August 26, 2019 • 4
Comments
Trump and Netanyahu thought
they were pulling a fast one on two U.S. congresswomen, but it has blown up in
their faces, as Marjorie Cohn explains.
During Congress’s August
recess, a group of 41 Democratic and 31 Republican congressmembers traveled to
Israel on a delegation sponsored by American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC). AIPAC subsidizes congressional trips to Israel in order to further the
“special relationship” between Israel and the United States.
Israel is the largest
recipient of U.S. military aid: $3.8 billion annually. AIPAC is the chief
Israel lobby in the United States and a consistent apologist for Israel’s
oppressive policies toward the Palestinians.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan
Omar, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, had planned their own
“Delegation to Palestine,” scheduled to begin on August 17. Tlaib, who was born
in the U.S., planned to travel to the West Bank to visit her 90-year old
Palestinian grandmother, whom she hasn’t seen for a decade. But, aided and
abetted by Donald Trump, Israel withdrew permission for the trip unless Tlaib
agreed to remain silent about Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. She
refused to abide by the gag order and the trip was cancelled.
Tlaib said in a statement, “Visiting my grandmother under these
oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me would break my grandmother’s heart.
Silencing me with treatment to make me feel less-than is not what she wants for
me – it would kill a piece of me that always stands up against racism and
injustice.” She added, “Being silent and not condemning the human rights
violations of the Israeli government is a disservice to all who live there,
including my incredibly strong and loving grandmother.”
Omar, who expressed “strength and solidarity” with Tlaib in a
tweet, toldreporters, “[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s
decision to deny us entry might be unprecedented for members of Congress. But
it is the policy of his government when it comes to Palestinians. This is the
policy of his government when it comes to anyone who holds views that threaten
the occupation.” She tweeted, “We cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in
hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us.”
Israel’s refusal to allow
members of the U.S. Congress entry into Israel-Palestine without muzzling them
backfired. It has garnered widespread criticism, even by AIPAC, and focused the national discourse on the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which Tlaib and Omar support.
Omar, a member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “It is my belief that as legislators, we have an
obligation to see the reality there for ourselves. We have a responsibility to
conduct oversight over our government’s foreign policy and what happens with
the millions of dollars we send in aid.” She says the U.S. must ask Netanyahu’s government to “stop
the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and ensure full rights for
Palestinians if we are to give them aid.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “The idea that a member of the United States
Congress cannot visit a nation which, by the way, we support to the tune of
billions and billions of dollars is clearly an outrage,” adding, “And if Israel
doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country to
get a firsthand look at what’s going on … maybe [Netanyahu] can respectfully
decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel.”
Tlaib and Omar Planned to
Witness Occupation
Tlaib and Omar were scheduled
to meet with members of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) and Palestinian and
leftist Israeli activists and nonprofits, as well as international human rights
organizations in Jerusalem and the West Bank. They were also set to confer with
members of Breaking the Silence, a group of former members of the Israel
Defense Forces who now actively oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.
Omar tweeted that the goal of the delegation “was to
witness firsthand what is happening on the ground in Palestine and hear from
stakeholders —our job as Members of Congress.”
The visit by Tlaib and Omar
“was to be something else” in contrast to the AIPAC delegation, James Zogby,
co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, wrote in the Forward. Tlaib and Omar
“weren’t going to focus on officials,” according to Zogby. “They were going to
expose the reality of Palestinian daily life under occupation.
They were going to visit the Wall that separates Palestinians from their lands.
They were going to refugee camps now cut off from US funding. They were going
to see how Hebron has been horridly deformed by a settler invasion and military
occupation.”
Israel had approved the
Tlaib/Omar trip last month. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said, “Out of respect for the U.S. Congress and the
great alliance between Israel and America,” Israel would not deny entry “to any
member of Congress.”
But Donald Trump reportedly
told several of his advisers that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should bar
Tlaib and Omar because they supported BDS. Hours after Israel cancelled the
trip, Trump tweeted, “It would show great weakness if Israel
allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish
people.”
The Israeli government agreed
to allow Tlaib to visit her grandmother, provided she agree in writing not to
discuss her support for BDS. But after emotional conversations with her family,
Tlaib refused to submit to the condition that she not discuss the Israeli
occupation.
Tlaib “was forced to make a
choice between her right to visit her grandmother and her right to political
speech against Israeli oppression,” Sandra Tamari wrote at In These Times. Tamari has been
barred from seeing her family in Palestine for more than 10 years because of
her advocacy for Palestinian freedom and justice. Tlaib “ultimately chose the
collective over the personal: She refused Israel’s demeaning conditions that
would have granted her a ‘humanitarian’ exception to enter Palestine, so long
as she refrained from advocating for a boycott of Israel during her visit,”
Tamari added.
What Is the BDS Movement?
In 2005, Palestinian civil
society — including 170 Palestinian unions, political parties, refugee
networks, women’s organizations, professional associations, popular resistance
committees and other Palestinian civil society bodies — issued a call for
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
BDS is a nonviolent movement
for social change in the tradition of boycotts of South Africa and the southern
United States. It is aimed at ending Israel’s illegal occupation. In 1967,
Israel took control of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights by military force. UN Security Council Resolution 242 describes “the
inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for the
“withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the [1967]
conflict.”
But Israel continues its
illegal occupation and exercises total control over the lives of Palestinians
in the occupied territories. Israel regulates the ingress and egress of the
people, as well as the borders, airspace, seashore and waters off the coast of
Gaza. Israel expels Palestinians from their homes and builds illegal Jewish
settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza
led to the deaths of 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, and the
wounding of 11,231 Palestinians. These actions likely constituted war
crimes, according to the UN Human Rights Council’s
independent, international commission of inquiry.
Former UN deputy high
commissioner for human rights, Flavia Pansieri, said that human rights violations “fuel and shape the
conflict” in the occupied Palestinian territories and “[h]uman rights
violations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are both cause and
consequence of the military occupation and ongoing violence, in a bitter
cyclical process with wider implications for peace and security in the region.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, writing in the Tampa Bay Times, cited the 2010
Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules,
and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West
Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services,
development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions
on Palestinians.” Tutu wrote, “This, in my book, is apartheid. It is
untenable.”
The call for BDS describes
boycotts, divestment and sanctions as “non-violent punitive measures” that
should last until Israel fully complies with international law by (1) ending
its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the barrier
wall; (2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens
of Israel to full equality; and (3) respecting, protecting and promoting the
rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as stipulated in United
Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.
What Are Boycotts, Divestment
and Sanctions?
Boycotts encompass the
withdrawal of support for Israel and Israeli and international companies which
are violating Palestinian human rights, including Israeli sporting, cultural
and academic institutions.
Divestment campaigns urge
churches, banks, local councils, pension funds and universities to withdraw
investments from all Israeli companies and international companies involved in
the violation of Palestinian rights.
Sanctions campaigns
pressure governments to hold Israel legally accountable by ending military
trade and free-trade agreements and expelling Israel from international fora.
The BDS movement has had a
major impact on Israel. BDS was a critical factor in the 46 percent reduction
in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development. Individuals and entities who have heeded the call for
divestment include George Soros, the Bill Gates Foundation, TIAA-CREF public
sector pension fund, Dutch pension giant PGGM and Norwegian bank Nordea.
Several churches, including
the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of
Christ and many Quaker meetings, have divested from companies the BDS movement
has targeted. The security services company G4S is planning to sell its
subsidiary in Israel because the Stop G4S campaign resulted in a loss of
millions of dollars in contracts. The withdrawal of French multinational
utility company Veolia from Israel led to billions of dollars in lost
contracts.
Tutu, who finds striking parallels
between apartheid South Africa and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians,
supports BDS. He has called on “people and organizations of conscience to
divest from … Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard,” which
profit “from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.”
Twenty-seven states have enacted legislation targeting
boycotts of Israel, but activists have successfully defeated anti-boycott laws
in several states. These bills are unconstitutional infringements on protected First Amendment activity.
In banning Tlaib and Omar,
Israel relied on its 2017 law prohibiting entry to any non-Israeli citizen
who “has knowingly published a public call to engage in a boycott” against
Israel “or has made a commitment to participate in such a boycott.”
And the United States’
overwhelming support for Israel is reflected in a resolution the House of
Representatives adopted on July 23. H. Res. 246, which passed easily on a 398-17 vote, opposes
the BDS movement. Tlaib and Omar voted against the resolution.
Questioning U.S. Aid to Israel
Interestingly, although the
Republicans on the AIPAC trip tweeted vociferously about their visit, there was
near silence on Twitter from the Democratic members of the delegation, although
the group had given Netanyahu a standing ovation. “The absence of chatter from
the Democrats obviously reflects the misgivings that the Democratic base has
about the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel,” Philip Weiss and
Michael Arria wrote at Mondoweiss. “A recent survey shows that
a majority of Democrats support sanctions against Israel
over settlements, even as the House votes overwhelmingly to condemn the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.”
The outrageous exclusion of
members of Congress from Israel-Palestine has focused unprecedented attention
on the Israeli occupation and the BDS movement. This is the time to pressure
congressional representatives to rethink their uncritical support for Israel and the $3.8 billion annually the
United States provides to Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment