Category: Community Contributor

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The Cruel Nature of the Israeli Occupation

Annette Braden-Rozier, The Chicago Tribune, Oct 11, 2024.

Jews and Palestinians are suffering, but the dominant narrative is that Israel is the rightful home of the Jews and needs defending against its enemies.

But there is another narrative. The cruel nature of the Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank is vividly portrayed in two recently released documentaries — “Israelism” and “Where Olive Trees Weep.” They show in graphic detail how residents of Gaza and the West Bank have lived in constant fear of being stopped and degraded by Israeli soldiers, shot, arbitrarily detained and tortured, raided at night in their homes, cut off from their farmland, and harassed and attacked by Jewish settlers. For decades, Palestinians have not been free to move, speak out or own property.

There are many organizations that work toward peace. IfNotNow is a movement founded by American Jews who want to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality and justice for both Arabs and Jews. Many Jews felt betrayed when they realized that they grew up not ever learning the Palestinian side of Israel’s history. Arabs were viewed as the enemy and as terrorists. Standing Together is another group, made up of Arabs and Jews, that is working toward a future in which Jews and Arabs can live next to each other with equal rights.

The Oct.7 attack on Israel was a horrific event, with painful consequences for both sides. How much worse is it now that Gaza has been turned into a wasteland, hostage families are still waiting for their loved ones and thousands of Israelis have been displaced? And how much worse is it now that Israel is attacking south Lebanon?

The U.S. government is enabling this expanding war. Despite knowing full well that the atrocities committed in Gaza should lead to restrictions in arms shipments, President Joe Biden has kept the weapons pipeline going. No wonder that many Muslims say they won’t vote for Kamala Harris!

Israel should work for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza to finally get the hostages out. Stopping the occupation is the path to peace.

Like these groups working for justice and peace, the Biden government should work with both sides to find a solution to end the bloodshed and achieve permanent peace.

— Annette Braden-Rozier, Evanston

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GAZA, HAMAS, OCCUPATION, LET’S ASK MORE QUESTIONS….

by Catherine Buntin, August 2024

Americans have protested the genocide in Gaza for these past 10 months. It has been anguishing to see the daily terror and murder of the Palestinian families and children. It’s a barbaric war.

Reflecting on my participation in the street protests at the Democratic convention last week, and having conversations with people from across the country who care deeply about a peace in the middle east, several themes emerged from these discussions that are shared here.

MANY THINGS ABOUT THIS WAR ARE CLEAR TO EVERYONE.

No one excuses the horrific murders of October 7th.  It is a war crime to kill civilians. But proportionality has been lost, the response is openly intended as genocide.

Hamas is a military force, but it also has provided government services to the Palestinian people in Gaza, much as the militant Black Panthers in Chicago also provided basic needed services to their communities for years (something that went unrecognized). These entities serve as more than one thing for their people. 

The occupation has meant that Palestinians have no control over their economy, over their power sources and water resources.  No control over the food supplies or travel out of their region.  And no opportunity for a defense force, or a military base, thus the tunnels their only way to resist occupation. Moreover, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians that happens daily, long has been met with immunity.

Many freedoms are out of reach for Palestinians.  Home security versus home demolitions, secure streets versus IDF snatching and taking people prisoners at whim. A secure environment for children versus abuse of children on the streets and in their homes.  Israelis hold Prisoners like hostages for years often without charges or on fabricated charges.

KNOWING ALL THIS, WE MUST ASK SOME CRITICAL QUESTIONS OF OURSELVES, if we proclaim to hold the moral high ground as often, we do.

Do Palestinians have the same right to defend themselves as Israel has to defend itself?

Is it natural to resist an oppressor? If so, does that resister deserve to be called a terrorist?

What about the oppressors?  Should they be defined as terrorists?

Is “occupation” a racist system of oppression?  Is one side deserving of freedom and security at the expense of the other?  Or are both peoples born with the inalienable rights of freedom and liberty? 

Bringing the questions home, how can Americans convince their politicians to withhold further support from the oppressor in order to achieve a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s genocidal goals?

Finally, do Palestinian citizens have the right to decide the role Hamas should play in their future government just as Israeli citizens are allowed to decide whether Netanyahu will be their leader for tomorrow?

If we ask these questions with an open mind, will we be better prepared to work for a realistic (or an actual) peace in the Middle East?

Catherine Buntin, Public Health Nurse and Board Member, Chicago Area Peace Action

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URGENT, FRESH LOOKS AT THE IMPORTANCE OF  HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI  COMMEMORATIONS

by David Borris and Jack Lawlor
August 5, 2024

Within four months after the atomic bomb attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 31 year old war correspondent John Hersey  went to Hiroshima, interviewed survivors, and wrote a series of  stunning articles for The New Yorker we know today as his book, Hiroshima.  The book does not treat this first use of atomic weapons as abstraction, instead, it personalizes the nature of the resulting individual suffering to six survivors caused by the attack in ways left unexplored in the recent movie, Oppenheimer.

For many years, Hiroshima became mandatory summer reading on some high school summer book lists.  I remember reading it in the hot summer sun of a golf caddy yard, moved deeply by the descriptions of severe burns, mysterious persistent radiation sickness, and efforts to rebuild life in the rubble of an irradiated city.  The book moved me to question my complete pro-American bias and inquire about how to protect humanity and the earth.

The commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks are more relevant than ever, because we may not have learned all that we can from them.  President Putin of Russia has been threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, a step which could lead to unforeseeable consequences.  He is already using hypersonic weaponry against Ukraine, another unprecedented escalation.

What can we as citizens do to protect ourselves, our descendants, the earth?  We need to join hands  and make international discussion of this issue much more of a top priority.

I wish we could say there is an arc of progress in efforts to regulate nuclear arms.  But the arc is going in the wrong direction:

1.     For all practical purposes, there are no longer effective arms control treaties in effect between the US and Russia.  They have expired or are expiring.

2.     There are now at least nine countries with nuclear weapons, stockpiling more than 13,000 weapons.

3.     The US budget allocates 22.4 billion, yes billion, annually for nuclear weapons and is in the midst of a massive modernization program encountering large cost overruns.  The land-based Sentinel nuclear missile program, which maintains hidden-in-plain site underground silos in a handful of Plains states, just reported a 37 percent and growing cost overrun.  The US Defense Department just gave the green light for moving forward, nonetheless. 

4.     There have been UN resolutions like the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) pledging member countries to forego first use of nuclear weapons.  This is an admirable effort, but its legal effectiveness is questionable and the nine nations who possess nuclear weapons either haven’t signed or privately feel free to violate the treaty.

5.     US peace and justice groups have been pushing hard for the US to forego first use of nuclear weapons.  Senator Markley of Massachusetts and US Representative Ted Lieu, among others, have been leading the efforts, but the legislative resolutions stall in a toxically divided Congress pre-occupied with elections and culture wars.

6.     The peace and justice groups’ efforts have tried to regulate, for the first time, a US president’s authority to authorize a nuclear attack.  Apart from verifying that the order to launch comes from the President, US protocols do not require discussion or review of the order to attack by any other US official.  This is remarkably dangerous should an autocratic or unstable individual occupy the Oval Office.

What can we do?

We cannot assume the US public is very familiar with much of this, and thus should begin a dialogue that uses plain language to demonstrate the need to avoid future Hiroshimas. We encourage people to:

A.    learn more about the situation, using resources such as Arms Control Today magazine and The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft ;

B.    attend the many webinars on this subject led by experts in the field and offered by organizations like Back From the Brink and The Union of Concerned Scientists and a variety of  US peace and justice groups;

C.    Above all, join with other people in your community through groups such as Chicago Area Peace Action.  You’ll learn a lot from others and they will appreciate your insights and talents.  Seasoned groups know how to work with elected officials and their staff members, elevating the effectiveness of your efforts enormously.

At the conclusion of his excellent book, Hiroshima Nagasaki, author Paul Ham points out the irony of how accelerating weapons technology has exceeded human capacity to control it.  In doing so he cites two of the people involved in the drama behind the recent movie, Oppenheimer.

First, he paraphrases Albert Einstein for the insight that “The splitting of the atom changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  Then, he turns to an insight from the often taciturn President Truman: “The human animal and his emotions change not much from age to age. He must change now or he faces absolute and complete destruction and then maybe the insect age or an atmosphere-less planet will succeed him.”

Let’s ponder this with the curiosity of a young John Hersey and work together to prevent another Hiroshima.

David Borris is the most recent past president of Chicago Area Peace Action. Jack Lawlor works with CAPA’s Foreign Policy Working Group and with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

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Mountaintop Removal

by Sean Reynolds, from Eurasia Review, March 28, 2024

In his March 24th opinion piece for the Times, David Brooks agrees with a “broad consensus atop the Democratic Party” (is there room for such breadth on the peak of that lofty mountain?) saying that Israel has the right to defend its apartheid regime by killing, banishing or imprisoning not only Gaza’s entire military but its entire elected government (the West Bank’s elected government, as well, but for a 2007 Israel-assisted coup there reversing the election).

Brooks approves of this “consensus” among top Democratic party officials, but laments that it’s not the whole story, as those leaders, he feels, also believe the ongoing extirpation can and should be conducted more humanely.  How could it be conducted any differently than it is, he asks, when Gaza has tunnels?!?!

Brooks seems earnestly to believe that a military enemy’s retreat underground requires ever more frenzied massacres of civilian populations left on the vacated surface. In his opinion piece Brooks intones the ritual cliché that by burrowing as far as it possibly can from the Gazan population – in the sole direction a hyper-crowded bantustan affords, which is downwards – Gaza’s Hamas-party government has chosen to use the population as “human shields.” To Brooks, the Gazans trembling before an Israeli troop detachment are “in between” those troops and their underground foe in some odd, non-Euclidean geometry where triangles are straight lines. All of this, in short, can’t be flat-out ethnic cleansing for its own sake. Brooks echoes Israel’s claims that each humanitarian institution making Gaza livable had, before its inevitable destruction, a Hamas base directly beneath it, later undetectable amidst the rubble. One wonders, short of tunneling into the next life, how Gaza’s elected defenders could have put themselves at sufficient distance from their families and friends that Israeli and American genocide apologists would stop slaughtering those families, then trusting the quick verbal ritual of “human shields” to wash bloodsoaked hands and souls beige-pink again.

Brooks feels the tunnels are a monstrously wasteful overspend on Hamas’ part – his clichéd assertion that Gaza-under-apartheid has, of all nations, the least (and not the greatest!) need of military spending is of a piece with his “human shields” cliché, depending as both ideas must upon the desirability of Gazans simply, and unfussily, dying.  

But the horror of Gaza’s military and government existing at all depends as well on the media-frenzy myth that has sprung up around October 7th.  Genocidal racists habitually summon up, then effortlessly believe, the most absurd such myths and this is no exception.  Does Palestine, alone among nations, deserve to exist without a military and without a government – that is, stateless, in pure enslavement – due to a special inhuman savagery of this one attack?  Name: Email:
On Oct 7 Hamas engaged in a sortie to kill Israeli soldiers and armed, combatant ex-military (nearly all adults in Israel are ex-military, trained precisely to fight alongside Israel’s troops at such moments) while taking noncombatants hostage to trade for the Gazan civilians Israel already held hostage in four figures, without trial or charge.  Hamas will have taken hundreds more hostage than the reported 250 who reached Gaza alive on Oct 7 – hundreds killed by IDF pilots whose Hellfire missile strikes would leave Gaza littered with melted cars packed full before their destruction, and rows of Israeli houses reduced to ashen rubble – Gazans, hostages and all – clearly not by the guns, grenades and RPGs with which Gaza’s soldiers were equipped but by Israel’s own tank shells and helicopter-fired missiles.  One pilot, invoking the infamous Israeli policy of killing hostages to prevent hostage exchanges, assured Ha’aretz that elimination of hostages was existing policy: “once you detect a hostage situation, this is Hannibal … What we saw here was a mass Hannibal. There were many openings in the fence, thousands of people on many different vehicles with hostages and without.”  Concertgoers at the rave, though caught between two military bases under attack, were roadblocked against escape by an IDF terrified of further Gazan infiltration, and many report that after they had fled their cars, an IDF uncertain of their identities appears, in defense of Israel’s shaken authority, to have begun picking them off from the air.

Many actually unarmed civilians, actually killed by Gaza, will have fallen to the “fog of war”  and many also, as with any military action, to the rage or callousness of individual soldiers, but not enough for their deaths to have been the sortie’s goal.  They will almost certainly have died in fewer numbers than Israel’s own, unanswered, civilian death toll counted over any two successive years of Gazan quiescence and in incommensurably smaller numbers than the civilian lives any modern U.S. intervention reaps within its first 24 hours.   Unlike Israel’s answering genocide, this wasn’t even “terror” – this military action had specific goals from which mass killing of civilians (hence any terror motive) were notably absent: from what Gaza had to accomplish with its action, there wouldn’t have been the time.  Pure fictions about beheadings, tortures, and sexual violence, though amplified by top Democrats including Pres. Biden himself, are unsupported by the identification of even a single victim, and clearly invented to justify the massive terror for which, David Brooks argues, those Dems show insufficient enthusiasm.  

Would the collateral damage in our own wars – not to mention Israel’s – justify the complete dismantling of the U.S.’ military and our elected government, top Dems and all, leaving our population completely defenseless and in an open air prison?  Because unless apartheid containment of certain populations – certain cultures, certain races – is justified, Gaza’s violence was clearly far, far more just  than any U.S. military engagement of the last seventy-five years; and its “collateral damage” comparably less blameful, even if ramped up to the horrific death tolls we – not to mention our Israeli client – customarily inflict.

Decades after the U.S.’ last plausibly ethical war, the genocide scholar Hannah Arendt warned us that “those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.”   In the 2024 election, no broad consensus will exist beneath the Democratic Party to support the genocidal fervor so devoid of mercy at its top. Despite Brooks’ assurance, no consensus likely exists among Dem leaders that their genocide is insufficiently humane: instead they seem to note with alarm that its cruelty has become an electoral liability for them, and an obstacle to fantasies of a restored unipolar dominance over a planet wracked with growing disgust for country and its leadership. Our Bidens and Clintons hope to squeeze through to victory through cosmetic gestures like the toothless demand for Netanyahu to cede his position to an even more bloodthirsty member of his own far-right government, and the Israeli-drafted plan for construction of a Genocide-Islandpier over which still-starving Palestinians can be forced onto exile ships if Egypt continues in refusing to dot the Sinai Desert with their refugee-tent cities. 

If top echelons of the Democratic or Republican parties minded starvation warfare, minded genocide, then our arms shipments to Israel would cease until Israel was one majority-Palestinian state with voting rights for all who had forgone fleeing to Europe or America with their apartheid-requisitioned wealth, and instead remained to share in the region’s poverty and precarity, performing the rightly arduous work of making neighborly amends. While few tools remain with which to denazify U.S. culture – at least, not from within the U.S. – some remain, and one of them consists of inching the Democrats towards basic humanity with not merely the threat, but the accomplished example, of resounding electoral defeats.  Our commitment, not just to ending the genocide in Palestine, but to sustaining and upholding Palestinian democracy and with it, Palestine’s elected government, requires that lesser concerns for our safety and comfort be put aside so that the beginnings of a punishment of genocide – falling sadly short, at first, of Hague tribunals – might take place even here, within the United States.

Sean Reynolds was a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and is currently an activist in the Foreign Policy Working Group of Chicago Area Peace Action.  He can be reached at joveismad@juno.com.

Photo: U.S. Marine and Afghan War veteran Zachary Kern burns his medals and a paper flag at anti-genocide “Cancel the DNC” rally 3/22/24 in Chicago. Photo credit: Behind Enemy Lines

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CAPA Climate Group Announces 2023 Priorities

We have two priorities with related actions. They Are: First, identify and support major actions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and demand that our political leaders put in place effective implementation plans for each of these actions as soon as possible. Second, stop adding more fossil fuels to our oversupply of planet destroying emissions.

1) Major Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

  • The EPA just announced stringent auto and truck pollution limits. These limits are designed to ensure that 67% of new cars and 25% of new heavy trucks sold in the U.S. by 2032 are electric and 54% to 60% by 2030. It is also a major transition from where we are today with 5.8% electric cars and only 2% of trucks in the U.S. These limits are the federal government’s most aggressive climate regulations to date and could propel the U.S.to the front of the global effort to slash greenhouse gases generated by cars and trucks, a major driver of climate crisis. Nearly every major car company has already invested heavily in electric vehicles, but few have committed to the levels envisioned by the Biden Administration. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is a key enabler in bringing this initiative to the marketplace.
  • The EPA has also been working for the past two years developing detailed plans to reduce methane emissions. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas and now represents 29% of greenhouse gas. The U.N. Environment Program notes that over a 20-year period, methane emissions are 80 times more potent in causing warming than carbon dioxide. It also notes that these emissions are worsening, with 2020 recording the largest annual increase since 1983. The methane emissions reduction program is now ready for implementation and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will enable the EPA to implement this important program. The primary focus is on the petroleum and natural gas sectors and implementation will begin in May. The Methane Reduction Plan will reduce 41 million tons of methane emissions from 2023 to 2035, the equivalent of 920 million metric tons of carbon emissions. The EPA has made a projection of 74% conversion to the new emission standards by 2030. In addition, the EPA has committed to explore other areas where methane emissions can be reduced.
  • There is also an International component of this initiative that started two years ago when the United States and the European Union jointly launched the Global Methane Pledge at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP 26). The Pledge asked countries to band together and commit to a collective goal of reducing global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. The State Department recently announced that 120 countries have joined this pledge. Since the EPA/IRA Methane Emissions Reduction Program was not developed at that time, we are demanding that President Biden propose a meeting with representatives from the 120 countries who have joined the methane reduction pledge. The EPA can review the key components of their Methane Emissions Reduction Program and the President can make a commitment to provide assistance to enable other countries to implement a similar program.

    The Biden Administration is keenly aware that climate activists are angry over their recent decision to approve The Willow Project, an enormous oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska. Some inside the administration argue that speeding up the transition to renewable energy, would lessen the demand for oil drilled in Alaska or elsewhere. CAPA realizes that we must demand our elected representatives introduce essential legislation like ‘The Earth Bill’’ instead of weaker alternative proposals. We also demand that President Biden declare a “Climate Emergency”.

    2) Stop adding more fossil fuels to our oversupply of planet destroying emissions.

  • We will continue to stop the legislative approval of the Mountain Valley Project or what is better known as “Manchin’s Dirty Deal”. So far, we have blocked the approval of this project three times. During the approval process for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Chuck Schumer agreed to a deal that would enable the Mountain Valley Project to get approved by step siding some local regulations in exchange for Manchin’s approval of the vote on the IRA. This project, if completed, will emit the equivalent of 25 operating coal plants into the atmosphere. When environmental groups recognized this, 600 environmental organizations across the country, including CAPA, called their House and Senate representatives demanding that they reject this Dirty Deal. We will continue to update you as new versions are introduced, so we can act again to reject them.
  • Stop the “Willow Project”. This will be the largest oil drilling project in the U.S. to date. This project will produce an estimated 254 million metric tons of climate-busting carbon over 30 years. The plan was initially approved by the Trump Administration but was halted in 2021 by an Alaskan judge because “Environmental impacts were not fully addressed.” In March of 2023 President Biden gave final approval to this project, an unacceptable departure by Biden from the promises he has made to the American people and to the environmental justice communities. Six environmental organizations subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration. The law suit alleges that the Biden Administration approved the project knowing the harm posed to Arctic communities, wildlife and the climate arguing that the project will spew toxic emissions and GHG pollution and undermine Biden’s promises to the American people. This suit was filed by Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Wilderness League, Environmental America, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club, and Wilderness Society. CAPA will follow this law suit closely and will support this litigation however possible.
  • CAPA has joined a national campaign to stop Wall Street Banks from financing climate destruction pipelines or refineries. Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, the large U.S. banks have provided $1.4 trillion to the fossil fuel industry. Currently, two national action movements are protesting the four largest banks funding fossil fuel projects. CAPA joined ‘Stop the Money Pipelines’ and have organized protests at these banks: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citi Bank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. A second national campaign against these banks was recently established by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is also focusing on these banks. The group called “Third Act”, focusing on customers over 60 who have their money in these local branch offices. These banks are funding major pipeline projects for the fossil fuel industry to transport either dirty oil from Alberta, Canada, liquified gas or CO2 captured carbon to locations all across the U.S. We must do everything we can to stop these climate destructive projects that are built to last 30 plus years. We will inform you about our next protests.
  • House Republicans passed a sprawling energy bill on March 31st. The bill, “The Low Energy Cost Act”, aims to undermine and revise Biden’s climate policies. The energy package would sharply increase production of oil, natural gas, coal, and offshore drilling. It would also ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects by bypassing local community and state regulations. This legislation will not pass the Democratic controlled Senate. However, Kevin McCarthy and the extreme Republican House members want to use this legislation now to force Mr. Biden to negotiate over raising the debt limit. This is the type of toxic climate legislation we can expect, if we do not elect pro-environment representatives in 2024 to enable the country to achieve the aggressive climate legislation, we need to reach a clean and sustainable future.

We are now in the process of setting up meetings with our elected House and Senate representatives, establishing coalitions with other like-minded organizations, drafting letters to key political decision makers and encouraging our members to join in these efforts. We will also be participating in demonstrations both locally and in Washington D.C.

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In the 6th grade, I was not allowed to exist as Palestinian. Today, my culture is still a threat to many.

by Liz Bajjalieh, CAPA Student Network Director  |

Even as a little girl I couldn’t escape it: what it means to be silenced.

Navigating the United States when you’re a Palestinian of the Diaspora is a difficult, complex experience. My first time I learned I was Palestinian was in the 6th grade, when my elementary school had a “culture day,” in which students could go on a stage in front of the school and talk about their ancestral heritage.

Growing up, I wasn’t really taught that I had much of any cultural background outside of being “American” or “Catholic,” and occasionally Mom brought up that we’re Irish. But when I brought up culture day to my parents, for the first time in my life, Dad brought up a new place that his family came from: Palestine.

I was fascinated. What was this mysterious Palestine floating within me? Ireland I had known existed since the first time I saw Saint Patrick’s Day on my pre-school calendar, but this gorgeous sounding Middle Eastern place was new, and caught my imagination. Until then, I hadn’t even known that “Bajjalieh” was a Palestinian last name. I’d thought my grandfather invented hummus.

A whole new part of myself opened up to the world.

I just had to do some kind of presentation on my family’s heritage  for culture day. My parents gave their full support and resources. Dad pulled out my great-grandmother’s wedding dress, a beautiful thobe with curling red tatreez. When I spun around, it twirled like a flower recently bloomed.

But when I proposed giving a speech on my Palestinian family history and identity to the school, I got a pretty quick answer: no. You can’t do that performance. I wasn’t told why; I wasn’t given space to protest.

I was shocked and confused. I just wanted to show off this place my grandfather came from and dance around in my great grandmother’s dress. I didn’t understand; what made me different? Why wasn’t I worthy of performance? Had I done something wrong, was I not good enough?

It took action from my mom to reverse this. After I’d told her what the school had done, she was furious, and she sent an email straight to the principal. “Why won’t you let my daughter perform? Is it because you don’t like her? I don’t think so. This is discrimination. It can’t be allowed.”

My mom’s  email was enough to make the school cave, but there was a stipulation: I had to call it “the Palestinian Territories,” not “Palestine.”

So, therein was the compromise. I was allowed to take part in culture day, but only as a person from a half-real “territory,” not a historic place rich with centuries of indigenous Palestinian heritage.

I’m glad I was allowed to perform. But it took work, it took a fight from my white Irish-American mom to get me on that stage.  (And I have a feeling that things would have gone differently if my brown, Palestinian-American dad had sent that email). My mom had to make clear that I exist beyond a political controversy.

I wasn’t hoping to march into the auditorium and deliver a speech on concrete walls or divided highways. I wasn’t asking to go on stage to demand accountability for Israel’s apartheid. I didn’t even know what that word meant. I just wanted to twirl in my grandmother’s flowery thobe. But that was too much for the school.

Even the notion of a little girl celebrating her Palestinian ancestry was a threat. It was going too far. Even at that young age, I was taught that my truth, my existence, is a battlefield.

Despite that being way back in 2005, I still face moments like this today. I’ve faced discrimination from organizations asking me to water down speeches for fear of “upsetting the donors”, invasive searches from Ben Gurion’s airport security in Tel Aviv simply because my last name is Palestinian, even silencing from my own friends who tell me they’d prefer I don’t talk about Palestine in public. They don’t want to deal with the potential they’ll be seen talking to me while a future employer sits at the coffee shop across from us.

It’s funny, because I also type this story out as a queer woman. And yet despite the oppression I faced for my queerness, I find it easier to tell the world that I’m queer. Yes, that’s in big part due to the privilege of having access to countless spaces that embrace our LGBT community. But when it comes to Palestine, the spikes I have to walk over to be myself in the world stab my feet more deeply than when I exist as queer.

This is what happens when the Israeli government decides to erase a whole people. For decades, since the Nakba began – the catastrophic expulsion of Palestinians from our homes – , pro-Israel voices have worked to obscure our existence. My stories are nothing compared to what Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza face daily: separate ID cards, child detention, depleted water reserves, the risk of being shot and killed for driving on the wrong highway.

I’m lucky. My struggle is just one of identity. I’ve never feared for my life, my home or my family, as Palestinians across Israel, Palestine, and bordering refugee camps do. I walk this world with white skin, so I never had to face the same ugly surveillance, state violence, and even social violence so present for brown bodies in the United States.

But that’s at the heart of what the Israeli state and their right-wing lobbying arm has been doing to destroy us. They make us, as individuals, a threat. They turn us into complex, controversial things. The powerful right-wing pro-Israel lobby has done an overwhelmingly good job of normalizing this in the United States: creating a political world where even the most mundane critiques of Israel’s actions are labeled as “anti-Semitic.” A world in which  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem simply naming Israel’s apartheid crimes causes an absolute uproar.

And that drips into our nation’s social fabric, where little girls are told they’re not allowed to dance in their great grandmother’s dresses, only to grow up and be told they need to be careful when they talk about Palestine, because a single tweet supporting Palestine could destroy their career.

We have to lift the curtains forced over Palestinians. Not just so we in the diaspora can have our celebratory culture days. But so Palestinian refugees can stop being denied the right of return because they’re “not really Palestinian.” We need to lift it so Palestinian children can stop being detained and tortured in the West Bank because, “well, both sides are violent, really.” We need to finally allow residents of Sheikh Jarrah a life free of the fear that their home will be bulldozed at 3 AM for “Israel’s security.” And for Gazan to be free of bombardment after bombardment after bombardment as the Israeli government says over and over that it’s just the reality of “conflict.”

We need the US media to talk about us like we’re human beings. We need US politicians to acknowledge that what is happening to Palestinians on the ground is apartheid, and to sign onto legislation such as the Representative Betty McCollum’s Palestinian Children and Family’s Act which simply seeks oversight into how the Israeli military is spending US tax dollars.

I want a world where Palestine is free, where the constant ethnic cleansing destroying our historic land and our ancestry is over. Where graves aren’t dug up, houses aren’t bulldozed. Where the worst thing a Palestinian has to complain about is bad weather. We need to create a world where no little girl ever has to choose between shrinking or fighting if she simply wants to exist.

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Join CAPA in celebrating an important anti-nuclear victory: Chicago City Council just passed a Back from the Brink resolution!!

CAPA and our Back from the Brink Coalition partners, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and others – would like to thank all who helped make this happen, and recognize the leadership of Chicago Alders Maria Hadden (49th Ward), Daniel La Spata (1st Ward), and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward)!

As our partners with the Union of Concerned Scientists note, “The Chicago City Council today passed a resolution calling on President Biden and Congress to cease spending federal tax dollars on nuclear weapons, embrace the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and make global disarmament a priority. Chicago joins a movement of 50 municipalities that have passed “Back from the Brink” resolutions and is the largest midwestern city to have done so.” (Read the full article here!)

This resolution is one major move further in the continuing work of nuclear disarmament. We now look forward to next action steps. Join CAPA and friends in the movement to divest our cities and nations from war! And remember to celebrate today’s victory. 

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Invest in Unarmed Civilian Protection, Not Militarism

by Charles Johnson, CAPA Organizing Director |

Militaries and military alliances are said to protect us. Meanwhile, they facilitate the global spread of weaponry, destruction, displacement, regime change–all while ignoring the rulings of the International Criminal Court. Even the most record-setting military spending doesn’t prevent attacks, invasions, or mass shootings. In fact, it tends to reinforce and replicate them. Investing in armed protection doesn’t keep people safe.

Still, many of us hesitate to back divestment from military: “If weapons go away, safety goes away, right?” Incorrect. While divesting from military, we can invest in proven safety models like Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP), a weaponless framework which is an effective alternative to armed protection.

UCP has grown worldwide for three decades, recognized by the UN as a viable conflict response since 2015. Essentially what UCP is: nonpartisan teams of paid, trained specialists enter deadly conflict zones unarmed, and de-escalate with strategic methods based around presence. UCP may seem paradoxical–how can unarmed people walk into war zones?–but protects more effectively than militaries, more effective even than armed peacekeeping forces like the UN’s Blue Helmets.

Unlike armed protection, UCP gives primacy to local community members. UCP teams enter by invitation and increase safe space for communities to do their own work of peace and justice. In places where UCP methods like Protective Presence operate, local efforts of de-escalation, mutual understanding, and peacebuilding grow. While militaries seek to one-up each other in destruction and propaganda, UCP methods like Monitoring and Relationship Building create contacts on all sides and power levels, to hold parties accountable when their words or actions contradict grassroots reports.

We may think “It would never work in conflict X, Y, or Z”– yet decades of evidence shows UCP works even in escalated conflicts, amid assault rifles and artillery. And people in escalated conflicts are seeking protection that truly uproots violence, instead of merely attacking its branches. In a recent statement, the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement notes:

“We need to stop … the insane throwing of taxpayers’ money into the furnace of the war machine instead of solving acute socio-economic and environmental problems…. We demand global de-escalation and disarmament, the dissolution of military alliances, the elimination of armies… We demand open, inclusive and comprehensive negotiations on peace and disarmament … with the participation of pro-peace civil society actors.”

Such peace-forward goals become possible where UCP operates.

UCP is emerging as an idea whose time has come; think of the growing “WE KEEP US SAFE” refrains heard in the U.S. since the 2020 George Floyd uprisings. Trained nonviolent teams can keep communities and nations safe. See also: Nonviolent Peaceforce, active in 5 nations; Cure Violence Global, in 20 nations; Peace Brigades International, Violence Interrupters, Safe Streets, M.A.S.K. of Chicago, LIFE Camp of NYC, and hundreds more. One of UCP’s main benefits is that it counters “good vs. evil” narratives, giving offenders paths back to society. Some of the most skilled UCP leaders are former combatants who’ve realized unarmedprotection is more practical, sustainable, and uplifting.

It’s true that the scale of UCP remains small; UCP groups have a tiny fraction of the funding and recruitment of armed forces, while receiving more protection requests than ever. It’s time this proven, safe, sustainable model enters the public discourse, mass media, and government policy, so we can divest from destructive conflict resolution methods and invest in constructive ones. In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “Safety is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” We must invest in UCP.

This piece was first published on the website of West Suburban Peace Coalition, receiving first place in its 2022 Peace Essay Contest. West Suburban Peace Coalition (www.faithpeace.org), based in Glen Ellyn, IL, has been holding its annual peace essay contest since 2013 as part of its continuing mission to promote peace in Chicago’s western suburbs and beyond. For further information contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com. 

09.22.19

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