By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
A crowd of nearly 200 filled Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral’s Bloedel Hall on Seattle’s Capitol Hill on June 25 to hear four pro-Palestinian speakers voice their anger and outrage with the Obama administration and Israel.
The activists blasted Pres. Obama at the three-hour forum, “Crisis in Gaza: The failure of U.S. Policy,” for not getting tough enough with Israel by reining in its settlement expansion, for remaining silent over Israel’s escalating segregation of Gaza, and more.
The panel also did not have much hope for any significant change in either country’s policies in the near future.
“We need a fundamental change,” said Richard Silverstein, a Seattle-based Jewish progressive Zionist blogger who has been writing a blog on Israeli-Palestinian issues, Tikun Olam, since 2003. “We need an end to the siege.”
Silverstein co-organized the packed event with Brenda Bentz, the conference coordinator for Sabeel-Puget Sound, the local chapter of the national pro-Palestinian Christian political group. Other panelists included Steve Niva, professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, David Schermerhorn, a long-time Palestinian rights supporter who was in the May flotilla, and Hazim Shafi, a Gaza-born Seattleite and the nephew of Haidar Abdul Shafi, a peace negotiator in the 1990s for the PLO.
The evening was hosted by the Mideast Focus Ministry at Saint Mark’s. At least seven more groups sponsored the event, including the Palestinian Concerns Task Force, the Episcopal Bishop’s Committee on Israel/Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Missing from the event, which was held on a Friday night, was any voice in defense of Israel or its military actions.
Discussion soon turned to the May 31 Israeli raid of the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, by Israeli Defense Forces. It was the only vessel of the six-ship flotilla that ignored Israel’s blockade requiring the inspection of cargo ships before delivery.
The operation left nine protestors dead and seven IDF soldiers seriously injured. Seven hundred pro-Palestinian activists were arrested. The operation has led to outrage around the world, most of it against Israel.
Bowing to international pressure, Israel appointed a three-member commission, considered to be a politically right body, to investigate the matter.
“I personally don’t know what happened,” Silverstein told the crowd. “They may have gone berserk or had some kind of manic reaction. But there’s only one investigation that’s going to work and that’s the U.N.”
The IDF commandos that rappelled aboard the Marmara said they were attacked by several activists who beat them with metal rods, knives, and glass bottles. They were fighting for their lives, they told The Guardian British newspaper. Some protestors fired live rounds at them.
Schermerhorn was travelling on another ship positioned within 50 yards of the Marmara, but eventually transferred onto it. He said he could hear weapons fire as they approached the blockade while helicopters hovered above them.
Israel claims protest organizers were warned repeatedly, in real time, about the blockade but the ship indicated its clear intention to violate the blockade by means of written and oral statements.
The raid on the flotilla “was a trap set by a terrorist lynch mob,” said Schermerhorn.
Other reports have stated the people onboard the Marmara were mercenaries with ties to militant groups intent on a violent break of the blockade.
As they proceeded to a prison, Schermerhorn spoke directly to soldiers filming the group.
“Much of the world is now going to view their country as thugs, pirates and assassins who have lost any moral positions,” he said, quoting himself.
After four days in incarceration and receiving medical attention, a judge required him to sign a mandatory letter of deportation before he left the country. He did so under protest.
“It’s as though the nation had lost its moral compass,” he said.
Schermerhorn surrendered the podium with the words “Boycott, divest, sanction,” the methods of non-violent resistance promoted by Sabeel and other groups opposed to what they call Israel’s illegal occupation of the territories. The words received roaring applause.
Niva, of Evergreen College, characterized Israel as a “rogue state” who was “not protecting the sanctity of life.”
“Israel’s really losing the ability to control the narrative,” he said. “People are not buying the story.
“I think that Israel’s ongoing effort to legitimate and, basically hide and disappear its ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestinian land…what I call the Greater Israel Project, seeks to control over 3.5 million Palestinian’s lives.”
He slammed the Obama administration for not “seizing the moment” and blamed “the Israel lobby” in Washington, D.C, for having a stranglehold on U.S. policy toward Israel.
Last month, majorities in both houses of Congress — 87 U.S. senators and more than 320 members of the House — signed on to separate letters that expressed steadfast support for Israel, reaffirming their commitment to the “unbreakable” U.S.-Israel relationship.
The Senate version supported Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and defended its right to enforce it. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, threw their support behind the Senate version.
Protestors question the legality of the blockade and believe it further isolates a population already in a hopeless situation.
According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations says, “A state may take action to enforce a blockade. Any vessel that violates or attempts to violate a maritime blockade may be captured or even attacked under international law.”
The blockade, Israel says, is meant to deny Hamas weapons shipments. The blockade has been eased in recent weeks.
Hazim Shafi, a principal program manager at Microsoft who grew up in Gaza, believes the threat from Hamas is a false premise Israelis are using to further a more sinister agenda.
“Security is an excuse,” Shafi said. “The goal [of Israel] is to force [Palestinians] to leave. Those who can afford to leave have left.”
Shafi described the territory as a big prison.
“There’s no airport and no land connectivity to the rest of the world,” he said. “The free movement of people has been restricted for many, many, many years.”
Although the IDF transports and coordinates an average of 15,000 tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza each week, and issues thousands of permits each year for travel in and out of Gaza, this is not the fundamental issue, according to Shafi.
“The problem with Gaza is not the movement of material, it’s that there’s no work to do,” he said. “Flour and cooking oil is not solving the problem. Most cannot afford the pasta because they have no income.”
Palestinian unemployment skyrocketed after 1996 to more than 50 percent, and fell from roughly 150,000 to about 35,000 after a series of terrorist bombings caused Israel to close its borders to most Palestinian workers.
The solution, believes Shafi, is to implement a two-state solution that would eventually lead to one secular state.
“By creating a state on top of the Palestinian areas,” he said, “and ethnically excluding and cleansing the land of its Palestinian inhabitants, and by continuing to occupy the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem for a long time and not clearly stating what the outcome of this is going to be, they have, in fact, on the ground today, destroyed the state of Palestine.”
Silverstein, who advocates Arab acceptance of Israel in return for a withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, struck a more conciliatory tone.
“I want Gilad Shalit to return to the bosom of his family but I also want Israel to recognize Hamas and end the siege,” said Silverstein. “I want the residents of Sderot not to suffer under missiles sent from Gaza, but I also want the residents of Gaza to be free from paralyzing fear and the anticipation of the next war.”