State anti-boycott laws will fall

There's good news today from Palestine Legal telling of a judge stopping the enforcement of Arizona's anti boycott of Israel law, Arizona being one of 25 states to have such a law pushed through by the Israel lobby. Since the Supreme Court has long held that a corporation is a person with rights protected by the Constitution, it stands to reason that freedom of speech by a business cannot be limited by states.

The anti-boycott of Israel laws specify that if a business participates in a boycott of Israel, the state will not do business with it. This is an attempt to cripple the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement (BDS) that was started by the Palestinians as a peaceful method of putting pressure on Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank, to give equal rights to Palestinians and to allow Palestinians to return to their homes in Israel.

Eventually a case such as this one in Arizona will work its way to the Supreme Court where it will be ruled unconstitutional, invalidating all such state laws.

re: the Methodist Church vote on BDS

The governing body of the United Methodist Church is set to vote this week on whether to support a BDS. I hope they do, but it's no slam dunk.

Jesus was a rebel, but you sure wouldn’t know it from the huge organizations that have claimed him as a role model for their membership.

The Methodist Church is an extremely cautious organization that generally goes into the water when almost all others have already done so. The irrelevancy was one reason the faith in which I was tutored never caught on. I have my fingers and toes crossed that they will do what any person who appreciates liberty and justice for all would do.

Martin Luther King Jr. died at 39, but at least he said he could see the promised land, though he might not make it there. The Palestinians have been wretched for over 60 years and only now is there some sign of movement in the United States on their behalf. They haven’t been to the mountaintop like MLK because Israeli settlers are already there and have it cordoned off. All Americans should be ashamed of our part in keeping such long-suffering people oppressed.

being true to Judaism

Earlier this year, an attempt by the University of California at Berkeley student senate to have the school engage in the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel failed. It was vetoed by the senate president Will Smelko.

Part of the process were hearings. At one (video just below) 84 year old Hedy Epstein testified. Her speech is only ten minutes long, but reveals the view of those who suffered from the Holocaust yet do not see Israel as the spokesman for or representative of worldwide Jewry or the precepts of Judaism. By the way, when she refers to the president - it is to the student senate president, not Barack Obama

To emphasize the relationship between the suffering of Jews in past times and the suffering of Palestinians at present, I provide a second video. You need not watch it all. The pertinent segment is from 3:00 to 9:00 minutes, during which a Palestinian woman breaks down in anguish over living in fear for her home and family in the face of a threatened Israeli demolition project in her East Jerusalem neighborhood of Al Bustan. At first calm and composed for the interview, she finally cannot hide her despair. I challenge any viewer not to feel it with her. In an uncanny similarity - both Hedy Epstein's father and the Palestinian woman's husband were marched away from their homes in their pajamas by the authorities.





To conclude - the words of a former soldier in the IDF, Chen Alon, from an article published in Haaretz...

In testimony to the makers of the documentary film "On the Objection Front" (2004 ), Alon said, "As a 19-year-old kid it doesn't seem so terrible to you to enter someone's home. But when you live your life and have a family and a home of your own, and you argue for an hour about where to hang each picture and where each thing should go, suddenly the thought arises that someone will knock on your door and you will have to open, and 10 animals like me enter, and each of them can kick a chair, mess up a cupboard, open a door, spill everything on the floor, tell you 'Open this door,' ask you, 'What are these papers?' And this can happen on any given day at any given time, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, at whatever time someone can enter your home without any sort of permission or authorization. Just because he feels like it; and even if he doesn't feel like it - because he has to. Because he was ordered to enter homes twice during the patrol. That is an intolerable thought.

protesting a Chicago-Israel link

Today I attended a protest at Chicago's Millennium Park. There is a celebration going on with performances and exhibits from Chicago's sister-cities around the world. One of the cities is Petach Tikva in Israel. Why protest that relationship?

Petach Tikva is the home of a detention center to which Palestinians may be taken who are arrested in the occupied territories. Transportation of detainees to another country from occupied territory is illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention, but the whole practice of administrative detention under which Palestinians can be held by the Israeli military are an object of concern. As B'Tselem reports (boldface mine)...

Administrative detention is detention without charge or trial that is authorized by administrative order rather than by judicial decree. Under international law, it is allowed under certain circumstances. However, because of the serious injury to due-process rights inherent in this measure and the obvious danger of its abuse, international law has placed rigid restrictions on its application. According to international law, administrative detention can be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means.

Israel's use of administrative detention blatantly violates these restrictions. It is carried out under the thick cover of privilege, which denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defense. Over the years, Israel has administratively detained thousands of Palestinians for prolonged periods of time, without prosecuting them, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their attorneys to study the evidence, making a mockery of the protections specified in Israeli and international law to protect the right to liberty and due process, the right of defendants to state their case, and the presumption of innocence.

In addition, the sister-cities program promotes economic ties between countries. Strengthening economic ties with Israel shows America's disregard for the plight of the Palestinians by helping the economy of a country that has continually deprived them of their rights and their lands for over 40 years. Israel would like nothing better than business as usual - good business with the outside world and no consequences for their bad business in the occupied territories.

As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day on which to exercise the American right of free speech. Many fliers were handed out. One person walked up to us and said "Israel is our ally, you can go to hell!" I wish that fellow would read my posting The Ally that only Takes.