December 2011, Pages 62-65

Waging Peace

U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation: Looking Back, Moving Forward

Washington, DC's Thurgood Marshall Center hosted the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation's 10th Annual National Organizers' Conference, from Sept. 16 to 18. Approximately 250 activists gathered for this year's conference, themed "Looking Back, Moving Forward: How to Align U.S. Policy with Freedom, Justice, and Equality."

The weekend's various well-attended panels and plenary sessions addressed a number of topics, notably boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns, approaches to challenging Zionist organizations in the U.S., and the Israel lobby.

Connecting the Arab Spring to Palestine

Kicking off the weekend's activities was a Friday night panel discussion on "What the Arab Spring and Palestinian Statehood Mean for Our Work." Moderated by Nadia Hijab, interim director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the panel featured political analyst and author Omar Barghouti, publisher and journalist Helena Cobban and syndicated columnist Rami Khouri. The panelists examined how the recent Arab uprisings will influence the future approach toward Palestine by activists and states alike.

Barghouti began by emphasizing Washington's declining influence in the Arab world. Commenting that the Arab uprisings have had a "devastating effect" on the ability of the U.S. and Israel to be the hegemonic powers in the region, Barghouti made it a point to emphasize that Israel must come to the realization that a new era of Middle East politics is emerging. Noting that Israel "has not yet realized that things have indeed changed," Barghouti argued that it is against Israel's best interests to not recognize that the status quo no longer applies.

While many in the West point to the Arab uprisings as a sign that al-Qaeda's ideology has been rejected by the Arab street, Barghouti stressed that the uprisings also demonstrate that the U.S., too, has become "irrelevant" in the region. The uprisings "happened despite U.S. policy, not because of it," he elaborated.

Cobban discussed the importance of changing the discourse that surrounds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Explaining that "discourse is how people get an idea of what is acceptable to think," she stressed that it is critical for Palestinian activists to challenge the current "discourse distortion" taking place in the American media.

On a more positive note, Cobban said that on her recent June 2011 trip to Gaza, she noticed that those living in the territory felt a deep sense of connectedness with Palestinians across the globe. She attributed much of this increased communication to the Internet, explaining that the "Internet has allowed Palestinians to overcome their fragmentation," providing a place where they can meet and exchange ideas.

Khouri pointed out that the world is now seeing the birth of the Arab citizen, "true Arab sovereignty," and "legitimate [Arab] governance." Citing the demand for social justice and constitutional reform as the two themes that all the Arab uprisings share, he noted that all Arabs want to be "citizens with rights." All three panelists agreed that Palestinians are no different from their fellow Arabs, and that the success of the uprisings in other countries will only fuel the burgeoning Palestinian desire for freedom and justice.

Khouri further emphasized that supporting Israel and repressive Arab leaders is resulting in the "self-marginalization" of the U.S. He concluded by stressing the importance of Palestinians developing a "clear and unified consensus" on how to deal with Israel, and warned that if the Palestinian approach remains vague, it will leave Israel with an effective propaganda tool.

—Dale Sprusansky

Panel on Crafting and Sharpening Effective BDS Campaigns

Boycott and divestment activism, initiated in 2005 by 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations in support of the Palestinian cause, continues to build momentum in the United States. Panel moderator Omar Barghouti, political analyst and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (available from the AET Book Store), opened the panel with the observation that "just three years ago, BDS was still on the fringe…but look where we are now."

Panelist Dalit Baum, an activist in residence with Global Exchange and a co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation, , explained that although BDS campaigns call for local accountability, the BDS movement has yet to realize its local potential. She urged audience members to adapt BDS, "which is not [simply] a list of proscribed actions," to fit the specifications of their local communities. "This is how we can educate people," Baum explained, and make them realize that "the entire Israeli economy is involved in the Palestinian occupation."

Baum cited Veolia, a French water and waste management company that has been involved in several Israeli projects, as a good target for local organizing because the company has facilities throughout the U.S.

Rebecca Subar, a professor of peace and conflict studies at West Chester University and a board member of Jewish Voice for Peace, focused on the TIAA-CREF divestment campaign. TIAA-CREF, a Fortune 100 investment group that is the leading retirement provider for academic and medical employees, is "known for being a socially-responsible company," she explained. However, it invests heavily in Caterpillar (CAT), the world's largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, which provides bulldozers to the Israeli army. According to Amnesty International, these have been used to commit human rights violations, including the death of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was killed under a CAT bulldozer operated by an Israeli Defense Officer in 2003.

Panelist Tory Smith, a member of Earlham College's BDS and Students for Justice in Palestine groups, discussed BDS activism from the perspective of a college student. He explained that "one of the interesting things about being a college group is that there's a built-in resistance [on campus]—Jewish student groups." In Smith's opinion, engaging in dialogue with these groups is the first step in creating a successful BDS campaign.

Nancy Kricorian of Code Pink: Women for Peace, a grassroots peace and social justice group, concentrated on her role in the Ahava "stolen beauty" boycott campaign. Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company that manufactures skin care products from the Dead Sea, "sources its mud product line from illegal settlements in occupied territory," Kricorian told the assembled activists, and hired "Sex and the City" star Kristin Davis as a spokesperson to help the company's image. According to Kricorian, "We were able to get people to contact Oxfam, which has an explicit policy against settlement products, and asked, 'How can you be against settlement products, and have a goodwill ambassador who is selling settlement products?'" Thanks to Code Pink's activism, Davis lost both her position as an Oxfam goodwill ambassador and her contract with Ahava.

Andrew Kati, a steering committee member with the U.S. Campaign, discussed cultural boycotts, noting that they "have a very significant role in overturning the psyche of normality and invisibility that Israel has." Cultural boycotts against Israel should follow the same model as the sports boycotts imposed upon apartheid South Africa, Kati said, and listed a number of artists and pop culture icons, including Elvis Costello, Oprah, Bono and Snoop Dogg, who have canceled planned appearances in Israel. For these artists, he explained, "it's a political statement to go and perform somewhere as much as it is not to."

The final panelist, David Wildman, a member of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church and a U.S. Campaign steering committee member, addressed the role of churches in the BDS movement. "Churches first started boycotting 2,000 years ago," he pointed out, "when the Apostle Paul advocated a boycott as an expression of solidarity." Since 2005, when the United Methodist Church passed a resolution to divest from companies supporting the Israeli occupation, the church has compiled lists of such companies. Wildman concluded with a call to action: "At what point do you stop saying 'this is wrong,' and start doing something?"

—Sara Birkenthal

Legal and Popular Approaches to Challenging Zionist Organizations

The next morning began with a workshop on challenging Zionist organizations, presented by Kristin Szremski of American Muslims for Palestine and Sara Kershnar of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. The pair provided background information on leading Zionist organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Israel Advocacy Initiative, the Jewish Federation and the Zionist Organization of America.

The role of Zionist organizations is to support the state of Israel and to falsely equate Judaism with Zionism, Kershnar explained. Noting that Zionist groups "stand in opposition to the goals of the Palestinian liberation and the Palestinian solidarity movement," she contended that Zionist organizations are ideal targets for BDS work. "We can't allow [Zionist groups] to claim Jewish interests or authority," she emphasized.

Next, Szremski explained the concept of "creeping normalcy," by which acceptance of Israeli human rights abuses has slowly become normal and unobjectionable. She described the movement to challenge the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)'s tax-exempt status based on the fact that this summer, 55 House Republicans and 26 House Democrats participated in "educational" trips funded by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a Zionist group affiliated with AIPAC. "In the United States we should not be giving non-profit status to organizations that racially discriminate," she argued.

—Sara Birkenthal

Exposing AIPAC: Delving into the Details of the Israel Lobby

During the second workshop session, Alison Weir of the Council for the National Interest and of If Americans Knew moderated a discussion on the history of AIPAC and its "various quasi-legal activities." Weir opened the workshop by proposing that "supporting Israel is damaging to U.S. interests." She explained that in the 1940s, the majority of U.S. government officials as well as oil company executives opposed Zionism and viewed U.S. support for Israel as damaging in the long-term. However, American support for Israel shifted with the creation of the American Zionist Emergency Committee, which had a budget of over $150 million in 1948.

Janet McMahon, managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, explained that because AIPAC is technically classified as a not-for-profit membership organization, it does not have to reveal its funding sources or expenditures. She then detailed the 30-50 smaller pro-Israel PACs that actually donate money to political campaigns.

Grant F. Smith of IRmep began his presentation by urging attending national activists to challenge the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He reviewed the organization's emergence from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1951 and continuous clashes with law enforcement officials and regulators over Foreign Agent (FARA) registration, election law violations, money laundering, classified information trafficking and even theft of US government property!

AIPAC is vulnerable, asserted Smith, because it has imported not just harmful Israeli government policies, but its illegal tactics and disregard for rule of law into the U.S.—and growing numbers of Americans can see how costly this has been to the economy and security of the nation. Smith urged activists to join three programs—AIPAC FARA registration, IRS exemption revocation, and suspension of ill-gotten trade preferences—to expose and challenge AIPAC's corrupt practices in America and win peace in the Middle East.

—Sara Birkenthal

Workshop: Strategies on How to Counter AIPAC

Alli McCraken, CODEPINK's Washington, DC office coordinator, led one of several workshops on Sept. 20 during the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation's National Organizers Conference. The workshop focused on strategies that can be implemented to counter the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), America's pro-Israel lobby, by organizations working to change the narrative on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the United States. The reason the group focused on the organization, with its $15 million budget and 158 employees, is because it considers AIPAC to be "the biggest obstacle to peace in the region" stemming from the fact that its financial wealth enables it to exert major political influence in Washington.

The workshop searched for ways to attract endorsement of CODEPINK's cause and to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. One successful example of increasing involvement in this issue was the Move Over AIPAC conference held on May 21, 2011, during AIPAC's annual meeting in Washington, DC. That conference succeeded in bringing attention to the influence AIPAC exerts on the U.S. government. The lack of resources of organizations working to counter AIPAC in comparison to AIPAC's wealth makes it difficult to mobilize with the same capacity. Fortunately, the resources necessary for organizations to counter AIPAC's influence in their communities is not only monetary. Factual information, creatively engaging people, and providing information in a simple manner that maps out the cause and effect are effective tools for organizers.

The workshop also came up with initiatives geared toward a college- level audience, since AIPAC focuses on recruiting college and university students. Workshop participants discussed ideas about how to include an educational component in order to reach out to college students.

CODEPINK is a women's anti-war and anti-militarism organization that fights to promote the reallocation of U.S. resources toward health care, education, green jobs and other efforts that benefit American communities. The name CODEPINK originated as a play on President George Bush's color-coded terrorism threat level alert.

To learn more about CODEPINK, visit <http://www.codepink.org>.

—Jean-Pascal Deillon