By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Jeff Halper has been living in Jerusalem for more than half his life. The 62-year-old college professor is a child of the ‘60s who left America for Israel in 1973, feeling disillusioned by the state of things in his native land. But he never gave up the spirit of radical activism that he learned in his youth as a participant in the civil rights and anti-war protests.
On Oct. 6, Halper was the featured attraction at a benefit dinner held in Seattle for the Friends of Sabeel, an American support group for Christian Palestinians. The local appearance was one of four he made in the Pacific Northwest as part of a national tour.
Founder and head of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, Halper was the lone Israeli Jew to join a boat trip from Cypress to the Gaza Strip in August. The avowed purpose of the trip, organized by a California group, was to break the Israeli sea blockade of Gaza. There have been other, similar missions, bringing food and medical equipment and other necessities to the territory, but Halper said what made this voyage important to him was that it was purely political in nature.
“It wasn’t humanitarian,” he explained in a telephone interview with JTNews. “I’m very much opposed to mixing humanitarian with the political, because every time you try to present the crisis in Gaza as a humanitarian crisis, and then you’re bringing in food and medicine and fuel, and so on, you’re deflecting attention from the political roots.”
“Gaza isn’t suffering from the aftershocks of an earthquake or a natural disaster. It’s suffering from political oppression – suffering from the occupation of 41 years, and from economic sanctions that have been imposed by the United States and Europe. The ‘breaking the siege’ really focused on this political issue, and that’s what I liked about it,” he said.
Following the Hamas take-over of the Gaza Strip in June of 2007, Israel sealed its borders with Gaza and has allowed little more than basic humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Under Israeli pressure, Egypt has maintained a closure of its border with Gaza, confining the 1.4 million Palestinians living in the territory to their narrow strip of land and causing widespread shortages of fuel, electricity and basic goods. A small number of Gazans are allowed to leave each year for medical care, jobs abroad and for the annual hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Referencing lessons learned from his early activism in the States, Halper says he was disappointed that more Israelis did not participate in the trip through the sea blockade.
“It can’t be that we’re the occupying power that is responsible for this situation and then, no Israelis go to protest,” he said. “That would be like in the American South during the civil rights days of protesting Jim Crow – only black people and no white people – like white people have no responsibility. As Israelis I think we have the ultimate responsibility.”
Still, he said he is not alone, noting that along with messages attacking him for his action, he has received hundreds of emails from other Israelis who support his position and who say they wished they were able to be on the boat as well.
“I didn’t represent anybody, but I did get emails,” he said. “In some way, I felt a certain mandate to represent those Israelis – and there’s quite a few of them – who also oppose the occupation, and in particular what is happening in Gaza.”
In the United States, Halper’s actions have received mixed responses as well. Locally, Rob Jacobs, executive director of the Northwest chapter of the Israel-advocacy organization StandWithUs, is vocal in his concerns about both Halper’s actions and his politics.
“Jeff Halper gives the image of a white-bearded, almost grandfatherly activist-academic, with ‘60s idealism still in his veins,” Jacobs wrote in an e-mail to JTNews. In contrast to that image, however, Jacobs stressed that, “Halper is as aggressive in his criticism of Israel as he is silent on Palestinian terrorism. He works with Palestinian groups, including the International Solidarity Movement, to publicize factual distortions and prejudices and support their anti-Zionist agenda.”
According to Jacobs, Halper’s organization, ICAHD, “promotes a highly politicized narrative of the conflict, falsely accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and state terrorism” and demonizing Israeli policies he calls “unrelated to housing issues.”
“Halper portrays Palestinians as permanent, always-innocent victims of always-unacceptable Israeli aggression,” Jacobs wrote. He gave the example of Halper’s frequent uses the term ‘apartheid’ to refer to the situation in Israel.
Halper defended the use of the term in reference to the Israeli policies of separation on the West Bank, including the construction of Israeli-only roads and the separation wall between the West Bank and Israel proper. Halper explains that he is not using the term to imply a racist motive, but insists that the word, Afrikaans for “separation” is factually accurate and defines a political and social strategy.
Halper was arrested when he returned to Israel but has not been formally charged. Nor, he said, does he expect to be.