Somerville-Israel Divestment Resolution

[the Jazz]

Last week one of the eleven aldermen for the city of Somerville (which is right next to Boston) called up the Temple B'nai B'rith, where my mother volunteers doing assorted office and database stuff. Apparently a resolution had been under discussion at the last meeting of the board of aldermen to divest from Israel, and Alderman White brought up the fact that hey, there's a synagogue in Somerville, maybe we should see what they think about this. Apparently an organization called the International Solidarity Movement has decided to use Somerville as a springboard from which to start a push for divestment in the state of Massachussetts, and they've been working on this for about a year now. The general congregation had not heard of this resolution until just last week; apparently the Social Action Committee had been approached by this group (http://www.divestmentproject.org/ is the site for their somerville cell), trying to get them to sign the temple on as a supporter, and the shmucks in the SAC never bothered to tell the members, the president, the darshan, or anyone else.

Anyhow, the matter was discussed on Tuesday at a public meeting of the board of aldermen, for a couple hours before they cut it off. I coped the full text of the resolution to my web space, so people can read it if they like:
http://home.mindspring.com/~babehuth/resolution/

The pro-resolution side was loud and obnoxious, hooting and cheering after every speaker for their position, passing out moronic white stickers with "I support human rights" written in ball-point pen, speaking out of turn to complain that they didn't get as much time as the opposition side got, before their time to speak was even up, and when they had spoken for an hour at the previous meeting already when there was no opposition side. I was not impressed.

People on our side threw around accusations of anti-semitism. People on their side told the board that the blood of Palestinian children was on their hands. There were about a dozen cops present.

This turned into a big issue overnight. This resolution is being pushed by people who don't live in Somerville, although they have garnered the support of some residents. It may hurt the city's retirment fund, which has invested in Israeli Bonds. But I don't oppose the idea of divestment; I oppose the resolution. The mayor has said that if the board were to pass the resolution in its current form he would exercise his veto power, but this isn't an issue that's going to die down any time soon. Anyone else have thoughts on the subject?

[bz£]

This is totally gonna hurt Somerville's reputation as the CITY OF LOVE.

[Caravan Ray]

As a very distant observer who is obviously ignorant of any specific issues current in your community - the resolution seems pretty reasonable to me. Your community obviously doesn't fund Palestinian terrorism - it would seem fair that you should avoid funding Israeli atrocities too.

I find it sad that the Jewish community seems to take it as an attack on Judaism. Is it impossible to separate the religion from the political entity that is Israel? (once again, I stress my ignorance here - I don't think I've ever personally met a Jewish person in my life - Anglo/Irish/southern European/Asian/Pacific cultures are dominant in my part of the world - I am strictly a disinterested observer).

On a final linguistic note - are claims of 'anti-semitism' correct? It was my understanding that the description 'Semetic' also applied to Palestinian people (or all people from the Middle East area - ie. 'the descendants of Noah's son 'Shem')

[c hack]

This is totally gonna hurt Somerville's reputation as the CITY OF LOVE.

HAHAHAHAHA

This is very interesting...

[the Jazz]

The principle of divestment is a fair one, what is wrong here is the language of the resolution, the group that is pushing it, and the way they are doing it. The very first thing that it says is untrue; Israel is not violating UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was very specifically worded back in 1967 NOT to require that Israel remove its forces from all the occupied territories. If you do some digging you will find that just about every major news outlet has at one time or another had to correct an error when someone said or wrote that 242 called for Israel to give up the west bank or the gaza strip. So they're not getting off to a good start.

Then, there's the whole matter of parity; there are dozens of countries out there with worse human rights violations being committed, and who don't happen to be the homeland of the Jewish people. Why are they not being addressed? If one was concerned merely with human rights, it would be easy to create a resolution to divest from a broad list of foreign interests. But the bare minimum if you are going to divest from Israel is to divest also from anything connected to the PLO, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and other entities that train, fund, or harbor terrorist groups which kill Israelis while they have a cup of coffee in the morning.

Another point: the current U.S. administration has declared the Geneva Conventions to be obsolete. If we are so concerned about violations of said conventions, it would behoove us to mind our own hearth before passing judgement on others.

Then there's the matter of the companies from which the resolution urges divestment. We start with Israeli Bonds; the reason given is that they "help fund Israel's violations of human rights." So, hey, how about everyone in the city of Somerville divests from state taxes this year, because the money goes into a general fund, part of which is used to pay state national guardsmen, some of whom have tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners of war? Does that make sense? Israeli Bonds are also used to fund Israeli elections, which the 20% of the Israeli population who is Palestinian have the right to vote in. Then we have Caterpillar, Inc., a huge international manufacturer of heavy machinery. Everything that is built is built by a CAT, practically. So if I were to commit gross human rights violations by force-feeding a Hindu person a burger from Wendy's, we should all divest from Wendy's for their support of human rights violations? Give me a break.

Let me also point out that even if Caterpillar were put out of business, they have no control over the bulldozers Israel bought from them. So if investment in companies like this - not to mention GE and Boeing! - hurts human rights in some way, you can be sure that the city is invested in SOMETHING that the Palestinians use to beat up human rights with.

As far as anti-semitism goes, I don't think this resolution is anti-semitic. I do think that the people in control of the International Solidarity Movement, who are backing the Somerville Divestment Project, are likely anti-semitic. But that's just speculation. And yes, technically Palestinians are semites as well, but whenever you bring that up all you get is "yeah yeah, whatever, braniac." Is it impossible to separate the religion from the political entity that is Israel? Maybe it is. If not impossible, it's pretty fucking hard. Judaism is a culture as much as a religion, and Israel represents Judaism to the world community. If Israel does something bad it reflects poorly on me because I am Jewish. It's not fair but it's the truth.

You're right that it seems fair to avoid funding Israeli atrocities. But if we're going to make a political statement, it had better be made right. And once you start getting serious about doing it right, you discover that the issue is incredibly complex, divestment is ineffective, and there's no right way to pass judgement on another country's actions, especially when you live in a country that just invaded and occupied one of its neighbors, installed a puppet ruler, and took over its absurdly valuable supply of natural resources in the process.

[Mogosagatai]

It's silly to say that if Israel does something bad, in reflects badly on you because you're Jewish. That's like saying all that firehosing and bombing and KKK shit that happened in B'ham reflects poorly on me, since I'm from there.

It's also silly to use other, worse atrocities to defend a lesser atrocity.

But then, I don't know too much about this issue. I can't get an objective explanation out of anyone. Care to give us some objective history on the whole Israel/Palestine thing?

[Caravan Ray]

lot of stuff.

Everything you say here seems valid - it's true there are many other countries where human rights are abused - I guess the only difference is that Israel is, and has been for many years the largest recipient of US aid - so it seems like an obvious place to start.

I'm interested by your last paragraph. Can I asssume you are not in favour of the war in Iraq? It is my understanding that the Jewish community usually favours the Democrat party - is that right? Drawing threads together - would it be right to assume that the Jewish community in America would oppose the US invasion of Iraq? Any ideas what the general Israeli opinion of the invasion of Iraq would be. (sorry to appoint you spokesperson for American Judaism - but this is stuff I wont learn from Seinfeld re-runs)

[the Jazz]

It's silly to say that if Israel does something bad, in reflects badly on you because you're Jewish.

You're right. It's silly. But that's how people think, especially in this case.

It's also silly to use other, worse atrocities to defend a lesser atrocity.

Right again. I am not defending Israel. I am merely pointing out the fact that out of all the possible targets for a divestment campaign, many of which are easier to make a case against, this group for some reason chose to focus its energies on Israel alone. Why?

I would give you an objective history if I could, but I can't escape my Judaism. It's a culture just as much as a religion (and in some cases, more *coughreformjewscough*), and ultimately if it came down to a choice of supporting either Israel or Palestine, and not both, I would choose Israel without a second thought. If you're that interested, there are a shitload of books on the subject, some of which are biased and some of which are not.

Can I asssume you are not in favour of the war in Iraq? It is my understanding that the Jewish community usually favours the Democrat party - is that right? Drawing threads together - would it be right to assume that the Jewish community in America would oppose the US invasion of Iraq?

Yes, yes, and I don't know. It is safe to assume that a majority of the American Jewish community opposes the invasion of Iraq, but I have no idea whether the split is 90/10 or 60/40. As far as Israelis go, I have no idea. They might be more in favor because their geographical proximity to Iraq means Saddam affected them more; they might be less in favor because of the international community's opinion of Bush and the U.S. right now; they might be more in favor because at any time they could be murdered by one of many terrorist organizations bent on the destruction of their country; they might be less in favor for the same reason.

I guess the only difference is that Israel is, and has been for many years the largest recipient of US aid - so it seems like an obvious place to start.

I think that's a very good observation. And this is why the issue is so incredibly complex. In many, many ways, Israel is our best friend in the Middle East. They are an example of a country, surrounded by enemies, constantly faced with the threat of terrorism, which maintains democracy and civil liberties unlike any other country in the region, and still has tight security and good intelligence forces. They spend more money on their grade schools and high schools, per student, than every country but Denmark and Norway. And they are ranked third in the world in frequency of orgasms. That's got to count for something.

[Caravan Ray]

Thanks for placing a (sort of) human face to this for me Jazz (really its a hamster face - but you know what I mean...)

EDIT
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or rabbit or some fucking vermin anyway whatever....

[the Jazz]

Rabbit, yes - fucking, no, not since he was noooooter'd.