On the eve of a significant Open Jewish Conversation about Cultural Boycott of Israel reported here last month Stolen Beauty has published a letter from highly regarded Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, founder of the the Progressive Jewish congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Park Slope, which is hosting the event tonight. The letter is addressed to other signatories of the Brooklyn Rabbis Letter, a letter originally signed by seven rabbis criticizing the boycott of Ahava Cosmetics.
Stolen Beauty prefaces:
After a visit to the West Bank, Lippman wrote to the other rabbis saying that she had changed her mind and now supported the boycott of settlement products, including Ahava.
Dear rabbis,
I am writing this note which I have meant to write since returning from the human rights mission to Israel and Palestine that I co-led in October; a trip organized by Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. It was an amazing trip in many ways, and a sorrowful one too, as we saw the painful places where human rights are damaged if not discarded. I urge you to go on next year's trip, which will take place in mid-November.
Among many other things, we saw the destruction that is wrought by too many Israeli settlers. We stood on the charred ground that had been a thriving olive grove only days before, before settlers set fire to it, as they also poison and cut down other trees and groves, seemingly just because they are owned and run by Palestinians. We stood with cave dwellers in the south Hebron Hills and a day later they and Israeli advocate Ezra Nawi were attacked by armed and masked "bandit" settlers. We visited Hebron, where streets are empty of life except in the area of the Cave, because Palestinian shops have been locked and so have many homes, and where the main street near the Cave is divided by a cement barrier; Palestinians walk on one side, Israelis, Americans, on the other, watched by a soldier.
Israel has many real security needs. But I have come to know that the ways in which the occupation of the West Bank is enforced go way beyond those needs to the realm of harsh discrimination and ready violence, aided by a complicity military and government.
This is all preface to my main point to you: I have changed my mind about the purchase of products made in the Jewish West Bank. All the rabbis I spoke to in Israel, who were not only RHR rabbis, are not buying West Bank products. I have decided to join them. Therefore, I will no longer oppose those who refuse to buy Ahava products.
The list produced by Gush Shalom is attached, if you want to think about this as well.
I have no interest in embarrassing any of you, my colleagues. I will not be standing in front of Ricky's urging a boycott. But I have come to think I must support it.
Thanks for "listening." I leave Monday for a month's sabbatical, so will have little chance to talk to any of you before going. I would be happy to talk when I return, if you like.
I wish you all a happy and hopeful new year.
Ellen
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann Kolot Chayeinu / Voices of Our Lives www.kolotchayeinu.org
A private decision on her part. Others can make similar if moved.
I’m not sure if boycotting Ahava says anything directly to the specific settlers that undertook harrassment of West Bank Palestinians.
Richard Witty said, ‘Notice how I threadjack, and try and belittle Rabbi Lippmann:
‘I’m technically wrong, because she is making her decision public, and she leads a congregation. But more importantly, I’m afraid of her willingness to go to the West Bank and see for herself and then change her mind. You won’t see me going anywhere near Israel/Palestine.’
yeah, and she’s going public the day before a big well publicized jewish community meeting about the boycott in a neighborhood with a big debate about whether the local co op should boycott. of course he would know that if he’d open the links but instead he rushes to be on top of the thread. way to go richard!
I’m hoping that she reads this and reconsiders what to state and how.
The co-op’s decision to boycott would be an abuse of its individual members rights.
“Therefore, I will no longer oppose those who refuse to buy Ahava products.” is a statement of respect of individual decisions, not a political advocacy or institutional.
Richard Witty said, ‘My third sentence above is absolutely incomprehensible. I’m so disturbed by Rabbi Lippmann’s eloquent point of view that I sputter meaninglessly. Let me by contrast reprint what the rabbi said after her most recent first-hand look at the occupation:
Kind of like a blockade/war on civilians/state supported land grab would be an abuse of its individual citizen’s rights and of those in the OT?
“Therefore, I will no longer oppose those who refuse to bathe Gazan children in white phosphorus or starve them or steal their land.” is a statement of respect of individual decisions, not a political advocacy or institutional.
What a mensch, you are!
Witty, what right do you (or anyone else) have to use pilfered goods from the West Bank?
RW: “A private decision on her part.”
Richard, why the sudden coyness on delegitimisation? Aren’t you still buying Ahava products?
I don’t use skin cream or whatever it is they sell.
Yes, I am assertively boycotting personal beauty products if that is what you mean.
Would have been a lost cause anyway, really.
RIchard, I would love to hear your first hand account of a visit to the West Bank. I guess you are in Westchester or some such front line zone. It behooves you to go. Thanks in advance.
great suggestion!
RIchard, I would love to hear your first hand account of a visit to the West Bank.
We must buy Richard a ticket to the West Bank. Simone can guide. Max B can film. Mooser rides shotgun, with or without his Samoan attorney. “The Education of Richard Witty.” This screams Sundance, don’t it?
Who’s in? -N49.
Count me in!
I would seriously poney-up money to see this happen. What would the bill be? $15k? To follow Witty about the West Bank and the check points and batshit crazy settlements and the old Palestinian villages, err, remains thereof, would be a genuine treat, and that`s before Mooser`s narration. A good film maker would be spoiled for material here.
Witty — whatcha say? You game? -N49.
Sure, I am.
I sincerely believe visiting Israel is Richard’s greatest fear, that he would sooner gouge his own eyes out than confront the reality of what Israel is.
I’m in for a donation. Come on witty, you missed out on birthright, go on your MW subsidized factsright trip. I have contacts, guides (Jewish!), and even places you can meet people in the tribe, in area A, should you need a Jew among all the Gentiles. How does a private pool party near Bethlehem sound (with cute Jewish girls from birthright attending… who have the chutzpah to cross the green line). I’m enticing you with Jews and even Jewish girls, but your favorite part will be meeting occupied Palestinians, sincerely.
“with or without his Samoan attorney.”
Is a “Samoan attorney” anything like a “Penang lawyer”?
“Samoan attorney”, Fear and loathing in Las Vegas? Dr. Gonzo? … Mooser rides shotgun, I think that’s a good idea. You have to keep him from fleeing into the settlements, Mooser.
>> Is a “Samoan attorney” anything like a “Penang lawyer”?
Yes. And don’t worry, Mooser, we’ll keep you off camera. The only thing that will make it on to the final print will be your voice and the odd shot of your cowboy boots.
Where is Witty? I am dead serious on this! We now have gracious co-supporters. This can happen. Where are you, Witty? -N49.
Yes.
well, I thought I may as well try, and fail miserably. Serves me well.
No, LeaNder, You are correct — for some reason, when trying to envision Witty in the West Bank, I cast back to those opening scenes of F&L in LV. I saw Mooser behind the wheel of massive, overpowered Caddy screaming across the desert, his Samoan attorney beside him, and Witty hanging on to dear life in the backseat.
HT:
Zionism & ether — working together since 1948.
As for my response to Mooser — I always answer “yes” to Mooser and I advise that you do the same. -N49.
I want to come along too — as interpreter. Richard speaks; I interpret into serviceable English; Simone or another Palestinian re-interprets into Arabic. (Although so many Palestinians speak English that my work should be enough for many of them.)
I bring to this task quite literally years of experience studying Richard’s bizarre vocabulary and unique turns of phrase: “holes rather than wholes,” “heart mousetrap” and so on.
>> We must buy Richard a ticket to the West Bank. Simone can guide. Max B can film. Mooser rides shotgun, with or without his Samoan attorney. “The Education of Richard Witty.” This screams Sundance, don’t it?
It does, and I would donate money to help make this happen! :-)
>> I want to come along too — as interpreter.
Absolutely! It wouldn’t make sense not to have you there because then, well, he wouldn’t make sense. ;-)
>> And don’t worry, Mooser, we’ll keep you off camera. The only thing that will make it on to the final print will be your voice and the odd shot of your cowboy boots.
I LOVE IT!!! :-D
when trying to envision Witty in the West Bank, I cast back
your, kind N49, I appreciate it.
(Although so many Palestinians speak English that my work should be enough for many of them.)
Don’t say that, James. Richard clearly needs an interpreter, even if people understand English. That’s pretty obvious. As you clearly have the necessary experience to do the job.
you people are romanticizing. the truth, i fear, is that mooser wears fraying Teva sandals in some once-spritely color combo now mudstained, and he could use a pedicure
I want to come along too
James N: Terrible omission on my part. We will need you of course.
Another thought: Maybe you could impart your mastery of Witty’s tortured syntax onto a select group Palesinians. This group, in turn, could spread it around their communities. I know when I read some of Witty’s mangled sentences I get an overwhelming urge to stick my head in a wood chipper. Maybe if the Palestinians employ these painful linguistic constructs at checkpoints, the IDF might feel inclined to do same. Hmmm…. -N49.
mooser wears fraying Teva sandals in some once-spritely color combo now mudstained, and he could use a pedicure
That works too. Might even be better. Just no pedicure and – please dear god – no socks. -N49.
N49: An alternate plan. We set Richard loose at a checkpoint, and steer him toward some particularly arrogant Israeli soldiers. “You have to humanize the other,” he tells them. “You have to create wholes, not holes. See just behind you — that’s green yarn, meant to show you where the green line is . . . ”
After our success there, we direct him toward an especially nasty group of settler/colonists, who are in the middle of cutting down Palestinian olive trees. . .
lol, the possible scenarios are endless.
We set Richard loose at a checkpoint, and steer him toward some particularly arrogant Israeli soldiers.
I’ll bet Witty has healing crystals. He could arrange these in a sacred pattern beside the checkpoint, entreat those standing in line since 3:30AM in the rain to join hands and channel the energy in positive accepting frequencies, rejecting otherness and mis-antagonising fear, rejection.
“Gotta smoke?” one of them will ask. Betcha. -N49.
Aside from the opportunistic low blows, I expect that I would be appalled by what I saw, and strongly motivated to want to do something to help those that are suppressed and harmed.
And, I probably would choose to personally boycott products produced in the settlements.
It doesn’t come into play for me, as I nor anyone in my family buys skin care products from the Dead Sea region. A boycott of humus that is made mostly in the US, but is owned by a company centered within green line Israel, would not be a statement of my conscience.
I would always remain concerned that if I were public about it, that my participation would be misused by those with other agendas, particularly those that genuinely do have the intention of removing Israel from the map (politically), which I do not believe in.
How does one participate in a global boycott movement that is really multiple movements?
With close attention to signs that the movement ceases to be a statement of humane principle, and devolves to a statement of rage cemented in malevolent ideology.
It doesn’t matter at all what you would probably do, it matters what you actually do. And this is why nobody takes you seriously, Witty, because you show no sort of self-awareness to take yourself seriously.
And if you think those were low blows, I haven’t even begin to scratch this topic to show you what low blows really are. You’re lucky I’m really tired right now.
I’m lucky? Why threaten anyone ever, in any way?
It is information to those that dissent, that the presentation of Palestinian experience hasn’t been made in a way that reaches people.
Frankly, more news that is dismissable as partisan, or even documentary that is also dismissable as propaganda, won’t reach people. Everyone knows that the conflict in Israel/Palestine is a thick and dangerous one. They won’t gamble about it, knowing that any position that they take could turn out to be the grossly wrong one.
If you want to persuade, do it well already, effectively, with room for individuals to take it in and respond as they see fit, without the political shaming and interpersonal abuse.
you people are romanticizing. the truth, …
Hmmm? I thought you were a luftmensch?
Look, in these ethereal realms, Teva sandals and stick-in-the-mud imagery is unwanted.
Yes, Richard, always staying on message, keeping an eye on the goal. No time for entertainment.
Aside from the opportunistic low blows, I expect that I would be appalled by what I saw, and strongly motivated to want to do something to help those that are suppressed and harmed.
Opportunistic blows, but you expect it would change your attitude slightly? Or is this rhetorical?
A friend once taught me one doesn’t die from being pulled out of a more comfortable watcher’s perspective in the back right into the center for people’s entertainment. It’s actually quite healthy to laugh with others about oneself.
I forget who said that a sense of humour is the ability to laugh at yourself. Richard, please note.
Anyway, that’s why Mooser is going with you. Maybe you`ll learn more than one thing on the trip. -N49.
“This is all preface to my main point to you: I have changed my mind about the purchase of products made in the Jewish West Bank. All the rabbis I spoke to in Israel, who were not only RHR rabbis, are not buying West Bank products. I have decided to join them.”
good to know some folks are flexible and open minded… and, they seek justice and know bds is the way to address the inequalities and aparthaid that mark present day israeli soceity…
“A private decision on her part.”
It’s a decision on “state land”, ha ha ha
i would love to attend that meeting tonight in park slope. i hope someone does and reports on it here.
this is an awesome move by Rabbi Ellen Lippmann. her timing is spectacular. i’m always really moved when ethical people make courageous stands after examining their conscience and the circumstances.
thank you rabbi
Ditto! Thanks, Annie.
I can’t understand how anyone who favors a two state solution could oppose a boycott on products produced in the West Bank. So I’m glad the Rabbi changed her mind, but don’t see why she needed a visit to the WB to do so. But better late than never.
I don’t see how anyone who favors human rights and international humanitarian law can avoid condemning the entire settlement regime (irrespective of the horrible POGROM-ISH crimes committed by some settlers and allowed by IDF), the water-stealing, the land-stealing (neither of which requires settlements, but both of which are intimately tied up with settlements as a matter of practice).
If Brooklyn rabbis, generally, are making excuses to OK the settlements (or even to decline to condemn them), they should try to see/experience what rabbi Ellen Lippmann saw/experienced and then try to be honest in their subsequent evaluation. If they WILL NOT SEE/EXPERIENCE, then they SHOULD NOT PREACH pro-Israel, pro-settlement propaganda out of misplaced (and easily correctable) ignorance and loyalty to the pogromists and thieves and lawbreakers.
I think this is right: anybody who goes to the West Bank cannot fail to be astonished and disgusted, shocked at the casual behaviour of the ‘settlers’ protected by the immoral army, the IDF. Hebron is a microcosm of the vile Israeli regime and a symbol of how an entire city is locked down, the economy ruined, in order to facilitate a handful of fanatical fascist zealots, protected once again by the boys who acquiesce to any settler demand. Palestinians are humiliated, spat at, attacked and harassed, all while the smiling IDF boys look on. No-one who has a shred of humanity, whatever religion they are, could fail to be shattered by the ugly vision of the depths of cruelty and despicable behaviour the settlers and their protectors exhibit. Rabbi Ellen is right, anyone with a heart left would feel this way.
Well, Rep. Allen West did visit West Bank, mostly to report his negative impression about Palestinians.
I suspect that Rabbi Ellen had a change of heart in private, but since she is not exactly a private person, she had to justify it. And providing her own witnessed testimony is perhaps the best way to do it.
>> Among many other things, we saw the destruction that is wrought by too many Israeli settlers. We stood on the charred ground that had been a thriving olive grove only days before, before settlers set fire to it, as they also poison and cut down other trees and groves, seemingly just because they are owned and run by Palestinians. We stood with cave dwellers in the south Hebron Hills and a day later they and Israeli advocate Ezra Nawi were attacked by armed and masked “bandit” settlers. We visited Hebron, where streets are empty of life except in the area of the Cave, because Palestinian shops have been locked and so have many homes, and where the main street near the Cave is divided by a cement barrier; Palestinians walk on one side, Israelis, Americans, on the other, watched by a soldier.
>> Israel has many real security needs. But I have come to know that the ways in which the occupation of the West Bank is enforced go way beyond those needs to the realm of harsh discrimination and ready violence, aided by a complicity military and government.
There appears to be a shortage of “heart mousetraps” in Israel.
Or is the good rabbi just another one of those anti-Semitic, Israel-hating, self-loathing Jews?
There’s an additional silver lining in the Rabbi’s activism. Imagine how welcoming a congregation in which Judaism is the focus, not Zionism, could be to those who steer clear of services because of the inevitable politicization.
Right on, ehrens: A pro-Palestine friend of mine in Boston had her son bar mitzva’d at a synagogue which had a pro-Israel, pro-settlement rally later, after her son’s ceremony, publicly, right “out there”. How she’d have wished, one imagines, for a rabbi (and a congregation) which did walk in lock-step (and to my thinking, in goose-step) with Israel.
the information about the injustices taking place in the West Bank, checkpoints, olive groves being destroyed, house and business demolitions has been out there for a long time. As is always the case with well educated people who sit on that information in denial they are guilty of complicity but…this is another case of better late than never.
And great timing!
There is no excuse whatsoever for settlers doing any of the things she mentioned. Absolutely. However, the boycott of Israel is not a result of either this or that incident, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more countries being boycotted. The boycott of Israel is to deny Israels right to exist, something we see often espoused here.
i think the rabbi distinguished between all of israel and the settlement enterprises.
Hers is of encouraging individual choices, and in the scope that one is moved and feels ethically comfortable doing.
She is advocating individual moral and not so much disciplined political choices.
“Individual morality?” Witty, is that what your Judaism means to you? Moral relativity? I think a LOT of Jews would object to that.
yes she did… it doesn’t serve those self interested folks to make these kinds of distinctions however.. better to label everyone anti-semite or offer up some other bogus bs to try to shut down the changes that will take place in israel to help it get beyond apartheid..
Israel has no more right to exist than the US does. Who would demand that Native Americans condone the killing of their people as well as the stealing of their land. That is what has been asked of the Palestinian people. Total bull.
Israel does “exist” based on the internationally recognized border.
Red Cloud
They made us many promises but they kept only one
They promised to take our land and they did -
longliveisrael: “The boycott of Israel is to deny Israel’s right to exist, something we see often espoused here.”
Your comment is typical and ridiculous hasbara. The boycott of Israel is intended to enforce international law and the human and property rights of the Palestinians in the face of Israeli invaders, oppressors, and thieves of land and resources.
Sounds not too far off from what the Afrikaners of South Africa would have said. Ahhh, two regimes so similar it’s almost impossible to tell which is which.
lli, you and others like you are always saying opponents are denying Israel’s right to exist. It’s one of your many straw men that we see often espoused here.
When will you get it through your thick skulls that what is denied the right to exist is Zionism as soon as it was carried out in action, and in its continual actions. Zionism and Israel are not synonymous. There can be an Israel without what Zionism inevitably brought, and brings daily.
That’s why you are correct that the boycott of Israel is not a result of either this or that incident.
longliveisrael usually makes one hasbara infested comment and then vanishes from the discussion because his arguments have no traction over a long debate with replies from the various knowledgeable anti-Zionists here.
He’s not like Witty, in that Witty is an attention-whore who posts here because he literally has nothing else to do (unemployed, senile, pathological). So I guess longliveisrael has SOME semblance of a conscience to be honest. Or at least, he isn’t as mentally ill as Witty.
This hasbara meme of ‘denying Israel’s blah blah’ has been spammed by Zionists over and over.
BDS is a Palestinian civil society initiative. They have ever right and justification to boycott the culprits responsible for their dispossession and suffering.
If someone supports BDS, that does not mean that that someone would not also support similar tactics against other immoral, racist, apartheid States (apartheid isn’t completely necessary either).
BDS is a tactic. It is a strategy for combating Israeli colonialism.
BDS can be effective against Israel because Israel is a small country. It is not the United States – an empire. The logistics make sense.
BDS is not simply about the act of boycotting but in the periphery of the strategy is education and activism. People will learn about this conflict through taking notice of BDS. Hence, BDS in and of itself has multiple positive effects for Palestinian solidarity.
It certainly has alienated Zionists but no one should expect a person who believes God is a real estate agent, OR that Jewish nationalism is more important than human rights, civil rights, and basic human decency vis a vis the majority population that was ethnically cleansed to make way for a Jewish State.
This is why BDS is a STRATEGY. And it doesn’t have to appeal to Zionists or Jewish settlers or whoever else could be consider cut from the same cloth.
That’s just flat out rubbish, ill. If that is the best you can do, smearing the campaign, and throwing in the feeblest of cliches about ‘right to exist’ just for good measure, then obviously you don’t have any actual arguments, just the usual hysteria. The settlers are part of israel, so condemning them is condemning the whole systematic abuse of Palestinians and their land since 1967.
The abuse of Palestine and Palestinians has been going on since 1948. In what sense would Israel continue to exist if that abuse came to an end?
“There is no excuse whatsoever for settlers doing any of the things she mentioned”
Anybody who wants to can click “longliveisrael’s” name above, access his comment file, and see that he has made every excuse possible for the settlers. If I remember correctly, you will find most of them under “H” for Hamas. And “A” for Arab.
Is there a doctor in the house? Maybe he (or she) can tell me if the assumption that everybody else has forgotten what you have forgotten is a common characteristic of all types amnesia, not just ziocaine amnesia.
That’s great – score!
RHR has been at it for a long time, like so many nonviolence activist groups working in the less-than-safe corridors of the West Bank, and they’re finally beginning to have an impact in influencing prominent members of the American Jewish community to break with tradition and adhere to conscience.
I’m not Jewish, but I’ll make an effort to attend services at her temple next time I’m in Brooklyn and Rabbi Lippmann is presiding.
Annie/all . Worthwhile read
September 15, 2011
18
Protecting Americans?
President Obama’s Shameful Silence in the Face of Israel’s Murder of a Young American
by DAVE LINDORFF
link to counterpunch.org
“Nor was there any protest from the White House when the Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine reported a month later that the autopsy conducted on Dogan showed that, like most of the other eight IDF victims, he had been shot in the back and in the back of the head, as well as in the face — hardly the kind of killing that would have resulted had he and the others — as the Israeli government claimed, been “attacking” the IDF boarders. (In fact a smuggled video shows two IDF officers brutally kicking a person identified by the filmer as Dogan while he is lying on the deck of the ship, and then shooting him repeatedly with their weapons, which my colleague Linn Washington says appear to be pump-action Remington 870 shotguns — a deadly gun popular around the world and among police for “riot control” actions. The weapon is part of the IDR arsenal.)”
Has anybody seen this brazen Bibi Chutzpah…?
Bibi to Address The UN GA Same Day as Abbas Seeks UN Bid…!
As I note, Bibi is scared stiff about the potential ICC/ICJ actions…!
I’m just back from Rabbi Lippmann’s congregation in Brooklyn, where I attended the Open Jewish Conversation about Cultural Boycott of Israel. Phil, Adam, Jack Ross and other members of the Mondoweiss community were there, and I’m sure Phil will be putting up a report.
Rabbi Lippmann opened the evening. She is warm, welcoming and impressive. She set the tone for a spirited but tolerant and wide-ranging discussion. I believe her congregation is among the first, if not the first, in the New York area with the courage to host a forum of this kind.
I wish I could have videotaped the entire evening, and then shown it on the West Bank, to let the Palestinians under occupation know that understanding and solidarity with their intolerable situation is growing, slowly but steadily. An evening like this, in a New York synagogue, would have been impossible five, or maybe even one, year ago.
Excellent North.
Do you think anyone else got the event on tape? It would be important for Palestinians and their supporters to see it.
Though commendable Rabbi Ellen’s gesture is, it bears little meaning. Boycotting the settlements products while sparing those produced in Israel makes little sense when Israel does not see the occupied territories anymore separated from Israel proper. The settlement enterprise is an Israeli responsibility not the settlers’.
Please note that I didn’t say it bears NO meaning.
Agreed that boycott of ALL Israeli products, and sports and other cultural events, and much, much more, puts more pressure on Israel and is likely to get the attention of more Israeli voters than a mere boycott of West Bank (and Golani) products.
It is also perfectly fair, because all Israelis, including the ultra-nationalistic settler community, have a voice in Israel’s settlement project and could, if they wished, terminate it.
Boycott of ALL things Israeli is calculated to get their attention faster and more firmly than mere boycott of West Bank and Golani products-of-occupation.
I would far rather that Israel SOON recalled all settlers and demolished the wall and all settlement buildings of its own volition — even if that volition was a response to a severe civil boycott — than if Israel did the same thing after a long while — after, for example, the UN acted to compel such actions, or, possibly later still, after hell freezes over.
link to haaretz.com
American-Israeli leverages power of TED for coexistence conference in Jaffa
A hundred Jews, Arabs and internationals from around the country congregated at Jaffa’s East-West House last Wednesday for a day of lectures by local academics and activists.
This is a smarter approach than boycott.
The project may be a good one, for all I know, and the conference a success, but the accompanying video clip is horrendous. Palestinians have a responsibility to “share the injustices they suffer, the pain they feel” with their oppressors, or this new immigrant to the region “will have no idea that that exists” and “will have no opportunity to find out that it exists”?! What ignorance, arrogance and insensitivity.
link to youtube.com
I really don’t understand how she can be Israeli and NOT know that Palestinians are suffering. She insists that they tell her, an Israeli, that life under occupation for 40+ years, sucks.
As a rule (near-100% effectiveness), if Dick Witty promotes something on Mondoweiss, it’s usually B.S.
So I’ll wait on this one.
“I really don’t understand how she can be Israeli and NOT know that Palestinians are suffering”
The answer is in the question. It’s, precisely, because she’s Israeli (on top of being a recent immigrant) that she doesn’t know that Palestinians are suffering.
>> What ignorance, arrogance and insensitivity.
It reminds me of people who “primarily celebrate” acts of ethnic cleansing.
Richard Witty said, ‘Once again, I display my profound ignorance about Israel/Palestine, a place I last visited (briefly) in 1986. Palestinians who live in the West Bank under the occupation could not have attended this conference, because they are not allowed into Israel. And of course the inmates of Gaza’s open air prison are stuck there as well.
‘Then, there’s this
‘These lectures may have been fine, but who needs a lecture to recognize that arresting children without trial and torturing them is wrong? Most first-graders who don’t live in Wittyville already know that.’
Witty says that [palaver] is a smarter approach than boycott. Well, hard to say. Probably depends on what you mean to accomplish. Or on how hard you want to work.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel sometimes (often?) unilaterally and without any military justification declares a village a “closed military area” and then, if people come out into the street — even if only to palaver or to protest — shoots tear-gas and sound-bombs at them.
This action by Israel — which is VIOLENT by the way in case Witty misses that detail — is intended to PREVENT protest, indeed, to prevent a protest which would presumably not be witnessed by anyone other than the protesters and any IDF folks who happened to be lounging nearby.
This IDF action is a form of BOYCOTT on peaceful, non-violent protest, that is, a boycott on a rather private form of palaver.
So Israel favors BOYCOTT over PALAVER.
Sometimes.
But Witty doesn’t. Good to know there is “daylight” between Witty’s policy and Israeli policy.
Perhaps Witty would care to comment on this, specifically, and, more generally, on why he thinks boycotts are not effective (or are for some other reason improper). I think they are great in those cases when used against a democratic nation such as Israel — because in that case, the people suffering boycott have a real opportunity to respond to the economic and ideational pressures of the boycott by re-directing their government. (By contrast, boycott against Iran or Iraq were unhelpful since, absent real democracy, the leadership could jolly well ignore the boycott and the people had to suffer.)
The argument that R.Ellen uses – that the means of enforcement go beyond Israel’s true security needs – seems weak to me, perhaps a broken reed that pierces the hand. If it’s a question about means to an end, ie how to achieve ‘security’, it seems hard to be sure that someone who is only a visitor and whose expertise is in religion and not in policing or counter-terrorism, could be so sure that she, in comparison with those who are there all the time dealing with ‘threats’, can know what means need to be used. If she had said that not even ‘security’ would justify certain practices she would have been more on her own home ground.