Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, November 21, 2023

 

BAY AREA

#CEASEFIRE MASS MEETING

Sunday, November 26

10:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.

Bay Resistance, Center for Political Education, APTP and AROC invite you to connect with allies and community to move into forceful action to stop the genocide in Gaza.

In this critical moment, we offer this mass meeting space to get clear on messaging and deepen our shared understanding of our organizing strategy. There will be space for political education, training on organizing skills, action planning, and spaces for arts and culture.

This event is open to everyone to get plugged in, including new people who want to learn more about this movement and activists who want to find ways to do more. We’ll have special breakout sessions for families and parents organizing at schools and in their districts.

Stay tuned for an RSVP link coming soon!  Check HERE for updated details:

https://www.facebook.com/events/267145765886103

Take Urgent Action Now!

Call Congress to Demand a Ceasefire Now!

https://act.uscpr.org/a/callforgaza?oa_ext=AROC

Email Congress to demand a Ceasefire Now!

https://act.uscpr.org/a/stop-funding-israels-massacres?oa_ext=AROC

AROC is the only organization in Northern California that builds power for our SWANA people by providing critical legal support and social services while organizing our community around issues of justice and equity.

Our team invites you to be part of the fabric that holds our work together, in the spirit of takkaful, by donating to our organization today:

https://araborganizing.networkforgood.com/projects/100246-main-giving-page

Donate to AROC:

https://araborganizing.networkforgood.com/projects/100246-main-giving-page

Copyright © 2023 Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), All rights reserved.

You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in AROC news and events.

Our mailing address is:

Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)

522 Valencia Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

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"The Rock" on top of Bernal Hill overlooking downtown San Francisco re-painted October 26, 2023, after pro-Israeli Zionist's destroyed it. 

Palestinians killed and wounded by Israel:

As of November 21, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 13,000—and more than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank in the past month. 

The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.

Since October 7, one in every 57 Palestinians living in Gaza has been killed or injured in Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion,

Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told diplomats in Geneva.

Israelis killed and abducted by Hamas: 

A total of 1,200* Israelis killed by Hamas (30 of them children) and 239 abducted on October 7, 2023.

* Israel has revised its official estimated death toll of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, lowering the number to about 1,200 people, down from more than 1,400, a spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday night.

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA  PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!

FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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Protesters calling for ceasefire in Gaza take over base of the Statue of Liberty

Hundreds of protesters affiliated with the group Jewish Voice for Peace staged a sit-in at the National Park Service site at 1:00 P.M., Monday, November 6, 2023 to call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/11/06/protesters-statue-liberty-gaza-israel-ceasefire

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Ann Boyer’s Powerful New York Times Resignation Letter

November 17, 2023

Read: The War Turns Gaza Into a ‘Graveyard’ for Children, By Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud, Nov. 18, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/world/middleeast/gaza-children-israel.html

According to Literary Hub[1], "[Early on November 16, 2023], the news broke that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist, and poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine, Anne Boyer, has resigned from her post, writing in her resignation letter that 'the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone...'"

 

The letter in full is written below:

 

"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.

"The Israeli state’s U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.

"The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from this war. It is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.

"Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse.

"I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.

"If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."

—Anne Boyer

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[1] https://lithub.com/read-anne-boyers-extraordinary-resignation-letter-from-the-new-york-times/

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Viva Fidel!

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PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD WIDELY!

 

To endorse the following statement as a trade unionist, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2tpd2c62Sh5YEVDOr2vmGWTuQArt-6OPQMDwd2wUnfNi_rQ/viewform

 

To endorse as other, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzWaP1U_KOHlH-ou1R3OD8zsuI5BWW1b9H4gtPoFK_lIQB3g/viewform

 

The list of signers will be updated periodically

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net

Website: laborforpalestine.net

 

Stand With Palestinian Workers: 

Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!

Labor for Palestine

 

“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)

 

The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”

 

The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.

 

Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.

 

In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:

 

1.     To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 

 

2.     To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 

 

3.     To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 

 

4.     Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

 

We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

 

Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine

(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild; Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council; Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation; Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat; Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return; Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine; Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired.)

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Join us for an exciting Cuba solidarity event coming up on Sunday, November 12th, 4 pm at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley. Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist and filmmaker with the Belly of the Beast media organization, is coming to the Bay Area as part of a national tour. She will be showing two new short documentary films exposing what's behind Biden's Cuba policy. This is an important chance for the Bay Area community to learn about current U.S. policy and show support for Cuba. 

Cuba has been outspoken about its solidarity with Palestine/Gaza during the current crisis.

Liz Oliva Fernández

Liz Oliva Fernández is a 29-year old journalist and on-camera television presenter from Havana, Cuba.  She is the award-winning presenter of the acclaimed documentary series The War on Cuba,  produced by Belly of the Beast and executive-produced by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover.  In addition to her journalism and filmmaking, Fernández is a dedicated anti-racist and feminist activist who co-founded Chicas Poderosas Cuba (Powerful Cuban Girls), an initiative that promotes change by inspiring female leadership and gender equality in Cuban society. 

Liz writes: “As a Cuban Black woman, I feel that the reality in which I grew up and still live is reflected in the stories we have told at Belly of the Beast. We challenge clichés – positive and negative – about Cuba and its people. And we are taking on issues that have been ignored or misrepresented by major media outlets both in Cuba and outside.”

Sponsored by Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network

Venceremos Brigade, Bay Area and 

Richmond, CA - Regla, Cuba Friendship Committee

More info: bayareacubasolidarity@gmail.com

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Jewish Doctor Speaks Out on Israel and Palestine

Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Canadian physician and author describes his own life experience and expresses his view on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

“I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.

“There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent—that’s what’s called the ‘Nakba’ in Arabic; the ‘disaster’ or the ‘catastrophe.’ There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.

“I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then.

“It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit!

“So, then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an ‘outdoor prison,’ which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.

“And ‘anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite’ is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.”

—Independent Catholic News, October 16, 2023

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/48251

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TERRORISM IN THE EYES OF THE IMPERIAL BEHOLDER - a poem

 

the French word

for rabies

is

la rage -

rage or outrage

 

and 

the French have a saying -

a man who wants to get rid of his dog

accuses it of spreading rabies

 

the people of Gaza

treated as inhuman animals

worse than dogs

are charged

with terrorism

 

come to think of it

what an honor !

 

world war two's resistance

against nazi extermination

was designated

as terrorism

by the Axis allies

 

what an honor !

 

Mandela

was monitored

as a terrorist

by the CIA

 

What an honor !

 

Tortuguita

peacefully meditating

near Israeli-funded cop city

was executed

in cold blood

on suspicion

of domestic terrorism 

 

What an honor !

 

in the spirit of Mandela

in the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

in the spirit of Tortuguita

in the spirit of Attica

may the anti colonial outrage

of the People of Palestine

contaminate us all -

the only epidemic

worth dying for

 

 (c) Julia Wright. October 17 2023. All Rights Reserved To The family of Wadea Al- Fayoume.

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Ruchell Cinque Magee Joins the Ancestors 

                                                         1939-2023

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors October 17, 2023, after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors last night after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

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The ongoing Zionist theft of Palestinian land from 1946 to now.

77 years of brutal oppression must end!

End all U.S. aid to Israel now!

For a democratic, secular Palestine!

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Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse

 

Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:

 

Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun.  Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.

 

I am still here.

 

Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment.  A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel.  With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.

 

Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls.  I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.

 

I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.

 

I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people. 

 

We are still here.

 

Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.

 

I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.

 

That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.

 

I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.

 

We are still here and you give me hope. 

 

I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me. 

 

I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you. 

 

And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head.  Prayer is an action.

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

DOKSHA, 

LEONARD PELTIER

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

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Free Julian Assange

Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here. As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger. Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality. As the Sam Adams Associates note:  “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.” We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support! Jesselyn Radack Director Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) ExposeFacts Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

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[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

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Articles

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1) ADL Data on Rise of Anti-Semitic Incidents Doesn’t Add Up

By Alan Macleod, Nov. 10, 2023

https://www.mintpressnews.com/adl-data-rise-anti-semitism-doesnt-add-up/286268/

Anew, highly publicized report from the Anti-Defamation League claims that anti-Semitic incidents across the United States have skyrocketed by more than 400%. But these ADL numbers do not add up – unless one equates opposition to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza with hatred of Jews.

 

The Anti-Defamation League’s findings that anti-Semitic incidents in the United States have risen exponentially have made headlines, both in America and worldwide (e.g., Reuters, CBS News, PBS, CNN, Washington Post). American Jews are purportedly facing a wave of hatred and violence like never before, leaving many terrified at the prospect of merely leaving the house.

 

In the month since Hamas’ surprise attack, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 10,000 people, including well over 3,000 children. Dozens of hospitals, schools and places of worship have been destroyed, as Israel has openly announced its plan to drive the densely-populated strip’s population into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, ethnically cleansing them from their land. In response to Israel’s actions, the United States has seen an unprecedented wave of demonstrations calling for a ceasefire.

 

DODGY DATA

 

As proof of this wave, the ADL published an interactive (and regularly updated) map of hundreds of incidents nationwide. Yet included in this map of anti-Jewish hate were 153 rallies and demonstrations for Palestine, which the influential NGO reflexively labeled as problematic, providing no further evidence. There were also 84 further rallies across the U.S. that the ADL claimed “supported terror.” These protests, the organization insisted, included “explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas,” although, again, the map does not explain further.

 

Together, these demonstrations represent essentially every major outburst of public solidarity for the people of Gaza, meaning that the ADL has tarred the entire movement as anti-Semitic. This is a highly controversial position, yet none of the news outlets referencing the ADL’s findings informed their readers of this.

 

Other episodes included in the ADL list are also potentially questionable. For example, one incident in Chicago was described as such: “Individuals at a pro-Palestinian rally chased and physically assaulted an individual holding a picture of an Israeli flag.” From the description, it is far from clear whether this was an anti-Semitic attack or a skirmish between rival groups protesting. If an individual showed up to a pro-Israel rally with a Palestinian flag and was assaulted, would this necessarily constitute an Islamophobic hate crime?

 

Nor does the list differentiate between trivial matters and extremely serious events. A large percentage of the incidents noted were simply racist signs being spotted. For instance, in Medfield, MA, “a swastika was carved into a portable toilet at a school,” while in Warrington, PA, “A swastika was spray painted on a utility pole.” It is unlikely, however, that toilet graffiti is the sort of incident that comes to many Americans’ minds when they read headlines about a shocking and dangerous rise in anti-Semitism.

 

There certainly have been extremely serious anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in the wake of Hamas’ surprise attack and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. For example, in Albuquerque, NM, a man phoned in a (phony) bomb threat, claiming he was in a messianic synagogue with a backpack full of explosives, causing the building to be evacuated. The ADL effectively puts incidents like this on par with marches calling for a ceasefire, thereby tacitly equating the rejection of Israel’s murderous war with a desire to kill Jews.

 

Some cynics might say that is precisely the point. Historian Norman Finkelstein, for example, has claimed that the ADL regularly announces the arrival of a new wave of anti-Semitism and that these pronouncements often coincide with international condemnation of Israeli violence, and has suggested that these amount to attempts to run interference for the State of Israel, changing the subject to distract from its crimes.

 

Miko Peled, an Israeli-American activist and son of a former top Israeli general, went further, writing that:

 

“The ADL is clearly a racist, Zionist, anti-Palestinian organization that makes it its mission to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle by equating it first with terrorism and now, since that claim has proven to be absurd, with extremism and anti-Semitism.”

 

The ADL is not the only pro-Israel NGO attempting to portray opposition to Israeli violence as inherently racist. Stop Antisemitism, for instance, posted pictures of a truck displaying messages reading “Israel kills one child every 10 minutes. End U.S. aid to Israel” and “Free Palestine,” along with the truck’s number plate. Another choice piece of “anti-Semitism” they profiled was the words “liberate Palestine” etched onto a toilet cubicle.

 

PLAYING DEFENSE FOR ISRAEL

 

That one of the Anti-Defamation League’s core aims is to defend Israel is not in doubt. The data on anti-Semitic attacks in the United States appears on a page titled “Stand with Israel,” after all. Furthermore, the ADL has published strategy guides groups can use to “deal with anti-Israel activity on campus” and recently printed a handbook of guidelines for media to use when covering Israel’s attack on Palestine.

 

This handbook instructs journalists to:

 

1.     Refer to Hamas as “terrorists” rather than militants or fighters;

2.     Describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “legitimate military action in response to [the Hamas] massacre and to prevent future acts of terror”

3.     Make sure that their readers understand that pro-Israel protests are morally far superior to their pro-Palestine equivalents. After all, they insist, “the Israeli Army does everything it can to limit and prevent civilian casualties.”

More evidence of the ADL’s true goals can be found on the ADL’s own “Mission and History” page, where it lists its most important moments and achievements. Many of these achievements are clearly just advancing the State of Israel’s interests, including the following:

 

·      The World Conference Against Racism, a U.N.-sanctioned conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, turns into an anti-Israel and antisemitic hate fest. ADL convinces the U.S. government and others to withdraw in protest.

·      ADL exposes the inherent antisemitism in Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s published accusations that an “Israel lobby” is forcing the U.S. government to adopt policies that are counter to American interests. ADL further renounces similar accusations in former President Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

·      ADL advocates for strong international sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, exposes European business dealings with Iran and launches the “Stop Nuclear Iran” information campaign.

·      In an effort to help address antisemitic and anti-Israel intimidation in schools and on campus, ADL lobbies for the Department of Education to include antisemitism and campus anti-Zionism within its ongoing civil rights enforcement authority.

·       

As can be seen from the final example, the Anti-Defamation League has gone out of its way to consistently equate opposition to Israeli government policy with racism. Indeed, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has gone further than the standard line that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, stating on MSNBC last month that “anti-Zionism is genocide.” Explaining this position, Greenblatt doubled down, insisting that, “Every Jewish person is a Zionist…it is fundamental to our existence.”

 

BOYCOTTING THE BOYCOTTERS

 

Given their stance on anti-Zionism, it is perhaps no surprise that the Anti-Defamation League has denounced tactic of boycotting Israel as anti-Semitic. And as the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has grown, the ADL has found creative ways to undermine it. Chief amongst these is to move into the field of investing in order to shield Israel from being targeted by ethical investment companies.

 

Last December, the ADL announced it had acquired financial company JLens to fight so-called anti-Israel activities in the progressive investing arena.

 

“It’s time for the Jewish community to take a seat at the table to use our power as institutional investors to ensure corporations are aligned with our values, and don’t fall for antisemitic pressures,” Greenblatt said, announcing the move.

 

Increasing numbers of people wish to invest their money ethically, meaning that corporations that pollute the environment or countries with particularly poor human rights records are off the table. Given the way it treats its Arab population and how it is occupying two neighboring countries, Israel stands to lose from any rise in ethical capitalism, hence the ADL’s attempts to influence the sphere and create an Israeli exception.

 

TRAINING AMERICAN COPS TO BE MORE LIKE ISRAELIS

 

Through its other programs, the Anti-Defamation League has a far greater effect on American society than many realize. For one, the ADL is the single largest non-governmental police trainer in the country. Every major metropolitan police department in America has sent officers to the ADL’s Advanced Training School, which provides instruction on extremism and terrorism for more than 250 U.S. agencies, including ICE and the FBI. In fact, ADL training is now mandatory for all new FBI special agents and intelligence analysts.

 

The ADL also facilitates American law enforcement officials to train in Israel and for Israeli and American forces to trade practices with one another. Thus, the surveillance and intimidation tactics honed on Palestinians living in open-air prisons find their way back to the United States, where police increasingly treat low-income neighborhoods and communities of color similarly to how Israel suppresses its indigenous population.

 

A perfect example of this is Ferguson, MO and the killing of Michael Brown. In 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot the unarmed 18-year-old black male while he had his hands up and was begging him not to fire. The event sparked nationwide protests.

 

Police Chief Timothy Fitch, the head of the county police department, had received an ADL-funded trip to Israel, where he met and was trained by Israeli counterinsurgency specialists. Activists have consistently highlighted the parallels and connections between American and Israeli law enforcement, from tactics to weapons.

 

Brown is far from the only American victim of Israeli-trained police violence. In 2006, Atlanta cops, fresh from a counterterrorism and drug enforcement exchange program with Israeli soldiers, carried out a no-knock raid at the home of 92-year-old black woman Kathryn Johnston. After firing 39 shots, police handcuffed Johnston, planted drugs on her corpse, and left her to bleed to death.

 

A SHAMEFUL HISTORY

 

Training the police is far from the only questionable activity the Anti-Defamation League has been involved in, however. Although it presents itself as a liberal, forward-thinking institution, the ADL has, for nearly a century, been at the forefront of the fight against progressive change in the United States and around the world.

 

As early as the 1930s, the ADL began carrying out surveillance against leftist organizations, reporting their activities to the House Committee on Un-American Activities – a government organization dedicated to suppressing left-wing thought. Although they formally opposed McCarthyism, the ADL also secretly fed information on a host of organizations to the FBI, becoming, in effect, a private spying agency.

 

The ADL stood against the student movement of the 1960s, attacking the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and branding them as “racist.” But it reserved special vitriol for the black liberation movement, spying on the NAACP and on Martin Luther King Jr. himself. It also attempted to keep the racist apartheid government in South Africa afloat, spying on the African National Congress Party and top anti-apartheid activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sharing that information with the white supremacist government.

 

More recently, the ADL has sought to undermine the Movement for Black Lives, strongly criticizing it for highlighting connections between how people of color are treated in the U.S. and how Israel treats Palestinians.

 

The longer one looks into the history of the Anti-Defamation League, the harder it gets to find a progressive institution, organization or movement that it has not surveilled or attacked. In 1993, it was revealed that the ADL had collected confidential information on nearly 10,000 activists and more than 700 organizations and had infiltrated countless more groups. Those surveilled included the United Farm Workers, the AFL-CIO, Greenpeace and a host of progressive Arab-American and Jewish-American organizations. The ADL even spied on the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and fought to keep homophobia out of anti-bias curriculums.

 

The ADL’s former research director Irwin Suall summed up his organization’s position: “It’s the American left that’s the biggest threat to American Jews.” What the “threat” from progressive Americans was not explained. However, since Israel derives crucial political and financial backing from the United States, it could indeed be said that if public opinion turned strongly against Israel, its legitimacy would be in question.

 

Throughout the period, the ADL passed sensitive data on to the government of Israel, acting as its unofficial spy agency. But many thought this relationship went even further, chief among them the FBI. A 1969 internal FBI memo noted that the ADL was very likely breaking the Foreign Agents Registration Act by acting as an arm of the Israeli state. “It is felt incredible to assume [the ADL] is not furnished to an official of the Government of Israel”, the memo concluded.

 

And while the ADL attacks and defames public figures like Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, claiming that she is anti-Semitic, it has supported many of President Trump’s moves despite his history of making blatantly anti-Semitic statements. In 2017, for instance, it praised him for announcing that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy to the ethnically cleansed city.

 

American Jews do face increased threats. In 2018, a gunman opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11. Only a few months later, a terrorist opened fire at the Chabad of Poway in California. But fighting this tide of intolerance is not helped by conflating sympathy with the Palestinian cause and protesting against the State of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza with Jew hatred. Yet this is precisely what the Anti-Defamation League continues to do, despite the fact that many of these marches were led by Jewish organizations. The ADL’s actions represent an increasingly desperate rear-guard action to shield Israel from legitimate criticism and smear activists the world over as racists. These attempts are indeed pathetic, but given the ADL’s long history of defending the indefensible, perhaps they are unsurprising.

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2) Many West Bank Palestinians Are Being Forced Out of Their Villages. Is My Family Next?

By Ali Awad, Nov. 20, 2023

Mr. Awad is a Palestinian writer living in the West Bank.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/opinion/israel-west-bank-palestinians.html

Zuhour Muhammad Awad, the author’s grandmother, walking in the village of Tuba in May 2021. Ms. Awad says she was born in Tuba in 1948. She has spent her life caring for herds of sheep and making cheese and yogurt. Credit...Emily Glick

I was born in February 1998 in Tuba, a rural shepherding community of 80 Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, where my family has lived for generations. Over the years we have suffered repeated attacks by Israeli settlers, part of an ongoing campaign to remove us from our land. Still, nothing prepared me for what our life has become since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. In the last six weeks, the raids and harassment by settlers have become so intense that I do not know how much longer I and the other members of my community will be able to live here.

 

Under the cover of war, settlers have been storming villages in the West Bank, threatening Palestinians and destroying their homes and their livelihoods. International attention has been mostly focused on the atrocities in Israel and in Gaza, including the internal displacement of more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip.

 

In the West Bank, increasingly violent assaults on villages have forced at least 16 Palestinian communities — more than 1,000 people — to flee their homes since Oct. 7. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settlers have attacked Palestinians in more than 250 incidents in the West Bank. So far, 200 Palestinians have been killed, eight by settlers and the others during clashes with Israeli forces.

 

In my village and in other villages around us, settlers have been raiding homes and harassing us relentlessly, sometimes multiple times a day. Less than a week into the war, according to a video published by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, an armed settler came into At-Tuwani village in the South Hebron Hills, approached a group of unarmed Palestinians walking after Friday Prayers and shot one of them in the abdomen from point-blank range. Ten minutes down the road, in Susiya, villagers said that settlers threatened to shoot residents if they did not evacuate their homes within 24 hours. On Oct. 30, settlers set fire to several homes in Khirbet a-Safai, a village less than a mile east of Tuba. And residents in the neighboring village to the west, Umm al-Khair, told human rights activists that armed settlers in uniform held people there at gunpoint and forced them to condemn Hamas and promise to raise Israeli flags in the village or they would be murdered.

 

For those of us in Tuba, this wave of attacks is part of a long string of attempts to force us to leave our homes. And it’s not only the settlers who want us out: Successive Israeli governments have also tried to get rid of us over the last decades.

 

In the early 1980s, our village, along with a group of others in an area called Masafer Yatta, was designated by the military as Firing Zone 918, land that Israel decided it wanted for training its forces (A government document indicates that there was an intention to displace residents living in the area). We have been fighting for the right to remain on our land ever since. We live in Area C of the West Bank, which means the Israeli military has complete civil and security control over our lives. Israel has tried various tactics to get us to leave, including enacting policies that prevent us from building homes in our own village and not allowing us to be connected to the main electrical grid or water infrastructure.

 

Sometimes it’s been much less subtle: In November 1999, when I was a year old, the Israeli military loaded all of Tuba’s residents and livestock onto trucks and dumped us on the side of the road several miles away. We spent the following months crowded in makeshift tents, fighting to shelter ourselves and our livestock from the cold winter rain. We were eventually allowed to return to our village “temporarily,” pending a final court decision.

 

Settlers from the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on — built near Tuba and partly on private Palestinian land not long after we returned — have done their share as well. In 2002, they cut off the main road that connected Tuba to the surrounding villages, including the children’s closest school and the city of Yatta, where we buy all of our food and medical supplies.

 

Settlers have also resorted to violence, some directed at my own family. We believe it was nearby settlers who stabbed my uncle, attacked my cousins with stones, and, as I’ve written before, set fire to a year’s worth of food for our flocks of sheep.

 

Throughout it all, we had been awaiting the final ruling from the Israeli high court about whether the Israeli military could force us to evacuate. Then, last year, the court ruled in favor of the state, allowing Israel to evict about 1,200 Palestinians, including those in my village. We have remained steadfast in the face of this pressure and refuse to abandon our land and our traditional way of life. But in recent weeks, attacks by settlers have rattled our resolve.

 

We have always felt that the work of the military, which demolishes our houses and prevents our ability to move freely, was intimately intertwined with and reinforced by harassment from settlers. However, since the war started more than a month ago, the settlers and soldiers in the region seemed to have fused into one entity, ending whatever semblance of distance existed between these two violent systems. Settlers whom we recognize from years of harassment in our villages have suddenly become soldiers, as reservists or as part of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s civilian security teams. Army reservists who are new to the area are apparently now taking their orders from local settler-soldiers or security teams. Together they patrol our communities with their M16s and threaten anyone who tries to bring his flock to graze or leave the village for work or errands.

 

In Tuba, as in nearby villages, settlers have also targeted the water systems and solar panels we have built and are entirely dependent on, as if to remind us of our vulnerability. They are clearly taking advantage of this moment to make our lives unlivable, and we have no reason to believe that, especially during a state of war, any of the violence we are experiencing in our communities will slow or stop soon. Local Israeli authorities say they are investigating some of the more violent attacks, including the killings, but they are showing no signs of being able to control them, and in fact, government ministers are fanning the flames.

 

In the last five weeks alone, residents from five other villages in the South Hebron Hills have been forced to pack up and flee from their homes. If the situation doesn’t change, I worry that Tuba will be next. As a letter signed by 30 Israeli human rights NGOs recently stated: “The only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong and direct intervention by the international community.”

 

Since I can remember, life in Tuba has been difficult, but it has also always been full of beauty and calm. It is the life my family has known for generations, and the traditional lifestyle we live is deeply connected to the land around us and the animals we care for. The hillsides are stamped with our footsteps and those of our flocks, the rocks on the top of the hill neatly arranged so we can watch the sunset over the desert. But the fear we feel, in Tuba and across Area C, now hangs heavy over this landscape. I don’t know if we will be able to stand it.

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3) Jihad and Hamas: Object Lesson in Incompatibility

The brutal and unspeakably gruesome attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which should rightly be condemned, was not an act of religion.

By Sumbul Ali-Karamali, Nov. 21, 2023

https://www.laprogressive.com/the-middle-east/jihad-and-hamas?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=b626ccfd4a-LAP+News+-

I’m often asked, as a woman with a degree in Islamic law who speaks about Islam and Muslims, about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s painful to discuss on multitudinous levels, but perhaps the most important (yet misunderstood) fact about this conflict is this: it is a modern political and territorial conflict, not a religious one. One of its terribly heartbreaking consequences is that it has spilled over into the wide world and increased both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred.

 

Why is this not a religious conflict? Before the 20th century, for thirteen hundred years or so, Muslims and Jews got along pretty well, and Jews lived in Muslim lands for centuries. The “they’ve always been at each other’s throats” is lazy nonsense that attempts to rewrite history in light of Israel-Palestine. Islam accepts Judaism and Christianity as part of Islam and therefore Jews were considered to be people who had received an earlier revelation from God. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are therefore, in the Islamic view, religious cousins. Remarkably, the Qur’an explicitly says that it’s not just Muslims who will go to heaven, but that “the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians—all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good—will have their rewards with their Lord. No fear for them, nor will they grieve” (2:62). When, in 1492, over 50,000 Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition (from which Muslims also fled), they fled to the Ottoman Empire, which welcomed them. Traditionally, the physician to the Ottoman Sultan was always Jewish.

 

Although the Israel-Palestine conflict is not motivated by religion, both sides use religious language to advance their agendas. Hamas, though it couches its language in the language of the religious texts, is a nationalist organization, not interested in world dominance but in resisting the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has invoked the biblical reference to Amalek and referred to the bombing of Gaza as a “holy mission.”

 

Hamas’s brutal and unspeakably gruesome attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which should rightly be condemned, was not an act of religion. Hamas would probably characterize its attack as jihad, but Islamic law is very clear on the rules of jihad, and Hamas violated them.

 

Although the Israel-Palestine conflict is not motivated by religion, both sides use religious language to advance their agendas.

 

Islam contains many types of jihad, which means “struggle.” Military jihad is the taking up of arms only in self-defense or to overthrow an oppressor.

 

But here’s the really critical bit: even in a legitimate jihad to overthrow an oppressor, never are those undertaking jihad ever allowed to kill non-soldiers. Never are they allowed to commit rape or kill civilians. In fact, never are those undertaking jihad ever allowed to kill non-combatants, poison the water supply, kill children or the elderly, kill anyone taking refuge in a holy building (including churches and synagogues), uproot trees, arbitrarily destroy property, commit terrorism (defined as the clandestine use of force), cheat or use treachery, or use torture on anyone (including animals).

 

These rules, established in Islam a thousand years ago, are stricter than our modern rules of warfare.

 

Therefore, Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 was not jihad, because it clearly violated these rules. Suppose Hamas had publicly announced that they were waging war on Israel and then marched in plain sight to attack Israel and limited their attack to only armed soldiers and didn’t destroy any property or kill or injure anyone else. Would that have been jihad? Possibly, under medieval Islamic law, but not under modern Islamic law, because the old rules of military jihad applied to a historical world that had no nation-states or international law, which is not our world today.

 

Yes, many people on all sides are angry and frustrated and horrified. But cannot we try for compassion in addition to whatever advocacy we are undertaking?

 

Military jihad is only one kind of jihad. The greater jihad in Islam is the jihad to make oneself a better person. To resist an oppressor, the preferable jihad is the jihad of patient forbearance, which is nonviolent resistance. There’s also jihad by the hand (like doing good works to help people) and jihad by the word (like writing articles like—I hope—this one to try to build bridges and deepen understanding).

 

Therefore, the tension on university campuses and elsewhere and the rise in hate crimes against both Jewish Americans and Palestinian Americans (as well as Muslims and people who “look” Muslim and even Jews advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza), is tragic. Our communities are not enemies. We shouldn’t allow political conflicts to tear us apart. Yes, many people on all sides are angry and frustrated and horrified. But cannot we try for compassion in addition to whatever advocacy we are undertaking?

 

It is possible to advocate in this situation without dehumanizing and demonizing the other side. Let us not rely on our corporate media to inform us properly, either—this is a complicated situation that deserves cool-headed study. And above all, despite our anger, let us exert ourselves in the difficult jihad of endeavoring to understand the opposite point of view and treating one another like human beings who deserve compassion.

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