April 30, 2007
Rabbi
Michael Lerner
Tikkun
Community
2342 Shattuck Avenue #1200
Berkeley, CA 94704
Dear
Rabbi Lerner,
On
behalf of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and United for Peace
and Justice, we are writing to reassert our position and vision for the
mobilization that our coalitions are organizing in Washington,
DC on June 10-11 to commemorate the 40th
anniversary of Israel’s
illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. We also would like to express
our profound disappointment with your mischaracterizations of the June 10th
and 11th actions. In an introductory note that you wrote to an
article by Uri Avnery, entitled “How the Anti-Israel Left Helps
Perpetuate the Occupation”, you state that “many” of the organizers
of this mobilization are united around the “dissolution of the State of Israel”.
First of all, as you are likely aware, both of our coalitions are
working to end those very US
policies that support and sustain Israel’s military occupation.
Neither the US Campaign nor UFPJ prescribe any particular political resolution
for the Israel/Palestine conflict. That is because we believe that as
US-based coalitions, we need to focus our efforts not on dictating to
Palestinians and Israelis how to end the occupation and create a just, lasting
and comprehensive peace, but rather on building a movement to reorient our own
country’s foreign policy so that it supports a just peace based on human
rights, international law, and equal rights for all. We take great offense
at your implication that our coalitions are helping to perpetuate Israel’s military
occupation.
Second,
your claim that “many” of the organizers of the mobilization are united around
the “dissolution of the State of Israel” is inaccurate. As you are likely
aware, the only principles upon which the more than 200 endorsing organizations
are united on are:
* An
end to US military, economic, diplomatic, and corporate support for Israel’s
illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East
Jerusalem.
* A
change in US policy to one that supports a just peace between Palestinians and
Israelis based on equality, human rights and international law, and the full
implementation of all relevant UN resolutions.
These
are the exact same points of unity with which we approached Tikkun back in
December 2006 to see if your organization would have liked then to have joined
the US Campaign and UFPJ as an original endorsing organization of this
mobilization. You were even given the opportunity to provide feedback
before the call to action went public; however, Tikkun declined to participate.
We are
concerned that a leader of a progressive spiritual movement would choose to
interpret these broadly supported political demands as a call for the
“dissolution of the State of Israel.” It
is particularly ironic because powerful organizations on the pro-Israeli
right—those organizations which actually are working to
perpetuate Israel’s
military occupation—do not even go so far in their condemnations of this
mobilization. For example, the “Anti-Defamation League” states only that
they are concerned that we will not provide a “balanced view of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict” during the mobilization. Why you feel the
need to outdo the ADL in your condemnation of our effort is beyond our
understanding.
It is a
real shame that Tikkun continues to sit on its hands “discussing how to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Occupation of the West Bank” rather
than join with the US Campaign and UFPJ to make that commemoration a powerful
and real protest against continuing US support for occupation. We believe
that Tikkun should help build up this historic mobilization, rather than try to
tear it down. We believe Tikkun should in fact put its own Core Vision to
action when it states that the United States should use its “influence and
economic power” to end Israel’s military occupation and that “We will support
efforts to convince the United States to condition aid to Israel on the end of
the Occupation.”
Several
Tikkun chapters have already endorsed this mobilization and several Tikkun
supporters have copied one of us on email communications with you that urged
you to retract your false statements about our mobilization and instead join
with us to make it a success. We hope that you take this opportunity to
do so and that we can all unite on June 10-11 in Washington,
DC to end US
support for Israel’s illegal
military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza
Strip, and change US
policy to support a just peace based on human rights and international law.
Sincerely
yours,
Josh Ruebner Grassroots
Advocacy
Coordinator US
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation | Leslie Cagan National Coordinator United for Peace and Justice |
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