Correspondence with a Quaker - New English Review

by Ardie Geldman (December 2015)

At any given moment during the year an estimated minimum of 2,000 foreign visitors, having entered the country as tourists, travel throughout Israel and the Palestinian Authority as participants in educational programs and tours whose goal is to export the Palestinian narrative (an account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as told from the Palestinian perspective), to others in communities throughout the world. The majority of these groups have some Christian church affiliation. These include North American, British and European mainstream churches, Quakers and Mennonites, assorted smaller, independent congregations and activist groups such as Christian Peacemakers, Sabeel, Siraj and Holy Land Trust that are based locally or have local offices. A lesser number are affiliated with sundry secular human rights and social justice organizations.

Participants in these programs return home as enthusiastic quasi-ambassadors of the Palestinians where they share their emotional experiences among their social circles, to church groups, on campuses and at community events. Each group, unwittingly or otherwise, serves as a cadre for instilling or further contributing to a one-sided view of the conflict. This longstanding practice constitutes a highly successful, grass-roots effort at building a community of overseas supporters, rank-and-file and elites alike.

Given the overt pro-Palestinian bent of these programs, why visit an “illegal settlement” at all? Over time, four reasons have emerged. First, the visit to Efrat adds a dramatic element to the group’s experience by bringing them into the very heart of the controversy, for some, into the “belly of the beast.” Second, it is an opportunity for participants to record observations and take photographs of “settlement life” to be used later in blogs, on websites, in public speeches, and in emails. Third, it presents an opportunity for the participants to virtually “interrogate” a “settler” about what they perceive as the injustices heaped upon the Palestinians in order to support the “settlement” enterprise. Four, even a short visit makes it possible to pay lip service to the “we listened to both sides” mantra.

In a recent communication with the author a Quaker correspondent, who recently visited Efrat with a group of Quaker activists from England, strongly expressed his views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.[1] His perspective, particularly his allegations concerning the sorrowful condition of Palestinians for which he blames the state of Israel, and particularly “settlers,” is characteristic of these groups. Although the correspondent sounds sincere, he reveals an open bias favoring the Palestinian narrative, but one that is based on (1) historical ignorance, (2) false premises and (3) factual errors.

The views expressed by this writer are also consistent with those of the Quaker Movement.[2],[3] The Quakers are originally a 17^th century British Protestant sect whose members reject all church sacraments and hierarchy. The movement is known for its strong pacifist tradition from which follows its history of anti-war activities. Like other Christian groups, the Quakers were represented by missionaries in the Middle-East, in their case as far back as the 1860s with centers in the Holy Land and Lebanon.

Following Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, what Quaker literature refers to as “The First Arab-Israeli War and Nakba,” the Arabic term for “disaster,” the Quaker Movement played a major role in providing relief to Arabs in the Gaza Strip, creating medical clinics, schools and vocational programs. This work was turned over to the United Nations in 1950. Since the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terrorist organization in 2007, Quaker activities there have been limited. Their Middle-East Regional Office is located in East Jerusalem, and Ramallah remains the location of additional offices, as well as a Quaker meetinghouse (church) and two schools.

The Quaker Movement has never looked favorably upon the Jewish return to sovereignty in the Land of Israel, basing its opposition upon “replacement theology” that sees the local Christian Arabs as the true inheritors of the land. However, the Movement’s opposition to Israel grew significantly more active following the latter’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War (the “War of 1967” according to Quakers), when Israel suddenly found itself in control of the Sinai desert, including the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. Since that time Quakers have adopted an openly hostile posture that is reflected in their strong activism against organized Jewish community life in Judea, Samaria and the eastern section of Jerusalem.

In recent years the Quakers, through its American affiliate the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC), have become one of the leading organizations behind the anti-Israel “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.” The AFSC honored Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a dinner in New York in 2008 despite his professed anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and threats to destroy the state of Israel. According to Romirowsky and Joffe, “The group now engages in apologetics for anti-Israel terrorism, accuses the Jewish state of all manner of crimes, and seeks to actively undermine its economy and security.”

If this Quaker correspondent follows the pattern of previous visitors, his communication below will prove to be a one-time affair. After using their correspondence to more fully vent their opinions and emotions, other visitors have been either unwilling or unable to challenge the point-by-point refutation that is returned.

The visits to Efrat and other Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria described above take place with the full knowledge of the Office of the Prime Minister, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israel Ministry of Tourism. Under Israeli laws that protect freedom of speech, these visits, although ultimately damaging to the state of Israel, are not illegal. However, Israel’s Knesset is currently considering legislation according to which ”anyone who is not an Israeli citizen or a permanent resident will not be granted any kind of visa or permit if they, or any company, organization or foundation they represent, calls for a boycott of Israel.” There is a possibility that in the future Quaker and other overtly pro-Palestinian groups known to support the BDS Movement will be barred by the government from visiting both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In the meantime, as evident from this correspondence, the ongoing propaganda tours by Quakers and other groups, even those that include a brief stopover in a “Jewish settlement to hear the other side,” only strengthen visitors’ identification with the Palestinian narrative.

November 20, 2015

Dear Friend,

I deeply appreciate your taking the time to relate to my recent correspondence with your colleague and for your sincere and thoughtful observations. I apologize for the delay in returning to you as I wanted time to think through your comments and about how I would respond.

Allow me, please, to place my remarks inter-linearly, below. (Yours in italics.)

You wrote:

November 12, 2015

Both the document you quote, the Balfour Declaration (1917), and particularly the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1922), specifically recognize we Jews as a people, not as a religion, who bear a legitimate historical claim to the Land of Israel as our homeland.

Had events taken a different turn, had Britain not reneged on its commitment to the Jewish People, today Israel might very well be living peacefully side-by-side with a state for the Arabs of Palestine that now occupies a territory known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. If there is, de facto, if not de jure, a Palestinian state today, that is it.

The political rights of the Jewish People expressed in the British Mandate were transferred to the founding charter of the United Nations in 1948. Article 80 of the UN Charter recognizes the Mandate for Palestine of the League of Nations.

It denies historical reality not to acknowledge that the Jews who settled in Mandatory Palestine in response to the call of the Zionist Movement rapidly raised the quality of life for all peoples in the area.

I have no idea to what you are referring here. Since it was established in May 1948, the state of Israel scrupulously guards the full civil and religious rights of all of its citizens, irrespective of personal background or group affiliation. There is ample evidence of this throughout our highly pluralistic society. Sadly, Israel is the only country in the region about which this may be said.

Yet, having said this, I ask, does Israeli society suffer from social and racial prejudice? Of course it does. I challenge you to identify one country in the world that is free of social and racial prejudice. However, social or racial prejudice within a population should not be conflated with institutionalized discrimination and racism. Such discrimination, in the form of vile antisemitism and persecution of Christians, characterizes the societies of most of our neighboring states. How strongly and how regularly do Quakers condemn the prejudice against both Jewish and Christian civil rights in Muslim countries? I repeat. How strongly? How regularly?

Yes, Israeli society over the years has had to contend with its own relatively few cases of home grown terrorists. (Perhaps you as a Quaker consider every soldier a terrorist and every form of physical self-defense an act of terrorism. I have heard this sentiment expressed in the past by other pacifists.) In contrast, violence as a means of social control, retribution and as a political tactic is unfortunately all too characteristic of much of (I do not say all of) Palestinian society. Social justice and human rights groups that refuse to recognize this, that do not vigorously condemn this, and who even equate this pathological, self-defeating ethos with the character of democratic Israel, not only egregiously err, but serve to abet this far too brutal culture.

Does the fact that no one in your group happened to witness such attacks during their visit bear relevance? Just yesterday, perhaps you heard, two Israeli Jews were stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist at a small, make-shift synagogue in Tel-Aviv in the midst of afternoon prayers at about 1:00 p.m. Later, at about 4:30 p.m., not five minutes from our home, a group of Palestinian terrorists drove past a line of vehicles stuck in a traffic jam, shooting into them at point blank range with an automatic weapon as they went along. Three innocent people were murdered in this incident, two Jews and one Arab. Five others were shot and wounded, many more severely traumatized.

The water issue that you raise is undoubtedly one of the most successful Palestinian calumnies. It rivals the medieval era accusation that the Jews poisoned the wells of Europe in order to instigate the Black Plague. Every government of Israel since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, including this one, has exceeded its commitment to the Palestinian Authority for supplying water. By way of contrast, in addition to their mismanaging and even absconding with millions of dollars provided by European and other governments earmarked to improve antiquated water delivery and sewerage systems causing much water to be lost to seepage and wasted, Palestinian leaders have never implemented water conservation methods (so common in Israel) and continue to ignore the illegal drilling by Palestinian pirates into wells whose depletion help pollute the water table. I am definitely not an expert on this technical topic, so I can only refer you to some articles whose authors know more than me:

“Palestinian Lies Like Water: The PA considers water and waste as weapons against Israel, not as areas of cooperation” by David M. Weinberg, The Jerusalem Post

“Socio-Environmental Cooperation and Conflict? A Discursive Understanding and Its Application to the Case of Israel/Palestine” by T. Ide and C. Frohlich, Earth System Dynamics

“The Israeli-Palestinian Water Conflict: An Israeli Perspective” by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman, The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

“Can Israel Solve The World’s Water Crisis?” Israel21c

“The Politicization of the Oslo Water Agreement,” by Lauro Burkart, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

(Link: https://www.facebook.com/MyIsrael/videos/1027879307230596/?pnref=story)

With respect to what many ordinary Palestinians are interested in, I commend to you this very recent article by Daniel Polisar:

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/11/what-do-palestinians-want/

Finally, back to the Quaker mission. I refer you to the op-ed article by Alexander Joffe and Asaf Romirovsky appearing recently in the Wall Street Journal:

(http://www.romirowsky.com/18076/quakers-israel).

Nonetheless, I truly look forward to seeing you and other Quakers again in Efrat.

[1] This correspondent voluntarily chose to write to the author after being copied on a previous correspondence between the author and another group participant.

http://www.thetower.org/article/quakers-stop-friends/, Issue #9, December 2013

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