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| "Where there is struggle there is hope" |
On Saturday December 14, two peace activists talked about war and injustice in the Mid-East at the Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco. About 100 came, twice as many as attended a similar event in October, and they gave the speakers a standing ovation. Word is out. The two activists are spokespersons for Standing Together (ST), a grassroots Israeli/Palestinian movement calling for a hostage deal, an end to the occupation, and a shared future based on equality. Both are citizens of Israel, with difficult lives. But as the Jewish speaker Alon-Lee Green pointed out, their difficulties are asymmetric.
Alon-Lee's life is hard because he's appalled by the carnage in Gaza, and because he protests against that war, and the others that would follow in due course. Jewish ST activists are sometimes forced to move by political violence, and the repression is ratcheting up. He's firmly opposed to the law enshrining Jewish supremacy as official doctrine, and when he hears Netanyahu & co. speak openly of their "genocidal ambitions," he feels like a fish out of water. His brother talks about immigrating, and his partner says he wonders why they're staying. But Israel is Alon-Lee's home, and always will be. He says he's in the fight because the country must be "a home for all of us, or eventually it won't be a home for any of us."
The Palestinian speaker, Rula Daood, could get in police trouble for posting "don't kill children in Gaza" on Facebook, or for uploading a black rectangle as her profile picture. And it is the "deadliest time for years" for the non-citizen Palestinians on the West Bank. (The rate of Palestinians killed there by settlers and the IDF over the past year is over 170% of the rate of Israelis who died on 10/7/23.) Like Alon-Lee she's not going anywhere, and fights to live in a country where she's a first class citizen; where she feels included when she hears the national anthem played at a soccer match.
Rula, Alon-Lee, and the other ST fighters can claim some victories over the past year. After October 7, ST was one of the first to call for a ceasefire. They bought billboards showing the hostages and the suffering in Gaza side by side, a revelation to the many Israelis who couldn't name a single Gazan victim. They opened a hot line for Palestinian students accused of political offenses. And they've organized protection for trucks from Jordan and the West Bank going to Gaza; since May 27 all protected trucks have made it through, over 100 in total.
ST organizes with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Their goal isn't purity, it's political power, and their approach to getting it is to "widen the tent." That means talking to people with different values and appealing to their self-interest from a place they can understand: ST tries to stand in front of the "street," not to walk 20 miles ahead. But Alon-Lee made it clear that their goal is political equality and ending the occupation, not to allow American Jews to maintain cherished illusions. At the same time, ST does not regard working within Israeli institutions as "normalizing" Palestinian oppression. Things need to change, but Israel will continue on.
One thing that they think Americans of all persuasions can do to help is to become dues paying members of Friends of Standing Together. Like most vital work, theirs requires money, and making a donation is an important thing you can do to show your support. Another is to keep alive the possibility for challenging the Trump/Israel alliance. Tell Congress, as ST tells Israelis, that the next war won't be the one that finally brings Israel security, it will kill thousands more Palestinian children instead.
And another thing to tell Congress, and your friends and neighbors, is something that Rula and Alon-Lee couldn't say without risking big trouble back home: one good way to promote a ceasefire is to stop sending Israel the weapons it uses to slaughter civilians.
Of course that would mean getting a fair distance in front of the American "street." But as Rula said when asked for a takeaway from the evening, "never give up on people."
Join Friends of Standing Together: https://www.standing-together.org/en/donate-en
Find out more about Bay Area Friends of Standing Together: sffriendsofstandingtogether@gmail.com
For a 22 page brochure about the ST approach to organizing: https://www.standing-together.org/_files/ugd/7ff315_5f69682daf404d66849f14af867a6221.pdf
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