A BERKELEY ACTIVIST'S DIARY: Week ending April 7
This Diary was ready to go. In fact, I had already sent it. I thought I was done with writing about Israel and Palestine and I could finish up with my planned Part 2, a Diary devoted wholly to Berkeley city meetings and native plant gardening. Then the news arrived that Iran had sent drones and missiles into Israel in retaliation for Israel’s attack on the Iranian Consulate in Syria.
This is an evolving crisis.
My first reaction was that Netanyahu may well have achieved his goal of turning Israel into a victim to take the world’s eyes off the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and the hostages, and in the process pulled President Biden and other departing allies back into another Netanyahu embrace.
So far, the news reports include the that Israel provoked the response from Iran by bombing the Iranian Consulate in the Syrian and killing seven people including a top commander and his deputy on April, that Iran had little choice but to show strength by responding to the Israeli attack.
Iran gave a warning that a retaliatory attack was coming. After the attack Iran communicated that it deemed the matter [response to the bombing of the Iranian consulate] “concluded.”
Biden is quoted as saying support for Israel is ironclad. Biden is also reported to have said to Netanyahu that the U.S. will not support an Israeli offensive operation.
Biden still has not used his full leverage to end this war. The question of why not has to be asked--which takes us back to where this Activist’s Diary started.
Israel and Palestine continue to consume my attention and reading. Each book, each article, each interview adds another layer to my understanding and perspective, but to put an end to the maiming, killing and genocide in Gaza, orthopedic surgeons Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter who have just returned from Gaza call on us in their graphic description of two weeks at the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis.
If you read nothing else in this Diary, read “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this onslaught continues” by Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter, April 11, 2024. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza
If any of us are thinking that replacing Netanyahu will change the direction of the war, Chris Hayes’ podcast interview with Israeli dissident Meir Baruchin, a Jewish history and civics teacher in Jerusalem, who was jailed and fired from his job (he has since been reinstated) gives us a reality check. You can read or listen at: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/story-israeli-dissident-meir-baruchin-podcast-transcript-rcna146927
Now that the Berkeley City Council has stopped pursuing the merger of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare Community Action Commission, the time is ripe for the Peace and Justice Commission to act on its current mission: to “Advise the Council and the School Board on issues of peace and social justice; Create citizen awareness and develops educational programs” and proceed with the planning for the Gaza Peace Roundtable.
If a Peace and Justice Commission roundtable ends with a Gaza ceasefire resolution, then getting anywhere to persuade the city council to endorse it will be a mountainous climb with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf firmly entrenched in opposition.
At least when it comes to local elections, I can vote my conscience. There are other choices. Come November, the box will have to be checked for Biden, but that doesn’t mean that vote will go quietly. There are letters to write, visits to be made, demonstrations to attend.
What really caught my attention in the framing by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now of an interview with Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbini was two words in a quote from President Biden. The quoted paragraph was taken from a release of Biden’s comments on Univision following the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy. Biden called for a temporary ceasefire and aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.
The two words received no special emphasis though they were cut off when I heard the same recorded Biden comments in a different podcast. If I hadn’t been doing so much reading they might have slipped by, but they sum up where Biden stands when it comes to Israel and Palestine, and define the pgolicy and the actions of the U.S
Biden’s two words referencing Palestinians were “those people”. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/10/mouin_rabbani_gaza_biden_netanyahu
It is the “othering” that runs through the history of the Palestinians. The words “those people” denote people who are not like us. They are less than us.
President Carter received blistering criticism and backlash when he wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (If you are looking for a book on Israel and Palestine with maps, the text of agreements and an easy to read list of events up to 2009 this book has it.)
Apartheid is the correct description. Nathan Thrall describes the walls, the barriers, the checkpoints to control Palestinians in the West Bank in excruciating detail in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
Aaron David Miller captures it in the second chapter of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli when he wrote, “[Palestinians] Unlike the Israelis, who had an American Jewish community that generally could be depended on as a champion, Palestinians had few allies in the United States to explain their plight, let alone to create a Hollywood mythology. No Exodus or Cast a Giant Shadow told the world of their suffering and heroism. No United Jewish Appeal raised money or mobilized a community and few allies in Congress pleaded their cause…when Americans thought of Palestine, they thought of refugees and terrorists.”
The title of Khaled Elginoy’s book focusing on the decades of the U.S. taking the side of Israel in negotiations says it so clearly Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump.
Then comes President Biden.
Reuters reported that when Biden met with Netanyahu and the war cabinet on October 21, 2023 on his visit to Israel that he said, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens-lifelong-bond-with-israel-shapes-war-policy-2023-10-21/
It is true you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. While Theodor Herzl is often credited as establishing the political organization for a Jewish nation at the end of the nineteenth century, the Christian Zionist movement precedes Herzl and the 1917 Balfour Declaration by decades. Some references push Christian Zionism back centuries. Reading “The Impact of Christian Zionism on American Policy” by William N. Dale is a quick primer on the history of Christian Zionism up to the Evangelical embrace of Zionism which serves as a guide to the present-day Republican Party and Trump. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ad/ad_v9_2/daw01.html
Tim Alberta covers the entanglement of Evangelicals, Trumpism and Trump in The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
The missile attack on the World Central Kitchen three vehicle convoy by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), put a crack in Biden’s full unconditional support of Israel as a self-proclaimed Zionist turning his prior requests to Netanyahu into outrage.
What was it that made this so impactful?
How did the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers move President Biden to outrage when the deaths of 224 aid workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 400 doctors, nurses and health care workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 33,000 Palestinians couldn’t, the estimated deaths of 14,000 Palestinian children couldn’t, the deaths of Palestinian children from starvation couldn’t? How could the unparalleled suffering of innocent Palestinians not move a president who is recognized for extending his own personal losses to empathy for others?
Was it that Jose Andres isn’t just the Spanish chef and US naturalized citizen who founded World Central Kitchen, Andres is a charismatic humanitarian with vision and knowhow? Andres has literally walked into crises worldwide, more often catastrophes and used social media, videos of conditions to bring the goodness of serving food to hungry people for all to see. Andres finds chefs, volunteers and resources to feed hundreds of people accomplishing the seemingly impossible.
Or was it that this time, six of the seven World Central Kitchen workers killed were not Palestinian Muslims like all those other deaths and instead came from around the world? Was it that this time, President Biden expressed outrage because Jose Andres is a fellow Catholic with whom President Biden has formed a friendship?
Or, is it those people?
Jeet Heer ponders this question in “What It Takes to Break Joe Biden’s Zionist Bubble” published April 5, 2024 in The Nation with the sub header, “The President’s rigid ideological commitment has led him to shut out government dissenters – and his own voters.” The article chronicles how Biden going back to his early days as a Senator has been a firmly entrenched Zionist Hawk. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-zionist-bubble-gaza-muslims/
On Friday, Nancy Pelosi with thirty-six congressional Democrats signed on to the strong letter to President Biden that ended with, “we again urge you to ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”
The letter should have arrived in Biden’s inbox, the same day, those of us who listen to Democracy Now first heard of “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy”.
“Lavender” is the AI machine directed program selecting Gazans for assassination who fit a profile making them suspect to being connected to Hamas. A component of that AI program “Where’s Daddy” follows the Gazan men home where the IDF can bomb their assassination target with ease.
Here we worry about AI generated disinformation.
In Gaza, a surreal science fiction future with drones buzzing overhead turns life in Gaza into a real present-day war horror where “no place is safe” children are injured, maimed, orphaned, killed, entire families and neighbors eliminated and buildings destroyed along with the target.
The April 3, 2024 article by Yuval Abraham is disturbing and chilling. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
In this swirl it was agenda item 10, Update the Gaza Peace Round Table Subgroup, that pushed my attendance at the Peace and Justice Commission. When I arrived, the room was filled with attendees wrapped in keffiyehs and a man sitting at the table of commissioners wearing a Yamaka who I soon learned was Nimrod Pitsker Elias.
I asked a few of the attendees if they had been coming to the meetings or whether this was their first. For the few that answered this was the first meeting.
Expecting that they were there for the roundtable update, I was surprised when nearly everyone stood up for non-agenda comments. There were more than a dozen who one after another spoke to an incident involving Hahn’s appointee commissioner Nimrod Pitsker Elias at the March 26, city council meeting. He was described as pushing his phone into the face of a Palestinian woman in an act of intimidation and harassment. The speakers asked for his removal from the commission.
One young man said he had four videos of the incident. I handed him my email and asked for the links. So far, no videos or links have appeared in my email. The city council meeting video stream of speakers is of such poor quality, that nothing is visible except the timer filling most of the screen.
In Councilmember Taplin’s newsletter, he described being appalled by the harassment of a Jewish woman at the same meeting.
At 7:50 pm Councilmember Hahn showed up at the commission meeting, said nothing, took a seat and held her phone in the air evidently to record the meeting. While it came off as an act of intended intimidation, by the time she arrived, most of the attendees who had lined up had already spoken and one of the remaining speakers noted Hahn’s attendance.
This was the second meeting in less than a week that I wished I had a recorder turned on for the entire meeting.
Grace Morizawa explained at the end of the comments that the commission does not have the power to remove a commissioner, that rests with the appointing hcouncilmember. Morizawa did not mention that the number of commissioner terms are limited as that does not apply. Commissioner Elias was appointed by Hahn on December 5, 2023.
When councilmembers are replaced through elections, the new councilmember can choose a new appointee, though often the existing commissioner stays in place.
After the non-agenda comment period, most of the attendees left missing what was probably the most important discussion of the evening, item 13, titled as Discussion on Berkeley High School Ethnic Studies. There was no way of knowing from the agenda packet, meeting minutes or the description Ethnic Studies that this was about sending a letter to BHS from the commission regarding the Berkeley High School (BHS) curriculum on Israel and Palestine unless you attended the prior Peace and Justice Commission meeting.
The proposed letter was not in the agenda packet, as a supplement online or printed for public review. It was read aloud at the meeting.
The letter asked BHS to review class curriculum for errors and respond when according to the evening commission discussion the lesson plan in question had already been corrected.
We heard from Jewish parents who stated they had not heard from their children expressing concerns or acts of anti-Semitism, but in following up they found an organized group of parents claiming anti-Semitism and pushing to change the ethnic studies curriculum to one approved by the Brandeis Center and Anti-Defamation League.
Both commissioners Morizawa and Lippman expressed that they did not support sending a letter, that the problem had already been resolved and that the Peace and Justice Commission should not be involved in dictating Berkeley High School curriculum.
Thinking about all the censoring, book banning and threatening to dismiss teachers and librarians from their jobs that is taking place in the south and even some conservative areas in California, I was disappointed that only one more commissioner, Bohn, joined Morizawa and Lippman to oppose any further consideration of sending a letter.
The final outcome in a four to three vote was to revise the letter and bring it back at the next meeting for final commission approval. Commissioners Jacqulin, Elias, Menscher and Guarino all voted for sending a letter.
There was little to report on the Gaza Peace Roundtable. subgroup. The next step is for the subgroup, Commissioners Lippman, Morizawa and Elias, to find a facilitator for the roundtable.
April 7, 2024, Part 2 is still in the works covering the Planning Commission, the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and the Parks Commission.
