Sabeel Labor Day Weekend Conference Draws Hundreds to Portland

By Sister Elaine Kelley

A two-day educational conference presented jointly by Friends of Sabeel-North America and Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, and co-sponsored by over 30 organizations, drew between 250 and 300 people to Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. The Aug. 29 and 30 event featured lectures and workshops, a catered Middle Eastern banquet, a panel of the presenters, and a spellbinding poetry reading by an International Solidarity Movement activist.

The event also drew occasional police patrols following repeated verbal threats against conference organizers by a small group of vociferous pro-Zionist demonstrators who picketed at the entrance to the church with a large Israeli flag, shouted obscenities at people arriving for registration, photographed participants' license plates, and went so far as to push at least one conference attendee off the sidewalk. Police were called three times by church staff and conference organizers, but no arrests were made.

"Laboring for Justice in Palestine and Israel: A Labor Day Weekend Conference for Peacemakers" featured presentations by Sabeel's Jerusalem director, Rev. Naim Ateek; Jeff Halper of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Pax Christi USA national director David Robinson; De La Salle Christian Brother Jerome Sullivan, who just completed six years as vice-president for development at Bethlehem University; Donald Wagner of Northpark University in Chicago, an expert on Christian Zionism and author of Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000; and Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, who co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

A workshop on "Working With the Media" was led by journalist Ann Hafften, coordinator of Middle East Networking for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Division for Global Mission in Chicago. International Solidarity Movement activist Joe Carr, 22, who witnessed both the killing of Rachel Corrie by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah Camp, Gaza, and the shooting of British activist Tom Hurndall as he attempted to protect Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire, led a workshop with Portland attorney Tom Nelson, co-founder of Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights. During the workshop, entitled "Eyewitness to Tragedy: The International Solidarity Movement," Carr so surprised and delighted attendees with his poem about Rachel Corrie, which he performed as an a cappella rap song while showing a fast-paced slide presentation, that Don Wagner gave up some of his own presentation time so that Carr could do a repeat performance in the church sanctuary where the major lectures were held. Carr attended Evergreen State College with Corrie and was with her at Rafah Camp during the two months before her death. His 1,550-word, 10-minute poem, "The Rachel Corrie Story," dramatizes his experience in Rafah Camp and the tragic death of Rachel Corrie on March 16. The emotional high-point of the conference, one participant called Carr's performance "overwhelming." He already has been invited to present at two other Sabeel events scheduled in Chicago and Chapel Hill.

The Labor Day conference represented the first time Sabeel has partnered with a secular organization in an attempt to attain maximum outreach and conference participation. Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights is a locally based association of people focused on human rights and on educating the public about U.S. spending and foreign policy. Sabeel's focus is on educating the Western churches and developing support for the Palestinian Christian community in Palestine and its efforts to achieve justice in the region through a nonviolent end to the Israeli occupation.

A major emphasis at the conference was the role of churches and the responsibility of people of faith to challenge church institutions on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. "It helps to connect with others to overcome the message we get at church to be silent," noted Jennifer Grosvenor, a member of the conference coordinating committee who participated in a Sabeel solidarity visit to Palestine in March. A conference like this "empowers us to go back to our faith or justice communities to speak the truth," she said. "It's not only to break the silence, but also to help us not feel so alone."

In his welcoming remarks, Sabeel founder Naim Ateek stated that Christians cannot be satisfied sitting on the sidelines, but must act from the position of faith to address injustice. Expressing his appreciation for "people who come from different approaches," he explained Sabeel's history of working with Jews and Muslims as well as with others who work to "achieve justice through nonviolent resistance."

A strong Catholic representation in the line-up of speakers was intended to challenge the Archdiocese of Portland in particular for its unwillingness to participate in the Middle East justice work of Sabeel or its own Catholic peace organization, Pax Christi USA, whose international head is the Palestinian Roman Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah. Frank Fromherz, director of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese's office of justice and peace, was fired in April by Archbishop John G. Vlazny for publicly condemning the war on Iraq (see June 2003 Washington Report, p. 53) and for lending the church's name as co-sponsor of an anti-war rally. Following his firing, Fromherz told this writer that he had been instructed many years ago by Archdiocese Chancellor Mary Jo Tully to "never discuss" the Palestinian issue.

Conference presenters David Robinson and Brother Jerome Sullivan were featured in publicity aimed at attracting members of the local Catholic community. Robinson, an internationally recognized expert in the field of disarmament and nuclear deterrence, represents Pax Christi International on disarmament issues at the United Nations. He was arrested at a March anti-war action at the Federal Building in Erie, Pennsylvania, and, along with Rev. Jesse Jackson and United Methodist Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, met with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss the role of faith-based organizations in resolving the crisis in Iraq. Robinson also organized a religious witness at the White House to protest the war against Iraq, and, from January through May of this year, undertook a nationwide speaking tour on Iraq.

"This is an agenda of empire, make no mistake about it," he stated. Robinson expressed disappointment in the small Catholic turn-out at the conference and said that, as people of faith, Catholics must "stand apart from empire" and "must always call back our own churches as they become co-opted into the imperial project."

At the conference, Robinson spoke of the link between Palestine and Iraq under the rubric of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think tank that seeks U.S. world domination through military conquest, a concept Dr. Helen Caldicott has called "the new Mein Kampf." According to Robinson, "Palestinians are a frontline people," and central to how this new foreign policy "plays out in the process of globalization." He described this foreign policy as one shared by the U.S. and Israel that seeks "to shape the strategic environment, beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussain," adding that "oil was one of the tangible goals in the Iraq war."

Among the implications Robinson cited are that we now have a military acting as an enforcer serving the goals of globalization, along with a "marginalization of the international community" and a "mainstreaming of the idea of empire.

"This has particular implications for people of faith and conscience," he added.

Following Robinson's remarks, Jerome Sullivan sought to give "a human face" to the situation for Palestinians in Bethlehem. Speaking on "Challenging the American Churches: A View from Bethlehem University," Sullivan pointed out that BU "is the only Catholic university in the Holy Land," and faulted the American church for failing to support the dwindling indigenous Christian community there. Palestinian Christians, he noted, now only 2 percent of the population of the Holy Land, "have become strangers in their own land, and feel hopeless and abandoned by the Christians in the Western world."

Palestinian Christians "have become strangers in their own land."

Sullivan encouraged churches to act by forming relationships with Palestinian churches and establishing partnerships with them through justice and peace committees in parishes; participating in Sabeel solidarity visits; supporting the Palestinian economy; and by consistently educating other Christians to create a more "even-handed" U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Jeff Halper described his work with The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions ICAHD, a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups "formed when Oslo was in the process of collapsing," he said. According to Halper, an Isreali-American Jew, demolishing Palestinian homes "is almost an obsession" in Israel, and "more than 10,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967." Over 90 percent of them, he stated, have nothing to do with security measures. "In 1948, after the war," he explained, "Israel systematically demolished 400 villages in areas of Palestine, two-thirds of them, in order for Israel to take the land, and to prevent the return of refugees.

"From the Israeli point of view," he added, "a Palestinian state was never considered, even in the brightest days of Oslo."

According to Halper, in Israel a Palestinian state "in the belly of our country" is "inconceivable," whether considered from a nationalist or biblical point of view or in the Labor or Likud parties. The working assumption for Israelis, he explained, is that "Arabs are our enemies; therefore no political solution." In his view, Israel's policy is "to create facts on the ground that foreclose establishment of a Palestinian state."

Halper used maps to illustrate Sharon's "Plan of Cantonization," a system of settlements and bypass roads, checkpoints, and a separation wall. Describing the wall as a "political border" that is "five times longer than the Berlin Wall and in some places twice as high," he noted it is more fortified than the German model, with trenches, automatic weapons, watchtowers, tank replacements and mine fields. Now, Halper added, Israel is using a special breed of dog from Holland similar to the kind used to control the Berlin Wall, which makes it a more "aggressive wall" and "turns the West Bank into a prison."

"I come as Cassandra," began Phyllis Bennis, referring to the Greek mythological oracle who tried to warn people of the outcome of disastrous political events. "I wish I were wrong," she said, "but Cassandra turned out to be right."

Saying the situation for Palestinians "is worse than it has been since 1967," Bennis focused on the responsibilities of Americans—"because," she said, "we are at the root, it is our government acting in our name with our tax money that is making possible this escalation of repression."

Bennis noted the irony of U.S. support for the Israeli occupation while at the same time learning from Israel how to carry out an occupation in Iraq. "Human Rights Watch identified 10 war crimes in Jenin," she pointed out, "so naturally who would the U.S. go to to teach soldiers how to take over a city?"

Addressing the "untrammeled unilateralism" passing as foreign policy in Washington, Bennis recalled that in 1992, when the Project for a New American Century was first presented to the leadership of the Republican Party, the response was that it was too extreme. Four years later, however, she said, "the same gang went to work in Israel as campaign consultants for Netanyahu, and drafted an Israeli version of PNAC." Entitled Making a Clean Break, the proposal called for the abandonment of Oslo and any pretense of a claim that Palestinians would get an independent state.

Bennis characterized the road map to Mideast peace as "an extraordinary thing upheld by the Quartet [the U.S., the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union], making it sound egalitarian." However, she pointed out, when it was released at the Aqaba Summit it was a U.S.-run show—the other three Quartet members weren't even invited. "What are we supposed to believe from this?" she asked.

Bennis reminded the audience that Israel and the U.S. had rejected a U.N. plan to place international peacekeeping forces on the ground to protect Palestinians—with Washington using its veto in a 14-1 Security Council vote—and to efforts by ISM volunteers to fill in the void. "But," she said, "we have to be very clear that ISM, as heroic as they are, cannot secure Palestinian lives. And what we see with the death of Rachel Corrie,"she added, "is that they put themselves at great risk."

An "Open Letter" [see box] circulated and signed by conference participants following a panel of the presenters was later distributed to the media and members of the Oregon legislature.

This was the fourth conference sponsored by Friends of Sabeel, following similar events in Boston, Pasadena, and Detroit. Among this year's co-sponsors were the national office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia's Bishop's Committee for Justice and Peace in Israel/Palestine, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Oregon and Southwest Washington, the Palestinian Task Force of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, Pax Christi USA (Portland Chapter), The Presbytery of the Cascades' Church and Society Committee, Jews for Global Justice, George Fox University's Peace Studies Department, and a dozen area churches. Future conferences are planned in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Nov. 13 through Nov. 16, and in Seattle and Salt Lake City in February 2004. Sabeel also sponsors international conferences held in Jerusalem or Bethlehem. The 5th International Sabeel Conference, entitled "Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics, and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict," will be held April 14 through 18, 2004, at the Notre Dame Conference Center in Jerusalem.

Sister Elaine Kelley is administrative officer of Friends of SabeeløNorth America, based in Portland, OR.