united church boycott of goods from illegal israeli settlements

First, a disclaimer.  I am not an expert in this area so I would recommend that you be intentional about seeking out information from a variety of sources that are able to provide more detail than that found here. The United Church national website has several links to the issue to which they have given the name “Unsettling Goods“. Kairos-Palestine (not related to Kairos here in Canada) has considerable information, too. There is a long list of United Nations resolutions to be found on Wikipedia that point to the attempts to restrain Israel’s encroachment upon Palestinian land, to set permanent borders, to refrain from taking land as a war bounty, etc., etc. The history is long and I am familiar with only slightly more than the headline version of it.  If you want to correct me on something, feel free to do so. The main point that I have distilled from all my reading, however, is that Israel continues to act in defiance of international law. The United Church is saying, “That’s not okay!”, their version of my niece’s admonishment of customers in a Costco line-up when she was two: “No pushing!” And they are backing up their words with actions. The boycott extends exclusively to goods manufactured in “illegal settlements”. It is not a blanket boycott of Israel although there were certainly factions who argued for that. That the Jewish representatives of many interfaith dialogue groups who had conversed for years with many of my colleagues became incensed by the United Church’s position is confusing to me. The Zionist pursuit of the colonization of the whole of Palestine has always been distasteful in these groups and rejected by many – if not all – of the Jewish delegates to those conversations. This is not about Judaism. It is about what is right and what is right according to international standards, laws, and treaties. I am completely boggled as to why the international community has not risen up in protest before now. But to name a critique of an illegal Israeli political aggression an affront to Judaism is, in my mind, a red herring and beneath the level of discourse that this situation deserves. The history is deep and challenging on both sides. My limited understanding is that the United Nations voted in favour of a partition that was never really recognized (Arab states unanimously opposed). Israel was to get a majority of the land even though they owned little of it and had fewer people. Lines had been redrawn to create a 60% majority in Israel held areas, but there was no guarantee that they would be able to maintain control of those lands with that slim a majority and an expectation that all who lived within the boundaries would be citizens of the state. The Palestinians did not accept that they were being given the smaller portion of the land despite their greater numbers and the reality that, at the time, Jews only owned 7% of the land (some people say 6%). Why, they argued, should they end up with the smaller portion when they owned most of the land to begin with and there were more of them? The end result was civil war, replaced by the Arab-Israeli war a few months later when the State of Israel was declared. In and amongst the withdrawal of the British and the civil war, there was no opportunity to peacefully and creatively clarify boundaries and borders that would a) acknowledge the long history of the Palestinians in the region, b) create sufficient space for a influx of Jews from their dispersion throughout the world, and c) be acceptable to both parties. The result has been that Israel’s boundaries have been drawn by war but never formally defined. Within a very short time of the declaration of the State of Israel, they had, by force, acquired 75% of the land of Palestine. Obviously that had belonged to Palestinians and the history of things like Operation Hiram have left blood under the fingernails of Israel, blood that Palestinians can smell all the way from the refugee camps many still inhabit. The international community responded but, in the eyes of those whose villages were destroyed and whose families were violated and massacred, it was never enough so the hatred continues, generations later. Under international law, the acquisition of land by force is illegal. The land taken in the early years of Israel’s statehood was illegally gotten land but, for some reason, no one in the international community seems to have said anything, allowing the boundaries to be assumed as the Zionists had achieved them. It is interesting that the acceptance of Israel by the international community was pretty much based on the borders set out in the partition act but as peace treaties were negotiated with Israel’s neighbours, the annexed land became part of the non-defined geography of the State of Israel as Israel created peace treaties with neighbours. It is also interesting that West Hill has begun a petition regarding our responsibilities as parties to First Nations’ Treaties; I see the situation as being similar in Israel. Although Israel expropriated (by force) much of the land of Palestine, they do not live up to the responsibilities they said, in their Declaration of Independence, they would live up to with respect to people living within their country. That declaration states that the State of Israel will uphold democratic principles like ensuring all its inhabitants have equal rights and freedoms without regard to religion, race, gender. It entrenched freedom of religion, language, education, and culture.  The Knesset feels differently about it and does not recognize it as law thereby justifying the differences in ways that Palestinians within its pseudo-borders (and outside of them) are treated. As with our petition, it is the people of Israel who must rise up and call on their government to live up to its own responsibilities and international obligations just as we have had to stand up and ask our government to appropriately live up to our obligations. Where the United Church comes down on it has been denounced as anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. It is not. Within the United Church documents and its conversation on the topic, the right of the State of Israel to exist was honoured and recognized over and again. There is no threat to the right of the Jewish people to have their own state and, yes, history reminds us how important that right is. That said, however, Israel does not have the right to continue to displace people as they have been doing for decades through acts of war and aggression. Yes, there are terrorist attacks against Israel. I know that. But I try to put myself in the position of a displaced people and I find I have more sympathy for them than for the multibillion dollar military machine that hunts them down when they send rockets. Israel has continued to be the major aggressor and the UN has recognized that, although they use bulldozers rather than rocket launchers and so escape the mainstream media’s pursuit of blood for their headlines. A Palestinian rocket into a settlement will be at the top of the news every time. The international community has stated refugees should be allowed to return to their homes but Israel moves others into those areas and the homes are no longer available (and often no longer in existence, having been bombed or bulldozed long ago). Settlements continue to grow and spread throughout the land, often destroying homes and farms that have been in families for generations. The transportation systems that link settlements cut through areas populated by Palestinians and cut family members off from one another and from their sources of income. Check points make simple connections horribly cumbersome. Although I try to tread carefully in the area of faith when it comes to these issues, I believe that faith has a lot to do with the tensions but we’re not supposed to really say that. The Zionist vision, the Muslim vision, the evangelical Christian vision – they are all egregious in their unblinking pursuit of power in the name of YHWH, Allah, or God. That one reason would be enough to inspire me to continue doing the work I do for decades. This broken world has seen more than its fill of divisive religious agendas. It is time we began looking at one another and recognizing ourselves in each other’s eyes. It is, I am convinced, the only way forward. Until that day, however, I feel convinced that we must stand in the face of oppression and speak clearly and loudly. And so, I applaud the United Church for taking this stand which far too many have denigrated as anti-Jewish.