EPf PIN member Kathy Christison wrote this Holy Week reflection.  This first appeared in the EPF email sent on Good Friday 10 April 2020.

We Are the Body of Christ 

On a Sunday in Gaza at the start of Lent, Israeli snipers on the other side of the border fence shot a young Palestinian man named Mohammed al-Naem.  Initially, there seems nothing especially significant about the shooting or its occurrence during Lent.  The special somberness of Lent means little to Gaza’s overwhelmingly Muslim inhabitants, who live in somber circumstances the year ‘round.  The fact of a shooting in Gaza is also not unusual, Israel having shot thousands of Gaza Palestinians and killed hundreds in the last two years of Palestinian protests over being imprisoned and blockaded inside this small territory.  

What was unusual on this day was that, as several other Palestinians ran to al-Naem and began carrying him to safety (it is unclear whether he was still alive at this point), an Israeli tank and a bulldozer entered the territory and chased the rescuers, shooting at them until they dropped the body.  Then, in a grotesque scene captured on amateur video, the bulldozer attempted repeatedly to scoop up al-Naem’s body but kept missing, until finally the bulldozer blades caught him by the shirt and drove away with his now-mangled body hanging limply by his clothing.

No one in the western world paid attention to this atrocity, but Palestinians grieved and, on websites and social media, they raged.  And suddenly out of nowhere, almost as if in a mystical vision, an image appeared on Facebook that takes one’s breath away.

We are the Body of Christ.

It is unclear who created this image, or whether the creator quite understood its power.  But the parallels are striking:  Jesus was a Palestinian Jew tortured and crucified by Roman imperial occupiers; al-Naem was a Palestinian Muslim tortured and crucified by Israeli imperial occupiers.  Jesus lived under oppressive Roman rule; Palestinians of all faiths live under oppressive Israeli rule.

The agony of Jesus on Good Friday (which in Arabic translates as Sorrowful Friday) was strikingly corporeal—in the garden, where he sweated blood; in Pilate’s chambers, where he was brutalized with beatings and a crown of thorns; on the way to Golgotha, where he bled under the burden of the cross; and on the cross.  Al-Naem’s agony was also notably corporeal.  Jesus hung, stripped of all human dignity, from a gross instrument of torture; al-Naem hung, also stripped of human dignity, from a gross instrument of torture.  In Palestine, the bulldozer has become a symbol of suffering, just as the cross is a symbol of suffering.  The bulldozer is the preeminent symbol of Israeli destruction, used to demolish Palestinian homes, to raze Palestinian agricultural land, to pave over the traces of Palestinian existence, to kill.  In 2003, a bulldozer ran over and killed a young American solidarity activist, Rachel Corrie.

It matters not at all that this image showing Jesus in agony was created to symbolize the agony and death of a young Muslim.  For Jesus is in each of us, Jesus Christ as God is in each of us.  The divine is in all of us, no matter our faith.  Jesus enters into and shares our suffering, as we share his.  He died on the cross in order to save all of us.

Tarek Abuata, the Palestinian Christian executive director of Friends of Sabeel North America, has said that in Palestine divinity is being revealed in the midst of destruction; like the moon against the darkness of night, we can see divinity more clearly against the darkness of destruction.  The image of Jesus hanging on a bulldozer is a glimpse of that divinity in the midst of destruction.

EPF PIN member The Rev’d E. Clifford (Cliff) Cutler traveled in Israel/Palestine last year and wrote this reflection of his time on the ground.

I retired in May 2019 and took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from Sunday, November 3 to the 16, 2019.  It was a time to reflect on “retirement” which is a word that nobody likes to use. I have decided to say with only a trace of humor that I am now a “Freelance Journeyman” in the Episcopal Church. After an apprenticeship of 43 years in ordained parish ministry, I am now qualified to freely pursue the spiritual path of the Master Carpenter from Nazareth. So why not follow in the Carpenter’s steps?

I realize that this pilgrimage is an exercise in unearned privilege. Peggy McIntosh in a classic paper “White Privilege and Male Privilege” (1988) observed that in the United States whiteness is like having an invisible knapsack provisioned with presumptions that one is articulate, possesses leadership, has access to places one wishes to go, and options that one may choose from without considering whether one’s own race would be accepted. As I begin this pilgrimage I enter Israel/Palestine provisioned with the unearned privilege of not being Palestinian. Those of us like me who are white are less aware of this invisible knapsack than those among us who are African-American and our knapsacks are fuller with more presumptions. We are unfairly advantaged. Because of settlements, restricted roads, checkpoints, and the wall, Palestinians have little freedom of movement. Their leadership is questioned (The State of Israel complains, “We have no partner with whom to negotiate.”). All options are freighted with the consideration of race.

Luke’s version of the Beatitudes concludes with four ‘Woe’s. It is as though Jesus wants us to unpack our invisible knapsack of unearned privilege. Woe to those who carry the presumptions to unearned power and unfair advantage yielding riches, fullness, laughter, and acclaim. The way race impacts each of us in the Holy Land and at home, and continues to do so, needs to be unpacked. In the space that is opened up by this unpacking there is emptiness for God to fill. That is why Jesus declares, bereft of unearned privilege, we are surprisingly blessed.

Blessed are you who are poor (with an empty “knapsack”). Why? Because God will mend you with unearned, overflowing grace; and God will use you to be agents of one another’s mending. Blessed are you who hunger, and recognize the hunger of others. God will fill you with the passion to care for those who are in need. Blessed are those who weep. This is the conversion of tears. We see suffering and cannot sit still. We find in God’s power of renewal and healing the energy to hope and laugh. Finally, blessed are you when you are excluded. Why? Because you then discover compassion for the other.

As I begin this pilgrimage, Jesus wants me to shine a spotlight on the invisible knapsack of privilege that I as a non-Palestinian carry in this place so that it is no longer invisible and can be unpacked.

On Monday, my first full day in East Jerusalem, Yumna Patel, the Palestinian correspondent for Mondoweiss, reported that over the weekend a video had leaked from the year prior showing an “Israeli border police officer shooting a Palestinian in the back as the man walked away from the officers, his hands raised in the air.” Stationed at a checkpoint, the officers told the man to turn around and walk away hands still raised before shooting him in the back. It reminded me of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO on August 9, 2014 who according to witnesses put his hands in the air before being shot and killed by a police officer. My friend Susan Landau and Rachael Kamel write “threads of connection exist across issues and geography” (Why Palestine Matters, p. 20). David Brooks in the New York Times wrote on August 14, “As the protests in Ferguson have escalated over the past week, the international community has increasingly turned its attention to the demonstrations stemming from the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man. Surprisingly, the images and videos of the police crackdown on protesters have resulted in shows of sympathy and support coming all the way from Palestinians in Gaza” (quoted in Why Palestine Matters, p. 26). Discovering these threads of connection is called intersectionality that seeks to understand the interaction between connected systems and structures of power. How do we unpack the shooting of an unarmed black man and a Palestinian both of whose hands were raised? A verse from the Daily Office for that day reads: “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful, for I have taken refuge in you; in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by” (Psalm 57: 1).

Black rooftop containers throughout Palestine are used to store water when Israel cuts off the supply. “…Ramallah has more annual rainfall than London. At the same time Israel has denied Palestinians control over their own water resources and successfully controlled all water aquifers in the region, both in Israel and the Palestinian territory…. While the UN’s World Health Organization recommends a daily allotment of 100 liters/day/person, Palestinians are limited to 70 liters/day/person. However, Israelis are given access to 300 liters/day/person” (Why Palestine Matters, p. 18). Three years prior, I participated in a witness with over 500 clergy at Cannon Ball, ND to support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The tribe argued the oil pipeline could harm drinking water and damage sacred sites. In September, 2016 over 90 signatories of Palestinians from around the world including Tarek Abuata, executive director, Friends of Sabeel North America, sent a statement of solidarity to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In part, the statement read: “We hereby declare our unqualified and heartfelt solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their epic struggle to protect what remains of their ancestral lands, waters, and sacred sites.” Here in the right to control one’s water resources is another instance of intersectionality.

A college classmate of mine, a Jew, has Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). I told him I would pray for him and tuck the prayer into the Western Wall. He replied that would be a blessing. He would die a month later. After praying, young Jews singing preceded me up to the Temple Mount. They went to what Muslims call Elharam Esh Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) not to pray but to make a statement of dominance. Rather than power over others, I was reminded of a line from Willa Cather’s novel My Antoniá, “The prayers of all good people are good.”

It is Saturday, November 9. This is the anniversary of Kristallnacht that took place in Germany on the night of November 9-10 in 1938, 81 years ago. At www.yadvashem.org, Kristallnacht is described as a “Pogrom (massacre or riot against Jews)… The name Kristallnacht refers to the glass of the shop windows smashed by the rioters…. The Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, told the other participants that the time had come to strike at the Jews…. Some 30,000 Jews, many of them wealthy and prominent members of their communities, were arrested and deported to the concentration camps at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald, where they were subjected to inhumane and brutal treatment and many died. During the Pogrom itself, some 90 Jews were murdered.” In Nazareth on the night of November 9, 2019 I joined a Rosary Procession that began at the Church of the Annunciation.

Earlier that day I passed Hanthala, a cartoon creation of Naji al-Ali. He is standing as usual, turned away, hands clasped behind his back. What he is looking at are the results of what Palestinians call the Nakba (Catastrophe). The sign before him reads, on May 15, 1948 more than 780,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and land. More than 500 villages were destroyed by Zionist forces. More than 50 civilian massacres were committed, more than 15,000 martyrs.” Cartoonist Al-Ali at the age of 11 was among the 780,000 who were forced from their homes in 1948. Hanthala, the cartoon figure, was never allowed to grow older than 11. Hanthala in hundreds of cartoons is always seen from the back as though we must join the ugly, poor child with spikey hair and patched shirt looking upon some cruelty or hypocrisy. With a child’s eyes, we cannot understand; we can only rage, judge, and in silence know that what we are looking at is broken and wrong. 

How is it possible to hold together in one’s heart, at the same time, Kristallnacht and the Nakba ten years later? Perhaps as Christians we can only gather where the deep and embracing compassion of God was embodied among humankind at the Annunciation, and conclude with Mary, God “has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 2:51-52). 

Also November 9 is the 30^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three days later I would be at the Israeli wall in Bethlehem, begun in 2002. In 2004 the International Court ruled that the wall on occupied lands was illegal. The wall when it is finished will extend 435 miles, 85% of which will wander through the West Bank. Part of the strategy of the wall has been to enclose West Bank settlements thus annexing 10% of the occupied land. There is more than a thread of connection between the proposed U.S. wall separating Mexico, and that of Israel. Netanyahu supports Trump’s Mexican Wall, and Trump uses Israeli assurances to push this agenda. One finds a high degree on intersectionality in reliance upon walls. One message painted on the Israeli Wall reads: “Walls don’t work here, and they won’t work in America.”

The day before during lunch I watched video remembering Yasser Arafat’s life on the 15^th anniversary of his death. The next morning I learned that Israeli forces had killed a Palestinian man during a yearly West Bank march commemorating Yasser Arafat in the Al-Arroub refugee camp. Entering the camp and reacting to the march, soldiers fired live ammunition, tear gas, and sound or stun grenades. One of the tear gas canisters exploded next to the house of Omar al-Badawi, 22, causing a small fire. When Omar went out with a bottle of water to douse it, a soldier fired hitting him in the abdomen and killing him. I visited the al-Arroub refugee camp in 2008. The Camp was built in 1948 for 40 separate villages whose inhabitants were displaced. The camp covers 1 square kilometer with a population of 10,000.  It is one of the most crowded areas in the world.  Since the closure of Israel, unemployment here stands at 51%.  A high percentage of the population is incarcerated in Israeli prisons, especially among youth 18 to 26 years old.  

Also at Bethlehem I visited the Peace Center. Located in Manger Square, it is Bethlehem’s first cultural center whose aim is to promote and enhance the Palestinian yearning for peace. In the Peace Center there was a display of crèches from all over the world. One that caught my eye was a miniature, blue collar, African-American Holy Family from the United States. There was a heart on Jesus’ diaper! While at the Peace Center Israeli forces killed a top Islamic Jihad commander in an air raid on his home in Gaza City. Shortly after the attack, salvos of rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel.

The Oslo Accord in 1995 divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C. Area A comprises about 18% of the land in the West Bank. A red warning sign declares this area is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The road into Area “A” is forbidden to Israeli Citizens and Dangerous to Their Lives, the sign implausibly warns. Area B comprises about 22% of the West Bank encompassing mostly rural regions. Israel retains security control of this area with civil matters handled by the PA. Area C covers 60% of the West Bank. Israel has nearly complete control of this area. “The division into areas was to have been temporary and meant to enable an incremental transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority.” (Why Palestine Matters, p. 58).  Since the Oslo Accord in 1995 however the number of settlers in the West Bank has tripled from 200,000 to 600,000.

The pilgrimage over, I walked along the jet way to our plane at Ben Gurion airport. Signs on either side advertised the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). While perhaps not strictly a Christian Zionist group they certainly make common cause with them. Of Yechiel Eckstein the organization’s founder, Christian Zionist John Hagee said: “His impact on the state of Israel and on bringing Jews and Christians together will be felt for generations.” Christian Zionists will not accept any peace that would weaken Israel’s hold on the land. They believe there is a divine mandate to support the modern state of Israel, “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.” Christian Zionism fuses religion with politics, rather than places them in dialogue or in prophetic challenge. The removal of settlers, they argue, is not blessed by God. Any criticism of the State of Israel is not only anti-Semitic but also against God’s will. The fact that 4 million Palestinians under occupation (some of whom are Christian) are suffering losses is inconsequential to Christian Zionism.

A Reflection from EPF PIN Member Kathy Christison

A propaganda war centering on indigenous rights—involving Native American solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli oppression—has lately been raging on public walls and local newspaper columns in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Although Santa Fe is a mere teapot of a city, the tempest is sizable.  Not only does it involve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, raising automatic charges from some in the Jewish community that lies and antisemitism are at its core.  The tempest is also becoming a vehicle through which Native Americans are putting forth their own protests against colonialist oppression, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and it is fast becoming an edifying symbol of intersectionality, the 21^st century’s prevalent sense that each struggle by marginalized, oppressed people is inextricably interlinked with all others.

It all began on a small scale about five years ago, when a long-time Santa Fe resident, who happens to own a large corner lot on a main thoroughfare into the city—a property surrounded, like many Santa Fe-style residences, by a five-foot-high adobe wall—allowed a local Palestine solidarity organization to use his wall to post occasional pro-Palestinian signs.  Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, a small but persistent group of pro-Palestine activists, began pasting signs on the wall protesting the billions in US military aid given to Israel, lamenting the killing by Israeli sharpshooters of nonviolent protesters in Gaza’s Great March of Return, urging support for bills in Congress aimed at preventing Israel’s jailing of Palestinian children, and highlighting various other instances of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

The signs were always vandalized—ripped off the wall, sometimes painted over, even on one occasion side-swiped by a pickup truck driver who either drunkenly or with sober malevolence crashed into the wall in the pre-dawn hours, taking out not only a sign but a small power installation as well, which cost the city $100,000 to replace.  This last act was witnessed by a morning newspaper delivery person, but the culprit was never identified.  The sign activists responded by strengthening the signs’ durability, moving gradually from simple wheat paste to display boards mounted on posts buried in the ground.  Even these were taken out.

The city eventually got into the act and, because the wall is in a designated historical district where the city’s public face is controlled by a set of architectural standards, imposed restrictions on the signage.  The property owner was required to obtain a city permit, to confine the display to one sign, and to limit the dimensions to just 3’ x 4’.  The vandals nonetheless persisted.

Then, suddenly one Sunday in early January, a Navajo artist from Arizona named Remy stepped up and literally plastered the entire long wall with multiple large digitized images of Israeli soldiers aiming weapons at Palestinian women and children, soldiers arresting Palestinian boys, Israeli tanks, and one sign saying simply “Stop Military Aid to Israel.”

Remy’s wall images appear on his website, along with a brief video showing overhead footage of the full extent of the wall and the art.  This site in turn links to Remy’s story, “In the Spirit of Faris,” of how he came to know Palestine and Palestinians and why he began this project, as well as to his defiant reaction to the criticism and vandalization of his art, “Here’s Why You Can’t Exterminate Us.”

“Faris” is Faris Odeh, a 14-year-old Palestinian shown in one of the wall images throwing a stone at an Israeli tank.  Faris was shot to death by Israeli soldiers several days after the photo was taken.  With this story in mind, Remy brings in the intersection of Native American with Palestinian struggles.  He writes that “What the average American does not understand is that Indigenous children in cages have been normalized on our continent since ships landed on our shores….Not much has changed for us in over 520 years of continued genocide, but we still exist and in the spirit of many Indigenous warriors like Faris, we still resist.  [Faris] did what he did for the love of his people and he was not afraid and we shouldn’t be either.”

Not surprisingly, there has been both criticism and vandalization.  The image of Faris standing in front of a tank has been torn off totally; another iconic image of a blindfolded teenage boy surrounded by 20 Israeli soldiers is in shreds.  But—and this is something always to be hoped for with the oft-silenced Palestinian struggle and the even more thoroughly suppressed story of our colonialist oppression of Native Americans—there has also been wide publicity.  Prominent articles about the wall art have appeared in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque newspapers, on local television newscasts, on Palestinian websites, and on Hyperallergic, a national site that describes itself as a “forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today.”

The brouhaha continues.  Santa Fe city authorities (no doubt less interested in being playful or radical than in dealing with criticism from irritated Jewish community members) ruled that the art violates city codes, not because of the location or the subject matter but, oddly, because of the medium, papier maché.  The ruling has been appealed, and the city has another two weeks to decide what to do.  In the meantime, local Native Americans, led by The Red Nation, a New Mexico-based but nationally known Native rights organization, is sponsoring a rally at the wall in a few days, to demonstrate solidarity with “our Palestinian relatives,” to protest the fact that all of Santa Fe sits on original Native land, and to proclaim that “You Can’t Exterminate Us.”

Important aspects of Native-Palestinian intersectionality have played out at Standing Rock, where several social justice activists and lawyers from Santa Fe, including members of Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, participated actively in that long-running protest.  Members of The Red Nation have in turn been particularly active in Palestine, sending individuals and small groups there to assist, to be educated, and to be in solidarity with fellow indigenous strugglers.  This is a heartfelt solidarity struggle: Remy speaks of how emotionally draining his project has been: “As hard as this project was physically, mentally and spiritually to endure,” he asserts, “this is nothing compared to what our Indigenous brothers and sisters go through in Gaza and other settlement prisons on a daily basis.”  He and his Native relatives have been there.

All public criticism has come from the Jewish community, and most critics take the breast-beating stance of the victim: all the images are lies, all are antisemitic, and all are likely to ignite further antisemitism.  The latest op-ed, by a local academic, laments, not unreasonably, that Jews in the US today feel under siege as they have not felt since the 1930s.  But he goes on to liken the appearance of the wall images at least implicitly to recent attacks at synagogues, labeling the artwork incendiary and provocative of greater antisemitism.  Blaming Israelis in general, who are Jews, for Netanyahu’s policies, however execrable, he says, amounts to blaming Jews in general—and “once it becomes a Jew problem, the match is lit.”  This author’s contorted reasoning would mean that no people are ever responsible for their government’s actions.

Another myopic criticism came from a local orthodox rabbi interviewed for the initial newspaper report.  His objection is to Remy’s comparison of the Palestinian struggle to the Native Americans’ anti-colonialist struggle.  There can be no comparison, the rabbi declared, because Jews are a native population returning to their original homeland, the implication being that Palestinians are not native to Palestine.  Even were this good history (it is not), his suggestion that indigeneity gives permission to oppress the “other” is most un-rabbinical.

The power of intersectionality and the inspiration oppressed peoples today take from each other  are beautifully spiritual and empowering: “This was for you Faris,” Remy writes, “and as long as I live, so will you because you are me and I am you.”

2019 saw the third delegation in four years to the West Bank and Gaza led by members of EPF’s Palestine Justice Network. Through these trips, many members have been able to see firsthand the consequences of settler colonialism, which has helped to inform our work. By going on the ground in Israel and Palestine, we have been able to verify with our own eyes the injustice of displacement, the pain of poverty, and the tragic result of state violence. We have seen the manifold ways the situation there resonates with so many concerns of groups at home: racism, the privileging of a few and the ‘othering’ of many, victimization of children, militarism, and xenophobia.

Within the Church in the US, our work in 2019 focused on monitoring the progress of implementation of six resolutions passed by the 2018 General Convention:

• the House of Bishops has appointed a committee to address the mandates of B003: On the Status of Jerusalem.
• B021: Support Aid to Palestinian Refugees and C038:Safeguard Rights of Palestinian Children were cited in action alerts by Office of Government Relations’ Episcopal Public Policy Network and the Presiding Bishop in support of reinstating UNRWA funding and a US House bill, Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.
• The Church’s Executive Council voted to put in place a Global Human Rights Investment Screen, with specific criteria for the Palestine/Israel conflict. The adoption of the screen creates a No-Buy List for our church, to be administered by the Council’s Committee for Corporate Social Responsibility. In addition, three corporations – Motorola, Caterpillar and the Israel Discount Bank – were placed on the No-Buy List, with a mandate to sell church holdings.

Another emphasis for PJN in 2019 was local organizing. A new PJN Bulletin for Local Organizers is being circulated among PJN activists to build up our network and share tactics and local initiatives.  This fall, the dioceses of Rochester and Chicago passed resolutions on freedom of speech and the right to boycott.  The resolutions were modeled on a resolution adopted in the Diocese of Vermont in 2018 and circulated in the Bulletin with advice for a successful process.  The Bulletin also highlights materials from PJN’s Tool Kit.

PJN continues our regular media outreach through PJNontheGo and Facebook. Our group is actively engaged with a wide circle of allies, representing denominations and interfaith organizing.   

In 2019, PJN endorsed four action initiatives from our allies at Jewish Voice for Peace, Friends of Sabeel North America and  the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.  

• An initiative from Jewish Voice for Peace: Fight white supremacy & antisemitism, not students and their freedom of speech: As civil rights organizations, we want nothing more than for our elected leaders to take strong, decisive action against antisemitism. But President Trump’s Executive Order is a harmful, authoritarian act that will not protect Jews.  President Trump’s Executive Order uses an overly broad and dangerous definition of antisemitism that was never designed to be used on college campuses. By defining criticism of Israel as antisemitism, it will lead to the censoring of student activism, faculty research, and teaching about Palestine.   The Executive Order does nothing to make Jewish students safer on college campuses, but it does play into the hands of Trump’s antisemitic, white nationalist base, by using language that could be interpreted as defining Jewish people as a separate nation.  We say: We should be fighting white supremacy and antisemitism, not students and freedom of speech.

• Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) and Black4Palestine (B4P) have partnered to initiate a Black church outreach project that seeks to raise awareness in Black congregations about Palestinian freedom and justice. “We invite Black Clergy, Black Christians, as well as members of the Black community and anyone who supports this statement to sign on in support of a Black church call to end Israeli apartheid and to uplift Palestinian demands for justice.”  Read the full statement here.
• Freedom is the Future A Call from Palestinians in the US: EPF PJN is a solidarity endorser.  The Call was featured in the December Voices for Justice email.
• Rise Against Racism: #CounterCUFI: FOSNA and other groups acted on a public witness at the annual CUFI (Christians United for Israel) gathering in Washington DC last summer.  Read the statement here.

EPF PJN looks forward to building on this important work in the coming year.  

Thanks to Linda Gaither, EPF PJN convener, and Harry Gunkel, communications coordinator for writing most of this report.

EPF PIN member Steve France reports on a book talk.

A large, excited crowd came to political scientist  Ian Lustick’s December book talk at the Middle East Institute in Washington. His new book, “Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality” gave an autopsy of the Two-State Solution (TSS) steeped in his 50-year experience of calling for Israel and the U.S. to make it happen (he assumed the Palestinians would accept a decent offer). Most PIN members might ask, “Where’s the news in that?” But he was addressing mainly other liberal Zionists.

For those who gave up on TSS a long time ago the news was about the growing disillusionment of liberal Zionists and many pragmatic backers of TSS, a prominent example being, Ambassador Philip Wilcox, who interviewed Lustick at the MEI event. Wilcox praised the book as“groundbreaking,” and “blowing up the solution we’ve clung to for years.”

The interesting question was whether Lustick’s emphatic death notice for TSS will open more minds to the One-State Reality (OSR). Lustick said reviews hadn’t yet begun flowing, but his email is burning hot with reactions. He condemned with the force of a man who has sworn off drinking all attempts to save TSS or to chart a sure path to a new paradigm for a viable One-State Solution. Such visions are “just pretty pictures,” he said repeatedly. People who cling to TSS “are being played for suckers by those who want to slide into endless Apartheid,” he said. But he warned that it will take decades of struggle to move from the current reality to a stable democratic reality for all the people living between the Jordan and the Sea.

Recounting his own evolution, Lustick said he “finally got so bored” with his TSS truth never progressing that he entertained “unwelcome ideas and views, trading boredom for anxiety.” He concluded that “the core problem is what Israel has become,” which he termed a “deeply red state.” He cited three forces that brought Israel to this point: 

1. the partial success of what early-Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky called the “Iron Wall” strategy to “keep on crushing” inevitable and understandable Arab resistance to dispossession until it cracked and “moderate” Arab voices would emerge to make a deal. The problem has been that great successes in the brutal first phase made Israel forget about the crucial need to make a deal.
2. Israeli Holocaust consciousness became “Holocaustia,” meaning the obsessive fear of a new Holocaust. At first, the Israeli attitude toward Holocaust victims tended to be that they were non-Zionist losers who had been too trusting of non-Jews; the lesson was Jews must never again be so naïve. Others believed the Holocaust was a crime against all of humanity and reflected universal risks of genocidal psychosis. After Ben Gurion accepted reparations from Germany, based on worries that Holocaust guilt might begin to fade, he felt the need to counter ferocious criticism by Begin, Shamir et al. and launched the Eichmann trial. But the trial traumatized Israeli Jews, who came to feel like they were all survivors, a belief that has grown ever more dominant.
3. The power of the Israel Lobby turned U.S. policymakers into yes men and women for Israeli policies toward Palestinians, no matter how harsh and extreme. Lustick said the framers accepted the necessity of lobbying in the political arena, but George Washington warned that “lobbying on behalf of a foreign interest is different because it faces no domestic counter lobby.”  Hence the old saying that U.S. politicians don’t view the Israeli-Arab conflict as a foreign policy issue but as a domestic political issue. 

“Now we have a gestalt switch,” Lustick said. “The new problem is inequality or the lack of democracy.” The practical question, he said, is similar to dealing with Apartheid South Africa, which also was only a partial democracy. “Do you favor ‘constructive engagement’ to foster change or boycott?.” (After the talk he agreed with a questioner that the democratic goals of BDS, as laid out by Omar Barghouti, are compatible with his views.) 

Despite his pessimism concerning the Israeli electorate soon accepting his views, Lustick offered some hope that the political system in Israel could begin to open up. For example, he said, Jerusalem currently has a far-right mayor, but that’s in part a result of the fact that almost no Arab residents vote in the elections. If they voted the mayor would be more moderate and looking to work out some deals. The problem is that leaders of the Palestinian Authority insist on an electoral boycott, arguing that voting would be a de facto acceptance of the Occupation. But the Palestinian Authority has vested interests in maintaining the two-state delusion because it underpins the PA’s status and pays its bills. He also saw some hope in the possibility that the centrist Blue and White Alliance in Israel, headed by Benny Gantz, might reluctantly accept to partner with the Arab-Israeli Joint List to break the seemingly insoluble stalemate preventing selection of a prime minister. That kind of pragmatic, if grudging, coalition seems the only way toward actual progress, he suggested.