I recently was interviewed in Princeton, NJ for a local TV show. The interview is only 28 minutes long. Watch it here.

I have just been interviewed on Blog Talk Radio by Ruthann Amarteifio. You can listen to the interview here.

- You were a stalwart follower of Israel during your whole life, but nowadays you are not anymore – or not as much as before. Can you explain to us what made you change your mind?

As I explain in greater detail in my book, in July 2006 Israel invaded Lebanon in retaliation for a cross-border raid into northern Israel by Hezbollah, the nationalistic Lebanese political/military organization. I fully supported Israel’s action, without regard for the consequences to Lebanon’s civilian population. Although I was not fully aware of it at the time, the real motivation for my one-sided perspective was Fear. Being Jewish, I identified with the Israeli soldiers who had been killed and abducted in the raid by Hezbollah. As a Jew, I identified with all Jews everywhere, who, I believed, were eternal targets of Hezbollah, Hamas and, in my mind, the entire Arab world. Without bothering to do any honest research to confirm my assumptions, I took for granted that this world was pathologically anti-Semitic (I define anti-Semitic as an aversion toward the Jewish religion and its people) and, therefore, a threat to my life.

Please note, in particular, two things I just implied: First, I did not indicate any identification with the people of Lebanon, the vast majority of whom were innocent victims of a devastating invasion. Because my identification was limited, in the sense that it did not include all people – and because I saw the Arab world as an enemy of my world – I was unmoved by the displacement of over one million Lebanese and the deaths of hundreds. In other words, my limited identity (in my case as a Jew) functioned as a lens through which I saw the world and it necessarily blinded me to the suffering of the other. In my mind, the other did not warrant the same humanity as did my people. As long as I defined myself as Jewish, my analysis of Israel’s behavior was inevitably predetermined. And documented facts were only relevant if they conformed to what I wanted to believe. If they did not conform, they were automatically dismissed.

The second thing I implied was through my reference to “my life.” I could have used the language of my past and said “my people,” but what I later discovered, when I became sensitive to the suffering of the other, is that the proclamations I made pertaining to alleged threats to my people were not precisely honest. I made use of the phrase “my people” to convince myself that I was not being selfish, that my concern was for my entire family of Jews, but what I was really concerned about was my perceived and personal sense of self, my presumed mortal identity. My concern was narcissistic, egotistical. Information that challenged the beliefs and images that formed a significant part of my identity was interpreted, at an unconscious level, as a mortal threat.

All of us are attached, to greater or lesser degrees, to unexamined beliefs and images and to the identities that arise out of or are reinforced by these beliefs and images. But if our beliefs and images are unfounded, what are the implications for our identity? If, for example, we are brought up to believe that throughout history our people have been innocent victims of anti-Semitism, that because we are Jewish we are victims, we will be compelled to interpret events, such as the Israel-Lebanon War, in a way that preserves that belief.

Nowadays, I find it amazing when Israeli loyalists talk about the suffering of Israelis, who are in the line of rocket attacks from Gaza, without the slightest concern for the far greater suffering of Palestinians who are subjected to infinitely more destructive rockets from Israel, not to mention an economic blockade that has caused immense suffering on every level of existence.

Getting back to what made me change my attitude toward Israel, in order to deal with the anxiety that arose as a result of Hezbollah’s provocative action, I started talking with close non-Jewish friends about what I referred to as the Arab world’s hatred toward all Jews. I explained to them that Arabs in general were so consumed with hatred that they were willing to sacrifice their own children to the goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. To my great disappointment, these friends disagreed with me and criticized Israel for its disproportionate use of force and the killing of civilians, both war crimes according to international law. My friends’ inability to understand the existential threat that Jews constantly faced only hardened my stance toward the Arab world and further convinced me that only fellow Jews could understand our people’s suffering.

A few days after these conversations, I received an unexpected phone call from a Jewish friend who I had known my entire lifetime. During our two hour conversation, which consisted mostly of me complaining about Arab society, my friend just listened. He did not offer any resistance. Occasionally, he disagreed with a few of the “facts” I shared but he was emotionally and intellectually non-judgmental. At the end of the call he suggested that I look into the writings of a couple of Israeli-Jews, who, he said, were well-respected historians. When I hung up the phone I thought to myself, “I can do that. I have never really studied the history of the Arab-Israeli problem. Maybe there is some information that I should be aware of.”

So that telephone conversation encouraged me to do something I had never previously thought of doing: to find out for myself what is true and what is false. I then began a long and meticulous study of the history of Israel’s relationship to the Arab world and, in particular, to Palestinians. What I discovered shocked me. I learned that virtually everything I thought I knew about the history, everything I had been taught from the time I was a child, beliefs I thought were unassailable, were either total fabrications or gross distortions of the actual history.

This remarkable repudiation of what I had taken as sacred triggered what I call a revolution in consciousness, in which my personal and collective identification as a Jew dissolved and was replaced by the understanding/recognition that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli or American, as much Muslim or Christian as Jew. Fear was replaced by compassion and confusion was replaced by clarity. Fear arises with the presumption of a limited identity, or separate self, and colors the way we see the world. It prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. Therefore, confusion always accompanies fear. Compassion, on the other hand, is the ability to stand in the shoes of the other and see from all perspectives. Therefore, clarity always accompanies compassion.  

So now, if I define myself at all, I define myself as pro-humanity. That makes me both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. My support for Palestinian equality is not because I like Palestinians or dislike Israelis. It is because I believe that all people – not some people – are entitled to the same rights as any other people. If the roles of Palestinians and Israelis were reversed I would be doing exactly what I am doing now, fighting for freedom for the oppressed.

But when we live within the paradigm of Us against Them, which is always based upon fear, we become so confused that we cannot conceive that someone who cares about Palestinians could also care about Israelis. We assume that if someone is pro-Palestinian they must also be anti-Israeli. This is the kind of dualistic thinking that is doomed to perpetuate conflict.

- You just published a book called “Breakthrough. Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” Could you kindly explain to us what your new vision contributes to resolving the conflict?

The vast majority of people who would seriously study the history of Israel-Palestine would conclude that the primary issue is land, two peoples competing for one land. And they would acknowledge that the religious and cultural disparagement between the two sides is a consequence of that competition. However, I see Israel-Palestine as primarily a spiritual problem. From my perspective, the root cause of the problem is, as you might deduce from my answer to your first question, the attachment to a limited identity and the beliefs and images that emanate from and reinforce that identity.

The real solution to this problem is for each of us to transform our consciousness from Us against Them to tolerance and understanding. Once enough individuals have made that leap in consciousness, society itself will be transformed.

So my vision requires each of us to practice what I call – and many of the great spiritual masters of mankind’s collective inheritance call – self-inquiry. We must begin to inquire within. We need to develop a capacity for self-reflection and inquire into our indoctrination, into the beliefs and images we have absorbed through our culture, our parents, our schools, our religions, etc. If we do this, we will find that much of what we have taken as fact is simply untrue and is designed to support a certain world view that keeps us imprisoned in this world of separate selves, or egos, that creates, for its own apparent self-preservation, a world of separation, of Us against Them. And society needs to educate its members to develop critical thinking skills, to question everything they have been taught.

If each of us takes responsibility for our beliefs and if society teaches us to think for ourselves we will be free from the indoctrination that favors one group and demonizes another. We will be freed from our life-negating enemy images. We will no longer unconsciously superimpose these images onto the world and then assume that the world we see is reality. Then we will no longer scapegoat particular others as being solely responsible for the state of our world. Our interpretations of our religious teachings will also be transformed. We will see that the objective of every true religion is to transcend the religion itself, to go beyond being a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian to being a human being who is part of an infinite and interconnected mystery that every human being contributes to. The bottom line is that before we can find peace in the world we first must find it within ourselves. 

- The day after the United Nations voted to give Palestine observer status, Israel announced plans to build a new settlement close to Jerusalem which will further divide the West Bank into two parts and will create a huge problem in the future. What is your opinion about this?

First of all, we have to understand that for every Israeli government since Israel became a state in 1948, peace has been secondary to the acquisition of more land. One only has to read the history as found within Israeli state archives and the writings of Israel’s leaders to come to this obvious conclusion. Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel will build in area E-1 and make impossible a contiguous Palestinian state is in line with the objectives of the Jewish only settlement project that began in 1967 with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The Likud platform, Netanyahu’s political party, explicitly rejects a Palestinian state and calls for the Jordan River to be “the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

Year after year we hear Israel claim that it wants peace while it continues to make peace impossible. Seizing Palestinian land, throwing Palestinians out of villages they have lived in for generations, stealing their water, destroying their olive orchards, restricting their movement and their access to education and medical care, allowing settler fanatics to terrorize women and children while the army looks on with approval are not the actions of a country that is interested in peace. Nor would a country interested in peace declare that Jerusalem is and must be the “undivided” capital of a Jewish state. All of Israel’s leaders know that any Palestinian leader who would surrender a right to East Jerusalem would become a pariah throughout the Muslim world.

Most of the world is upset with Israel’s treatment of its non-Jewish inhabitants, but its immoral and illegal abuse of non-Jews will not stop until the United States government finds the courage to stand up to Israel’s powerful lobby and put justice ahead of the prejudice that enables and encourages the abuse.

- Thousands of Palestinians have died since 1948; five million live as refugees… most people around the world see Netanyahu with the same eyes that they used to see Hitler because actually, he is doing the same things Hitler did. Do you think Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory will end some day?

I would not go so far as to say that Israel is doing the same thing to Palestinians as Hitler did to Jews. There are no extermination chambers and, as far as I know, no plans to warehouse and murder Palestinian men, women and children. However, I do not want to minimize the hatred many Israeli politicians and religious leaders, not to mention soldiers and settlers (colonizers), routinely express toward Palestinians. When a rabbi writes a book, endorsed by other rabbis and barely criticized by Israel’s government, that claims the Torah allows for the killing of Palestinian infants because they will grow up to be “terrorists,” I can only conclude that segments of Israeli society have fallen to a level of inhumanity that is a threat not only to Palestinians but to the integrity of Judaism itself.

Briefly, I want to say that I do not condone Palestinian violence toward Israel, but it has to be understood within the context of the Occupation. The fact is that Palestinian resistance has mostly taken the form of nonviolence. However, Israel has so delegitimized Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party and their attempts to nonviolently come to a peace agreement with Israel, not to mention deported, arrested and assassinated over decades many of the leaders of Palestinian nonviolence that one has to consider the possibility that Israel is more comfortable with violence than with nonviolence. Certainly, Israel can more easily divert the world’s attention from its colonization of Palestinian land towards Palestinian violence.  

Regarding Israel’s colonization, at some point either the world, with the United States in the decisive role, will sanction Israel like it sanctioned South Africa and force the colonization to end or Israel will complete its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to the extent it deems necessary to fulfill the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel; and the Palestinians will be left with a few cities and small pockets, or Bantustans, that will be separated from other Palestinian areas. And the world will hold up its hands and say that it is too late to do anything about it.

- The last ‘war’ between Israel and Gaza ended about one month ago (November 22). It all started when an Israeli air strike killed Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari. Nevertheless, International Media said a rocket launched by Hamas started the war. What is your opinion about International Media?

I was part of a human rights delegation, sponsored by InterFaith Peace Builders, which visited Gaza from November 5 to November 11. On November 8, Israeli artillery fire killed thirteen year old Hamid Abu Daqqa while he was playing soccer with his friends in front of his house in the village of Abassan Kabira. The next day, our delegation went to the boy’s funeral. We met with his family and with his friends who witnessed the killing. We went to the boy’s house and saw exactly where he was shot. Abassan Kabira is about one and-a-half kilometers from the border with Israel. Israel has created a buffer zone that is supposed to extend three-hundred meters into Gaza where only Israeli Occupation forces are allowed to enter. However, Israeli soldiers sometimes enforce the buffer zone up to a kilometer away. Furthermore, prior to the “war” Israeli tanks entered Gaza on average six days a week. When the tanks enter, Israeli soldiers begin shooting indiscriminately. A woman I met in Abassan village asked me a rhetorical question: “Do you sleep with your shoes on?” Gazans who live close to the border are terrorized almost every day by Israeli soldiers. They sleep with their shoes on so they can get up out of bed at a moment’s notice and run to areas that provide them with greater safety.

International media that claims the war was started when Hamas shot a rocket into Israel are irresponsible. The war started with Israel’s occupation that began over forty-five years ago. It started when Israel killed a boy who was playing soccer with his friends, something millions of boys do every day all over the world. And it started when Israel violated a two day old truce by killing Jabari, who had agreed to a longer term truce.

If international media wanted to provide their readers with real and useful information, they could report on a joint statistical analysis performed by the University of Tel Aviv, MIT and a Harvard graduate student that demonstrates that 79% of all ceasefires were violated by Israel, 8% by Palestinians and 13% by both sides on the same day; and that of twenty-five ceasefires lasting longer than a week Israel violated twenty-four; and that Israel violated all fourteen ceasefires that lasted longer than nine days.[1]

- How do you perceive the ideological bent of the news and what do interests obey?

In the United States, the mainstream news favors the Israeli government perspective. Actually, perspective is not the most accurate word. Propaganda would be more appropriate. One example is the constant reference to rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza. There is nothing inherently wrong with reporting on such incidents, but what is egregious is that little or no mention is ever made of the fact that rocket attacks into Gaza from Israel are far more lethal and far more numerous. According to Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, from 2000 through 2008 Palestinian groups fired a total of 8,088 mortars and rockets into Israel. Contrast that figure with the nearly 8,000 rockets and mortars Israel launched into Gaza in the nine months between September 2005 and June 2006.

Most American journalists use language that has been cultivated for many years and favors the Israeli side. For example, Israelis who shoot at and kill Palestinians are soldiers but Palestinians who shoot at Israelis are terrorists. When the government of Israel attacks a Palestinian village it is defending itself in the name of security, but when Palestinian groups shoot projectiles into Israel they are terrorizing an innocent population. Critics of illegal Israeli policy toward Palestinians want to delegitimize the Jewish state but Israeli behavior that brings on the criticism is not seen as delegitimizing the prospects for peace. And as I said earlier, people who care about the rights of Palestinians are labeled anti-Israeli, whereas people, especially U.S. Congressmen, who enable Israel’s daily violations of international law, are friends of Israel who simply want peace between the two sides.

- Have you ever planned to return to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza to do some type of activity?

Currently I do not have plans, but I expect to return in the near future. I will go anywhere I think my message can educate and bring a measure of clarity to people. Peace through internal transformation is the heart of my message. And this transformation can take place much more easily when people make themselves available to hear the truth, even when the truth is not congruent with the beliefs and images that constitute their indoctrination.

Thank you so much to Richard Forer for being with us while you are very busy in this period and share with us your thoughts; our readers will really appreciate it and wish you all the best.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers.

ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN INTERVIEW SERIES RICHARD FORER

ENSLAVEMENT OF THE FALSE SELF

Transforming Fear Into Compassion

Yago: Recently you spoke at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) about your book, Breakthrough. Transforming Fear into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict. You shared your personal transformation towards a new understanding of your identity and of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This blog aims to deconstruct the energy of enslavement that penetrates today’s world in many dimensions. In your witnessing, you expressed openly how we can become enslaved by rigid ideologies, wrong perceptions of the world and the illusion of being separated from the world. The energy of enslavement can destroy the beautiful gift of our humanity. Listening to you, Martin Luther King Jr.’s words resonated deep within me: “As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.” I would like very much to welcome your own journey in this blog.

My first question is related to the very origins of your life and how the “indoctrination” took place. What do you remember from your childhood that began shaping your mind and identity in a clear dualistic way? What role did the collective unconscious of the Jewish people play?

Rich Forer: Children are more receptive than adults, more innocent. As children, we take on the beliefs of our parents and teachers, our collective of ethnic and/or religious groups, and our society. Although much of our learning is taught to us directly, many of the ideas we incorporate are taught to us indirectly. For example, we absorb beliefs that are expressed, subtly or not so subtly, through feeling, especially the feelings of our parents or other caregivers. Just as we unconsciously model our speech and physical patterns on these caregivers, our view of the world is likewise influenced by these models. We begin to develop an internal logic, a way of seeing the world that is influenced by the people and institutions around us.

This logic has a quality that is unique to each individual. It also has a quality that is unique to the society or collective each individual grows up in. For example, when I was a kid I attended Sunday school. I remember seeing, probably in my first-grade classroom, photographs of David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first Prime Minister and Weizmann its first President.

At that time, about nine years after the end of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated upon the Jewish people were very present in the minds of Jews. Most of the Jewish adults I knew had relatives or friends who were killed in the Holocaust. I absorbed their ideas, their knowledge of the terrible suffering of the Jewish people, their horror that human beings are capable of such acts of hatred. When I would look at the photographs of these great men, who had created the one safe haven for the Jewish people, I saw men who wanted to protect and save life, not men who wanted to destroy it. These were the leaders of our people and they were making sure that another Holocaust would never again happen.

Along with this thinking, this way of interpreting the information that I, a kid, had available, there seamlessly arose the view that Jews would never do to others the shocking things that Adolf Hitler and others had done to Jews. After all, it never occurred to me to want to do such things. And the Jews I knew were basically caring people, so it obviously had never occurred to them to do such things. They were ipso facto incapable of committing such crimes. What they were capable of was planting millions of trees and turning an arid desert into a land of milk and honey.

With a childlike faith in the goodness of my people, it was a natural progression in thinking to presume that the non-Jewish world, much of which had remained silent while Jews were being murdered, was different than the Jewish world.

In other words, for some inexplicable reason, or perhaps because we were special, Jews were more humane than non-Jews. When I looked at Israel, it was obvious that Jewish soldiers were merely defending their land from the irrational hatred of those who, like Hitler, wanted to harm us.

Our internal logic colors the way we see the world. It leads us to interpret the world in ways that reinforce our mind’s conception of reality. The logic of my youth continued basically intact into my adult life. So, when I heard that Israeli soldiers had killed children and other civilians, I automatically responded with skepticism if not outright denial. My “logical” mind explained what really must have occurred, which is that these children and civilians were killed because Hamas or Hezbollah, whoever the enemy was, embedded their soldiers within civilian populations. Children were killed not because of Israeli bullets but because these organizations were so filled with hatred they were willing to sacrifice their own children in order to murder Jews.

This is how the unexamined mind projects its content onto the world and creates the way the world is constituted.

Yago: During your childhood and adolescence you were indoctrinated to see the world as an enemy to the Jewish people. The horrors of the Holocaust and the pain-body (collective trauma) of the Jewish people were passed on, consciously and subconsciously, from generation to generation. You mention in your book and you just indicated that all your life you had an unexamined belief system that operated and guided you at the subconscious level. How do you describe that?

Rich: Every human being is born into a particular society and is given a name and told who he or she is. In these and other ways, each of us assumes the matrix of an identity. In my case, I was told I was a Jew and an American, this is my family and this is my history. These labels, which in truth are only concepts and beliefs, delineated the boundaries of my worldview. My thinking developed along a spectrum from idealism – Jews are good and their leaders honorable – to cynicism – others are neither good nor honorable. I had in fact created a gulf between myself and others, and I was extremely reluctant to question my worldview. The belief that Jews are more humane than other people, that Jewish people would never willfully harm other people became the limit of my ability to see clearly. This was the boundary created by my unquestioning acceptance of the conditioning of my youth.

This was also a boundary on my ability to feel. The fear and horror I felt when I read about non-Jewish victims of atrocities could not compare to the fear and horror I felt when I read about Jewish victims. I was so identified with being a Jew, that I couldn’t really put myself in the shoes of non-Jews. This selective sympathy had become so habitual that it seemed perfectly natural and justified.

I am convinced that the great majority of those who defend Israel are in the same position I was in. When they learn that hundreds of Gazan children are being killed by Israeli bombs, their reaction is nowhere near as agitated as when they learn that even a single Jew was killed by a Hamas bomb.

The root of the limit on the ability to see clearly and feel fully is one’s presumed identity. Whether I am a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, an Israeli, a Palestinian or American, whatever I may be, my identity is the lens through which I perceive the world.

I say “presumed identity” because the conventional worldview in which we identify ourselves as separate and limited individuals is just a presumption. It is not the truth of our existence. It is more like an idea that is so axiomatic it is never questioned. But it has the same limitation as any other idea. It has nothing to do with knowing who we are. One of the realizations that arose out of my spontaneous awakening, which I write about in my book, was the recognition, the knowledge, that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli or American, as much Christian or Muslim as Jew, and that the so-called other is an image in the unexamined mind. This image of self and other is a primal error, and it creates a world of us against them.

Let me interject something. I am not denying that there are people who want to harm Israelis. There are always some who want to harm others. In the case of Palestinians, if you investigate the documented history, you find that only a small percentage has used violence against the state of Israel. And even that violence must be looked at in the context of the history, of the taking of Palestinian land and a brutal occupation.

What I am saying is that we distort our ability to see clearly. We reduce things to a primitive and inaccurate orientation. We create the other by superimposing or projecting onto him the beliefs and images we have absorbed and created within our minds, our imaginations. When we look at the one we define as the other, we don’t see who he or she really is. We see a reflection of our beliefs about them superimposed upon who they really are. How we see the other, how we interpret his words, what we think he is thinking, what we think his objectives are with regard to Jewish people, all of this is a result of the indoctrination that most of us have accepted without question.

A phrase I hear a lot in Jewish society, especially among the ultra-Orthodox, including my own family, is “all Arabs want to kill all Jews.” This belief is part of the collective Jewish mind. If we have not inquired into and seen the inaccuracy of the belief, inevitably when we encounter Arabs we will superimpose this belief upon them. Notice the projection. When we fear that all Arabs want to kill all Jews, wouldn’t we feel safer if our leaders incapacitated all Arabs? And so we manufacture ideas that enable us to rationalize policies that remove or even kill Arabs day in and day out – until they are no longer a threat. “All Arabs want to kill all Jews” becomes “We want to kill all Arabs.” In fact, I’ve heard a number of ordinarily good-hearted Jews express this exact sentiment. Similarly, the fear of genocide against Jews becomes genocide against Arabs. This type of language is frequently encountered, in particular, amongst Israel’s extreme right-wing.

I am virtually certain that the principle reason it has been so difficult to solve the Israel-Palestine dilemma, is that fundamentally we are not dealing with a political problem; we are dealing with a problem of identity. This is how it was for me. I could never have understood the dilemma until I understood my own mind and my presumed identity. In my book I describe what motivated me to begin a thorough research of the conflict. But quickly, I ran up against my presumed identity, a lifetime of propaganda about myself and my so-called people. The confrontation was shocking. The anger and shame and sadness I discovered in myself were a raw wound. But the wound was necessary; it was the doorway to the end of fear and confusion.

It is hard work to examine our minds and question our identities. Core beliefs are so ingrained that we cannot conceive of letting them go. They are a part of our mortal identities, and they cannot be talked away. They operate in visceral ways, in the subconscious and unconscious. To question them seems unimaginable. In truth, we are terrified of letting go of these beliefs because doing so means death. It means the end of our presumed identity. This is why, rather than inquiring into the patriotic beliefs and images tied to their American identities, so many were willing to send their children to Iraq in 2003 to kill or be killed. Their patriotic identities were more precious than the lives of even their own children.

Our identities are mental constructs. From the awakened perspective, they are fictional or illusory. When we let go of the limits set by our indoctrination, we recognize our inherent oneness or connection to all of life. And our prior way of relating to life is seen as dreamlike, not fully conscious of what we were doing or why we did it.

Yago: The unexamined belief system goes with another expression of yours that we live in a mental prison. Indeed, we can be slaves of our own minds. This has been said throughout history by the wise men of all traditions. In this regard, Gandhi stated that “freedom and slavery are mental states.” What can you say about that?

Rich: We may have all the freedoms promised by any charter or constitution. We may come into possession of the entire land of Canaan, and populate it with Jews only, thereby fulfilling what we believe is God’s covenant with the Jewish people. But what if, in order to have satisfied this hunger, which is a consequence of our collective worldview, we gave up our personal integrity and sacrificed our humanity at the altar of dogma and greed? Are we free or are we enslaved to an unexamined mind?

If we had to choose between on the one hand fulfilling all of our pseudo-religious and material fantasies while losing our humanity and, on the other hand, living as actual slaves, but with our humanity intact which is the right choice?

So I would agree that we are slaves of belief systems. Until we inquire into our core beliefs, we will never be free. If, as we are bound to do, we look at the world through the prism of unexamined beliefs and images, our conscious attention may not even accommodate an awareness of what is most threatening to our self-images; and what it is aware of will be limited and distorted. Thus, our understanding or interpretation of the information available to us will likely be biased and inhumane. In my book, I say “where a man cannot look he cannot feel and where a man cannot feel he has not really looked. Without both, he will never understand.”

The goal of all spiritual work, be it Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity or Judaism, is to go beyond beliefs, beyond the separate selves that are framed by beliefs. Once we release our attachments to these beliefs, we will recognize our true nature, which is beyond description, self-identification, or separateness. We are all part of the whole. And because we are all part of the whole, each of us contributes to the collective mind of humankind and each of us is responsible for the suffering in the world.

Yago: What role has the Holy Scriptures, the Torah, played in your life? How did your interpretation of the Torah keep you in a state of indoctrination, caught in a mental prison? Could you experience inner freedom and liberation through the Scriptures?

Rich: Many people have been brought up to believe that God is an omnipotent, omniscient, infinite yet human-like Being. This belief is the hardest to let go of because it stimulates and appeals to one’s imagination. It is imbued with fear, mystery and wonder, of a Being who created us and can destroy us. This underlying belief resides in the unconscious.

As I suggested a moment ago, many Jews and Evangelical Christians believe Jews are the chosen people to whom God gave the land of Israel. This belief is a form of consolation that inflates one’s self-image (identity or ego). They believe it because they want to believe it. They crave the consolation. With this belief, they can rationalize all kinds of abominations – the theft of Palestinian land, the behavior of fanatical Jewish settlers who raid Palestinian villages, poison their wells, destroy their olive orchards, and abuse men, women and children.

Many, who take advantage of this belief to rationalize such abominations, also claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The two ideas cannot coexist. Yet, the contradiction never occurs to these claimants. Furthermore, any proclamation about Israel’s political structure cannot magically disguise the inequality and lack of democracy that is made possible by these very people. Because they operate out of self-interest, they promote narcissistic points of view that care only about their personal identities and the collective or tribe with which they identify. They are incapable of compassion towards those who are not part of their collective.

Let me add that a prominent rabbi who was brought up in the ultra-Orthodox tradition and who reads Aramaic and Hebrew, told me that the Torah does not call Jews “The Chosen People,” it calls them “A Chosen People.”

To your question if the scriptures can guide us to inner freedom, I would say that perhaps sections of the Scriptures can serve as guides on the path to freedom but freedom can only be found when one gets in touch with one’s heart and allows the heart to be the guide.

We have to learn to trust our heart-based intuition. This is not easy because we have been indoctrinated into giving up our power and our reasoning to religious texts and all kinds of authorities. We’ve lost touch with our inner wisdom which, at its most unobstructed, flows from the heart. No text or authority figure, if only we would get in touch with our deeper selves, knows our hearts better than we do.

Yago: Could you share how your mind maintained its vicious circle of indoctrination?

Rich: Growing up, I experienced some anti-Semitism. I also experienced what I construed as insensitivity toward me and my people. In elementary school our classes would celebrate Christmas and Easter, but there was never a celebration of Hanukkah or Passover. I thought that was unfair. I saw it as an insult to who my people were and to our long history.

The hurt I felt from being exposed to anti-Semitic attitudes and insensitivity caused me to retreat more forcefully into my Jewish identity. I became more dogmatically loyal to my people. This loyalty, along with the common belief in Jewish and American society that the Palestinians were always sabotaging Israel’s sincere efforts to make peace, reinforced my certainty in the innocence of my people, which in turn contributed to the certainty that I myself was innocent. It never occurred to me that my unquestioning loyalty to Israeli policy made me complicit in the subjugation of another people.

Instead, I held onto the idea that Israel had always wanted peace but the Palestinians did not and that the Palestinians were willing to sacrifice their own children in order to drive the Jews into the sea.

Even though I was not religious and did not attend synagogue, whenever I would encounter someone defending Palestinian behavior, or hear of a suicide bombing, I would become more zealous in defense of Israel, which was really a defense of my self-image or identity. I concluded that Palestinian society was pathologically hateful towards Jews. I generalized the activities of a minority onto the totality of Palestinian society.

In the mid nineties, I read From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. I was led to believe this book was a well-documented history of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people. Without bothering to validate the claim, I blindly accepted that the book was in fact well-documented. I did so because what the book said conformed to and strengthened what I wanted to believe.

Peters’ main thesis was that the Palestinians were an invented people. They never existed. They were Arabs from other parts of the Arab world who had come to Mandatory Palestine in the first half of the Twentieth Century to work for Jewish landholders, who paid them more than they could earn in their own countries. Because the book added credibility to my belief system, it became a kind of Bible for me. Whenever someone criticized Israel I resorted to Peters’ book to refute their argument. I later discovered that From Time Immemorial had been thoroughly debunked by Israeli and American scholars.

Then, in the summer of 2006, Hezbollah, the Lebanese nationalistic political/military organization, crossed over into Israel and killed three Israeli soldiers and abducted two. Israel immediately retaliated with immense firepower. While many accused Israel of disproportionate force and the targeting of civilians, I insisted its response was necessary. In my mind it was obvious that Hezbollah and the entire Arab world would stop at nothing to destroy Israel and the Jewish people. Just three weeks earlier, Hamas had captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the Israel-Gaza border, so I saw the two provocations as proof that my analysis that the Arab world wanted to destroy the Jewish people was accurate.

Yago: Let’s move to the awakening. What provoked this peak experience? How did you manage to break the chains of slavery in your mind?

Rich: Hamas and Hezbollah’s behavior and the war in Lebanon outraged me. I complained to a couple of non-Jewish friends about the Arab world’s hatred of Jews and its obsession with destroying Israel. These were intelligent men, whom I admired for their insight and wisdom. In the past they had been critical of Israel but this time, considering that two “terrorist” organizations had instigated hostilities, I was sure they would see things from my perspective. To my surprise and disappointment, however, they disagreed with me. They said that Israel was using disproportionate force, and that this was a continuation of Israeli behavior that had gone on for decades.

Their response to my perspective not only fortified my resistance to their perspective, it also fortified my attachment to my Jewish identity. It made me realize that only Jews can understand the suffering of our people. This was yet another belief that separated me from the rest of humanity.

A few days after those conversations, a Jewish friend I’d known all my life phoned to tell me he would be attending a Bar Mitzvah out West and would be visiting me in New Mexico, where I lived at the time. I then took the opportunity to complain to him about Hezbollah, Hamas and the entire Arab world. I went on and on for two hours. During my diatribe he mostly let me talk. Occasionally he interrupted, usually saying “that’s not right, that is incorrect,” but he was non-judgmental, basically neutral and unemotional about the subject.

Now, I knew that he had studied Israel-Palestine more than I had, so when, at the end of the conversation, he recommended I read two well-regarded Israeli historians for a more comprehensive understanding of the issues, I was open to his suggestion. Because he didn’t resist my point of view, or judge or criticize me, he opened up a space where I was able to say to myself: “I can do that. I have never really studied the history of the Arab-Israeli problem. Maybe there is something I should be aware of.”

After we hung up, I went online to Amazon to look for the authors he recommended. When you type in the name of one author, the names of other authors in the same discipline appear. So I compiled a list of books, my chief qualification being that the author had to be Jewish. I was afraid that if I read non-Jewish authors I would suspect bias. I took this list to the local library, checked out two books, came home and put them aside.

The next day I picked up Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein. I hadn’t yet heard of Finkelstein, so I didn’t know what a controversial figure he was. From the very beginning of the book, he was critical of Israel, with no criticism of the Palestinians. I thought this a little odd, but I wasn’t yet ready to reject the book, especially because it was brilliantly written and meticulously documented. I wanted to see where the book was going.

I figured that since the Israeli view was very well known, perhaps Finkelstein wanted to present the Palestinian point of view. Alternatively, I was also open to the possibility that he was a self-hating Jew with a talent for distortion. And the subtitle of his book is On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. I thought: “Who is misusing anti-Semitism, he or I?” So I kept reading.

I read about awful things Israelis were doing to Palestinians: home demolitions, stealing land, the use of violence by Israeli soldiers in situations where there was no threat of violence from the other side, lethal violence against children and institutionalized torture of prisoners. At a certain point, I needed a break from this powerful material. When I put the book down, I hadn’t yet differentiated all the feelings I had gone through while reading. I was aware I had experienced a range of feelings but I had been so absorbed by the book’s content that I hadn’t consciously registered them.

So I put the book down and closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, I came out of a space that in retrospect I call nothingness. I don’t know how long in chronological time I had been in this timeless space, but the first thing I noticed is that I felt cleansed and purified. The negative feelings I’d experienced while reading were completely gone, without a trace, but now I was able to delineate those feelings. The contrast between my new feeling and the feelings I had experienced earlier was so stark that I instinctively looked around the room, searching for my old feelings. I looked in my bookcase and in the corners of the room, wondering, “Where is the shock, where is the anger at Israel and at myself, where is the shame and embarrassment, where is the sorrow for all that the Palestinians have been put through?” These were the specific feelings that had been stimulated while reading, but now they were nowhere to be found.

So I just sat there, in a state of bliss, in the Eternal Present, free of negativity, without a desire to be anywhere or do anything. Then I felt a mild pressure upon my eyes, as if a cloth was covering that part of my face. I quietly acknowledged this sensation. After about a minute, the cloth began to unravel in a spiral motion, first uncovering the left eye and then the right. There was a soothing quality to the unraveling. When the cloth was finally gone, I saw that the world as it really is is empty of all qualities, that in Reality it is a reflection of my inner states of consciousness. I saw that the world is my creation; it is a projection or superimposition of my mind’s content. The veil that had obstructed this recognition had fallen away.

Yago: In your book you describe this process as moving from fear to compassion and from confusion to clarity.

Rich: The next thing I noticed was that I could not find any attachment to a particular identity. There was simply a feeling of non-separateness. And in that moment I understood that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli, as much Muslim or Christian as Jew.

Next, I started seeing the dynamics of how we project our perception onto the world and then presume that the world we see proves the reality of our perception. In a never-ending cycle of unconsciousness, we persist in creating the same reality or worldview over and over again. This process imbues our internal logic with the deluding certainty that the world truly is the way we perceive it.

When my core Jewish identity could not be found, I was no longer imprisoned by beliefs and images that had once emanated from and reinforced that core identity. Nor was I compelled or condemned to identify with one group to the exclusion of any other. Therefore, I could see the world from any perspective, without bias. I understood that the real enemy is the unexamined mind that projects its own suffering onto the world and then blames or scapegoats the world for the suffering.

Throughout my being, I felt a tangible sense of peace and realized that peace cannot be found in the world unless it is first found within one’s self.

Fear is an inevitable component of separateness, of the attachment to or belief in an exclusive or limited identity. A limited identity implies the existence of something outside its limits. Just as our limited identity is presumed to be our self, whatever is interpreted as falling outside our identity is presumed to be the other and is seen as a possible threat. This is the world of Us against Them or Good against Evil.

Having somehow let go of fear, I realized that fear had been a lens that colored the way I saw the world. And because fear prevents us from seeing the world as it really is, it is always accompanied by confusion. But once fear vanishes, we can more easily empathize with the suffering of others. Thus, in place of fear, compassion arises.

Compassion is the ability to stand in the shoes of the other and see from all perspectives. Thus, in place of confusion, clarity arises.

Yago: You describe your transformation as a letting go of the mind and journeying towards the heart. Could you explain what really occurred?

Rich: Letting go of the mind set free the natural intelligence of the heart. This intelligence is always available, but in order to access it we must first let go of the indoctrination that blocks its access. A passage through the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding is a journey that each of us must make at some point if there is ever to be peace.

Yago: It looks like a kind of dis-identification from the thinking process. You were able to discover that you were much more than your thinking process.

Rich: Exactly! And there is not a single thought that has to be believed. We can accept thoughts as having relevance but we don’t need to believe them as the absolute, as reality itself. Anything we believe can be looked at and questioned. We can ask of any belief: Is it really true or is there a possibility that it is false or not always true?

Yago: Listening to your transformation, I recall the words of Richard Rohr in his book, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer: “Real religious conversion can, in fact, take care of years of therapy. To really experience the absolute is to experience the essential pattern. When we are reconnected at our core, we leap over years of problem-solving and years of asking questions about ourselves (…) True religious experience dissolves the fortress of ‘I’ by abandoning its defenses.”

Life is a constant journey of shadowboxing. I would like to know how you are integrating and processing this new sense of identity and understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Rich: I would say that sharing my journey and the insights gleaned from it is integrative and part of my commitment to peace. And although the Israel-Palestine issue is the context through which I share these insights, the insights are applicable to all human beings under all conditions.

However, in my opinion Israel-Palestine is the core foreign policy issue of our time. It is an archetype of conflict and it can become an archetype of peace. A just resolution can serve as a model for future generations. The Book of Isaiah refers to the Jewish people as “A light unto nations.” Well, Israel and its Jewish supporters are certainly not operating in the light now. But if they can penetrate their darkness and come out into the light of transformation, they can shine that light upon other nations and help the Palestinian people heal from their traumas. For it is only when the Palestinian people are healed that the Jewish people themselves will be healed. And this healing can herald a whole new consciousness of compassion for the world.

The key is education and critical thinking. We need to find out for ourselves what is real and what is false. People are mostly decent. Once they learn what is actually happening, they will demand that Israel make a fair peace with the Palestinians. For this to happen, though, we have to stop relying on our leaders for answers to our problems. Leaders are often the most attached to their identities. Their status or sense of importance can be a trap that lures them into a prison of inflated self-images and hinders the ability to empathize with the other.

When we open to the possibility that things are not always as they seem, and become curious as to what the real history is, we will begin to see that the behavior of people, no matter how bizarre or self-destructive, does not take place in a vacuum. We will recognize the necessity of taking responsibility for how our inertia, obliviousness and apathy affect the behavior of others, of our society and the world. We will see how interconnected we all are.

Yago: During the last months you have been invited to give talks, TV and radio interviews. What impact are you having?

Rich: I speak wherever I am invited, though invitations are rare. I want to point out that no matter which side of an issue people identify with, they all have their own self-images to contend with. And as I just said, leaders, and others who are looked up to, tend to be more ensnared by their self-images than the average person.

My message of self-inquiry challenges self-images, but especially the self-images of those who think they are more important than other people. A sense of specialness or importance acts as a barrier to fresh and unique ideas. The challenge I speak of makes it difficult for me to be invited to speak at conferences sponsored by organizations with a leadership hierarchy. Many leaders have vested interests and are not interested in someone who says that a spiritual problem, a problem of identity, is at the root of the Israel-Palestine dilemma; and that the antidote is inquiring within. They would rather invite speakers who stick with the history.

Yago: You talk about the difficulty of getting your voice heard. You also mentioned the difficulty organizations have in accepting your perspective. Let’s look at the positive impact you are having. What kind of people and networks are you engaged with? Who is welcoming and encouraging you in your honorable task? What are your areas of influence?

Rich: There are a lot of ordinary people who’ve read my book, watched my TV interviews or come to one of my talks, and they are inspired. My description of how our attachment to a limited identity affects the way we see the world helps them find clarity.

Further, my explication of what is really going on in the minds of those who accuse me, because I am critical of Israel, of being a self-hating Jew or anti-Semite, makes a great deal of sense to my audience. Briefly, what I say is that these accusations are, together, a reflexive defense mechanism or projection that is used to deny what my critics are afraid of seeing within themselves. When, for instance, I criticize Israeli attacks on civilians, Israel’s defenders automatically label me an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew. This tactic lets them off the hook. After all, if their label fits, my criticism must be nothing more than slander founded upon an irrational prejudice toward Jews. But what is really happening is that my criticism functions as a mirror. These defenders cannot look in the mirror out of fear that the face of inhumanity will be exposed, that in persecuting the other the way their people were once persecuted and in denying the humanity of the other, they have sacrificed their own humanity. Looking in the mirror would reveal that their criticism of me is actually true of themselves. It is they who are acting out of hatred and irrational prejudice.

I explain why it is so common for those who justify Israel’s oppression of Palestinians to equate concern for the lives of Palestinians with hatred toward Israel. The dualistic mind works that way. It infers that those whom it perceives as a threat possess qualities that are opposite of the qualities it presumes of itself. If you are pro-Palestinian, you must be anti-Israeli.

The dualistic mind supports oppression as an apparent path to peace. People quickly grasp the absurdity of this proposition. A mind of oppression can never lead to peace, not in the world and certainly not within one’s self. If we want peace we have to go beyond duality, beyond pro-this and anti-that. We have to go beyond labels and the effect labels have on our perception of reality. If we must use labels, let us say that we are pro-humanity, which is both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. That label at least points to the path to peace.

Imagine the confusion that exists within a mind that justifies oppression yet claims it wants peace. This mind is so afraid of confronting its self-destructive thought processes that it cannot comprehend that when we oppress people and deny them their rights, they have legitimate reasons to rebel. Instead, it labels the rebellion as terrorism. At the same time, it is oblivious to the terror that it, as an enabler of oppression, inflicts upon a people who every day are denied the same rights it demands for itself. The fear-based mind is not just narcissistic, it is fascistic.

Yago: You talk about apathy in today’s world, especially apathy from people who govern. Many politicians appear egocentric and indifferent to the suffering of the world. They protect themselves within their own world of artificial well-being and small pleasures. What can you say about apathy in today’s world?

Rich: Apathy gives leaders permission to disregard the consequences of their actions and enables them to mislead us about things they have already done. It encourages them to do things they might not otherwise do if they knew the eyes of the world were focused on their behavior and that they would be held accountable.

There is a great deal of economic stress in the United States. When people have to struggle to survive, they don’t have time to pay attention to issues that do not appear to impact them directly. I doubt that more than five percent of Americans have much awareness of the effect the policies of their government has on the Israel-Palestine issue. This is a shame, because if more people became aware, for example, that America gives more money to Israel to spend on its military than Israel spends itself, the outcry would force the United States to change to a foreign policy that focuses on peace rather than on supporting the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. This change would in turn free up resources that could be used to alleviate suffering in this country.

Yago: What role does your understanding of the Torah (Jewish Holy Scriptures) play in the on-going conflict between Israel and Palestine?

Rich: Instead of cultivating beliefs that conform to the wisdom of their scriptures, people commonly make the meaning of scriptures conform to their pre-existing beliefs. They pick and choose passages that seemingly support their beliefs while ignoring passages that challenge them.

Although the Torah, which is considered the word of God, is used primarily by Jews, it is also used by Christians. Many Jews spell the word G-d. The missing letter acknowledges that God is a mystery, incomprehensible to the mind. Yet many of these believers claim with conviction that they know God’s intentions, that He intended to give the land to the Jewish people. They justify the dispossession of an entire people and the humiliating tactics used to facilitate the dispossession by resorting to this dogmatic and self-serving belief.

Likewise, they ignore the many prohibitions in the Torah against scheming, stealing and breaking contracts. And they pay no attention to the practice of Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world, in which every Jew is obligated to rectify injustice. They wait for the coming of the Messiah, but they ignore the very practice the Torah says will make the world a dwelling place for the Divine. Is there anything less Jewish than denying God a dwelling place by exploiting His word so that the covetousness of one people can be satiated at the expense of another? In my talks I emphasize that, rather than resorting to dogma, opening ourselves to the intelligence of the heart is how we prepare a dwelling place for God. This is Tikkun Olam, and it is the same wisdom all the great scriptures of mankind intend to transmit.

Yago: In your book you make reference to the Book of Deuteronomy, quoting the passage: “You shall love the stranger;” and you also find similarities between the Koran and Torah. You are pointing out a common message in the three monotheistic traditions. Could you elaborate on this?

Rich: Some form of “love the stranger” is found in every religion. In Christianity “love thy neighbor” is a core principle. A Muslim friend of mine, who read my book, told me that I had made a mistake in citing the Talmud as saying “Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.” She told me that the quote comes from the Koran. I learned that this wisdom exists in both religious traditions.

Over time wise people in all religions have discovered basic truths, including the truth of our real nature, beyond the mind or separate self.

Yago: Your transformation has allowed you to compassionately enter into the worldview of the other, in this case the Palestinian people. Looking back at your life before the transformation, what does it mean and feel to be imprisoned in indoctrination or, in this case, the collective pain-body of the Jewish people? How is your compassion and sense of oneness reflected at the level of feelings towards Jews who are still caught in a narrow and partial view of the conflict? Do you know in your own living experience what they are going through?

Rich: I do know what Jews are going through because I went through the same thing. Nonetheless, I sometimes become angry when I hear someone exclaiming: “Palestinians are terrorists who want to kill us all,” or when I hear people justifying the killing of children. It is difficult for me not to become angry. And although mine may be a righteous anger, I know that I can be more effective in encouraging people to look into the history when I discipline myself and remember their point of view, which was once my own situation. So it is important that I stay aware of my thoughts and feelings.

I want to emphasize that my goal is not to convince someone that my point-of-view is more accurate than theirs. I often say in my talks that I do not want anyone to believe what I say. Rather, I want them to find out for themselves the history of this subject. Only personal investigation, with an uncompromising intention to discover the truth, allows one to take responsibility for their role in the suffering of others.

I need to add, though, that I have not met a single Israeli loyalist who has impartially studied the actual history. If they had the decency to do so, most would discover that they have character assassinated the Palestinians and expedited their misfortune. The real conflict for these loyalists is not Israel versus the Palestinian people. The real conflict is the inability to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration recognizes Israel’s dark side; the other denies the dark side exists.

Only by committing myself to the truth was I able to apprehend the astonishing reality that criticism of Israel was never my principal concern. I had never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists. I had defended an idealistic image that was projected onto the real Israel. This projection enabled me to repress and deny painful revelations that I would have learned about Israel and myself if only I had looked without the influence of an unexamined mind.

Denial and projection go hand in hand. What I denied about Israel and about myself, I projected onto the other, who automatically and necessarily became my enemy. My reaction to criticism was motivated more by the fear of taking on the challenge that criticism of Israel posed to my identity than by fear for Israel’s survival.

Yago: We are invited to face and dialogue with conflict with a Yes of “basic acceptance” of what is occurring, but at the same time to say No to the injustices that undermine a human being’s true potential. To be able to combine both attitudes simultaneously, we need to integrate that sense of oneness that you experienced in your transformation, to incorporate a compassionate, non-dualistic mind in our journey in the midst of conflict.

Rich: It would be naive to expect people to go through as radical a transformation as I underwent, though it may occasionally happen. Most people are capable of applying themselves in pursuit of the facts of history. This is why I emphasize that the most effective path is to find out the history for oneself. If we do, we will finally figure out that we have been deceived by propaganda and one-sided belief systems. We will recognize that we have supported injustice and we will understand the various forms that Palestinian resistance has taken over the years, both violent and nonviolent. This is a more compassionate view of the world. And the compassion liberated in our new understanding of this particular conflict will affect the way we see conflict in general.

In a peaceful world people will be less anxious. They will be more capable of self-inquiry. Mankind’s journey toward a more humane consciousness will accelerate and our materialistic society will move closer to spiritual values as greed and acquisition begin to lose their seductive allure.

Yago: We are moving towards the end of the interview, I know you were in Gaza in November, 2012. What is the current situation there?

Rich: Gaza is virtually unlivable. The economy is dying. Between 1996 and 2000, exports averaged 1,736 truckloads per month. In 2011 exports averaged twenty-five truckloads monthly. I am not kidding. I did say twenty-five.

The Israeli blockade only permits enough food into Gaza to keep its residents at a subsistence level. Anemia, malnutrition and stunted growth afflict substantial portions of the population. Eighty percent of residents are dependent on UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) for food. Israel has created buffer zones inside Gaza that seal off access to thirty-five percent of Gaza’s agricultural land. If a farmer dares to venture inside or even near these zones there is a high probability he will be shot. Gaza used to have thriving citrus and olive industries. Neither industry exists anymore, destroyed by Israel.

Ninety percent of the water is so polluted it is undrinkable and the availability of clean water is limited, so that per capita water consumption is well below the minimum standards set by the WHO (World Health Organization). Ninety thousand cubic meters of sewage is dumped into the sea every day, yet Israel does not allow Gazan authorities to build water treatment plants. High levels of nitrates and chlorides, related to blue baby syndrome, kidney disease and prostate cancer, are found in the water. Every one hundred meters along stretches of the Mediterranean are wells from which Israel takes clean water for its Jewish residents, none of which is available to Gazans.

Over 100,000 tons of garbage sits on the streets of Gaza. Everywhere I went I saw garbage. Israel does not permit the government to import garbage trucks.

The Oslo Accords stipulated that Palestinian fishermen could sail twenty nautical miles out to sea to harvest their catch, but Israel reduced the limit to three nautical miles. To catch the large fish, fishermen have to go at least eight miles out to sea. After Operation Pillar of Cloud, which ended in November, the fishing limit was extended to six miles. Nonetheless, just as happened prior to Pillar of Cloud, Israeli military vessels frequently confront fishermen within the limit, force them to swim to the Israeli boats, strip off their clothes and swim back to their vessels.

The effective rate of unemployment, when you include people who have given up looking for a job, is over fifty percent. Young people with college degrees cannot find work. They are prime targets for recruitment by extremist groups.

There are nowhere near enough construction materials, schools, houses, medical supplies, hospital beds, doctors, nurses, etc. I could go on and on. According to UNRWA, by 2020 Gaza will have reached the point where life is untenable. All of this is economic warfare, collective punishment at its worst. And none of it adds to Israel’s security. If anything, by flaunting its contempt for non-Jewish life, these restrictions inflame anti-Semitism throughout the world.

The international community has to insist that Israel abide by international law. For the sake of Palestinians, Israelis and Jews worldwide, it must demand that Israel’s government respect the dignity of human life. Think about it. If all countries adhered to these laws, which have evolved over centuries to safeguard the well being of all peoples, the vast majority could look forward to a future for themselves and their children. This vision may be idealistic on my part but it is a future we all must work towards.

Yago: Are you networking with Palestinians or Jews who have gone through a similar experience of integration of a compassionate and non-dualistic approach to the conflict? Or do you feel alone in this process?

Rich: I do feel alone, but there are a lot of people who appreciate my point of view; and even though they haven’t had such profound an awakening as I had, they understand that peace can only prevail when both peoples are treated equally.

One of the things I often say is that the human rights movement, at least with regard to the Israel-Palestine issue, is very small. There is a need for many more people so that we can reach a critical mass where our support for the rights of all, not some, will begin to be felt within the halls of Congress and other centers of power.

Another thing is that people, who are into non-traditional types of spiritual practice, such as Buddhist meditation or A Course in Miracles, as well as teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie, must get involved in human rights. The world needs their wisdom and their support. Their numbers probably exceed by a wide margin the numbers found in the human rights field. I think the two fields should be combined so that one completes the other. Spiritual seekers need to understand that their search for enlightenment, liberation, happiness, whatever they call it, cannot truly be fulfilled if it is merely about them. They need to understand that we are all Palestinians. Of course, we are all Iranians, Americans, Chinese and Israelis too. And, as I said earlier, we are all responsible for the suffering in the world. But the Palestinian people, to a large extent, have become an archetype for loss and suffering. As such, their healing can play a critical role in the future of the planet.

People involved in human rights, and there are some amazing people, need to work toward a deeper insight into the nature of reality. They need to combine their activist approach with self-inquiry or self-reflection. If they fail to do so, the ancient paradigm of victim becoming oppressor, of one group being made a scapegoat for another will continue.

Yago: My final question is in line with your last words, which for me are fundamental. Could you summarize the characteristics of a peace builder in the context of today’s world?

Rich: We have to become more self-aware and we have to acquire self-understanding. To acquire self-understanding we need to inquire within and discover how our indoctrination influences the way we see the world and how it convinces us to favor one group over another. This is how we find our real humanity. When we find our humanity we will recognize the humanity of everybody else. We will see that we are all in this together. If we engage this process, prejudices we were never aware of will reveal themselves and be resolved.

Next, we need to put our new understanding into action by finding out, in the case of any subject that affects people’s lives, the actual documented history. Regarding Israel-Palestine, this commitment will take us beyond the myths and false beliefs that are so characteristic of the issue.

I always tell people “Don’t believe what I tell you. If you simply believe what I tell you without finding out for yourself, you may believe the next person who comes along, especially if he is more persuasive than I. And that person may be promoting a self-serving worldview.“ So we need to initiate a practice of doing our own research and finding out, as best we can, the real history. This is not as difficult as it seems. Israel-Palestine is the most legally documented conflict in Mankind’s history.

If we do our research we will understand why people behave the way they do. We will see the effects of fear and greed. We will understand the despair and hopelessness that can lead people to commit acts of desperation. We will discover how, by denying the humanity of the other, we lose our own humanity; and we will recognize the internal logic that induces us, in the name of security, to brutalize the other. We will have acquired greater compassion and clarity. The world will begin to transform itself into a realm where each of us has the opportunity and the resources to pursue our dreams.

Yago: Rich thanks a lot for the wonderful contribution to this blog.

Rich: Thanks to you, Yago!

RECENTLY RETURNED FROM GAZA, RICHARD WILL SHARE HIS PHOTOS AND OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE PEOPLE, THE CONDITIONS AND THEIR FUTURE 

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 9–11 AM, BUSBOYS and POETS, LANGSTON ROOM (2021 14th St NW Washington, DC 20009)

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2, 6:30 PM, THE MUSIC ROOM at ST. COLUMBA’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 4201 Albemarle St. NW, Washington, DC (Tenleytown Stop on Metro Red Line; One Block West of Intersection of Wisconsin Ave and Albemarle St. NW)

Richard Forer, Author of

Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion

Speaking on THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF CONFLICT

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 / 6:00 pm

#9 Main Street, Ramallah

ANNA BALTZER, NATIONAL ORGANIZER FOR THE U.S. CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION:

To my knowledge, there has never been a book that takes on the daunting challenge of describing and deconstructing the unbelievably complex emotional and intellectual journey from prejudice to compassion on this issue… until now!

GILL DYE, COLLEAGUE OF ARCHBISHOP ELIAS CHACOUR AND PAST HEAD OF THE ELIJAH TRUST, A CHRISTIAN CHARITY BASED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:

I have been working in the Israel/Palestine arena for nearly 20 years. I believe that you and your book are an answer to our prayers over many years. May God speed it and may it be dispersed and read widely across the English speaking world.

Until 2006 Richard Forer had been a loyal defender of Israeli policy and a member of AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), a powerful Washington D.C. lobbying group. A series of conversations with close friends persuaded him to begin an intensive study into the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Open to the possibility that a lifetime of beliefs might contain a few inaccuracies, he secretly hoped to obtain information to discredit scholars whose findings he considered anti-Semitic. With an uncompromising commitment to the truth, he went far beyond his original intention. Reaching into the depths of himself, in a remarkable moment he underwent a spontaneous spiritual transformation in which he awoke to his true identity. Forer discovered that in Truth we are all Muslim, Christian and Jewish, Palestinian and Israeli.

In his talk Richard will share how blind loyalty to Israel obstructed his ability to empathize with the suffering of Palestinians and induced him to support self-destructive policies that are doomed to perpetuate conflict and suffering on both sides.

Richard Forer has Ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel. His identical twin brother is a prominent member of an Ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism. His younger brother is a former president of one of the largest synagogues on the East coast.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL + 972 (0) 2-297-1314

The Self-Hating Jew

 by Richard Forer

In the past the label self-hating Jew, though rarely used, was associated with Jews who were ashamed of or who hid their religious and cultural heritage. But as the debate over Israeli policy toward the Palestinian people has intensified, self-hating Jew, like anti-Semite, has become a routinely brandished and emotionally charged retaliatory weapon. The idea that a three-word label can encapsulate the character of a person is problematic. A human being is far more than what a single phrase can say about him, and self-hating Jew is so divisive that it makes tolerance and cooperation impossible; and it eradicates the possibility for real understanding.

For some Jews, support for Israeli policy is unconditional, even if it conflicts with traditional Jewish values. For other Jews, these values are primary and ought to be associated with Israel’s compliance with international law. If the former would make an effort to discover why the latter campaign for Palestinian equality, they would learn that they are making a conscious choice not to remain silent when witnessing one group’s denial of basic human rights to another group. These Jews see their people, like the rest of mankind, as complex beings, capable of acts of inhumanity as well as acts of kindness. They are able to concede that at times Israel does violate the rights of others, that it has used torture and mistreated and killed innocent people, and that its leaders do not always tell the truth about these acts. They believe that the Israeli government has hijacked their heritage by replacing morality and brotherhood, once so valued in Judaism, with bigotry and exclusion. Nearly every Jewish critic I’ve met believes that by opposing policies that relegate Palestinians to lives of second-class citizenship, that they are rescuing the integrity of their religious tradition. They are, therefore, true friends of Israel.

A true friend will admonish his friend when he sees him acting irrationally toward his neighbor. These critics have no desire to harm the state of Israel. Their desire is to prevent the state of Israel from harming Palestinians. They advocate equal rights for all because they know that equal rights lead to peace.

This begs the question: What exactly is self-hating (or anti-Semitic) in such a position? Is honoring the humanistic values many Jews were taught at synagogue a betrayal of their Jewish roots? Is caring about another people synonymous with hatred? Is learning about a painful subject likewise symptomatic of hatred? Isn’t thirst for knowledge a hallmark of Judaism and isn’t it fundamental to solving problems? If criticism of deliberate violations of international law expresses hatred, what does turning one’s back on the suffering of millions express? If calling on Israel to end its human rights abuses expresses hatred, are we to forsake a people who cry out against the destruction of their own homes or the traumatizing of their own children?

So where is the hatred? The hatred is conceived in the minds of those who are afraid to ask why someone is critical of Israel. Rather than conducting honest research to refute or confirm the criticism, the accuser victimizes himself with self-generated feelings of fear, confusion and anger, all of which are animated by unexamined beliefs and images within his own mind. This mind colors his perception so that he sees the world in terms of personal victimhood versus the world’s hostility.

Because he is unconscious of the effect his feelings have on his perception, the accuser can only project his perception onto the world and then presume that the world he sees proves the reality of his perception. Creating his own suffering, he narcissistically scapegoats and blames the world (in this case Palestinians and their sympathizers) for his suffering. Triggered through denial, this inner thought process attributes to Palestinians and their sympathizers the accuser’s own hatred. In other words, the accuser makes the other responsible for, and the repository of, his unresolved pain. He objectifies the other and rejects his humanity. Then he supports inhumane policies, which he justifies under the guise of an existential danger to Israel. In so doing, he brings the world’s anger down upon Israel which reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of perceived victimhood. This entire process is a defense mechanism that stems from the fear of inquiring into one’s presumed identity through the questioning of one’s beliefs and images.

Labeling as hateful or anti-Semitic honest criticism of Israeli oppression is no different than labeling as anti-American honest criticism of America’s history of oppression toward people of color. And holding Israel to normative standards of conduct does not delegitimize anyone. What delegitimizes Israel are the behavior and attitudes that humiliate an indigenous people.  

I have not met one defender of Israeli policy who has impartially studied the actual history. If they had the decency to do so, most would discover that they have character assassinated the Palestinians and facilitated their misfortune. The real conflict for these defenders is not Israel versus a hostile world or Israel versus the Palestinians. The real conflict – and the basis for claims of self-hatred and anti-Semitism – is the failure to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration acknowledges Israel’s dark side. The other denies the dark side exists. If these defenders want to distinguish the source of conflict and find peace they need to inquire within. But there are no excuses! Under certain conditions, willful blindness is a crime against humanity.  

Only by committing myself to the truth was I able to apprehend that, in reality, criticism of Israel was never a serious concern. Incredibly, I had never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists. I had always defended an idealistic image of Israel that was projected or superimposed upon the Israel that actually exists. This projection enabled me to repress or deny painful revelations that I would have learned about Israel and about myself if only I had looked without the errant influence of an unexamined mind. Denial and projection go hand in hand. What I denied about Israel and about myself, I projected onto the other who automatically and necessarily became my enemy.

The perspective formed from my projections revealed more about how I wished to see my people than how they really are when looked at in an honest light. My attachment to certain beliefs and images was a defense designed to preserve a childlike faith in Israel as guardian of freedom and humanity. Somehow, I had to reconcile my treasured images with the reality that conflicted with them. However, rather than making use of the tension between these forces as a gateway to transformation, I spurned reality and adhered to the safety of indoctrination. When friends I normally trusted pointed to Israeli deeds that seemed out of character, I reacted by ignoring or rationalizing the suffering of Palestinians.

Equating Palestinian freedom with Palestinian terrorism, I worried that if Israel relinquished strict control over its subjects, the lives of its citizens would be imperiled. Fearing annihilation, I unconsciously superimposed Nazi images onto the Palestinian people, and then refused to believe that the Jewish state could act indefensibly toward them. Fear prevented me from empathizing with the pain of Palestinians and it blinded me to the likelihood that a country I had invested so much faith in could administer such brutal policies.

I indoctrinated myself into the idea that some Jews were willfully ignorant of the evil intentions of the Palestinians, and that their willfulness demonstrated support for that which my unexamined mind feared most: the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Truthfully, my reaction to criticism was motivated more by the fear of taking on the challenge that the criticism posed to my identity than by genuine disagreement or fear for Israel’s existence. For a split second, though, before denial and repression set in, this challenge reflected the prejudice that induced me to deny the humanity of the other. And in order to avoid encountering my own lack of humanity, I ignored documented evidence, thereby consenting to the subjugation of millions. I judged Palestinian violence as a pathological expression of hatred, not the response of an oppressed people, a small minority of whom resort to violence as the only way they know to retain a measure of self-respect in the face of generations of violence inflicted upon them. By turning my back on the suffering of others, I had sacrificed the very values Israel once personified.

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How is it that a person can be devoted to the well being of one group and hostile to the well being of another? Is it true that there is an inherent difference between two peoples that justifies devotion to one and hostility towards the other? Are such feelings real or has something been added that distorts feeling? In my view, the determining factor is the labels that are applied to a people and the beliefs and images associated with the labels. These labels are the mind’s attempt to resolve fear and gain security, but they occlude the very mechanism that can achieve these aims.

The ability to look and to feel is what achieves security. This ability is inherent and it functions perfectly when there is no recoil from the circumstances of existence. In simple practical situations it makes itself known. Everyone has experienced it. There is a moment when you just know there is danger, when you know that a person is not to be trusted. Then you act accordingly. You do not need one iota of belief about the situation. You have no preconceptions and you are not recoiled from the situation. You are simply being present. Then there is the real feeling that something is amiss.

What I am talking about is natural intelligence as the means for practical security. If we look and feel, then certain things become clear. But we have to renounce labels, we have to renounce the philosophy of us against them, and we have to end our recoil from the human reality of the conflict. There is nothing to fear; we needn’t wait. Do we wait until we discover the nationality, race or origin of a person before we feel concern or neglect for him or her? If so, then there is no real feeling at all. Our concern and our neglect are false. Both are manifestations of fear and confusion. Our automatic identification with one side of a conflict is selfish, founded upon an attachment that keeps us so inextricably bound that we have lost our connection to humanity. We may tell ourselves we support an end to conflict, but as bearers of inner conflict we constantly subvert our goals.

Beyond the mind lies a vast expanse of freedom, unqualified by our presumed mortality as a separate person. In this space of freedom true feeling arises; it flows from the heart. In the field of human relations its expression is compassion. Compassion is the expression of peace and the means of peace. When we know it then we also know that peace for the world is achievable.

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I never used the term self-hating Jew. I am thankful I didn’t. I believe the label is a powerful barrier to understanding. The key to understanding is dispassionate intelligence. Fear and anger permeated every argument I made in defense of Israel. Invariably I moved from the quandary of fear to the apparent certainty of anger. But I never crossed over into hate. There is a special feeling that accompanies the words self-hating Jew. The key is in “hate.” Characterizing someone in any way with this word introduces viciousness to the mind. This viciousness makes the mind utterly dualistic – and utterly obtuse. The subtle awareness that my ingrained perspective was perhaps incorrect would have been extinguished if I had described Israel’s Jewish critics as self-hating. As it was, because I did not become involved in hate, I remained open to a dispassionate investigation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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The notion that any Jew who dedicates him or herself to justice for all people and who protests the unfair treatment of the downtrodden harbors self-hatred defies common sense. Given the self-esteem it takes to stand for justice amidst fierce denunciation, a more accurate assessment is that they are self-loving Jews.

Please read this short appeal from my friend Rana, who lives in Gaza. She wants the same opportunities so many of us have had in life. If anyone can help her come to the U.S. or Europe to attend college please let me know. Here is a little bit of her story, written by her with some editing by me.

My Life Story

I wonder how to begin writing about myself. There is so much to say that I don’t know exactly where I should start?

My name is Rana. I am a Palestinian girl, nineteen years old. I am studying English Literature at the Islamic University in Gaza. I have finished two years and am about to start my third. Because of the situation here in Gaza, it is very difficult to study and make progress.

No one can bear to live here. Gaza is in crisis: economically, socially and culturally. We suffer from a lack of electricity. The fuel that supplies the main station is in short supply. Our world is filled with war, medical problems, emotional problems and all kinds of physical problems. Who is responsible for all of these terrible things? The people of Israel? The government of Israel? Who is responsible?  Every day the number of dead and injured steadily increases. Our lives have turned to hell. People want to leave for other countries. But Israel won’t let very many leave.

Our education system is not bad at all. Our students graduate with degrees in science but what is their future? There are no jobs here. Unemployment is high and widespread. There is nothing to do in Gaza. That is why people spend their time in the streets doing bad things or sitting in front of their computers spending hours on the internet. This is what is going on in Gaza.

I want to tell you my story. Four years ago when I was fifteen, Israel destroyed my home with a rocket. The dream I had worked for since I was a little girl was also destroyed, but I told myself “it’s OK. I’m still alive and I can find a new dream.” My dream had been to leave Palestine and study medicine in a foreign country and then to use my knowledge to help my people.

In the beginning, my Dad wanted me to become a doctor, but I only received a score of 82% on my exams. This wasn’t high enough. I felt ashamed. When I heard the results I stood beside the wall and cried. But then I realized that what I was doing was a sign of weakness so I washed my eyes and sat peacefully in my room, collecting my thoughts and ideas.

My father was disappointed in my low score also, because that was his dream too. He used to call me Dr. Rana. I told myself that I will work hard to break down the barriers that are in my way and overcome all the challenges that I face in my personal life, at school and even in my community, that one day I will make my father proud of me.

I decided to enter the faculty of arts, a new field and a new dream. Having to start all over again from zero was very difficult. In my two years at the university I have had low grades, but I still have chances. I believe in myself and I know what my talents are.

I want to travel from Palestine but I don’t know how? I know it is time to rely on myself without having to depend on anyone, not even my Dad. I have to prove myself in all areas of my life, to trust in myself and make my own decisions. I can work hard and I can work under pressure to reach my goals. Traveling abroad is at the top of my priorities. Hand in hand, heart to heart we can achieve our dreams

I want to stop taking money from my Dad. I feel embarrassed whenever I ask him for money. I hope I will get a job in my field of study. I look forward to challenges and am always working to improve myself. I take risks, love adventure and have an open mind.

I know I have the power to live a positive life. I know that life is not a bed of roses, so I need to work on my patience. I trust God and I trust myself. There are those who just want to break me down. They call me a failure but when I smile I destroy their illusions and they see how strong I am.

I want to show the world what is happening to us in Gaza. I want to represent my country and show the silent world how Palestinians are killed every day while Israelis and Americans are enjoying their lives.

Damn! Where is the humanity in the world? How can people lose their humanity? We will never give up fighting until the Israelis give us back our rights and release all Palestinian political prisoners from their jails. We don’t want more blood, more massacres; we just want peace and security. These are the conditions that everyone in the world needs in order to live a good life.  Rana

As a past spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel I would like to respond to Congressman Berman’s letter to that organization. My aim is to engender a more accurate understanding of who we really are and what we really advocate.

Mr. Berman’s use of language is founded in an Us against Them mentality. As such, it is inherently polarizing. Thus, he mistakenly interprets our call for Congress to end military aid to Israel as anti-Israeli. He also suggests that the current relationship between the U.S. and Israel demonstrates international leadership. We respectfully disagree with both claims.

First, America’s extraordinary monetary and diplomatic assistance is a key factor in enabling Israel to carry on its daily violations of international law and the denial of basic civil rights for millions of Palestinians. This misguided support allows Israel to divert resources it would otherwise use for military purposes to its settlement – really colonization – project and its forty-five year occupation of an indigenous people. Without the billions of dollars given to Israel by American taxpayers, its leaders would very likely be compelled to negotiate a peace that would be fair to both sides.

Mr. Berman’s claim that it is Mr. Abbas who is the obstacle to peace betrays his bias as well as a serious lack of research into the subject. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Likud party have always rejected a Palestinian state and have even called for Israel’s eastern border to extend to the Jordan River. In this light, along with the undeniable fact that Israel continues to gobble up more and more of the land it allegedly is willing to negotiate over, I ask Mr. Berman how anyone could possibly believe that Israel has ever negotiated in good faith with any interest in a real peace that honors fundamental rights to self-determination and equality for all people.

Second, the way to demonstrate international leadership is not to enable our friends’ daily violations of international law that enrage much of the world but to insist that our friends, just as much for their sake as for anyone else’s, respect international law. A true friend does not make excuses for his friend’s behavior when he sees him humiliating and terrorizing his much weaker neighbors. If Mr. Berman really wants to be a true friend to Israel we encourage him to put aside any political motives he may have and to undertake an honest and objective research into the history of Israel-Palestine, even if it means that he could become an object of the kind of false accusations that he and his friends, such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have made against our Coalition.

Finally, Mr. Berman says: “I am not going to stand by and remain silent as some outside group comes into our community with these outrageous billboards calling for an end to our security partnership with Israel.”

The Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel is not going to stand by and remain silent as the United States, in the name of democratic values, and Israel, in the name of the Jewish people, make Americans and Jews around the world less secure as a result of their outrageous refusal to recognize the democratic rights of a non-Jewish people.

So where is the hatred? The hatred is in the minds of those who are afraid to ask why someone is critical of Israel. Rather than doing honest research to refute or confirm the criticism, the accuser panders to his feelings of fear, confusion and anger, all of which are animated by unexamined beliefs and images within his own mind. This mind colors his perception so that he sees the world in terms of personal victimhood versus the world’s hostility.

Because he is unconscious of this deeper thought process, the accuser can only project his perception onto the world and then assume that the world he sees proves the reality of his perception. He creates his own suffering and then scapegoats the world (in this case Palestinians and their sympathizers) for his suffering. Triggered through denial, this thought process attributes to Palestinians and their sympathizers the accuser’s own hatred. In other words, the accuser makes the unknown “other” responsible for, or the repository of, his unresolved pain. He objectifies the other and rejects his humanity. Then he supports inhumane policies, which he justifies under the guise of Israel and the Jewish people’s security. In so doing, he brings the world’s anger down upon Israel which, in turn, reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of perceived victimhood.

The real conflict, then, is an inner one and can only be resolved through self-reflection or inquiry into the beliefs and images the accuser takes for granted that form a large part of his personal and collective identity. Without inquiring into his beliefs and images, or indoctrination, he will not be able to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. One consideration acknowledges Israel’s dark side. The other denies the dark side exists.

If the accuser can find the courage to commit to the truth – to the best of his ability – and take advantage of the clarifying tools of research and inquiry, he will inevitably apprehend the astonishing reality that, as regards Israel-Palestine, criticism of Israel has never been his principal concern. In fact, he has never defended Israel, at least the Israel that actually exists.

What he has always defended is an idealistic image of Israel that he unconsciously projects or superimposes upon the Israel that actually exists. This projection enables him to deny painful revelations that he would otherwise discover about Israel and about himself if only he would look at Israel and the world without the errant influence of an unexamined, or indoctrinated, mind.

The fruits of the accuser’s sincere efforts will be the transformation of fear into compassion and confusion into clarity. He will know that no behavior occurs in a vacuum and that each of us is responsible for the suffering in the world. The unnecessary and self-created boundaries of his mind will dissolve, the intelligence of his heart will awaken and he will recognize his connection to all of humankind. Finally, he will understand that peace must first manifest within his inner world before he can see its manifestation in the outer world.

In reading Paul Danish’s article, “Is Nablus Boulder’s sister?” I was struck by the contempt Danish holds for Palestinians and for the suffering they have endured under a brutal occupation.

By selectively choosing the most shameful of incidents and painting Palestinian society as completely colored by the horrors of those incidents he shows his own bigotry and lack of humanity.

I would bet that Danish “ululates” with delight every time he hears of the killing of Palestinians and other Arabs by Israeli soldiers and police. And I am sure that when babies are incinerated and decapitated, as happened in Gaza, the only sounds that come out of his mouth are justifications and excuses for his side’s actions. Obviously this man has never had the common human decency to objectively study the actual history of Israel/Palestine and the Middle East. It is so much easier for him to take the low road of clinging to stories that make him feel good about the hatred he sees coming from others, not having even a hint of awareness that it is his own hatred that insures the continuation of the unnecessary suffering of others whose lives are totally irrelevant to him. Richard Forer/Albuquerque, N.M.

Peace will only come to the Middle East when Americans finally demand that their elected officials find the integrity to discern the history before speaking out on issues that affect the lives of millions every day. And it is up to newspapers like the Richmond Times Dispatch to support the public in their endeavor to separate fact from fiction and fairness from prejudice. Richard Forer, Author: Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,
As an American Jew with relatives living in Israel I am appalled and deeply concerned at your government’s treatment of its Palestinian wards. Walid Abu Rass (ID #: 9-9702819-6) is under administrative detention because, I suspect, he cares about his people. Mr. Rass is Finance and Administration Manager for the Health Work Committees (HWC, at www.hwc-pal.org). Why does your government, in the name of the Jewish people, routinely persecute individuals who are trying to make life a little easier for a citizenry that has had so much taken from them? Are they being persecuted because, unlike you, they were not born to Jewish mothers?

Prime Minister Netanyahu what kind of image of Israel and the Jewish people are you attempting to send to the world? Are you aware that the behavior of your government incites anti-Semitism throughout the world, just as the behavior of Islamic extremist groups incites Islamophobia? Are you aware that many of your fellow Jews are becoming more and more disgusted with policies that are designed to treat the Palestinian people as subhuman? What kind of world do you think you are creating with such inhumane behavior and what kind of legacy do you intend to leave for the Jewish people? Have you considered the effect of your policies upon Jews around the world?

As a Jew who has not lost his compassion and humanity I ask that you look into your heart, find some compassion for other human beings and immediately release Walid Abu Rass. I ask that you cease persecuting non-Jewish individuals simply because they are committed to the health and well-being of their people. Sincerely, Richard Forer

The way of life in the new Israel where we will live and die won’t remind us in the least of the country we’re used to. Even this article won’t be publishable. Only proper opinions will be put into print, the ones approved by the new government-sponsored journalists’ association, whose people will sit in every newsroom so there is no divergence from the accepted chorus of opinion.

Laws and regulations (clearly they will be passed as “emergency” regulations ) will bar publication of anything that could, in the eyes of the authorities, harm the state. A new law will bar defamation of the state, and the newspaper you will hold in your hands will be different. It will only report good news.

Radio and television broadcasts won’t be what you’re familiar with either. No media outlet will be able to go beyond the bounds of the law due to the draconian penalties for running afoul of them. The word “occupation” will be illegal, as will the expression “Palestinian state.” Treasonous journalists will be pilloried or arrested, or at least fired. That day is not long in coming.

In the not too distant future, the urban landscape will look different. What is happening today in Jerusalem will play itself out in the whole country tomorrow, when the likeness of women will be banished from public view. Today Jerusalem, tomorrow the whole country. Separate buses and streets for men and women. Radio and television will only broadcast men singing. At some point, women will be required to cover their heads. Then it will be the men’s turn. They will be barred from appearing clean-shaven or without a head covering. That day is not long in coming.

The cities will be shut down on Shabbat. Not a store or movie theater will be open. Then will come the ban on driving on Shabbat. Non-kosher restaurants will be illegal. Mezuzahs will be required on the doorpost of every room in every home. Couples not registered with the rabbinate will not be allowed to live together, and couples in which only one party is Jewish will be deported immediately. Unmarried couples will be barred from walking arm-in-arm in public.

Once a month all the country’s schoolchildren will make solidarity visits to West Bank settlements. Every lesson will begin with the singing of the national anthem and a salute to the flag. Those who don’t serve in the army will lose their citizenship and be deported.

And the Jewish state will have a Jewish Knesset. First Arabs will be barred from running for parliament in their own parties. Then they won’t be allowed to be elected at all. Until then, MKs who at the beginning of every Knesset session don’t sing the national anthem’s words about the “yearning of the Jewish soul” will be permanently removed.

Arabs will be denied the right to a university education, with the exception of a symbolic quota approved by the Shin Bet security service. It will be illegal to rent to Arabs, other than in their own towns and villages, and the Arabic language will be banned. The poetry of Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish and his Jewish compatriots Aharon Shabtai and Yitzhak Laor will also be banned. Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman will have to decide. They, and all the country’s citizens, will be required to declare themselves Zionists to get published.

The West Bank will be annexed, but the Palestinians living there will not be. Left-wing organizations will be made illegal and their leaders arrested. The government will publish a blacklist of those with offensive views who will not be allowed to leave the country or speak to the foreign media. Only someone who murders Jews will be deemed a real murderer, and the statute books will be divided into two parts, one for Jews and one for non-Jews. The death penalty will only apply to Arabs.

Special legislation will give settlers the right to take control of any land in the West Bank, and military censorship will ban any news item that could “harm the strength of the Israel Defense Forces.” The Supreme Court will only serve as a court of appeals and will not consider direct petitions on civil rights violations. Supreme Court justices will be selected by the Knesset and slots on the bench will be reserved for West Bank settlers, rabbis and members of the party in power. Only religious justices will be able to serve as chief justice. Rabbis will have legal immunity similar to what MKs have. Any declaration of war or a peace agreement will need the approval of the Council of Torah Sages.

Actually, you don’t need much imagination to come up with all this. The future is now. The revolution is in progress; just wait for what’s to come.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDENTS FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE PRESENT
Richard Forer, Author of
Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion
Friday, December 2, 2011 / 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Humanities Room 1B80 CU Boulder

Legendary Reporter and former Senior White House Correspondent Helen Thomas:
“Anyone with an interest in the Israel-Palestine Conflict should not miss an opportunity to attend one of Richard Forer’s talks. The insight he brings to this seemingly endless dilemma has the ability to transform the entire debate and create a just resolution for all sides.”

In his talk Richard will share how blind loyalty to Israel obstructed his ability to empathize with the suffering of Palestinians and induced him to support self-destructive policies that are doomed to perpetuate conflict and suffering on both sides.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: 303 332-8856

1) September 27 from 7pm to 9pm at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church at 42nd St. & Albemarle St. NW – Go up the main steps through the doors.
2) September 28 from 5:00 to 6:30 at Busboys & Poets – 2021 14th St NW (14th St NW and V). Famed journalist Helen Thomas will be joining me for this talk.

Here is my response:

As an American Jew and former staunch defender of all things Israeli, I am compelled to respond to Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen’s misguided editorial in which she states her opposition to recognition by the UN of Palestinian statehood. Obviously her only concern is to maintain the Israeli government’s brutal occupation over an indigenous people. Just as obviously the congresswoman has never studied the actual history. She rails about rocket fire from Gaza and the “growing threats facing the Jewish state” with no acknowledgment that Israel has fired far, far more rockets into Gaza, killing far, far more people, that Israel has made a policy of repudiating International law by collectively punishing an entire population and sabotaging its democratically elected government, and that Israel has repudiated truces with Hamas that would have insured “quiet for a generation,” according to former head of Mossad Ephraim Halevy. The real problem is an illegal and inhumane occupation that condemns a population for the crime of not being Jewish and the support for this inhumanity from lawmakers like Ros-Lehtinen who put advocacy for the greed of Israeli leaders ahead of their duty to the citizens who elected them to office in the first place.

March 11, 2012 Medford, OR: 1 to 3 PM Medford Public Library

March 12, 2012 Roseburg, OR: 7-9 PM - Douglas County Central Library

March 13, 2012  Florence, OR: 7:00 PM, doors open 6:30 Florence Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

March 14, 2012 Tillamook, OR: 6-8pm Hatfield Community Room of the Tillamook County Library

March 15, 2012  Newport, OR: 7-9 PM Atonement Lutheran Church

March 16, 2012  Beaverton, OR: 6:30-8PM Chapel of the UCC Church of Cedar Hill

March 17, 2012  Salem, OR: 2-4 PM First Congregational Church [UCC]

 March 17, 2012  Corvallis, OR: 7-9 PM Corvallis Public Library

December 2, 2011 Boulder, CO – University of Colorado, Students for Peace & Justice

September 27, 2011 Washington D.C. – St. Columba’s Episcopal Church

September 11, 2011 Boulder, CO – First Congregational United Church of Christ

September 11, 2011 Denver, CO – Friends of Sabeel, Montview Presbyterian Church

Sunday, September 11, 2011

3-5 pm at Montview Presbyterian Church
1980 Dahlia, Denver (corner of Montview Blvd. and Dahlia)
All lectures are free and Open to the Public—Light Refreshments served

For more information: Jan Miller, janlmiller@q.com

Information for the Boulder talk the morning of September 11 will be provided in the next two weeks.

Part Two of Radio Interview on Israel/Palestine with Richard Forer

Thank you for publishing Medea Benjamin’s op-ed, “Despite the bullying the flotilla will sail.” Ms Benjamin speaks for people of conscience, who know that collectively punishing an entire society and reducing its people to abject poverty is inhumane and unworthy of nations that claim to be bastions of democratic values. Unlike those who will reflexively accuse her of anti-Semitism or Jewish self-hatred, Ms Benjamin is not disposed to ignore the cries of men, women and children simply because of their religion or ethnicity. And she has taken the radical step of studying the documented history of Israel-Palestine, looking at both sides of the dispute, anathema to those who fear the truth. Like any honest researcher, her findings compelled her to acknowledge that in the name of her people Israel has been conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing and character assassination against the Palestinian people for decades. My hope is that Benjamin’s op-ed will encourage readers to investigate for themselves the reality of Israel’s Occupation, its blockade of Gaza and its virtual imprisonment of one-and-a-half million people and then demand that their nation’s leaders put the values they profess ahead of their ignorant support of bigotry and oppression.

Richard Forer, author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

As a Jewish American and former AIPAC member I request your assistance in encouraging the Greek government to release from captivity John Klusmire, the captain of the Audacity of Hope, one of the boats in Freedom Flotilla II. I do not believe the captain would have been arrested by Greek authorities if not for collusion between the U.S. and Israeli governments. The captain was part of a mission whose purpose was to shine a light on the illegal and inhumane collective punishment of the people of Gaza by the government of Israel. For American federal employees from the president on down to ignore the rights of its own citizens while acting on behalf of Israel’s oppressive and illegal claim to international waters seems treasonous to me and an affront not only to international law but to the Constitution of the Untied States.

In short my request is that you do your duty to act on behalf of peaceful American citizens who believe in the values upon which the United States was built rather than on behalf of a foreign government whose intention is to bring harm to those citizens. Sincerely, Richard Forer

I have studied the history of Israel-Palestine in great depth and have written a meticulously documented book using as my sources Israeli government archives as well as the writings of past and present Israeli leaders. There is absolutely no question that peace and security are a distant second to land acquisition and the transfer of the Palestinian population.
This is why boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) are so critical to the well being of not only Palestinians but Israelis as well. Further, because the Israel-Palestine issue is at the core of Muslim extremism throughout the world and because it has such a polarizing effect throughout the United States and Europe, it is essential that major companies such as TIAA-CREF exercise their conscience and take a stand for justice and peace. The most effective nonviolent means for doing so is through BDS.

If companies like TIIAA-CREF do not put Israel on notice that daily violations of International and humanitarian law must end, the world will pay dearly with greater turmoil, extremism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. People will die and badly needed resources will be diverted to excess military purposes.

I know you have heard and will continue to hear why BDS is anti-Semitic. In conjunction with that you will hear arguments that justify Israeli policy. I am familiar with all of these arguments because I once made them. A moderate study of history is more than enough to prove that these arguments are gross distortions or outright fabrications. Unfortunately, those who make them have never studied the history. This includes almost every member of Congress. They base their statements on a variety of unexamined assumptions that have been repeated for many years to the point that they seem like natural law. In fact they are Zionist mythology designed to deceive Israelis, Jews and much of the world and to character assassinate the Palestinian people.

A true friend of Israel knows when he or she must speak out to prevent his friend’s self-destructive behavior from harming himself and all around him. Please become a true friend of Israel and let its government know that you will not stand for policies that dehumanize Palestinians and Israelis and that bring needless danger to the rest of the world.

Sincerely, Richard Forer
Author of Breakthrough: Transforming fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict
www.richardforer.com

Dear ___________,
If enough of us would only research history we would be more informed and more reasonable. We would understand why some people resist occupation and why others want to occupy and we would be able to make a fair peace where all people, not just Jews, can live in peace and respect each other. I am not particularly interested in convincing people to change their minds or to believe what I have to say. What I am interested in is encouraging people to find out the facts for themselves. Is this an unreasonable aspiration? Is it incompatible with Jewish tradition? If we fail to separate fact from fiction, if we merely listen to uneducated others, to Israel’s leaders or to self-serving journalists, we will be at the mercy of these “experts” who may have ulterior motives, are deceitful or just plain deluded. Thirst for knowledge, once a hallmark of Jewish learning, is fundamental to solving problems, yet today we have “experts” like Dennis Prager whose self-serving proclamations, which have become common belief within Jewish culture, are based not on knowledge but on unexamined indoctrination. And we have followers who abdicate responsibility for their own thinking and its effect on the world by believing whatever corresponds to their own unexamined individual and collective belief structure. Therefore, I hope you will consider the points I make and use them as a springboard to replace myth with real knowledge.

I have been familiar with Prager for many years. He is an extremist on most issues, not just Israel. His greatest thrill in life was shaking the hand of G.W. Bush, likely the most divisive president in U.S. history. He is a segregationist when it comes to Israel/Palestine and a firm supporter of Reverend John Hagee who says that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. And, comparing Adolph Hitler to Moses, Hagee says that Hitler, who was born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews,”[i] was a “hunter” sent by God and tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel. Hagee further believes that Jesus Christ will return to Earth and that Jews will have to convert to Christianity or perish in a lake of fire. This kind of ignorance has been at the heart of anti-Semitism for nearly two thousand years. Without it, Adolf Hitler could not have relied on the hatred and the silence of those who supported or closed their eyes to the evils of the Holocaust.

In his video, Prager is guilty of gross distortion. Since he claims to be an authority on the Middle East I have to assume he deliberately distorts although I understand why he would be compelled to do so. He is terrified that his identity, so fused with childhood belief about Israel, could be nothing more than an artificial structure built upon language and cultural belief. He is mortally afraid for what he mistakenly takes as who he is. His terror is manufactured by his own mind and it is the lens through which he sees the world. That lens distorts his view so that he only sees the world in terms of us against them, in terms of his people’s victimhood versus the rest of the world’s hostility and hatred. Because he is so unconscious of his deeper thought processes he can only project his fear-based mental/emotional content onto the world and then assume that the world he sees, colored by all of that, is the evidence he needs to prove himself right. In other words, this kind of thinking, unconscious as it is, always creates its own suffering and then blames the world (in this case and in particular the Palestinian people) for its suffering, treating it as a scapegoat. This process is the primary cause of conflict.

In the video he objects to the Arab world refusal to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” Why would anyone who opposes institutionalized discrimination and land expropriation of Arabs in Israel and in occupied Palestinian territory recognize a “Jewish” state? That would de facto legalize these very policies and deny a positive future to the Palestinian people. Many defenders of Israel, none of whom have actually studied the history, will say Arabs in Israel proper are treated as equals. There is a plethora of Israeli laws, policies, conventions and virulent daily racism that easily refutes that claim.

Prager refers to the UN Partition Plan of November 1947, UN Resolution 181, which the Arab countries rejected. First, what right did the UN have to take land from one people and give it to another people? How you would you feel if you were the aggrieved party? And does Palestinian rejection of 181 justify Israel’s continued expropriation of Palestinian land? Does it justify the brutal methods of a relentless occupation? Resolution 181 took 56% of mandatory Palestine and gave it to the Jewish people who owned about seven percent of the land. Forty-three percent went to the Palestinians with the remaining one percent, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, under the authority of the United Nations. The new Jewish state would have a 49% Arab minority that would have become a majority probably in less than five years. It is utterly naïve to believe that Israel would have accepted such an outcome yet, in an explicit pledge made to the UN the Jewish Agency – under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion – falsely stated that the new state “will not be Jewish in the sense … that the Jewish community will be superior in status to other communities.”[ii] In other words, acceptance of 181 was a tactical move and a prelude to future expansion. David Ben-Gurion, May 1947: “Does anybody really think that the original meaning of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and indeed, that of the millenarian yearning of the Jewish people, was not that of establishing a Jewish state in the whole of Eretz-Israel?”[iii] In December 1947 Ben-Gurion said: “There are no final settlements in history, there are no eternal borders, and no political demands are final.” One week later he pledged to his political party’s Central Committee that the borders established by 181 were not final. Following Ben-Gurion’s lead, Yigal Allon, the most prominent Israeli general of the 1948 war stated: “the borders of partition cannot be for us the final borders … the partition plan is a compromise plan that is unjust to the Jews.  . . . We are entitled to decide our borders according to our defence needs.”[iv]

If, like Ben-Gurion, you believe the millenarian yearning of the Jewish people entitles them to all of Eretz-Israel then why don’t you admit, as Jabotinsky, Dayan[v] and others have done, that you also believe in eternal conflict – unless the Palestinian people docilely consent to this interpretation of Judaism and accept their fate as an inferior people whose need for self-determination is irrelevant in the face of Jewish self-determination.

Prager discusses Gamal Nasser and Arab rhetoric. Yes, Arab rhetoric was bloodthirsty but Prager, the Middle East expert, ignored mentioning the numerous peace proposals beginning in 1949 that came from Syria and Egypt. Nasser attempted to settle the conflict yet each Israeli prime minister from Ben-Gurion to Meir completely ignored him as well as the English, Maltese, Quaker, Yugoslavian and Jordanian emissaries who spoke for him, just as Ariel Sharon ignored the 2002 Saudi offer.

Additionally, Prager says that Egypt, Jordan and Syria were planning to attack Israel in 1967 in order to “extinguish” it. Were he honest this expert would have discovered what Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Chief-of-Staff Yitzhak Rabin, and Opposition leader Menachem Begin all acknowledged:

Eshkol: The Egyptian layout in Sinai and the general build up there testified to a militarily defensive Egyptian set-up, south of Israel (Yediot Ahronot, October 16, 1967).

Rabin: Nasser didn’t want war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it (Le Monde, February 28, 1968).

Begin: In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him (New York Times, August 21, 1982).

Prager mentions the three No’s that Arab countries agreed to at Khartoum. That was a public relations disaster for the Palestinians that allowed Israel to claim it was Arab countries, not Israel, that opposed peace. Since the 1980s however, the PLO has been open to dialogue about peace but Israel has always placed obstacles in their way.

If you look at maps of Israel/Palestine from 1948 to the present you can see the absurdity of the oft-repeated lie that Israel has always been willing to exchange land for peace, as Prager asserts. Yes, Israel gave up the Sinai for peace with Egypt but that does not mean it was ever willing to give up the West Bank for peace. Peace with Egypt was strategic in that it eliminated Israel’s greatest military threat in the Middle East, yet it took until 1979 before Israel made that peace. Israel could have had virtually the same peace in the early 70s – prior to the Yom Kippur War – had it not cavalierly dismissed Arab requests for talks. Per capita, in just three weeks Israel unnecessarily sacrificed the equivalent of three times the number of Americans lost during the ten years of the Vietnam War, all because of disinterest in peace. And I again must mention Israel’s failure to respond to the Saudi plan and its sabotage of the Bush Roadmap for peace. Furthermore, Hamas, which was created by Israel in collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly said it would accept a peace negotiated on the basis of the 1967 lines if it were approved by the Palestinian people. Israel knows it can make peace with Hamas but uses the rhetoric of some Hamas militants to make excuses for not making peace. Peace would have an enormous moderating effect on Hamas. Israeli and American advisers are all cognizant of this. Neither Egypt nor Jordan was required to recognize Israel as a precondition for peace talks.

In short, any reasonably objective person who does research based upon a wide range of Israeli state historical archives would deduce that throughout its history Israel has always favored expansion – via the heartless and selfish theft of Palestinian land – to peace. Just this year the Palestine papers illustrated this point.

I know some of you will bring up the 2005 Gaza disengagement of 8,000 Jewish settlers. Israel’s reasons for following through on that action were to relinquish responsibility, as required by articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, for the well being of the Gazan population and to provide a smokescreen for the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank. While 8,000 settlers were removed from Gaza, freeing up over 25% of the Gaza Strip’s desperately needed water resources for its 1.6 million starving citizens, 12,000 settlers were given Palestinian land in the West Bank. In other words, Israel used the Gaza pullout as a way to distract attention from its unilateral redrawing of the boundaries of Greater Israel at the expense of negotiation with the Palestinian Authority. Another factor is that while the West Bank is rich in natural resources Gaza is not.[vi] What kind of people, by the way, would hoard more than 25% of critical resources when they represent but one-half of one percent of the population? I would submit that the answer is a people who consider their neighbors less than human. What does that say about such a people’s own humanity?

Prager claims that Palestinians want Jews dead. I have met many Palestinians in the U.S, Israel and the West Bank and not one has ever hinted at such a heinous desire. In fact, all would like to live in peace with their Jewish brothers and all made clear that the problem is not religion but Zionism. Today, unfortunately, the majority of Jewish defenders of Israel have made Zionism an essential element of Judaism.

Of course there are Arabs who would like to see Jews dead, just as there are Jews who would like to see Arabs dead but I would bet there is a far greater percentage of Jews who would be relieved, if not happy, were the Palestinian people destroyed. If you would read Israeli newspapers and the accounts of various Israeli and other Human Rights groups about the behavior of Israeli soldiers and settlers in occupied Palestine you would be exposed to some of the most primitive hatred imaginable. I have seen this hatred in the writings and speech of countless Israeli and American Jews, some of whom I know personally. I wonder if the Torah encourages Jews to hate their neighbor and to discriminate against and steal from their neighbor if their neighbor happens not to be Jewish. Deuteronomy 10:19 and Genesis 18:1-5 certainly do not.

Prager finishes his diatribe with irrelevant, yet typical, arguments that merely show how deluded and bigoted he is. His statement that Arabs have many states and Jews have only one is based on the tribal consciousness of separateness, of an unwillingness to live together in peace. It is the statement of a deluded, self-righteous and self-destructive segregationist whose life is dedicated to the humiliation and destruction of another people all because of a narcissistic need to protect a false identity into which he has never had the courage to inquire. The fact that there are many Arab (an ethnic group) states and only one Jewish (not an ethnic but a religious group) state does not justify deliberate policies and practices that routinely violate international humanitarian law and that have caused immense suffering for an entire people while costing a large segment of the Jewish people their humanity and their collective soul. Speaking as a Jew I cannot ally myself with this disturbing position.

If the purpose of the Jewish people is to bring blessing to the world, if T’shuva (repentance, transformation) really is a valued concept in Judaism, then it is incumbent upon every Jew to reflect upon his or her views, to overcome the dangers of indoctrination and dehumanizing beliefs and awaken to the clarity and compassion that is the authentic nature of reality. That is the true path to Peace.

Dear ___________,
If enough of us would only research history we would be more informed and more reasonable. We would understand why some people resist occupation and why others want to occupy and we would be able to make a fair peace where all people, not just Jews, can live in peace and respect each other. I am not particularly interested in convincing people to change their minds or to believe what I have to say. What I am interested in is encouraging people to find out the facts for themselves. Is this an unreasonable aspiration? Is it incompatible with Jewish tradition? If we fail to separate fact from fiction, if we merely listen to uneducated others, to Israel’s leaders or to self-serving journalists, we will be at the mercy of these “experts” who may have ulterior motives, are deceitful or just plain deluded. Thirst for knowledge, once a hallmark of Jewish learning, is fundamental to solving problems, yet today we have “experts” like Dennis Prager whose self-serving proclamations, which have become common belief within Jewish culture, are based not on knowledge but on unexamined indoctrination. And we have followers who abdicate responsibility for their own thinking and its effect on the world by believing whatever corresponds to their own unexamined individual and collective belief structure. Therefore, I hope you will consider the points I make and use them as a springboard to replace myth with real knowledge.

I have been familiar with Prager for many years. He is an extremist on most issues, not just Israel. His greatest thrill in life was shaking the hand of G.W. Bush, likely the most divisive president in U.S. history. He is a segregationist when it comes to Israel/Palestine and a firm supporter of Reverend John Hagee who says that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. And, comparing Adolph Hitler to Moses, Hagee says that Hitler, who was born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews,”[i] was a “hunter” sent by God and tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel. Hagee further believes that Jesus Christ will return to Earth and that Jews will have to convert to Christianity or perish in a lake of fire. This kind of ignorance has been at the heart of anti-Semitism for nearly two thousand years. Without it, Adolf Hitler could not have relied on the hatred and the silence of those who supported or closed their eyes to the evils of the Holocaust.

In his video, Prager is guilty of gross distortion. Since he claims to be an authority on the Middle East I have to assume he deliberately distorts although I understand why he would be compelled to do so. He is terrified that his identity, so fused with childhood belief about Israel, could be nothing more than an artificial structure built upon language and cultural belief. He is mortally afraid for what he mistakenly takes as who he is. His terror is manufactured by his own mind and it is the lens through which he sees the world. That lens distorts his view so that he only sees the world in terms of us against them, in terms of his people’s victimhood versus the rest of the world’s hostility and hatred. Because he is so unconscious of his deeper thought processes he can only project his fear-based mental/emotional content onto the world and then assume that the world he sees, colored by all of that, is the evidence he needs to prove himself right. In other words, this kind of thinking, unconscious as it is, always creates its own suffering and then blames the world (in this case and in particular the Palestinian people) for its suffering, treating it as a scapegoat. This process is the primary cause of conflict.

In the video he objects to the Arab world refusal to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” Why would anyone who opposes institutionalized discrimination and land expropriation of Arabs in Israel and in occupied Palestinian territory recognize a “Jewish” state? That would de facto legalize these very policies and deny a positive future to the Palestinian people. Many defenders of Israel, none of whom have actually studied the history, will say Arabs in Israel proper are treated as equals. There is a plethora of Israeli laws, policies, conventions and virulent daily racism that easily refutes that claim.

Prager refers to the UN Partition Plan of November 1947, UN Resolution 181, which the Arab countries rejected. First, what right did the UN have to take land from one people and give it to another people? How you would you feel if you were the aggrieved party? And does Palestinian rejection of 181 justify Israel’s continued expropriation of Palestinian land? Does it justify the brutal methods of a relentless occupation? Resolution 181 took 56% of mandatory Palestine and gave it to the Jewish people who owned about seven percent of the land. Forty-three percent went to the Palestinians with the remaining one percent, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, under the authority of the United Nations. The new Jewish state would have a 49% Arab minority that would have become a majority probably in less than five years. It is utterly naïve to believe that Israel would have accepted such an outcome yet, in an explicit pledge made to the UN the Jewish Agency – under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion – falsely stated that the new state “will not be Jewish in the sense … that the Jewish community will be superior in status to other communities.”[ii] In other words, acceptance of 181 was a tactical move and a prelude to future expansion. David Ben-Gurion, May 1947: “Does anybody really think that the original meaning of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and indeed, that of the millenarian yearning of the Jewish people, was not that of establishing a Jewish state in the whole of Eretz-Israel?”[iii] In December 1947 Ben-Gurion said: “There are no final settlements in history, there are no eternal borders, and no political demands are final.” One week later he pledged to his political party’s Central Committee that the borders established by 181 were not final. Following Ben-Gurion’s lead, Yigal Allon, the most prominent Israeli general of the 1948 war stated: “the borders of partition cannot be for us the final borders … the partition plan is a compromise plan that is unjust to the Jews.  . . . We are entitled to decide our borders according to our defence needs.”[iv]

If, like Ben-Gurion, you believe the millenarian yearning of the Jewish people entitles them to all of Eretz-Israel then why don’t you admit, as Jabotinsky, Dayan[v] and others have done, that you also believe in eternal conflict – unless the Palestinian people docilely consent to this interpretation of Judaism and accept their fate as an inferior people whose need for self-determination is irrelevant in the face of Jewish self-determination.

Prager discusses Gamal Nasser and Arab rhetoric. Yes, Arab rhetoric was bloodthirsty but Prager, the Middle East expert, ignored mentioning the numerous peace proposals beginning in 1949 that came from Syria and Egypt. Nasser attempted to settle the conflict yet each Israeli prime minister from Ben-Gurion to Meir completely ignored him as well as the English, Maltese, Quaker, Yugoslavian and Jordanian emissaries who spoke for him, just as Ariel Sharon ignored the 2002 Saudi offer.

Additionally, Prager says that Egypt, Jordan and Syria were planning to attack Israel in 1967 in order to “extinguish” it. Were he honest this expert would have discovered what Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Chief-of-Staff Yitzhak Rabin, and Opposition leader Menachem Begin all acknowledged:

Eshkol: The Egyptian layout in Sinai and the general build up there testified to a militarily defensive Egyptian set-up, south of Israel (Yediot Ahronot, October 16, 1967).

Rabin: Nasser didn’t want war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it (Le Monde, February 28, 1968).

Begin: In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him (New York Times, August 21, 1982).

Prager mentions the three No’s that Arab countries agreed to at Khartoum. That was a public relations disaster for the Palestinians that allowed Israel to claim it was Arab countries, not Israel, that opposed peace. Since the 1980s however, the PLO has been open to dialogue about peace but Israel has always placed obstacles in their way.

If you look at maps of Israel/Palestine from 1948 to the present you can see the absurdity of the oft-repeated lie that Israel has always been willing to exchange land for peace, as Prager asserts. Yes, Israel gave up the Sinai for peace with Egypt but that does not mean it was ever willing to give up the West Bank for peace. Peace with Egypt was strategic in that it eliminated Israel’s greatest military threat in the Middle East, yet it took until 1979 before Israel made that peace. Israel could have had virtually the same peace in the early 70s – prior to the Yom Kippur War – had it not cavalierly dismissed Arab requests for talks. Per capita, in just three weeks Israel unnecessarily sacrificed the equivalent of three times the number of Americans lost during the ten years of the Vietnam War, all because of disinterest in peace. And I again must mention Israel’s failure to respond to the Saudi plan and its sabotage of the Bush Roadmap for peace. Furthermore, Hamas, which was created by Israel in collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly said it would accept a peace negotiated on the basis of the 1967 lines if it were approved by the Palestinian people. Israel knows it can make peace with Hamas but uses the rhetoric of some Hamas militants to make excuses for not making peace. Peace would have an enormous moderating effect on Hamas. Israeli and American advisers are all cognizant of this. Neither Egypt nor Jordan was required to recognize Israel as a precondition for peace talks.

In short, any reasonably objective person who does research based upon a wide range of Israeli state historical archives would deduce that throughout its history Israel has always favored expansion – via the heartless and selfish theft of Palestinian land – to peace. Just this year the Palestine papers illustrated this point.

I know some of you will bring up the 2005 Gaza disengagement of 8,000 Jewish settlers. Israel’s reasons for following through on that action were to relinquish responsibility, as required by articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, for the well being of the Gazan population and to provide a smokescreen for the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank. While 8,000 settlers were removed from Gaza, freeing up over 25% of the Gaza Strip’s desperately needed water resources for its 1.6 million starving citizens, 12,000 settlers were given Palestinian land in the West Bank. In other words, Israel used the Gaza pullout as a way to distract attention from its unilateral redrawing of the boundaries of Greater Israel at the expense of negotiation with the Palestinian Authority. Another factor is that while the West Bank is rich in natural resources Gaza is not.[vi] What kind of people, by the way, would hoard more than 25% of critical resources when they represent but one-half of one percent of the population? I would submit that the answer is a people who consider their neighbors less than human. What does that say about such a people’s own humanity?

Prager claims that Palestinians want Jews dead. I have met many Palestinians in the U.S, Israel and the West Bank and not one has ever hinted at such a heinous desire. In fact, all would like to live in peace with their Jewish brothers and all made clear that the problem is not religion but Zionism. Today, unfortunately, the majority of Jewish defenders of Israel have made Zionism an essential element of Judaism.

Of course there are Arabs who would like to see Jews dead, just as there are Jews who would like to see Arabs dead but I would bet there is a far greater percentage of Jews who would be relieved, if not happy, were the Palestinian people destroyed. If you would read Israeli newspapers and the accounts of various Israeli and other Human Rights groups about the behavior of Israeli soldiers and settlers in occupied Palestine you would be exposed to some of the most primitive hatred imaginable. I have seen this hatred in the writings and speech of countless Israeli and American Jews, some of whom I know personally. I wonder if the Torah encourages Jews to hate their neighbor and to discriminate against and steal from their neighbor if their neighbor happens not to be Jewish. Deuteronomy 10:19 and Genesis 18:1-5 certainly do not.

Prager finishes his diatribe with irrelevant, yet typical, arguments that merely show how deluded and bigoted he is. His statement that Arabs have many states and Jews have only one is based on the tribal consciousness of separateness, of an unwillingness to live together in peace. It is the statement of a deluded, self-righteous and self-destructive segregationist whose life is dedicated to the humiliation and destruction of another people all because of a narcissistic need to protect a false identity into which he has never had the courage to inquire. The fact that there are many Arab (an ethnic group) states and only one Jewish (not an ethnic but a religious group) state does not justify deliberate policies and practices that routinely violate international humanitarian law and that have caused immense suffering for an entire people while costing a large segment of the Jewish people their humanity and their collective soul. Speaking as a Jew I cannot ally myself with this disturbing position.

If the purpose of the Jewish people is to bring blessing to the world, if T’shuva (repentance, transformation) really is a valued concept in Judaism, then it is incumbent upon every Jew to reflect upon his or her views, to overcome the dangers of indoctrination and dehumanizing beliefs and awaken to the clarity and compassion that is the authentic nature of reality. That is the true path to Peace.

From June 1, 2011, posted by Rich Forer on 6/01/2011 (31 items)

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It also appears that Pamela Geller and her group, Stop the Islamicization of America, recently classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, have been recruited to intimidate Rutgers University’s Muslim community with threats of physical violence.

BAKA is an Affiliate of SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine). Among its activities, it organized a US to GAZA Flotilla fundraiser last fall, and the Never Again for Anyone tour in early 2011. Not only did neither activity demonize Israeli Jews or delegitimize Israel, both had a prominent Jewish presence.

April 15, 2011

Dear President McCormick,

As a Jew raised in New Jersey, with numerous relatives having graduated from Rutgers, I appeal to you to issue a statement making it clear that the administration of Rutgers will not tolerate discrimination in any form. And furthermore, that it deplores the use of any tactics that are intended to provoke, misrepresent or slander any student or group of students.

I am a former member of AIPAC and have been involved in human rights and equality for both Palestinians and Israelis for a number of years. I am author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict. While writing this book, I conducted voluminous research into the history of Israel-Palestine, mostly from Israeli sources, many of them governmental and, like any competent and objective historian, was compelled to conclude that a significant number of claims made by organizations such as Hillel and ZOA are not based in reality. They are, at best, recycled myths intended to portray Palestinian society as inherently violent and irrational while hiding the truth that the greatest violence has always been a deliberate strategy meant to dispossess the Palestinians of their indigenous homeland.

Likewise, claims that groups such as the sponsors of the Never Again For Anyone tour or the courageous individuals who’ve formed the Gaza Flotilla Movement are anti-Semitic, attempting to delegitimize Israel or existential threats to Israel are equally irrational, if not hysterical. Both in Israel and the U.S. there has been an increasingly vicious and hateful backlash against the growing revelation of the inhumanity and violence of the Israeli occupation. Throughout humankind’s history there have always been periods of potential growth and more enlightened education that have been interpreted as grave threats to the existing order, which often responds emotionally with fear and tactically with repression.

As the truth of the occupation becomes more manifest its defenders become even more frightened – and more dangerous. Although they express their fear by slandering their “enemies” as misinformed and anti-Semitic, the truth is that they are afraid to investigate the actual history of the conflict out of fear for what they might discover about Israel and about themselves. Throughout college campuses their tactics are the same: to portray any who criticize Israel as the enemy. They define an anti-Semite as someone who challenges Israeli policy or who believes that Palestinians are entitled to the same basic rights as Israelis. By that definition David Ben-Gurion was an anti-Semite for acknowledging that “we stole the land” from the Palestinians. I define an anti-Semite as someone who attacks a Jew because of his or her commitment to human rights and equality for all people. Since many Jews are appalled at Israeli treatment of Palestinians who is implicated by that reasonable definition?

The truth is that the tactics of groups such as ZOA are not meant to defend or protect Israel or the Israeli people. Their tactics are meant to defend and protect their self-image as individuals or a people who have not lost their humanity. By painting the Israeli governments’ critics as irrational and anti-Semitic they can deny any authenticity to the criticism of Israel. And they can deny their lack of humanity despite their support for an oppressive and dehumanizing Occupation.

Please do not allow those who narcissistically favor one group at the expense of another the power to intimidate, threaten or suppress the dawning of knowledge and awareness that eventually will lead to freedom for the oppressed and a more humane perspective for the oppressor.

Many white Southerners, freed from dehumanizing beliefs, are far more moral and humane than they were during segregation. At some point leaders in all walks of life must take a stand for equality and common human decency. I urge you to do so now.   Sincerely, Richard Forer

Below is a letter I wrote to Rutgers University President Richard L. McCormick. I did so because the Zionist Organization of America has accused Rutgers of violating federal regulations by allowing a campus environment that is “increasingly hostile, anti-Semitic, and even includes violent threats against a Jewish student.” ZOA alleges that activities organized by BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice have “demonized Jews in Israel” and have attempted “to delegitimize the Jewish state.” Although I deplore discrimination in any form I am familiar with the tactics of groups like ZOA. Their common practice is to call anyone who supports human rights in the Middle East or calls for an end to an illegal occupation an anti-Semite. This is hysterical and self-destructive thinking and must be countered.

It also appears that Pamela Geller and her group, Stop the Islamicization of America, recently classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, have been recruited to intimidate Rutgers University’s Muslim community with threats of physical violence.

BAKA is an Affiliate of SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine). Among its activities, it organized a US to GAZA Flotilla fundraiser last fall, and the Never Again for Anyone tour in early 2011. Not only did neither activity demonize Israeli Jews or delegitimize Israel, both had a prominent Jewish presence.

April 15, 2011

Dear President McCormick,

As a Jew raised in New Jersey, with numerous relatives having graduated from Rutgers, I appeal to you to issue a statement making it clear that the administration of Rutgers will not tolerate discrimination in any form. And furthermore, that it deplores the use of any tactics that are intended to provoke, misrepresent or slander any student or group of students.

I am a former member of AIPAC and have been involved in human rights and equality for both Palestinians and Israelis for a number of years. I am author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict. While writing this book, I conducted voluminous research into the history of Israel-Palestine, mostly from Israeli sources, many of them governmental and, like any competent and objective historian, was compelled to conclude that a significant number of claims made by organizations such as Hillel and ZOA are not based in reality. They are, at best, recycled myths intended to portray Palestinian society as inherently violent and irrational while hiding the truth that the greatest violence has always been a deliberate strategy meant to dispossess the Palestinians of their indigenous homeland.

Likewise, claims that groups such as the sponsors of the Never Again For Anyone tour or the courageous individuals who’ve formed the Gaza Flotilla Movement are anti-Semitic, attempting to delegitimize Israel or existential threats to Israel are equally irrational, if not hysterical. Both in Israel and the U.S. there has been an increasingly vicious and hateful backlash against the growing revelation of the inhumanity and violence of the Israeli occupation. Throughout humankind’s history there have always been periods of potential growth and more enlightened education that have been interpreted as grave threats to the existing order, which often responds emotionally with fear and tactically with repression.

As the truth of the occupation becomes more manifest its defenders become even more frightened – and more dangerous. Although they express their fear by slandering their “enemies” as misinformed and anti-Semitic, the truth is that they are afraid to investigate the actual history of the conflict out of fear for what they might discover about Israel and about themselves. Throughout college campuses their tactics are the same: to portray any who criticize Israel as the enemy. They define an anti-Semite as someone who challenges Israeli policy or who believes that Palestinians are entitled to the same basic rights as Israelis. By that definition David Ben-Gurion was an anti-Semite for acknowledging that “we stole the land” from the Palestinians. I define an anti-Semite as someone who attacks a Jew because of his or her commitment to human rights and equality for all people. Since many Jews are appalled at Israeli treatment of Palestinians who is implicated by that reasonable definition?

The truth is that the tactics of groups such as ZOA are not meant to defend or protect Israel or the Israeli people. Their tactics are meant to defend and protect their self-image as individuals or a people who have not lost their humanity. By painting the Israeli governments’ critics as irrational and anti-Semitic they can deny any authenticity to the criticism of Israel. And they can deny their lack of humanity despite their support for an oppressive and dehumanizing Occupation.

Please do not allow those who narcissistically favor one group at the expense of another the power to intimidate, threaten or suppress the dawning of knowledge and awareness that eventually will lead to freedom for the oppressed and a more humane perspective for the oppressor.

Many white Southerners, freed from dehumanizing beliefs, are far more moral and humane than they were during segregation. At some point leaders in all walks of life must take a stand for equality and common human decency. I urge you to do so now.   Sincerely, Richard Forer

If you know anyone in or within a couple hours of the Eugene area, regardless of their position on the Israel-Palestine issue, maybe even especially if they identify with the Israeli side, please encourage them to attend the talk.  Thanks, Rich

From West Bank and Israel 2010, posted by Rich Forer on 6/15/2010 (93 items)

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I write to you as an American Jew with ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel; and as a former member of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), America’s largest pro-Israel lobby. I also write to you as one who, for most of his life, was a blind defender of the Israeli government’s behavior toward the Palestinian people.

Until a few years ago I shared with many of my fellow Jews around the world the fear, the anger and the mythic stories of the heroic establishment of a Jewish state only a few years after the genocide of six million of our people. But then I embarked upon an intensive and daily study of the history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. My primary sources were all Israeli, including the Israeli Ministries of Defense, Internal Security and Foreign Affairs. What I discovered precipitated a change in consciousness and a profound compassion for all people, not favoring one group at the expense of the other. I realized that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli, as much Muslim or Christian as Jew.

I have followed the controversy over your decision to draft a statement of reprimand toward Israel for its illegal and lethal attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla less than one year ago. And I have read the comments of many of Eugene’s Jewish residents, especially those who oppose any action on your part. I see my former self in the words of these frightened citizens. I know some have admonished you for issuing a statement when you “are totally ill-equipped to deal with international issues.” Others have accused you of being biased, cautioning you to “keep silent . . . or send a letter of honor to Israel, lest you be tagged with the label of anti-Semitism.”

These Jewish citizens will tell you that their strong and defensive emotions arise out of a belief that Israel is being delegitimized, that Israel faces an existential threat from a hostile world that has never accepted Jews in its midst. I am painfully aware of the fear and anger in their words and I do not doubt that they believe that what they are saying is accurate. However, it is because of that awareness that I respectfully ask that you exercise your responsibility as people of conscience by following through on your earlier decision to write the statement.

Speaking from my own experience and from my awakening to the reality that my rationalization of any Israeli behavior had contributed to the suffering of millions, the truth is that none who beseech you to turn a blind eye to these issues, none who make veiled threats that you will be labeled anti-Semites has ever honestly studied the history of the Israel-Palestine struggle. Encountering the documented history, as described in Israel’s own archives and in the statements of Israel’s leaders from David Ben-Gurion to the present, is the real fear, to a far greater extent than any concern for the state of Israel. For such an encounter would bring each individual face to face with his or her lifelong denial that their fellow Jews could act so inhumanely toward those who compassionately intercede on behalf of a beleaguered people; that Israel could use premeditated lethal force, as it did against the Mavi Marmara, and as it has done for more than sixty years against the Palestinian people.

We are all, individually and collectively, interconnected through our attitudes, our thoughts and our actions. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people could not take place without the moral and financial support of Jews and Christians around the world, especially from communities throughout the United States, from places like Eugene, Oregon. The Occupation could not take place without the support of American taxpayers who make the acquisition of powerful weaponry possible for the Israeli military. Without this combined support, Israel could not maintain a blockade against one-and-a-half million people in Gaza, nor would it be able to collectively starve Gazans to the point that eighty percent rely upon food donations from charitable organizations for their subsistence-level existence. That Israel brutally prevented the Freedom Flotilla from bringing humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza and has suffered no sanctions by the international community; that Israel unnecessarily invaded Gaza less than two years earlier in an horrific display of contempt for human life and has been able to avoid censure despite the universally consistent reports of numerous human rights organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council’s Goldstone Report, is all a consequence of the ability of organized and powerful interest groups, such as AIPAC, to intimidate politicians at every level of government. And all of that can be understood as a consequence of our unexamined beliefs and our apathy toward the humiliation and subjugation of others who, though they may live far away, are impacted in very concrete ways.

I implore you not to give in to the forces of Us against Them. It takes a great deal of courage to stand for fairness and humanity, knowing that powerful groups will reflexively accuse you of hating Israel simply because you express concern for the lives of all people rather than some people. By taking a stand for human rights and decency, for equality and justice you will be contributing to a more benign legacy for all of humanity. Every thought and every action that takes into account the well-being of the other leaves its mark upon the collective consciousness of humanity, reverberating throughout time. Both the Talmud and the Koran say: “Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.” By speaking out on behalf of those who risked and even sacrificed their lives so that others might have a better future, you will be sending a powerful message of compassion straight to the collective heart of mankind. Publish your statement of reprimand and rescue the world!

Sincerely, Richard Forer, author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

I write to you as an American Jew with ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel; and as a former member of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), America’s largest pro-Israel lobby. I also write to you as one who, for most of his life, was a blind defender of the Israeli government’s behavior toward the Palestinian people.

Until a few years ago I shared with many of my fellow Jews around the world the fear, the anger and the mythic stories of the heroic establishment of a Jewish state only a few years after the genocide of six million of our people. But then I embarked upon an intensive and daily study of the history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. My primary sources were all Israeli, including the Israeli Ministries of Defense, Internal Security and Foreign Affairs. What I discovered precipitated a change in consciousness and a profound compassion for all people, not favoring one group at the expense of the other. I realized that I was as much Palestinian as Israeli, as much Muslim or Christian as Jew.

I have followed the controversy over your decision to draft a statement of reprimand toward Israel for its illegal and lethal attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla less than one year ago. And I have read the comments of many of Eugene’s Jewish residents, especially those who oppose any action on your part. I see my former self in the words of these frightened citizens. I know some have admonished you for issuing a statement when you “are totally ill-equipped to deal with international issues.” Others have accused you of being biased, cautioning you to “keep silent . . . or send a letter of honor to Israel, lest you be tagged with the label of anti-Semitism.”

These Jewish citizens will tell you that their strong and defensive emotions arise out of a belief that Israel is being delegitimized, that Israel faces an existential threat from a hostile world that has never accepted Jews in its midst. I am painfully aware of the fear and anger in their words and I do not doubt that they believe that what they are saying is accurate. However, it is because of that awareness that I respectfully ask that you exercise your responsibility as people of conscience by following through on your earlier decision to write the statement.

Speaking from my own experience and from my awakening to the reality that my rationalization of any Israeli behavior had contributed to the suffering of millions, the truth is that none who beseech you to turn a blind eye to these issues, none who make veiled threats that you will be labeled anti-Semites has ever honestly studied the history of the Israel-Palestine struggle. Encountering the documented history, as described in Israel’s own archives and in the statements of Israel’s leaders from David Ben-Gurion to the present, is the real fear, to a far greater extent than any concern for the state of Israel. For such an encounter would bring each individual face to face with his or her lifelong denial that their fellow Jews could act so inhumanely toward those who compassionately intercede on behalf of a beleaguered people; that Israel could use premeditated lethal force, as it did against the Mavi Marmara, and as it has done for more than sixty years against the Palestinian people.

We are all, individually and collectively, interconnected through our attitudes, our thoughts and our actions. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people could not take place without the moral and financial support of Jews and Christians around the world, especially from communities throughout the United States, from places like Eugene, Oregon. The Occupation could not take place without the support of American taxpayers who make the acquisition of powerful weaponry possible for the Israeli military. Without this combined support, Israel could not maintain a blockade against one-and-a-half million people in Gaza, nor would it be able to collectively starve Gazans to the point that eighty percent rely upon food donations from charitable organizations for their subsistence-level existence. That Israel brutally prevented the Freedom Flotilla from bringing humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza and has suffered no sanctions by the international community; that Israel unnecessarily invaded Gaza less than two years earlier in an horrific display of contempt for human life and has been able to avoid censure despite the universally consistent reports of numerous human rights organizations, including the UN Human Rights Council’s Goldstone Report, is all a consequence of the ability of organized and powerful interest groups, such as AIPAC, to intimidate politicians at every level of government. And all of that can be understood as a consequence of our unexamined beliefs and our apathy toward the humiliation and subjugation of others who, though they may live far away, are impacted in very concrete ways.

I implore you not to give in to the forces of Us against Them. It takes a great deal of courage to stand for fairness and humanity, knowing that powerful groups will reflexively accuse you of hating Israel simply because you express concern for the lives of all people rather than some people. By taking a stand for human rights and decency, for equality and justice you will be contributing to a more benign legacy for all of humanity. Every thought and every action that takes into account the well-being of the other leaves its mark upon the collective consciousness of humanity, reverberating throughout time. Both the Talmud and the Koran say: “Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.” By speaking out on behalf of those who risked and even sacrificed their lives so that others might have a better future, you will be sending a powerful message of compassion straight to the collective heart of mankind. Publish your statement of reprimand and rescue the world!

Sincerely, Richard Forer, author of Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

In the pages of the New Mexico Jewish Link and other venues, JFNM has repeatedly labeled critics of Israel’s decades-long, illegal Occupation as “Israel haters,” accusing these critics of anti-Semitism. The fact that some of the critics happen to be Jewish, some even reformed Zionists, has always been irrelevant to JFNM. How ironic, then, that in sponsoring this event, JFNM provided a platform for a man infamous for his anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Hagee, a “megachurch” pastor based in San Antonio, Texas, raises millions of dollars annually for Israel’s settlement enterprise on Palestinian land. He believes that the boundaries of Israel are set by God, that Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as the West Bank, are within these God-given boundaries and that these lands must be inhabited by Jews. This, of course, would require the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. One can argue that this viewpoint obstructs the chances for peace but it certainly doesn’t qualify as anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, though, Hagee is an exponent of the “End of Days,” when Jesus will return to Earth and non-believers, Jews included, will have to either convert to Christianity or fall into a lake of fire (Hell). Hagee further believes that the Jewish people are guilty of deicide – the murder of Christ – the one unpardonable sin. This belief has been at the heart of anti-Semitism for nearly two thousand years. Without this belief, Adolf Hitler might not have been able to rely on both the hatred and the silence of those who supported or closed their eyes to the evils of the Holocaust.

But most perniciously, Hagee has stated that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and “shepherd” them to Palestine. And, Hagee continues, Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God to expedite His will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

For the Jewish Federation of New Mexico to sponsor a man who compares Hitler and his subordinates to Moses betrays its profound confusion and ultimate support for the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine. JFNM’s self-destructive alliance with blatantly anti-Semitic forces can only doom both Palestinians and Israelis to generations more of conflict, while, ironically, fomenting anti-Semitism worldwide and drawing the global community into this quagmire.

Furthermore, Christians who ignore the suffering of human beings by using the same justification as the more fundamentalist of Jews – that “God gave the land to the Jewish [or chosen] people” – need to take a closer look at the teachings of Christ. Did Christ single out some for his blessing while ostracizing others? Did he teach hatred or did he teach love and compassion? And they need to look more deeply into their own hearts. Then they will discover that in denying the humanity of some they deny their own humanity.

Christians and Jews who proclaim a Jewish (and, for Christians, an eventual Christian) divine entitlement to the Holy Land must begin to understand that such thinking requires a divine abandonment of all who do not meet the definition of “Jewish” (and, eventually, “Christian”). Separative thinking is never divinely inspired. It is always narcissistically inspired; it is, in fact, the very antithesis of the unifying and all-encompassing nature of the divine.

In the pages of the New Mexico Jewish Link and other venues, JFNM has repeatedly labeled critics of Israel’s decades-long, illegal Occupation as “Israel haters,” accusing these critics of anti-Semitism. The fact that some of the critics happened to be Jewish, some even reformed Zionists, has always been irrelevant to JFNM. How ironic, then, that in sponsoring this event, JFNM provided a platform for a man infamous for his anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Hagee, a “megachurch” pastor based in San Antonio, Texas, raises millions of dollars annually for Israel’s settlement enterprise on Palestinian land. He believes that the boundaries of Israel are set by God, that Judea and Samaria, otherwise known as the West Bank, are within these God-given boundaries and that these lands must be inhabited by Jews. This, of course, would require the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. One can argue that this viewpoint obstructs the chances for peace but it certainly doesn’t qualify as anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, though, Hagee is an exponent of the “End of Days,” when Jesus will return to Earth and non-believers, Jews included, will have to either convert to Christianity or fall into a lake of fire (Hell). Hagee further believes that the Jewish people are guilty of deicide – the murder of Christ – the one unpardonable sin. This belief has been at the heart of anti-Semitism for nearly two thousand years. Without this belief, Adolf Hitler might not have been able to rely on both the hatred and the silence of those who supported or closed their eyes to the evils of the Holocaust.

But most perniciously, Hagee has stated that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. And, Hagee continues, Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God to expedite His will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

For the Jewish Federation of New Mexico to sponsor a man who compares Hitler and his subordinates to Moses betrays its profound confusion and ultimate support for the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine. JFNM’s self-destructive alliance with blatantly anti-Semitic forces can only doom both Palestinians and Israelis to generations more of conflict, while, ironically, fomenting anti-Semitism worldwide and drawing the global community into this quagmire.

Furthermore, Christians who ignore the suffering of human beings with the same justification as the more fundamentalist of Jews – that “God gave the land to the Jewish [or chosen] people” – need to take a closer look at the teachings of Christ. Did Christ single out some for his blessing while ostracizing others? Did he teach hatred or did he teach love and compassion? And they need to look more deeply into their own hearts. Then they will discover that in denying the humanity of some they deny their own humanity.

Christians and Jews who proclaim a Jewish (and, for Christians, an eventual Christian) divine entitlement to the Holy Land must begin to understand that such thinking requires a divine abandonment of all who do not meet the definition of “Jewish” (and, eventually, “Christian”). Separative thinking is never divinely inspired. It is always narcissistically inspired; it is, in fact, the very antithesis of the unifying and all-encompassing nature of the divine.

A few days ago I posted an item to the blog that did not appear in full as it should have. I have corrected the problem. Today’s post is from Human Rights Watch latest report on conditions in the West Bank. You can download the full report here:   In the meantime, here is a summary of what HRW found.

Under Discriminatory Policies, Settlers Flourish, Palestinians Suffer

December 19, 2010

( Jerusalem ) – Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no legitimate security or other justification and calls on Israel , in addition to abiding by its international legal obligation to withdraw the settlements, to end these violations of Palestinians’ rights.

Palestinians face systematic discrimination merely because of their race, ethnicity, and national origin, depriving them of electricity, water, schools, and access to roads, while nearby Jewish settlers enjoy all of these state-provided benefits. While Israeli settlements flourish, Palestinians under Israeli control live in a time warp – not just separate, not just unequal, but sometimes even pushed off their lands and out of their homes.

Carroll Bogert, deputy executive director for external relations at Human Rights Watch

The 166-page report, “Separate and Unequal: Israel’s Discriminatory Treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” shows that Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in the large areas where it exercises exclusive control. The report is based on case studies comparing Israel ‘s starkly different treatment of settlements and next-door Palestinian communities in these areas. It calls on the US and EU member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law.

“Palestinians face systematic discrimination merely because of their race, ethnicity, and national origin, depriving them of electricity, water, schools, and access to roads, while nearby Jewish settlers enjoy all of these state-provided benefits,” said Carroll Bogert, deputy executive director for external relations at Human Rights Watch. “While Israeli settlements flourish, Palestinians under Israeli control live in a time warp – not just separate, not just unequal, but sometimes even pushed off their lands and out of their homes.”

By making their communities virtually uninhabitable, Israel ‘s discriminatory policies have frequently had the effect of forcing residents to leave their communities, Human Rights Watch said. According to a June 2009 survey of households in “Area C,” the area covering 60 percent of the West Bank that is under exclusive Israeli control, and East Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed, some 31 percent of Palestinian residents had been displaced since 2000.

Human Rights Watch looked at both Area C and East Jerusalem and found that the two-tier system in effect in both areas provides generous financial benefits and infrastructure support to promote life in Jewish settlements, while deliberately withholding basic services, punishing growth, and imposing harsh conditions on Palestinian communities. Such different treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin that is not narrowly tailored to legitimate goals violates the fundamental prohibition against discrimination under human rights law.

Israeli policies control many aspects of the day-to-day life of Palestinians who live in Area C and East Jerusalem . Among the discriminatory burdens imposed on Palestinians that Human Rights Watch found are Israeli practices of expropriating land from Palestinians for settlements and their supporting infrastructure; blocking Palestinians from using roads and reaching agricultural lands; denying access to electricity and water; denying building permits for houses, schools, clinics, and infrastructure; and demolishing homes and even entire communities. Such measures have limited the expansion of Palestinian villages and imposed severe hardships on residents, including leaving them with limited access to medical care.

By contrast, Israeli policies promote and encourage Jewish settlements to expand in Area C and East Jerusalem , often using land and other resources that are effectively unavailable to Palestinians. The Israeli government grants numerous incentives to settlers, including funding for housing, education, and infrastructure, such as special roads. Those benefits have led to the consistent and rapid expansion of settlements, the population of which grew from approximately 241,500 inhabitants in 1992 to roughly 490,000 in 2010, including East Jerusalem .

“While Israeli policy makers are fighting for the ‘natural growth’ of their illegal settlements, they’re strangling historic Palestinian communities, forbidding families from expanding their homes, and making life unlivable,” Bogert said. “The policies surrounding Israel ‘s settlements are an affront to equality and a major obstacle to ordinary Palestinian life.”

One of the Palestinian communities that Human Rights Watch examines in the report is Jubbet al-Dhib, a village with 160 residents southeast of Bethlehem that dates from 1929. The village is often accessible only by foot because its only connection to a paved road is a rough, 1.5 kilometer-long dirt track. Children from Jubbet al-Dhib must walk to schools in other villages several kilometers away because their own village has no school.

Jubbet al-Dhib lacks electricity despite numerous requests to be connected to the Israeli electric grid, which Israeli authorities have rejected. Israeli authorities also rejected an international donor-funded project that would have provided the village with solar-powered street lights. Any meat or milk in the village must be eaten the same day due to lack of refrigeration; residents often resort to eating preserved foods instead. Villagers depend for light on candles, kerosene lanterns, and, when they can afford to fill it with gasoline, a small generator.

Approximately 350 meters away is the Jewish community of Sde Bar, founded in 1997. It has a paved access road for its population of around 50 people and is connected to Jerusalem by a new, multi-million-dollar highway – the ” Lieberman Road ” – which bypasses Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, like Jubbet al-Dhib. Sde Bar operates a high school, but Jubbet al-Dhib students may not attend. Settlements are designated closed military areas that may be entered only with special military permits. Residents of Sde Bar have the amenities common to any Israeli town, such as refrigerators and electric lights, which Jubbet al-Dhib villagers can see from their homes at night.

“Palestinian children in areas under Israeli control are studying by candlelight while watching the electric lights in settlers’ windows,” Bogert said. “Pretending that depriving Palestinian kids of access to schools or water or electricity has something to do with security is absurd.”

In most cases where Israel has acknowledged differential treatment of Palestinians – such as when it bars them from “settler-only” roads – it has asserted that the measures are necessary to protect Jewish settlers and other Israelis who are subject to periodic attacks by Palestinian armed groups. But no security or other legitimate rationale can explain the vast scale of differential treatment of Palestinians, such as permit denials that effectively prohibit Palestinians from building or repairing homes, schools, roads, and water tanks, Human Rights Watch said.

Moreover, in addressing security concerns, Israel often acts as if all Palestinians pose a security threat by virtue of their race, ethnicity, and national origin, rather than narrowly tailoring restrictions to specific individuals who are shown to pose a threat. The legal prohibition of discrimination prohibits such broad-brush restrictions.

“The world long ago discarded spurious arguments to justify treating one group of people differently from another merely because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin,” Bogert said. “It’s time for Israel to end its policies of discrimination and stop treating Palestinians under its control markedly worse than Jews in the same area.”

Israel’s highest court has ruled that certain measures against Palestinian citizens of Israel were illegal because they were discriminatory. However, Human Rights Watch is not aware that the courts have adjudicated whether any Israeli practice in the West Bank discriminated against Palestinians, although petitioners have raised such claims in a number of cases.

Human Rights Watch said that the blatantly discriminatory practices make it an urgent matter for donor countries to avoid contributing to or being complicit in the violations of international law caused by the settlements. These countries should take meaningful steps encourage the Israeli government to abide by its obligations, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch reiterated its recommendation that the United States, which provides US$2.75 billion in aid to Israel annually, should suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements, which a 2003 study estimated at $1.4 billion. Similarly, based on numerous reports that US tax-exempt organizations provide substantial contributions to support settlements, the report urges the US to verify that such tax-exemptions are consistent with US obligations to ensure respect for international law, including prohibitions against discrimination.

Human Rights Watch called on the EU, a primary export market for settlement products, to ensure that it does not provide incentives for settlement exports through preferential tariff treatment, and to identify cases where discrimination against Palestinians has contributed to the production of goods. For example, the report documents how crops exported from settlements using water from Israeli-drilled wells have dried up nearby Palestinian wells, limiting Palestinians’ ability to cultivate their own lands and even their access to drinking water.

The report also describes cases in which businesses have contributed to or benefited directly from discrimination against Palestinians, for example through commercial activities on lands that were unlawfully confiscated from Palestinians without compensation for the benefit of settlers. These businesses also benefit from Israeli governmental subsidies, tax abatements, and discriminatory access to infrastructure, permits, and export channels. Human Rights Watch called on businesses to investigate, prevent and mitigate such violations, including ending any operations that cannot be separated from discriminatory Israeli practices.

“Discrimination of the kind practiced daily in the West Bank should be beyond the pale for anyone,” Bogert said. “Foreign governments and businesses at risk of being tainted by Israel ‘s unlawful practices should identify and end policies and actions that support them.”

I applaud the LA Times for publishing Ali Abunimah’s op-ed, “Israel leaves us no choice but to boycott.” As a former loyal defender of any Israeli policy, a past member of AIPAC and as an American Jew with Ultra-Orthodox relatives living in Israel it is time for Israel to grow up, take responsibility for its destruction of Palestinian society and abide by international law and common decency. Israel’s leaders cynically characterize Palestinian resistance as delegitimizing and anti-Jewish despite their awareness of the fact that the Palestinians only other choice is self-destructive acceptance of their status as second-class citizens and non-entities, a choice that would consign future generations to lives of hopelessness and poverty and insure that any peace would never last. Richard Forer