Marg's Words, Our Vigil, the Courage of Youth

Framing the BDA Issue by Marg Jacobs, Melbourne, November

A serious matter, Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions, but the e-mailed video clip of an action in a Toronto supermarket had me clapping and yay-ing along. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6d09eVOY21)

A diverse group of people were having serious fun, bopping their way towards the shelf with the Sabra hummus, their whooping singsong perhaps a welcome distraction for bored shoppers. Certainly the security guard appeared torn between enjoying the show and his duty to move the demonstrators on.

Definitely more than serious fun, according to Rafeef Ziadah who was amongst the dancers: this is the kind of action that puts the Israeli authorities off their game, accustomed as they are to more reactive responses. Rafeef was in Melbourne recently speaking to the national Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference Building Solidarity, Combating Occupation and Apartheid. she is an organiser of the international Israeli Apartheid Week and a member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and cultural boycott of Israel (PACBI). Their call can be summarised as a threefold demand to Israel: end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, (dismantling the Wall and freeing all Palestinian and Arab political prisoners); recognise the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; respect, protect and promote the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Rafeef advised Australians pushing for BDS to learn from events in Canada, where the mainstream Jewish community tried to stifle the debate. Kim Bullimore of the (Australian) Palestinian Solidarity Campaign provided an example: QUIA (Queers United against Israeli Apartheid) was labelled anti-Semitic after film of a Gay Pride March was distorted to show a swastika effect on a T shirt. QUIA initially succumbed to the demonizing--fearing withdrawal of support by their university sponsors would threaten the whole Pride march--however that particular 'pinkwashing' tactic failed. A notional gay haven in the Occupied Territories turned out to be a mirage; Zionists in "Stand with Us" purporting to speak for queer Palestinians in the Occupied Territories were pressed for details about their supposed friends there, but couldn't name a single person. For one Palestinian speaker, freedom has the first priority and the fight for gay rights will have to wait.

Those mythical gay Zionists emerged from a hasbara campaign: the Hebrew word meaning something between propaganda and information. If, as it appears, the labelling of opponents anti-Semitic isn't working so much anymore, what about the label 'apartheid' for the actions of the state of Israel? According to Ginny Adams, an organizer with the Health and Community Sector Union who recently returned from a Union Aid Abroad APHEDA Middle East Study Tour, the term 'apartheid' provides a framework in which to explain what is going on and is neither anti-Semitic nor racist. The term was coined by the UN referring to '...acts committed for the purpose of maintaining domination, for example reserves and ghettos', and characterised by 'disproportionate funding of services; infliction of bodily/mental harm; degrading punishment, infringement of freedom of movement.' All of these if carried out on a racial basis constitute apartheid. Prevention of Palestinians moving from one Palestinian town to another Palestinian town would be illogical unless the aim is separation into reserves, rather then security.

In thinking about further boycotts, context and the circumstance are all-important. As to whether or to what extent Australia might learn from the Canadian experience, the PACBI organization website http://www.pacbi.org/ provides a possible starting point with some useful links to the ANC and Haaretz. For these Canadians, whether or not an Israeli cultural boycott would apply depends on the following circumstances, with further explanations on the site):

--Cultural product is commissioned by an Israeli body

--Product is funded by an official Israeli body, not not commissioned (no political strings)

--Event is partially or fully sponsored or funded by an official Israeli body

--event or project promotes false symmetry or "balance".

While a distinction was drawn between a speaker representing an Israeli university, and on acting on their own behalf, this may not provide sufficient guidance or reassurance, particularly in the context of visits to Australia, as many academic speakers would be unable to travel without support from their employer.

Despite complexities such as these, the speakers' reports, the references they provided and their insights and impressions constitute a valuable resource. A request has been made for the conference papers to be made publicly available: watch this space.

Marg

From the conference program--a list of companies and products to boycott:

Beigel and Beigel/Hydro-Industries/Naot Footwear/Ahava Dead Sea Cosmetics/Jaffa Citrus Fruit/Seacret Spa Dead Sea Products/Max Brenner Chocolate/Pirgate Grapefruit Juice/Sara Lee/Motorola/Elbit Systems/Revlon/Starbucks/Estee Lauder Companies/L'Oreal/The Body Shop/McDonald's/Intel/Coca-Cola/Caterpillar/Nescafe/Optus/Cemex/Veolia/Volvo/Danone

More about each of these companies and how they are involved in supporting the Occupation and the government that perpetuates it can be found at http://www.australiansforpalestine.com/

(list added by Joan)

An exchange at our November vigil: A man perhaps in his middle thirties, stands before us with his baby huddled on his chest. He tells us that Israel is right to kill Palestinians who threaten it.I know, he says, in his heavily accented English. "My country Lithuania was overrun by the Russians. You are wrong, you are wrong," he kept saying, his hand protecting the baby's head from the sun. "I live here now, in Australia, and I would kill for this land, I would show my love by killing for this country." One of us answered, why kill to show love, why is that the way to honor a country or life? He was shouting now and the baby woke and began to cry. No, No, you have to kill the enemy. He was bending over, trying to protect his child from his own anger. What I saw was a man, a loving man if history and national masculinities would allow him to be, torn between two urgings, his paternal self and his militarized self. We then with our banners and olive branches were like the Furies, tormenting him with futility of all he had been taught. And the child, what future awaits him? (Joan)

And then the courage of the young:

Two days ago at 11:30 in the morning in New Orleans, more then 12 young, proud Jews with Jewish Voice for Peace gave voice to the disillusionment of a generation. They loudly named the unnameable in the Jewish community-Israel's immoral vilations of human rights of Palestinians and much of the Jewish institutional world's active support of these violations.

And they did it in front of 3,000 Jewish leaders from across America--Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu himself.

If there was ever a moment where courage and moral strength was required, this was it, each person carrying in him or herself the inspiration of Palestinian freinds who risk much worse to make their claim to peace and justice.

Their Statement:

We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language. We pray three times a day or only during the high holidays or when we feel like we really need to or not at all. We are punks and students and parents and janitors and Rabbis and freedom fighters. We are your children, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. We embrace diaspora, even when it causes us a great deal of pain. We are the rubble of tangled fear, the deliverance of values. We are human. We are born perfect. We assimilate, or we do not. We are not apathetic. We know and name persecution when we see it. Occupation has contricted our throats and fattened our tongues. We are feeding each other new words. We have family, we build family, we are family. We re-negotiate. We atone. We redraw the map every single day. We travel between worlds. This is not our birthright, it is our necessity.

Go to http://www.youngjewishproud.org/ and see the bravery of these young people. Tell them of your thoughts. I think the next attempt to complex the discussion should have us both, the young and the old, with arms intertwined, so when the bullies come they will face their people's history in our gray heads and well as the future.

Our August Vigil, 2010, Melbourne

As I write this, September 1, four Israelis have been shot to death in the West Bank. Some Palestinians celebrate the deaths and the settlers call for retribution, while a major rabbi calls Palestinians "an evil race." A craziness sweeps from the mall in Washington, D.C. where Obama is pictured as Hitler to the streets of the West Bank and Jerusalem. The glorification of killing, of nationalisms that obliverate the lives of unwanted others, waves its ghostly hand over our times. Here seven woman--Hellen, Alex, Joan, Hinde, Geraldine, Sandra and a friend--stood, once again, trying to intercede like so many in peace movements, in anti occupation movements around the world, try to do, to look a passing woman or man in the eye and ask, human to human, is this the kind of world you want.

Our July Vigil "We Will Not Be Enemies"

Once again, as for every month, we took to the streets of Melbourne, members of Women in Black, our numbers growing, to call for an end of the occupation of Gaza, an end to national terrorisms of all kinds. We are just a small part of grassroots peace movements around the world, but little by little, the voices of dissent are growing. Come join us on Saturday, August 7, in front of the old GPO, 12-1.Come to talk, to stand, to discuss with mutual respect.

We Are All Gazans Now, Our Vigil, June 6, 2010

Hagrit, from Israel, Geraldine, Sandra, Sivan, an Israeli-Australian, Hinde, Alex, just returned from Israel, Sandra, Esma, Di and Hellen, in vigil photo, Joan from New York and Melbourne.

The rain fell. On such a sad and hopeless time it seemed for world sanity, for history to have meaning, black clad Israeli commandoes swirling onto the ships, nine people and perhaps more dead, and still Israel has not released their names as if they were not really human after all, just a problem for the nation's public relations concerns. But then we gathered, Israeli women, Australian women and some of us from in between, then we took to the streets where hope was born again. A young Iraqi couple walked by, read our signs, took our leaflet, and then returned again. The young man stood in front of us and asked, "are any of you Jewish women?" It just so happens that most of us are Jewish. Hagrit and Sivan, both Israelis and myself all heard the question and nodded. Then Hagrit said, "yes, I am Israeli and I am so ashamed." The young woman answered, "we are Iraqi and we had to leave, there is no room to be different." She stepped forward, throwing her arms around Hagrit, there on a Melbourne street, people holding tight to the humanity of their dissent, to their desire for another kind of world. No reporters from The Age or the Australian ever cover our vigils, gray haired women standing in the rain again and again--but the hundreds who walked by us know silence is a choice and there are alternatives.

Our flyer:

We Are All Gazans Now

Women in Black, Melbourne

End the Israeli Occupation, End the Embargo of Gaza

June 5, 2010 marks 43 years since the Six Day War that began the occupation.

Three and a half million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation which denies their most basic freedoms.

Walls, check points, eviction, embargoes bring endless suffering to families, destroy possibilities of education, medical care, harvesting of crops.

We stand here to make our opposition visible, to ask you to think about what kind of world you and your children want to live in.

We stand, women from many different backgrounds, refusing to be enemies.

From Hagar Square, Jerusalem to the Old GPO, Melbourne

Peace activists on both sides of the wall call for the end to this madness.

Join us, in Melbourne, the first Saturday of every month, 12-1 on the steps of the old GPO.

A statement from Isha L'Isha, Haifa Feminist Center:

We, the women of Isha L'Isha--Haifa Feminist Center express deep shock at the continuing and deteriorating consequences of the siege on Gaza. We express our solidarity with women peace activists who acted to break the unhuman siege on women, children and men; a siege that has been preventing basic human freedoms, health services and essential materials.

We extend our support to our sisters in the feminist movement, especially those who went out to exercise their right to protest against an outrageous injustice, and found themselves facing a military attack that was a result of a violent state policy.

We call on women and men in Israeli society to resist the assault on the most basic human values, and to join our call--the attack on the peace flotilla is an attack on me. The siege on Gaza endangers us all. Isha L'Isha--Haifa Feminist Center is a multi-cultural feminist collective established in 1983. Our aim is to bring about social change by promoting values of equal rights and equal opportunities for all women; eradicating discrimination, violence and oppression of women, and fostering solidarity among women.

http://www.isha.org.il/


A new book of interest

Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation

edited by Osie Adelfang, an anthology of women writing about the Middle East, with a preface by Amira Hass and foreword by Cindy Sheehan.

Can be ordered from Amazon.com

"Urgent, we have threat from Israel"

In the darkness of night, 70 miles out to sea, in the international waters beyond Israel, over 20 people were shot to death by elegantly armed Israeli soldiers. Perhaps Israel hoped the night would shroud the horror of their young people's actions--give them the guns, give them nationalistic fervor, give them heavy doses of Israel's exceptionalism and turn them loose on the "enemy." I am writing words in shock, in despair, in rage--I am taking in the shouts of pain and disbelief from my peace activist comrades around the world, including Israel. We can reach each other, but we cannot stop a nation gone mad and all the others who empower the killers--the American government who pours money into the military coffers of Israel--paying for those helicopters from which the young people lowered themselves onto the boats, paying for those state of the art commando uniforms, the guns which they turned on those marked only as enemies of the Jewish state. I want to say to all of you, all who tonight sit at their screens as I do, reaching out, so we are not alone with the horror of witness only, we recommit to honoring human life, to honoring each one who died in the darkness of the night, amidst a cargo of hope. We do not know the names or countries of those who died--that will come in the morning light. We do not know if Hedy survived or did Israeli bullets do what the concentration camps could not. Again, as I have always written, I write from a Jewish heart, Israel is my concern, my burden, my shame--and activism in the face of the brutalities of a State maddened with its unquestioned nationalistic certainties is my Jewish heritage.



From on the boats in the Flotilla:



Lubna: Greta urgent we have threat from Israel
Greta: Luba, What is happening?
Lubna: two Israeli ships coming towards us
Greta:Please try to stay on this so I can tweet it
Lubna: they contact the ship asked who we are and disappeared now they are getting close to the ship we can see them stay here 3 boats coming not tw0 3 Israeli boats we are 78 mile from Israel
Greta: I'll keep writing
Lubna: people here their life jackets every body peppering here
Greta: ok. You are the lifeline to our twitter account.
Lubna: we may loose the wireless, we didn't expect them now, we thought they will arrive at the morning. Please stay in touch with the other boats.
Sent at 10:50 on sunday
Greta: We can't reach anyone
Sent at 10:52 on Sunday
Greta: Where are you? Are you there?


We will stand in deepest silence on June 6 at our monthly vigil--please join us

1989 Women in Black Poster from Melbourne Group

Archival Posting 3--from "The Australian Jewish Democrat," June 1991

Women in Black

by Marge Jacobs, vol.2, No. 1, June 1991

"The only thing that can get me into the City on a Saturday morning is Women in Black."

Marg Jacobs (seen here leafletting at our December 2009 vigil)

Why does a person get involved in political work? When I look at my political comings and goings over the years, how much of it has been 'must' and how much 'ought'? I'm aware that these are very white middle-class questions asked by the comfortable...but that is my situation and these questions need to be asked without wading in guilt. It's become cliche for many of us who were part of the women's movement in the early seventies to describe the urgency that drove us--there was no choice, it seemed, this was what you had to do, and every action resounded in society as well as in us.

It's the nineties now and during the twenty years, what changed for me? Apart from things never seeming quite as straightforward as in 1972, political activity has been and I suppose must always be several parts grind. The romance of struggle is a middle-class illusion. Meetings, power plays and the tedium of the many small unglamorous jobs that have to be done: a lot of us have been caught up in all this and it has often drowned the sparks.

I came across Women in Black at a time when the spark had been missing for a while and life had begun to consist of getting to work every day. I joined the Solidarity Choir which seemed a a great way to have politics without tedium. We performed at an international Action day where Women in Black had a stall with posters, information and a list of dates for their vigils. I'd heard of the WIB groups in Israel--groups of women regularly demonstrating their opposition to the Israeli's government's actions in the occupied territories. For once I didn't agonize (do I really want to join another group?). I turned up to the next vigil, on the GPO steps [where we still vigil, the first Saturday of every month, including this one.] 11 o'clock on the first Saturday of the month, then November 1989. I've been nearly every month since.

The ambivalence I usually feel about political work hasn't been a problem for me with Women in Black. It's not just that the group doesn't demand a huge commitment. I love the fact that there is a tremendous age range among us (twenties to eighties) and that we have a mixture of backgrounds including Jewish, Anglo-Celtic, Arab, with many of us having migrant origins. The warmth of our greetings, and the intensity of some of out discussions, and the generosity of people in the Mall have kept me going. During the Gulf War being in Women in Black became even more important to me, despite the fact that the war forced me to look harder at the political and emotional complexities of being a Jewish member of the group.

The diversity of political opinion and background amongst Women in Black members in Melbourne does not always make organizing a straightforward business. When is it ever, indeed? But I find the diversity stimulating: so often on the Left either assumptions float around unchallenged, leaving no real debate, or people simply mud-sling. Our opinions about the state of Israel and its relationship to the Arab world are not unanimous, but we all want to see an end to the occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are opposed to the attacks on Palestinians' rights and lives by the Israeli government and its military.

What is not so clear is how we focus our energies, two years later after the first vigil was held in Melbourne. We've collected signatures for our petition which calls amongst other things for an end to the occupation. We want to present these to the Israeli ambassador soon. While the vigils have been and will probably remain a worthwhile organizing point, we have agreed that we need to look hard at where we are going and how we can make 'solidarity' work more effective. Should those of us who are Jewish put more effort into presenting our point of view within the Jewish community? How can we involve more Palestinian women? The situation of the Palestinians is as terrible as ever and settlement of Jews in the territories is definitely increasing not decreasing.

To return, finally, to the reasons for my involvement in this group in particular: the fact that it is Women in black is one, because I feel that as women we share assumptions about the importance of process in organizing--the how as much as the what--and that we feel free to question and discuss in a way that is often not possible in mixed groups, But there's something else.

I'm a Jew who has had no Jewish upbringing, who hasn't 'belonged' to Jewish culture or religion. Being in Women in Black means that I do something about being Jewish, about wanting to work out what it means to me. I feel that as a Jew born of parents who lived under Nazi rule I'm forced to learn about the world in a different way. I don't want to avoid the effort of trying to connect this past with what I see going on in Australia and the rest of the world, and with my political views in general. And I have never been so openly Jewish as I have been since joining Women in Black.

Marg Jacobs has been committed to social activism, especially women's issues, for many years and is an active member of Women in Black. End of Archival document.

Back in Melbourne, 2010, on the eve of our February vigil. Marg and her partner are off on a six month international journey, including a visit to Hanover and a sharing of her mother's published ms about the rise of Nazism in her home city. As I sat here, typing in Marg's words from the yellowing issue of AJD, I felt an over whelming sense of humility, I who am newly come to this city by the Yarra, bringing with me all my New York centeredness, taking in each word of Marg's explanation, her connection to so many activist communities, her honest public questioning, the strength of the women's activist community here. Here is social change history, women's history, lesbian history, Jewish women's history, Australian progressive movement history, diasporic history. I want again push for Women in Black groups around the world to form their own archives so these stories of how women come to the streets becomes part of public history and of our present actions. Sadly, I was also forced to see as I transcribed the article how little has changed in Palestine/Israel and how much worse things have become. Operation Cast Lead and the ongoing ceaseless embargo against Gaza, the continuing encroachment of the Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the clearly stated Israeli government's view that it never will accept a totally autonomous Palestinian state on its borders make actions even more compelling. I have heard that some think the older women who stand in Women in Black vigils are wasting their time, for what has changed. I think of the Israeli women, in their 90s, Holocaust survivors, who stood in the Jerusalem heat enduring the taunts of passer-bys. Not to take some form of public action is to acquiesce to daily tortures of other human beings in our name, not to take some form of public action is to loose in a deep sense that which makes us human. Marge and Jules, travel well.

A New year, an Old Sadness but Renewed Resistance

Our Flyer for the first vigil of 2010:

Make 2010 the Year We End Israel's Blockade of Gaza

Since just days before Christmas, 2009, over 1300 citizens from 42 different countries have travelled to Cairo as a transit point enroute to Gaza where they would join 50,000 Palestinians on December 31 in a Gaza Freedom March to protest the continuing siege of Gaza. Conceived during Code Pink's delegation to the Gaza strip after the Israeli Cast Lead Incursion, the organizers envisioned a massive peaceful nonviolent show of international solidarity with the Palestinian people. They had envisioned several days of commemoration of those who died during the winter attack, several days of bearing witness to the rubble, the unreconstructed homes, and the widespread destruction of the possibility of healthy daily life.

Women in Black, Melbourne, dedicates this vigil to the international Gaza Freedom Marchers, young and old, including 85-year old Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, who have been stranded in Cairo, after the Egyptian government decided to block their transport. Like freedom marchers from other times and other struggles, they are helping each other to survive on the streets, in blockaded hotels, in the face of massive police presence. All we ask of you is to be aware that thousands of miles from here, ordinary people are risking their lives to end the suffering of the people of Gaza. Yesterday thousands marched in Gaza and in Israel to the Israel-Gaza border, asking for an end to the blockade and renewed dedication to peace efforts. For first-hand accounts, please go to Gazafreedommarch.org or this website.

These people, ordinary citizens of Gaza, of 40 other countries, want another kind of world where children do not play amidst the rubble of their homes, where young people have hopes for the future, where national hatreds do not reign supreme over international negotiations for peace. A new year, let us make it one that honors human life and all its joyous and complex possibilities.

We, the members of Women in Black, wish a happy and peaceful New Year for all.