Dear Pete,
All the best from your friends in Israel/Palestine. In that spirit, I was surprised to hear of your planned participation in With Earth and Each Other: A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East. While at first blush it might seem to have something in common with the work of ICAHD and other Israeli and Palestinian peace groups -- attempting to build bridges between peoples -- it is actually something quite different.
One of the lead partners in the effort is the Jewish National Fund, which is responsible for the allocation of land in Israel. As such, it is a mainstay of the ever-increasing apartheid system there. Among their most recent activities has been the planting of a forest to cover a Bedouin village in the Negev from which the residents have been forcibly removed. They are in fact engaged in various tree-planting exercises that brand them as an environmental organization, when in fact their purpose is to secure the land of Israel, if not all of Palestine, for Jews only. That is their historical role, and so it remains. Efforts to paint Israel as environmentally concerned are mere greenwashing. Israel has repeatedly torn down Palestinian neighborhoods by declaring them green zones.
As you know, Israel has doggedly pursued a policy of settlement expansion, home demolition, and gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians throughout Israel proper and its occupied territories. Millions of Palestinians languish in internal and external refugee camps. In the wake of brutal assaults on Gaza and aid flotillas, the world is increasingly outraged.
A broad array of Palestinian civil society groups called in 2005 for a program of boycotts, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to conform to international law and stop blocking justice for Palestinians. This call has received widespread support. But the boycott includes a cultural and academic boycott as well. The purpose of this effort is to deny Israel the ability to brand itself as a normal nation while flouting the law and suppressing an occupied people. Brand Israel is their strategy; ours is to insist on no business as usual with the regime, as was done successfully in the struggle against apartheid South Africa.
In recent months, increasing numbers of artists have decided to forego performing in Israel. Gil Scott-Heron and Elvis Costello have explicitly stated that they will not participate in the whitewashing, greenwashing, or any washing of this rogue regime. Many others have quietly scuttled their planned tours.
I hope that you will decide to join these artists of conscience and once again make a bold stand for justice. The movement is gathering strength, the violators of civilized norms are fearful, and change is in the air.
Thanks for giving me a hearing,
Jeff Halper
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
I’d like to know if he gets a reply.
Israel seems devoted to a major anti-environmental project: killing Dead Sea. Yes, Dead Sea is not exactly rife with life, but you still can demolish whatever ecosystem is there and around by diverting the water to irrigation and letting the water level in the lake/sea drop, and eventually convert the lake into salt desert.
Additionally, the diversion of water is done without the agreement of Syria, Jordan and Palestinian Authority, so it is international theft on top of ecocide. But it is just rubbing more salt into a wound.
So perhaps in it unfair to compare Israel to South Africa under apartheid, because South Africa was quite decent on ecological matters.
On the second thought, I mixed up Arava Institute with a maker of cosmetics based on Dead Sea mud. Ketura/Qetura Kibutz where Arava Institute is seems to be a benign institution, far from the Green Line, not using stolen water etc. I would like to know if their “pan-Middle East” program is something real/useful, or a Potyomkin village. In other words, in what sense of the word is this “Rally for better Middle East” virtual.
this is a telling moment about Pete
For that matter the last four decades have been telling moments about Pete. Really something when folks are concerned about human rights issues except for Palestinians. Telling
My impression is that Pete Seeger is a decent fellow on the Palestinian issue and may just have been misled by whoever is managing him. On the other hand there is (or was) a group of people from a certain generation and political orientation – American leftists from the thirties and forties – who had a soft spot for the Israeli experiment based on the socialism of the kibbutz, the Zionist struggle against an imperialist Britain, and the feudalism of the Arab regimes. Back in the days of folk singing, Israeli folk songs were included in the mix of songs produced by the Seeger and the Weavers. The small record with “Good Night Irene” had “Tsena, Tsena, Tsena” on the other side. Maybe Pete has some nostalgia for a fantasy of sixty odd years ago. I’m reluctant to criticize the old man who has seemed so principled throughout his career. Maybe he’ll go and do a spiel and songs that will support true justice there.
I used to have an old record of the Weavers (the singing group that included Pete Seeger) on which they sang “Hava Nagila”, among other things, including a song in Hindi. Israel was just another left-wing cause back in the days of the fellow travellers.
Jeff was on the freegaza boat I was on that landed in Gaza August 2008.
Palestinian homes are bulldozed for any reason Israel comes up with. Many homes are demolished because the Palestinians cannot get a permit to add on to their home. Israel destroys the entire home not just the addition. Permits are never given to Palestinians. Of course Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem are adding to existing settlements. 3000 homes are planned in these illegal settlements. Most often bulldozing occurs at night usually 1am.They show up with megaphone to rouse people up and give 5 minutes to evacuate. Families barely have time to grab babies and elderly disabled before the destruction begins. Large extended families are rendered homeless. All their food, furniture, clothes and valuables are buried under the rubble of their homes. After the destruction people dig through the rubble for what can be salvaged. In the Jenin massacre; people were buried alive when a swath the size 2 football fields wiped out part of the town. A blind man, a wheelchair confined man and a developmentally disabled man were found buried under the rubble among others. Rachel Corrie was murdered by one of these bulldozing Caterpiller designed murdering machines in full view of witnesses. The Pharmacist whose home she was trying to protect was bulldozed for “security reasons”. All the homes of their neighborhood were bulldozed that way, 2000 homes were wiped out in Rafah. This was not at Israel’s border;it was done by Israelis at Egypt’s border. Jeff and I and others stood there at the spot where she was killed during our stay there. Since 2008, 6000 homes and businesses have been destroyed.Thanks to Cast Lead. The other day Israel bombed 2 tunnels killing 2 workers and badly burning 2 men. One tunnel used to bring fuel in for cars etc and the other used for essential goods Israel keeps out of Gaza. Recently Israel took snacks off the list so yea, kids can have chips I guess(which their parents can’t afford) but milk, eggs, fresh produce which Israel has made sure Gaza farmers cannot provide (100,000 chickens were bulldozed and wiped out during Cast Lead) for their neighbors or their own families. We could see the Egyptian border where we stood. Gaza residents cannot walk across that border to buy goods in Egypt, or visit doctors or find medical care in Egyptian hospitals. They are trapped. Israel has not let up on the blockade. Homes and businesses cannot rebuild. Many people live in tents. Cement is on the list. Building materials on the list. I bet they allow diet pills since they allow chips! Ketchup is allowed now. Not fresh tomatoes. And guess what products get in? Israel’s. So Israel wiped out the agriculural lands, and manufactuers and the people who used to produce these things now if they want them must buy from the peole who renderd them dependent on charity.For the most part even aid is blockaded.Limited aid is bypassing the blockade but 80% of the people of Gaza are dependent on UN charity. And Pete how did you get on the wrong list? I hope Jeff can change his mind.
Why is JNF being called a ‘lead partner’? The only partnership I could find on the site was JNF listed as one of many groups highlighted for having any connection at all to the topic of helping the environment in the Middle East.
No doubt, JNF is evil, especially because of what they are up to with the Bedouin in the Negev. But…. it plays a major role in environmental initiatives in Israel, some of them positive. (I’m not suggesting that anyone NOT go after the JNF….)
Not sure the Arava Institute deserves to have this effort become a target by any faction of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. Kind of a waste of effort – better to simply go straight after the JNF.
From the Arava Institute website:
The JNF logo appears beside this blurb, with the slogan: JNF, for ISRAEL forever.
As a pillar of ongoing ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Israel and the OT, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) is eminently boycott-worthy
(greenwashing attempts notwithstanding).
link to stopthejnf.bdsmovement.net
The importance of the cultural boycott was clearly demonstrated the critical rolet the international boycott of South Africa’s rugby team had in bringing down that nation’s apartheid system. Seems that the isolation from the world of sports was too much for sports crazy Afrikaners. Come on Pete Seeker, we’re your kind of people and BDS is your kind of thing.
Maybe Pete is actually for peace, unless the rest of you people.
Really? And how peaceful is it, entertaining extremist land-thieving Uzi-wielding criminals who are robbing the people of the West Bank blind, anyway?
Maybe Pete has gotten old and senile and forgotten what peace means.
I couldn’t resist this one, in a thread about Seeger and Jeff Halper :
Pete Seeger singing “Little Boxes”
“Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes all the same…”
link to youtube.com