Back in 2012 the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US offered the same blind and illusory “solution” to the conflict: Dump money into a Palestinian “economy” that is crucially limited by the routine policies of an occupying foreign power:
[The Episcopal News – Diocese of Los Angeles, 28 March 2012] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori urged Episcopalians to “invest in legitimate development in Palestine’s West Bank and in Gaza” rather than focusing on divestment or boycotts of Israel, during a March 25 “Middle East Peacemakers” luncheon in Los Angeles.
“The Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott,” the presiding bishop told more than 200 people gathered at the California Club in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s not going to be helpful to endorse divestment or boycotts of Israel. It will only end in punishing Palestinians economically.” . . .
Presiding bishop on Middle East peacemaking: Engage, don’t divest
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/article/presiding-bishop-middle-east-peacemaking-engage-dont-divest
“So far,” writes Friedman in the TIMES, “the Israeli military command has played this 3-D chess game of 21st-century warfare extremely well — managing to stay out of Syria’s civil war . . . . “
Well . . . The Jerusalem Post reports otherwise:
NEW UN REPORT REVEALS COLLABORATION BETWEEN ISRAEL AND SYRIAN REBELS
NEW YORK – The Syrian ambassador to the UN has long complained of a Zionist conspiracy working with the Syrian rebels to overthrow President Bashar Assad.
Now, a report from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) reveals that Israel has been working closely with Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights and have kept close contact over the past 18 months. The report was submitted to the UN Security Council at the beginning of the month.
The documents show that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals. This and a few past reports have described transfer of unspecified supplies from Israel to the Syrian rebels, and sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with the Syrian opposition east of the green zone, as well as incidents when Israeli soldiers opened up the fence to allow Syrians through who did not appear to be injured. . . .
A hearty AMEN! The implausibility of applying the term “left” to any Congress-member nowadays shows just how far we’ve sunk.
Why do Israel’s eminent leaders need to watch a Palestinian prisoner at his toilet-routine? Aren’t they outproducing, on their own, every sewer system in the world, enough shit to flood this planet?
Yes, it was indeed the settlements, not any persons, whom Rep. Johnson referred to as termites. But when will ADL complain about Zionists’ common reference to Palestinians as COCKROACHES?
Woops! Ms. Mozes has forfeited for her people their right to possess their so-called ancestral inheritance (all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates).
The Supreme Being’s promise to the ancient people of Israel — the promise that modern Zionists cite as their title to exclusive possession of Eretz Yisrael (the whole of the land) — turns out NOT to be exactly carte blanche. There is “a string attached.” In fact, the divine promise exacted from the recipient a promise in return: The receivers of this land-gift must behave in a certain manner, must observe certain moral principles, or THE PROMISE IS OFF. Possession of this land is CONTINGENT on your extending kindness to those who are NOT YOU, who don’t look like you, who may not worship as you do, who may not worship any divine entity whatsoever.
Hear, O Israel [Shma Yisrael!] the following:
if you do not oppress the foreigner, [among others]. . . then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.
— Jeremiah 7: 6-7
Wouldn’t you agree that it’s unjust to assume that some injustice committed in a particular society (e.g., police firing on unarmed demonstrators) has been committed at the command or with the compliance or through the neglect of some particular, prominent person who happens to have held at one time a leadership position in that society?
It would certainly be a mistake to assume that Archbishop Tutu’s critiques, objections and condemnations were reserved strictly for the white, apartheid government and were never leveled at the black, post-apartheid government that began with the election of Nelson Mandela as President.
See, for example, in Tutu’s book GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN Chapter 14, entitled “We Must Turn the Spotlight on Ourselves” (i.e., on the black, post-apartheid government), or Chapter 15, entitled “Naught for Your Comfort: A Critique of Comrades and Friends,” in which you will find stringent criticism of the administration of Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as President (p. 183 ff.). The editor of this collection of Tutu’s speeches and writings notes: “Within months of Nelson Mandela being sworn in, Desmond Tutu was holding to account South Africa’s first democratically elected government, criticizing . . . the administration for its failure to close down the apartheid armaments industry. When Mandela hit back by accusing him of being a populist and saying he should raise his concerns privately, Tutu treated the new president like an apartheid cabinet minister: Mandela must be either forgetful or lying, he said, because they had discussed the issues at a private breakfast in the presidential residence in Capetown” (p. 177).
At no time has Desmond Tutu shown any slight willingness to tolerate in the predominantly black South African administration any behavior or policy he had condemned in the totally white apartheid government that preceded it. I don’t find that the post to which I’m replying offers any help toward understanding the incident referred to; nor do I find it a just critique of the Archbishop’s character.
Too often our pundits have written and spoken of the situation in Palestine/Israel as a conflict between equals — commonly with the implied claim that this conflict is a “cycle of violence.” This involves what may be called “the Mantra of Equivalence,” suggesting that both sides suffer equally and merit about equal moral censure. The group of Episcopalians just formed seems to accept this as a true account of things. But of course many facts on the ground would have to be different from what they are for this to meet any standard of reality.
Below is a list of alterations (not an exhaustive one) of the actual conditions in Palestine/Israel that would need to be made in order for this fake equivalence to carry the weight of truth.
1 The Palestinian Authority pursues a continuing program of annexing land from Israel; it settles its own Palestinian people (military bases and civilians) upon it in violation of international law and holds that land by arresting, firing at (often maiming or killing) individual Israelis of any age who come “too close” to the annexed territory’s border. (Gazan farmers in their fields, if they are deemed to have approached too close to the border with Israel, have been shot and killed by soldiers of the Israel Defense Force.)
2 Israeli workers, suffering under high unemployment because of the Palestinian authorities’ closing of their borders and overall strangle-hold of their economy, line up in the wee hours of the morning in cattle-shoots to get into Palestine on time for their jobs; some are arbitrarily insulted and/or denied permission to cross into Palestine on the whim of adolescent soldiers of the Palestinian army.
3 Because of commonly arbitrary delays at Palestinian-controlled check-points, pregnant Israeli women are forced to give birth at these checkpoints.
4 The Palestinian Authority demands (with US support) that in return for the establishment of an Israeli state, units of a (now non-existent) Palestinian army must be permanently based in a wide area of Israeli territory. (This would be the Palestinian equivalent of the Israeli Prime Minister’s ultimatum that, if ever a Palestinian state is established, then units of the Israeli Defense Force must be permanently based in the West-Bank.)
5 Armed Palestinians from the (now, of course, actually nonexistent) Palestinian army routinely enter Israeli homes by night and carry away Israeli children without either of their parents, detain them in prison, and subject them to harsh interrogation under accusation of stone-throwing.
6 Palestinians in their navy’s gunboats (now, of course, actually nonexistent) off the coast of Israel fire at Israeli fishermen when they attempt to ply their trade, even within universally recognized limits for off-shore fishing rights.
7 Palestinians receive up-to-date lethal weapons from the United States (paid for by a large part of the US’s annual gift to Israel of $3-billilon) for the purpose of controlling the Israeli population held under Palestinian rule.
8 Palestinians residing in settlements (colonies reserved for Arabs exclusively) established by force, illegally, on Israeli land routinely invade Israeli villages and uproot their crops and olive trees while soldiers of the (now of course nonexistent) Palestinian state — sent ostensibly to prevent violence — either look on with calm indifference or arrest Israeli villagers for “rioting.”
9 Palestinian soldiers fire rubber bullets, tear gas, and live ammunition at peaceful, unarmed Israeli demonstrators. (This would be the equivalent of Israel Defense Force units’ actions [supported by IDF Military Order 101] against peaceful, unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in such villages as Bil’in and Nabi Saleh, killing some of them and severely wounding both villagers and international volunteers.)
10 The Palestinian government deports Israelis who establish Israeli centers for the study of nonviolence. (This would be the equivalent of Israel’s deportation of Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian activist, founder of the Palestinian Center for Nonviolence.)
11 The Palestinian State rejects the idea of a proposed Israeli state — in reverse-equivalence of the clear and firm rejection by Israel’s leading Likud party of any possibility of an independent Palestinian state. (Likud’s rejection of a Palestinian state is made explicit in that Party’s charter. We may note by way of contrast that the 19th Palestinian Council [1988] proclaimed its recognition of the State of Israel in its pre-1967 borders. We may also note that this item in Likud’s charter, unlike certain Arab nations’ leaders’ denunciation of Israel’s right to exist as a state, has not been reported by the US media, despite its strong significance for any plausibility of a two-state solution of the Palestine-Israel conflict.)
12 Jewish-Israeli prisoners incarcerated by Palestinian security authorities match the number of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli prisons (5,318 as of June 2014).
13 The number of Israelis prisoners held in Palestinian jails without charge (currently zero) would match the number (363) of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel under “administrative detention.” (Israeli law provides for “administrative detention”; i.e., incarceration without charge, indictment, or trial — subject to indefinite extension.)
14 Palestinian officials respond to foreign criticism of their policies not by addressing the critique itself, but by accusing their critics of being anti-Palestinian — in equivalence with the Jewish-Israeli practice of responding to critiques of Israel’s policies not by addressing the critique itself, but with accusations of anti-Semitism.
15 Hamas rockets intentionally destroy Israeli infrastructure (e.g., water-systems, power-plants, schools) in equivalence with destruction wreaked intentionally upon Gaza’s infrastructure by Israel’s bombardment and shelling throughout several Israeli campaigns.
17 Palestinians spy on the US (in imitation of Israel’s spy Jonathan Pollard) or tap US officials’ cell phones (to imitate Israeli agents’ hacking Secretary John Kerry’s phone during Kerry’s conversations with Palestinian negotiators while he was en route to negotiate a truce between the two parties — these hackers gaining thereby for Israeli negotiators advanced information of Palestinian negotiators’ plans.
As I’ve noted above, this is only a partial list of changes required in order for us to apply with some honesty the Mantra of Equivalence.