Tag: Palestine

300 Activists for Palestinian Rights at All-Day Hartford Conference

by Stanley Heller, Middle East Crisis Committee

The pews were filled at the Hartford Unitarian Society for a major conference about U.S. activism during a time of immense killing of Palestinians and Lebanese. Thunderous chanting filled the hall. The best part was that 80 to 90% of those attending seemed to be under 30. Participants were members of a score of activist groups in Connecticut and Massachusetts. A workshop of nearly 40 people founded a Labor for Palestine chapter. Our group and members of Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven took part in a panel on Jews confronting Zionism. I gave a slide show based on my book Zionist Betrayal of Jews using photos to show how Zionist leaders consistently allied with far-right parties, even groups that were violent antisemites, in their single-minded quest to drive out Palestinians and create a Jewish state.

In speeches to the whole assembly, Hesen Jabr, a Palestinian-American nurse, described how she was fired right after being given a nursing award because of her remarks and social media posts about the attacks on Palestinians. Sultana Hossain, who is part of the Amazon Labor Union and Labor for Palestine spoke about efforts to organize for Palestinian rights in the one unionized (Long Island) Amazon plant.

The conference took place among new threats of repression. The radical right is pushing for a bill that would give the Secretary of the Treasury the power to designate any nonprofit as “terrorist supporting.” If it passed, the Secretary (who serves at the pleasure of the President) could on his/her own devastate a group. There would be no need to show any evidence or provide due process. A group so designated would lose its tax-exempt status. That might be the least of its problems. Once designated as supporting terrorists it would no doubt be demonized and attacked in social media or worse. It’s believed groups supporting Palestinian rights would be the first targets.

Yale Police Arrest 47 Student Protesters for Trespassing on Beinecke Plaza

Yale Daily News, April 23, 2024

Yale police arrested 47 pro-Palestine student protesters on Monday morning. Shortly after 6 a.m., officers arrived at Beinecke Plaza, where protesters demanding that Yale divest from military weapons manufacturers had set up tents during the third night of their overnight encampment. Police detained protesters who refused to vacate the Plaza. …

The protesters were charged with trespassing, a Class A misdemeanor, before being released with a citation and an assigned court date of May 8. Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 said they had issued a warning to protesters on the Plaza last night at 11 p.m. and in the morning before 7 a.m. prior to arresting student protesters.

Arrested students will be referred for Yale disciplinary action — which could include reprimand, probation or suspension.

About 250 protesters rallied in support of the arrested individuals, flanking detainees and police officers as they boarded the buses.

[Read the entire article at yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/04/22/live-police-begin-arresting-pro-divestment-protesters-on-beinecke-plaza]

Rally in Hamden for Ceasefire Resolution

by Paula Panzarella, rally participant

photo: Paula Panzarella

On Feb. 20, from 6-7 p.m., over a hundred people were in front of Hamden Town Hall, rallying in favor of a draft resolution for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza fighting. “Permanent Ceasefire Now,” “Another Jew for a Free Palestine,” “Stop the Killing,” and “Let Gaza Live” were some of the banners held by the crowd.

Shortly after 7 p.m., many people attended the meeting to give testimony about the need for local municipalities to take a stand against the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. The hearing lasted well past midnight, with more than four hours of public commentary. The Town Council did not vote that night and may take up the resolution at a following Town Council meeting.

Ceasefire Now

by Joan Cavanagh, NH Sunday Vigil for Peace and Justice

November 26, 2023: The actions of the terrorist organization HAMAS on Oct. 7, 2023, were an atrocity, a war crime against innocent civilians, with a death toll of 1,200 people, accompanied by rape and other forms of torture, as well as the taking of hostages. We condemn these actions with horror and without equivocation.

The actions of the Netanyahu government in response, murdering more than 14,000 people, reducing Gaza to rubble, destroying any means by which survivors can treat their wounded and sick, and cutting off their food, water, and access to the outside world, have only amplified that villainy.

Whatever you know, believe, or have been told about the current U.S. funded and supplied Israeli government war on Gaza, or indeed about the history of Israel and Palestine, please recognize that there is no moral, political, ethical, or legal justification for genocide—the deliberate elimination of an entire group of people.

Shamefully, most of our elected officials from the executive branch on down refuse to call this siege what it is and are doing nothing to end it. Indeed, they are voting to continue it by sending money and armaments to further fuel it, even while asking for brief “humanitarian pauses” out of the other sides of their mouths. And, as usual, the arms merchants are making a handsome profit each day the war continues. They are the only beneficiaries of this all-out assault on a population with nowhere to go to escape. This war must end, and it must end now.

The good news is that from all the corners of Earth, there comes a concerted human outcry against this inhumanity. Resistance actions, led by Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations, are happening all over this country and throughout the world. There have been nonviolent shut-downs, blockades, and takeovers of congressional office buildings, headquarters of war-profiteering companies (including Colt, in Hartford), the Statue of Liberty, the United Nations, and many more, involving in total millions of people.

Please find a way to join that outcry. Speak out, write, march, demand accountability from our own government. Here in Connecticut, contact directly—and repeatedly—all of your federal representatives to demand that they act to stop this war. Ignore their perfunctory form letter replies. Keep up the demand, no matter what justifications or evasions that they give. RESIST THIS ENDLESS WAR

Veterans for Peace Joins International Delegation to Gaza Border

by Gerry Condon, Veterans for Peace

I have the honor of representing Veterans for Peace on an international delegation currently in Cairo, Egypt. We are seeking permission to travel to the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, where hundreds of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid are being held up. We are calling for an immediate end to the US-backed Israeli slaughter of innocents in Gaza. And we are calling for the border with Egypt to be opened up to allow the massive delivery of desperately needed food, water, medicine, and fuel.
We are among the first of many international humanitarian and human rights delegations that are heading for the Gaza border in order to provide practical and moral support to the Palestinian people.

We encourage people all over the world—and especially in the United States—to continue pressing for a Ceasefire, Humanitarian Aid, the Release of All Prisoners, and Negotiations that respect the Palestinians’ Right to Survival, Dignity, and Self-Determination.

Below are excerpts from the press release we released on Sunday, November 12.

“ …In response to the Palestinian and Arab calls for civil society to challenge Israel’s deadly occupation by heading immediately towards the Egyptian-Palestinian crossing to bring urgent humanitarian relief to 2.3 million people, we have just submitted a request to the Egyptian authorities for permission to travel to Rafah….

“We urge all peoples and governments to act urgently to end this horror. There are hundreds of aid trucks currently parked in the desert waiting to enter the Rafah crossing. We demand they be allowed to reach Palestinians whose needs are dire and desperate.”

“Stop Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza Now! Open the Rafah border Now!”
veteransforpeace.org, 206-499-1220

Israel-Gaza War’s Grief Spills onto Church St.

by Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent, Oct. 9, 2023

Half an hour into a tense and loud and flag-filled standoff between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters on the front steps of City Hall, city police brought in barricades to physically separate the two sides….

That was the scene outside of City Hall at 165 Church St. Monday afternoon during an at-times combustible, but never violent, set of dueling rallies sparked by the horrific bloodshed of the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza.

photo: Thomas Breen

Several hundred people from across the city and the state turned out for the parallel protests … The two sides took turns, and shouted over one another, about the Israeli occupation, Hamas terrorism, open-air prisons and blockades, the kidnapping and murder of civilians, the righteous uprising of a dispossessed people, the righteous defense of democracy….

“Free, free Palestine!” one side cheered over and over again at Monday’s rally. “From Hamas!” cheered the other side in response.

The pro-Palestine protest was organized by a number of student and local lefty political groups, including the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, Yalies for Palestine, the Party for Socialism and Liberation-Connecticut, and Wesleyan Students for Justice in Palestine….

The pro-Israel contingent, meanwhile, saw a mix of New Haveners and Connecticut residents, many of whom are members of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic community, and nearly all of whom have close ties to and family and friends currently living in Israel….

Joshua Pernick, the rabbi in residence and director of Jewish life and community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, told the Independent about his brother, who after a weeklong vacation in the United States returned to his home in Holon, Israel, this weekend just hours after Hamas began its attack. He and his wife and six-month-old child have been shuttling between shelters ever since, Pernick said. … ​“The problem of terrorism is it doesn’t discriminate….”

Faisal Saleh, the founder and director of Woodbridge’s Palestine Museum, showed up to the other side of City Hall’s steps Monday to support those rallying for Palestine.

Saleh was born and raised in the West Bank. He moved to the U.S. when he was 17, in 1969. He said he’s been communicating with Palestinian artists in Gaza who he knows through his museum work every few hours, just to make sure they are still alive amid the Israeli army’s strikes.
“Everybody is waiting to see what will happen,” he said….

[The article can be read in its entirety at newhavenindependent.org/article/israel_palestine]

News from Palestine from Dr. Qumsiyeh

by Stanley Heller, Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, spoke twice in Connecticut in August, once at the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge and the next day in Hartford at the Unitarian Society. He brought us up to date on the impressive activities of his institute and the Palestine Museum of Natural History, which is one of its projects.

Qumsiyeh lived in Connecticut at the start of the 2000s as he headed the Cytogenetics Department at the Yale Medical School. He was very active in Palestinian human rights work and co-founded the Palestine Right to Return Campaign. He returned to Palestine a decade ago. In his talks, he maintained that despite what is usually said, Palestine was a peaceful area for most of its thousands of years history. He dated recent problems to the Zionist movement and its settler colonial project.

As a bit of activism at the events we passed out copies of a picture of a two-year-old boy named Mohammed Tamimi, who was shot to death by an Israeli sniper on June 1. The ultra-right Israeli government almost immediately excused the sniper from all responsibility and expressed “regret.” We briefly chanted “Justice for Mohammed Tamimi.”

The one bit of good news discussed was the open letter called the “Elephant in the Room,” which was signed at the time of the meetings by over 700 academics and public figures decrying Israeli apartheid and telling Jewish leaders in the U.S. that democracy in Israel could only be maintained if it included equal treatment for Palestinians. The number of signers, overwhelmingly Jewish, has since swelled to more than 1,800. The wall of Jewish support for the Israeli government has a deep fissure.

The Palestinian Exception to Free Speech

by Noor Kareem and Craig Birkhead-Morton, Yale Daily News
Feb. 7, 2023

Although Yale claims to be a bastion of free speech that provides a forum for addressing all political and cultural issues, the one exception to this is the issue of Palestinian liberation.

The discourse around Palestine at Yale is surrounded by fear and restraint. Discussion is often prefaced with the familiar acknowledgment of how complicated the topic is, immediately obscuring the power relations between a Western-backed occupying power and a population subjected to life under occupation…

Many incorrectly frame Zionism — the political project seeking to establish Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people — as synonymous with Jewish identity. This conflation of the Jewish people with the Zionist state makes any criticism of the occupation immediately deemed “antisemitic.”

In reality, Zionism is an ideology and a political movement that, in the words of its founders, necessitates the erasure of Palestinians and the violent seizure of their land in the pursuit of creating a modern nation-state.

If we have learned one thing from the last couple of years, it is that silence kills. The lack of discussion on the systemic nature of Israeli war crimes has given total impunity to a state that murders civilians, massacres refugees and bombs a city already under siege. Since the assassination of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces in May 2022, the Biden administration has failed to hold Israel accountable. The number of murders is showing no signs of slowing down so far, as 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the Second Palestinian Intifada. And as of Feb. 6, 2023, 36 Palestinians have already been killed…

In December 2022, Yalies4Palestine launched the first-ever BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign at Yale. Prior to this, Yale was the only university in the Ivy League not involved in the BDS movement, largely due to this campus’s pro-Zionist climate. This is despite public institutional condemnations of human rights violations in Iran and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We must overcome this culture of hypocrisy and call on Yale to take a stand against the Israeli occupation… As students at one of the most elite academic institutions in the world, we have an obligation to illuminate truth and honor light over darkness. Join us in fulfilling this obligation by signing and sharing our petition demanding that Yale cancel its contract with G4S — a security company involved in some of the world’s worst human rights abuses, including those in Israel — and by taking the initiative to learn more about the BDS movement.

[Article can be read in its entirety at yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/06/kareem-birckhead-morton-the-palestinian-exception-to-free-speech. To find out more about the BDS Committee for Yalies4Palestine, email [email protected] or [email protected]]

Notes to PAR Readers

We urge you to check the internet for the many demonstrations protesting the bombing of Gaza. As of this printing, there were rallies and marches in Hartford, New London, New Haven, and Manchester, as well as in cities throughout the US and around the world. The New Haven rally and march on May 22 was in solidarity with the people of Palestine and Colombia, fighting for their right to life and self-determination. Video footage is available at thestruggle.org.

A reminder that PAR does not publish in the summer. The next issue you receive will be the September issue. If your subscription has expired with this issue, you will have a renewal form inserted in this issue. Please look for it and renew your subscription. We ask for $13, or whatever you can afford.

Please let us know if you find out that regularly-occurring meetings or events have resumed so we can list them in our calendar pages. E-mail us at [email protected]. Many of the previously regularly scheduled programs have changed frequency, gone on hiatus, or switched to Zoom. We want to keep our readers in the know so they have options for activism.

Are you computer-proficient? We’d like help on the Production Team. We currently use a combination of Word and Open Office for this newsletter, and are open to suggestions for other programs for layout. E-mail [email protected] and put “computer-proficient help” in the subject line. A stipend may be available.

Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children

Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven

Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven (JVPNH) and Tree of Life Educational Fund (TOLEF) are reaching out to organizations to endorse our resolution in support of the Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act. If you are affiliated with an organization, please see the resolution at www.tolef.org/pal-children, and get your organization to sign on. This can be done online.

JVPNH and TOLEF have been leading an effort to get our five CT congresspeople to co-sponsor the bill, which was introduced in the previous congressional session as bill HR.4391 by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN). It has 30 co-sponsors, including six from New England. We had in-person meetings with each of our congresspeople. Each expressed interest, but none signed on as co-sponsors.
Rep. McCollum is very likely to re-introduce the bill in the new Congress, and we are renewing our effort to get our CT delegation to sign on. At this point, we are reaching out to organizations to show support by endorsing the resolution, which calls on our CT delegation to sign on to the bill.

Please see the resolution at http://www.tolef.org/pal-children, and get your organization to join with the many others which have already signed on.

Courageous Women of Resistance Tour in CT — Oct. 21-29

by Tree of Life Education Foundation, tolef.org

In the history of popular struggles, a most important chapter will be the role of women who with courage and unflagging determination work for justice and human rights in their communities. Women helped to bring clean water to Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, and women were at the forefront of the encampment at Standing Rock, by the contagion of their spirit helping to build an international community of resistance.

Likewise in Israel and Palestine, in the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, in organizations such as “Bedouin Women for Themselves” and “Grassroots Jerusalem,” women are helping to build a non-violent resist-ance movement. By refusing to be silenced or compromised by the militarism of settler colonialism, these women are speaking truth to power and in doing so, they are helping to bring enlightenment and engagement in the struggle to build a better and more peaceful future for their children.

This program will be taking place at the following locations: Saturday, October 21, Yale, New Haven – details to come. Sunday, Oct. 29, The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, 2 Ferry Street, Old Lyme – details to come.

The Courageous Women speakers: Madonna Thunder Hawk, a member of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, has a long history of grassroots activism prior to her formative work for Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP) as a Tribal Liaison. She is co-founder of Women of All Red Nations (WARN), as well as the Black Hills Alli-ance—which prevented corporate uranium mining in the Black Hills and proved the high level of radiation in Pine Ridge reservation’s water supply.

Fayrouz Sharqawi works as the Advocacy Coordinator at Grassroots Jerusalem, a platform for Palestinian community-based mobilization, leadership and advocacy in Occupied Jerusalem. They believe that the challenges and responses of Palestinian communities must be articulated and led by them.

Barghouti and Nader Accept Gandhi Peace Award

by Stanley Heller, Promoting Enduring Peace

Hundreds gathered at Yale’s SSS building on April 23 to celebrate the Gandhi Peace Award being jointly given to Omar Barghouti and Ralph Nader. The award has been presented since 1960 by Promoting Enduring Peace (PEP).

Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti was introduced by Rebecca Vilkomerson, the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. She decried his Israeli arrest on March 19 as “politically motivated.” She called him a “charismatic speaker, a brilliant writer, savvy campaign strategist, and a principled thinker.”

Barghouti began his talk by noting Palestine “lingers on in colonial chains.” He dedicated his award to Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israel. He asked that his $2,500 prize money be given in equal shares to Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Friends of Sabeel North America. He talked about the “striking similarities” between Israeli treatment of Palestinians and that of blacks in the days of apartheid South Africa. He noted the recent decision of Barcelona, Spain, which ended its complicity with Israeli settlements and explicitly defended boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). He also listed many other BDS victories.

Ralph Nader was introduced by activist and mediator Charles Pillsbury, who said he was inspired to be a lawyer by Nader and wanted to be one of the activists dubbed “Nader’s Raiders.”

Ralph Nader said he was a student of Gandhi’s thinking that “open non-violent disobedience be active and not passive.” He said, “Peace is desirable not just on philosophical, religious or argumentative grounds, but a survival mechanism which transcends cultures.”

He talked about terrorism, and said the worst terrorism was “state terrorism” which “is always legitimized as in the ser-vice of national defense.”

At the end of his talk, he mentioned Palestinians and Israelis.

He denounced settlements as “illegal colonies.” He talked about breaking the grip of the lobby AIPAC on Congress and categorized some of the resolutions it advances as “bloody beyond belief.” He asked “Who has killed more than 400 times the number of innocent men, women, and children than the other side? The answer is the Israeli government.”

The talks were warmly received with standing ovations.

For more on this year’s awards, visit http://www.pepeace.org/gpa-2017-video-and-photos.

Palestinian Dance and Hip Hop at SCSU

by Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace

On Thursday, March 30, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven will be partnering with SCSU Women’s Studies Department and Tree of Life to present the touring Shoruq Debka and Hip Hop. Shoruq, an initiative of Palestinian refugees, has two debka dance troupes (traditional Palestinian dance), one for adolescents and one for younger children. Participants are trained in dance techniques that allow them to express their thoughts, opinions and national identity. The troupe of dancers in the tour are age 13-16.
Shoruq envisions Palestinian refugees striving individually and collectively to attain and exercise their rights, especially the right of return to their original lands, and realizing dignified lives for themselves in the meanwhile until their return. It provides free legal aid and psychosocial support to refugee children in conflict with the law; owns and operates a media center that offers trainings and access to equipment to help children, youth and professionals generate media forms including music, online radio, video; uses art as a tool for advocacy; and creates many projects geared towards the social development of the refugee community.

Shoruq’s hip hop group is specialized for girls, currently 9 girls. The girls write about their feelings and experiences as refugees and as girls to share them with the world. They re-cord their original songs at Shoruq’s media center. Hip hop is a means for advocating and reinforcing children rights and refugee rights. They meet regularly to share new ideas and get training from Shoruq’s volunteers who have a good background in hip hop.

An excerpt from one of the Shoruq songs:
All I need in this life, is to be free
Free, from this cage, but I need a key
The key for a life waiting for me
If only you’ve seen what my eyes still see`
Problems after problems, yet in poverty
IDENTIFIED, without identity
I will fight for my country till eternity under the name of justice, humanity I want to live, I want to learn, and I want to be successful
Even if it’s stressful
Just for staying alive, for life I am grateful
I’m right here, and that’s what I rap for
All my life I’ve been paying them up prices
I’m depending on luck, so I’m just throwing dices

Details: March 30, 7:30 p.m. Engleman Hall, C112, SCSU, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. $15 general, $5 students, available at www.eventbrite.com/e/palestinian-debka-hip-hop-in-new-haven-tickets-31114730998 or email [email protected] Web: www.jvpnh.org Facebook: jvpnewhaven Twitter: @jvpnewhaven.

No Child Behind Bars: Living Resistance from the US to Palestine

by Nina Stein, Jewish Voice for Peace

On Feb. 1, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven will be partnering with Tree of Life to present a program “No Child Behind Bars: Living Resistance from the US to Palestine.”  The presentation will feature Ahed Tamimi*, a charismatic and articulate 15 year old from the West Bank Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, who will discuss the brutal injustices to which she and others her age are subjected on a continuing daily basis.

Ahed will be joined by Amanda Weatherspoon, a Unitarian Universalist minister and Black liberation activist from the San Francisco Bay Area, whose ministry is centered on collective liberation and cross-movement solidarity between oppressed people. Nadya Tannous, a writer and organizer who has researched the detention of Palestinian minors since 2013, will join the two to provide additional insight into the realities Palestinian minors face within the Israeli detention system.

In addition to discussing the life of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation, the presentation will show how the struggle for human rights in Palestine is inextricably linked with the struggle for civil and human rights here in the US.

The event will take place on February 1 in New Haven at 7 p.m. at Sudler Hall, William L. Harkness Hall, Yale University on Cross Campus.

This presentation is part of a three week, 18 city U.S. tour organized by Friends of Sabeel (FOSNA). FOSNA is part of Sabeel, a movement initiated by Palestinian Christians, which promotes theological, moral and legal principles for peace in the Holy Land.

Email: [email protected]; Web: www.jvpnh.org; Facebook: jvpnewhaven; Twitter: @jvpnewhaven

* Ahed, who was originally to appear in person, has been denied a travel visa by the U.S. State Department, so arrangements are being made to have her speak about the situation on the ground and share her story by live-stream video.

Seeking Your Help to Protect Next Gandhi Peace Award Winner

by Stanley Heller, Administrator, PEP

Promoting Enduring Peace has set up a “Freedom to Travel” committee to pressure the Israeli government to allow one of its Gandhi Peace Award winners to travel to the United States. At a telephone press conference the 64-year-old peace and environmental group announced the Gandhi Peace Award will be given jointly to Ralph Nader (pictured on the left) and Omar Barghouti (right) at a ceremony in New Haven in April 2017.

nader-and-barghouti-620x330

Ralph Nader is known for over five decades for his consumer and civic activism and for being among the first nationally known figures to criticize Israeli abuses and to speak up in support of the Israeli peace movement. Omar Barghouti is one of the best-known leaders of the BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) movement which calls for economic pressure against Israel until it withdraws from the land it occupies, gives full civic equality to Palestinians citizens inside Israel and allows Palestinian refugee families their right to return to their homeland and homes.

Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, talked about Omar Barghouti. He said the Palestinian was a “central player in the Palestinian campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.” And “Omar’s voice has been a crucial one in the past several years and one that should be increasingly amplified to all those asking about Palestinian non-violence.”
Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said she first met Barghouti in 2009 and that’s when Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) starting working on BDS issues. She hailed Barghouti’s leadership and “impeccable ethical framework” and his continued work “at great cost and risk to himself.”

The Israeli government has refused to renew Barghouti’s travel document and he is effectively banned from leaving Palestine/Israel. Vilkomerson said JVP would be working with PEP and other groups to restore Barghouti’s ability to travel and to come to the U.S. to accept the award.

Those interested in working on the “Freedom to Travel” committee should write to [email protected]. A recent TSVN You Tube interview with Barghouti can be heard by going to http://www.pepeace.org.

Dr. Alice Rothchild discusses ‘historical and ethical challenges in Israel and Palestine’ in Storrs

by Julia Berger, Middle East Crisis Committee

On July 30, about 35 people convened at the Storrs Meeting House to enjoy a Middle Eastern potluck and a talk by Dr. Alice Rothchild: “A Personal Journey: Facing Historical and Ethical Challenges in Israel/Palestine.”

Alice Rothchild

Alice Rothchild

Dr. Rothchild has practiced ob/gyn for almost 40 years and served as Assistant Professor of Obstretics and Gynecology at Harvard Medical School. She is a first-generation American who grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in the Boston area. She grew up with the narrative of Israel as a haven for Jewish “victims,” as a democratic state in the Middle East surrounded by hostile Arabs and Palestinians. Only when she was in college did a friend cast doubts on this view. Dr. Rothchild was inspired by this friend to do some serious research—on colonialism, imperialism, and U.S. and Israeli history—especially about the 1948 Palestinian “Nakba” in which many Palestinians were killed by Israelis and many more became dispossessed refugees.

Eventually Dr. Rothchild joined Physicians for Human Rights on a journey to Israel and Palestine to see for herself the conditions there and to work in clinics, especially in Palestine. Since then she has gone annually to travel around, to work in clinics, and to speak with Palestinians and Israelis about the deteriorating physical situation in Palestine (the Wall, the increased Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, the checkpoints, the housing demolitions, etc.). She emphasized she is not criticizing Jews as Jews but rather the policies of the Israeli government.

When she has attempted to speak about her experiences here in the U.S., she has frequently been harassed or her talks have been cancelled. But she remains optimistic because more and more Americans and Israelis are finally speaking out against Israeli government policies.

Dr. Rothchild also pointed out the affinity between Black Lives Matter and the Palestinian situation. Both are met with increasingly militarized/weaponized responses. The final irony: many of the U.S.’s police departments are even trained in Israel or here by the IDF.

She was also troubled that none of the current presidential candidates, except Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party, were even talking about Israel/Palestine.

Asked about BDS, she responded that the U.S. provides $3 billion a year to Israel—a population of 8.2 million—the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The American taxpayer has some responsibility for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. Moreover the non-violent BDS is supported by the Palestinians and seems to be having an impact on the Israeli government.

Dr. Rothchild has directed a documentary film “Voices Across the Divide,” and has written several books and articles on her experiences.

Dr. Alice Rothchild to Speak on Historical and Ethical Challenges in Israel/Palestine July 30

by Joyce Rawitscher, Israel/Palestine Peace Group of NE CT

Alice Rothchild

Alice Rothchild

On Saturday, July 30, the Seventh Annual Potluck Picnic of the Israel/Palestine Peace Group of Northeastern Connecticut starts with a picnic at 4 p.m. The featured speaker, Alice Rothchild, physician, author and filmmaker, has focused her interest in human rights and social justice on the Israel/Palestine conflict since 1997. She will talk about “A Personal Journey: Facing Historical and Ethical Challenges in Israel/Palestine,” at 6:30 p.m. at the home of Joyce and George Rawitscher, 343 Codfish Falls Road, in Storrs. The public is welcome.

Dr. Rothchild practiced ob-gyn for almost 40 years. Until her retirement, she served as Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School. She writes, blogs, and lectures widely, and is the author of Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience, and On the Brink: Israel and Palestine on the Eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion. She directed a documentary film, “Voices Across the Divide,” and is active in Jewish Voice For Peace. Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/ Palestine will be published in early 2017.

Information: (860) 429-3107, [email protected].