted, dispossessed, harassed, insulted and killed with bullets, missiles, armored bulldozers, tanks, helicopter gun-ships, cluster-bombs, fleshettes, fighter-bombers, semi-automatic submachine guns, sonic booms, tear gas, electrified fences, blockades, closures and walls, they must renounce violence so that the hoodlums won't get hurt. If they defend themselves they lose. If they complain, they are insincere; if they ask for something in return, they are untrustworthy; If they ask for a fair hearing, they are advancing an "agenda;" If they hit back randomly, they are an instrument of terro! r. So when the furies of the thousands of dead, tens of thousands of wounded and detained, and millions of bound and gagged rise up together in a whirlwind to protest, they will be pointed to as evidence of innate evil that must justifiably be contained, justifiably occupied, with justified indignation and bottomless financial aid.

Hamas' reward for coming to power just in time to provide all the aspiring Sharons the most perfect, served-up-on-a-silver-platter pretext for continuing their well-worn policies with a vengeance, has been for the Kadima party -- the party of the future-- to announce that it will put the Palestinians on a starvation diet for presuming to exercise their rights. Hamas' reward for verifying the smashing success of Israel's goal to destroy Fatah has been Israel's insistence that it abide by all the agreements, treaties and accords that Fatah, essentially the PA, signed but which Israel shredded page by p! age. With every new brick laid for the settlements, every new road pav ed to Ariel, Maale Adumim, Illit, Gush Etzion and beyond, with every permit denied for work, education, medical care and travel, every truck left waiting with rotting produce at Sufa and Karni, every tax and customs dollar stolen from a people interned on their own land, Israel parades its contempt for human decency and gets standing ovations in the US Congress and elsewhere.

When Osama Bin Laden opines that it is legitimate for al-Qaida to murder Americans because, as citizens in a democratic country, they are responsible for their government, "civilized" society erupts, appropriately, in indignation. When Dov Weisglass and his smug, sadistic associates advocate appalling varieties of collective punishment against Palestinians for having had the audacity to democratically replace the failed Fatah with Hamas, "civilized" society nods its head in sanctimonious approval.

For those who haven't noticed, Israel opposes a two-state solution. It also opposes a one-state and a bi-national state, a federated secular state, and the zillion interim-state solutions that have been drawn up and debated and argued over the years. It opposes them because it opposes the presence of another people on land it has claimed as the exclusive patrimony of the Jews. This has to be the starting point for effective activism against the racist and hegemonic vision that Israel is implementing and the US guaranteeing, not faraway discussions on the most ideal solution. An effective opposition must not retreat into a slumbering or sidetracked lethal indifference.

Jennifer Loewenstein is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre. She has lived and worked in Gaza City, Beirut and Jerusalem and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, where she has worked as a free-lance journalist and a human rights activist.


Mearsheimer, Walt and Corrie: The Lobby and the Bulldozer


Norman Solomon 

April 13, 2006

By NORMAN SOLOMON

Weeks after a British magazine published a long article by two American professors titled "The Israel Lobby," the outrage continued to howl through mainstream U.S. media.

A Los Angeles Times op-ed article by Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot helped to set a common tone. He condemned a working paper by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was excerpted last month in the London Review of Books.

The working paper, Boot proclaimed, is "nutty." And he strongly implied that the two professors -- Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago and Walt at Harvard -- are anti-Semitic.

Many who went on the media attack did more than imply. On April 3, for instance, the same day that the Philadelphia Inquirer reprinted Boot's piece from the L.A. Times, a notably similar op-ed appeared in the Boston Herald under the headline "Anti-Semitic Paranoia at Harvard."

And so it goes in the national media echo chamber. When a Johns Hopkins University professor weighed in last week on the op-ed page of the Washington Post, the headline was blunt: "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic." The piece flatly called the Mearsheimer-Walt essay "kooky academic work" -- and "anti-Semitic."

But nothing in the essay is anti-Semitic.

Some of the analysis from Mearsheimer and Walt is arguable. A number of major factors affect Uncle Sam's Middle East policies in addition to pro-Israel pressures. But no one can credibly deny that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, where politicians know that they can criticize Israel only at their political peril.

Overall, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay makes many solid points about destructive aspects of U.S. support for the Israeli government. Their assessments deserve serious consideration.

For several decades, to the present moment, Israel's treatment of Palestinian people has amounted to methodical and despicable violations of human rights. Yet criticism of those policies from anyone (including American Jews such as myself) routinely results in accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry.

The U.S. media reaction to the essay by professors Mearsheimer and Walt provides just another bit of evidence that they were absolutely correct when they wrote: "Anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle Eastern policy -- an influence AIPAC celebrates -- stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby.' In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a very effective tactic: anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of."

Sadly, few media outlets in the United States are willing to confront this "very effective tactic." Yet it must be challenged. As the London-based Financial Times editorialized on the first day of this month: "Moral blackmail -- the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and U.S. support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism -- is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters."

The Financial Times editorial noted: "Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of open debate and free enquiry shut down -- at least among much of America's political elite -- once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the pro-Israel lobby's role in shaping U.S. foreign policy."

The U.S. government's policies toward Israel should be considered on their merits. As it happens, that's one of the many valid points made by Mearsheimer and Walt in their much-vilified essay: "Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided U.S. support and could move the U.S. to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well."

But without open debate, no significant change in those policies can happen. That inertia -- stultifying the blood of the body politic by constricting the flow of information and ideas -- is antithetical to the kind of democratic discourse that we deserve.

Few other American academics have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of professional risks that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt took by releasing their provocative paper. And few other American activists have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of risks that Rachel Corrie took when she sat between a Palestinian home and a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza three years ago.

The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish the home, rolled over Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same U.S. media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

In sharp contrast to the high-tech killers who run the Israeli military apparatus and the low-tech killers who engage in suicide bombings, Rachel Corrie put her beliefs into practice with militant nonviolence instead of carnage. She exemplified the best of the human spirit in action; she was killed with an American-brand bulldozer in the service of a U.S.-backed government.

As her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, said in a statement on her birthday a few weeks after she died: "Rachel wanted to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, a people she felt were largely invisible to most Americans."

In the United States, the nonstop pro-Israel media siege aims to keep them scarcely visible.

Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.