Year: 2017

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State of Palestine joins Interpol

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Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France. (photo: Laurent Cipriani / AP)

Despite strong opposition from Israel, the international police organization approves Palestine’s membership by a vote of 75–24.

By Peter Meaumont / The Guardian / Sep 27, 2017

Israel campaigned to block the Interpol move and made a series of procedural moves in an attempt to prevent the issue coming to a vote. . . . After Israel blocked the last Palestinian attempt to join Interpol — at last year’s annual general meeting in Indonesia — the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his country’s diplomatic efforts had secured a major victory. The Israeli foreign ministry made no immediate comment on Wednesday’s decision.

Interpol has voted to admit Palestine as a full member, dealing a significant diplomatic blow to Israel, which has strenuously lobbied against Palestinian admission.

In a secret vote of representatives of the international police organization’s members in China, Palestinian membership was approved by 75 to 24 votes, with 34 abstentions — exceeding the two-thirds requirement of yes to no votes.

“The State of Palestine and the Solomon Islands are now Interpol member countries,” the organization tweeted after the ballot.

Continue reading “State of Palestine joins Interpol”

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Muslim Ban 3.0 prohibits travel from 8 countries

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Donald Trump answers questions after arriving in Washington on Sunday. (photo: Getty Images)

In a far-reaching move, President Trump orders permanent restrictions on travel from six Muslim-majority countries.

By Oliver Laughland / The Guardian / September 25, 2017

“Six of President Trump’s targeted countries are Muslim. The fact that Trump has added North Korea — with few visitors to the U.S. — and a few government officials from Venezuela doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban. President Trump’s original sin of targeting Muslims cannot be cured by throwing other countries onto his enemies list.”
— Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union

 

On Sunday evening the Trump administration issued its third travel ban in less than a year, opening yet another chapter in the heated legal and civil rights battle that has dominated much of the president’s first nine months in office.

Trump’s ban has gone through many iterations, from a chaotically implemented first attempt that was blocked by a series of federal courts, to a streamlined version that was refined even further by the supreme court and eventually allowed to come into effect in June.

With all the legal challenges, policy revisions, and Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric on immigration, it has been hard to keep up with what has often felt like a set of ever-evolving restrictions. In the latest twist, the supreme court announced on Monday it had cancelled arguments on the ban set for 10 October, asking for updated briefings from the government and the ban’s challengers.

Here we answer some of the key questions about the new ban.

Continue reading “Muslim Ban 3.0 prohibits travel from 8 countries”

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Event: Reception for Naim Ateek, Liberation Theologist

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Naim Ateek is a Palestinian priest in the Anglican Church and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Date: Thursday, Oct 12, 2017
Time: 2:30 – 4:00 pm
Location: Episcopal Diocesan House
1551 10th Ave E
Seattle, WA 98102
Information: Email questions here
Tickets: Free

Event Details

We are pleased to welcome the Reverend Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel, and Tarek Abuta, Executive Director of Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), to Seattle. Rev. Ateek and Mr. Abuta will be in town to mark the launch of the Bishop Edmund Lee Browning Memorial Fund, honoring the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Browning was instrumental in the founding of FOSNA and one of the strongest supporters of Sabeel.

Continue reading “Event: Reception for Naim Ateek, Liberation Theologist”

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Event: Welcoming the Stranger, Ways of Serving and Understanding

 

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Syrian youth and children gather in a refugee camp in Jordan where the number of children exceeds 60 percent, hence its name “The Children’s Camp.” Many have lost relatives or parents. (photo: IMB, 2013)

Please join our brothers and sisters at St. Mark’s for this important event about how to better serve the refugees among us.

Date: Saturday, Sep 30, 2017
Time: 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Location: St. Mark’s Cathedral, Bloedel Hall
Information: Email questions here
Tickets: $15.00 (includes lunch and materials)
Tickets and more information here

Continue reading “Event: Welcoming the Stranger, Ways of Serving and Understanding”

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“1984” in Israel and Palestine

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Nablus, 1990. (photo: Alex Levac)

We must get the Israeli public to recognize this basic human truth: Occupation by a foreign government cannot be a substitute for sovereignty, just as slavery isn’t freedom, war isn’t peace and ignorance isn’t strength.

By Dmitry Shumsky / Haaretz / July 13, 2017

A Palestinian state that faithfully reflects the national yearnings of all parts of the Palestinian people, which deserves national freedom like any other people  . . . will only come about with the end of the Israeli occupation and liquidation of the lion’s share of the settlement enterprise.

In one of the most trenchant articles ever written here against the occupation, Prof. Shlomo Avineri wrote that any denials of the fundamental fact that Palestinian residents of the territories — who have been under Israel’s direct or indirect control since 1967 — are under Israeli occupation “recall George Orwell’s book ‘1984,’ in which the government declares that slavery is freedom, war is peace and ignorance is strength” (Haaretz Hebrew Edition, March 17).

A recent op-ed by former Defense Minister Moshe Arens (“Gaza, a failed Palestinian state,” June 26), which claimed that the Gaza Strip is a “sovereign Palestinian state,” is clear confirmation of Avineri’s diagnosis.

Continue reading ““1984” in Israel and Palestine”

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Why the Occupation is No Accident

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Ilan Pappé speaking at the conference The Israel Lobby and American Policy in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2017. (photo: Phil Portlock)

The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories by Ilan Pappe, Oneworld Books (2017)

By Rod Such / The Electronic Intifada
September 18, 2017

Everything that followed the 1967 War, notes Pappe, follows the “logic of settler colonialism” and that logic in turn foresees the eventual elimination of the indigenous Palestinians. That outcome, however, is not inevitable. An alternative is possible, Pappe maintains, if Israel decolonizes and makes “way for the logic of human and civil rights.”

As early as 1963 — four years before the 1967 War — the Israeli government was planning the military and administrative takeover of the West Bank, according to The Biggest Prison on Earth, a new book by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.

The planning for that operation — codenamed Granit (granite) — took place over a month on the campus of Hebrew University in the Givat Ram neighborhood of western Jerusalem. Israeli military administrators responsible for overseeing Palestinians within Israel joined military legal officials, interior ministry figures and private attorneys to create the judicial and administrative decrees required to rule over the one million Palestinians then living in the West Bank.

These plans were part of a larger strategy for placing the West Bank under military occupation. That strategy was codenamed the Shacham Plan for the Israeli colonel, Mishael Shacham, who authored it, and was formally presented by the Israeli chief of general staff to the army on 1 May 1963.

Continue reading “Why the Occupation is No Accident”

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Event: Reception for Naim Ateek, Liberation Theologist

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Naim Ateek is a Palestinian priest in the Anglican Church and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Date: Thursday, October 12, 2017
Time: 2:30–4:00 p.m.
Location: Episcopal Diocesan House
1551 10th Ave E
Seattle, WA 98102
Information: Email questions here
Tickets: Free

Event Details

We are pleased to welcome the Reverend Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel, and Tarek Abuta, Executive Director of Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), to Seattle. Rev. Ateek and Mr. Abuta will be in town to mark the launch of the Bishop Edmund Lee Browning Memorial Fund, honoring the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Browning was instrumental in the founding of FOSNA and one of the strongest supporters of Sabeel.

Continue reading “Event: Reception for Naim Ateek, Liberation Theologist”

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Event: Welcoming the Stranger, Ways of Serving and Understanding

 

img20138302907hi1
Syrian youth and children gather in a refugee camp in Jordan where the number of children exceeds 60 percent, hence its name “The Children’s Camp.“ Many have lost relatives or parents. (photo: IMB, 2013)

Please join our brothers and sisters at St. Mark’s for this important event about how to better serve the refugees among us.

Date: Saturday, September 30, 2017
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: St. Mark’s Cathedral, Bloedel Hall
Information: Email questions here
Tickets: $15.00 (includes lunch and materials)
Tickets and more information here

Event Details

Inviting in the stranger, as Matthew’s Gospel directs, is central to our identity as Christians. But what does that mean in practical terms, right here on the ground in Seattle? This event, sponsored by Mideast Focus Ministry at Saint Mark’s Cathedral, will feature an array of guest speakers and workshops to help us understand how to better serve refugee populations here in Seattle and beyond. Featured speakers and guests include Dean Steve Thomason; The Rev. Pete Strimer, The Rev. Terry Kyllo, Mary Segall, Mideast Focus Ministry Chair; Olivier Santos, Saint Mark’s, Anne Lynn, President, American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem; Greg Hope, Refugee Resettlement Office; Talya Gillman, Jewish Family Services; Rizwan Rizwi, Muslim Housing Services; The Lutheran Refugee Program; and representatives from Catholic Refugee Services. Tickets are $15, which includes a catered lunch and workshop materials.

 

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Crusaders and Zionists

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(image: Christianity Today)

By Uri Avnery / Antiwar.com
September 2, 2017

“When you were writing your book, did you ever think about the similarities between the Crusaders and the modern Zionists?” [the author inquired.]
“Actually, I hardly thought about anything else. I wanted to subtitle the book ‘A Guidebook For the Zionist About How Not To Do It,’ but my Jewish friends advised me to abstain from doing so.”
— British Historian Seven Runciman

A few days ago I found myself in Caesarea, sitting in a restaurant and looking out over the sea. The sunbeams were dancing on the little waves, the mysterious ruins of the ancient town arrayed behind me. It was hot, but not too hot, and I was thinking about the crusaders.

Caesarea was built by King Herod some 2000 years ago and named after his Roman master, Augustus Caesar. It once again became an important town under the Crusaders, who fortified it. These fortifications are what now makes the place a tourist attraction.

For some years in my life I was obsessed with the Crusaders. It started during the 1948 “War of Independence,” when I chanced to read a book about the crusaders and found that they had occupied the same locations opposite the Gaza strip which my battalion was occupying. It took the crusaders several decades to conquer the strip, which at the time extended to Ashkelon. Today it is still there in Muslim hands.

After the war, I read everything I could about these Crusaders. The more I read, the more fascinated I became. So much so, that I did something I have never done before or after: I wrote a letter to the author of the most authoritative book about the period, the British historian Steven Runciman.

To my surprise, I received a handwritten reply by return of post, inviting me to come and see him when I happened to be in London. I happened to be in London a few weeks later and called him up. He insisted I come over immediately.

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Senator Cantwell, Are You Listening?

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Seattle activists challenge Maria Cantwell’s sponsorship of S. 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.

By Alice Rothchild / Mondoweiss
September 10, 2017

According to the ACLU: The bill states that violators shall be fined in accordance with the penalties laid out in Section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That section provides that violations are punishable by a civil penalty that could reach $250,000 and that willful violations are subject to criminal prosecution, which could result in a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.

Senate Bill 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, (and its twin in the House of Representatives, Bill 1697), are currently wending their ways through the national legislative process with all the usual front and backroom big money pressure from AIPAC, StandWithUs, and Co., as well as pushback from the less financially endowed citizenry. S. 720 is part of a host of national and state level legislation that seeks to suppress criticism of Israeli policy, to destroy BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement (as anti-Semitic hate speech dangerous to Israel), and to erase Palestinian history and narrative. Washington Senator Maria Cantwell who claims to support freedom of speech and human rights, is a cosponsor of S. 720 and we have a problem with that.

Six constituents (including myself) met with [Sen. Cantwell’s] outreach staffer in Seattle on September 7. We are activist Jews, a Unitarian, an Episcopalian, and an Anglican; we are a building contractor, doctor, Palestinian educator, psychologist, and folks active on community and social justice issues. Most of us have had personal experiences bearing witness and working in Israel/Palestine. Dayna was welcoming, interested, but clearly not well versed in the topic, as that is the turf of the DC office. So we started with the basics. Continue reading “Senator Cantwell, Are You Listening?”