NEWS

We are using this image on our actionnetwork.org public petition to the POTUS/Senate to sign and give consent to the ratification of the UN TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons).

By Teresa Castillo (Fresno branch) and Barbara Nielsen (San Francisco branch)
Chairs, Program Committee

The Program Committee welcomed many branches at our March meeting. Looking forward to our next call and more branch participation!

We had many branches represented on our March call in addition to our issues committees, and are seeking a representative from as many branches and groups as possible to join in our Program Committee monthly call series. On the call, we share firsthand what our branches and our issues committees are doing and how our activism relates throughout the section. We learned a lot through shared information and questions on national and local activities and actions. We are hoping to increase info sharing and coordination with all branches, particularly those with issues committees that parallel our national issues committees, and to find ways to expand our issues committees’ interactions with branches and groups around the national Solidarity Events that are being promoted via the ONE WILPF calls team.

Several of our issues committees have begun to make connections around the WILPF-based activism supporting the Poor People's Campaign days of action that many branches will being engaged in. The PPC’s third week, around Memorial Day, will focus on Veterans and Militarism and our DISARM-End Wars issues committee members are working on actions then, too. We would like to facilitate sharing of resources that could be helpful throughout the section. Some other examples: Nationwide Spring Days of Action to End the Wars at Home and Abroad on April 14 – 15; Tax Day (Move the Money) on April 17; Earth Day, ANA’s DC Days in May; the WILPF-US Solidarity Events relative to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorative ceremonies and actions in August.

Branches Facebook Pages: Please note we are still seeking information from each branch or geographic region with a Facebook page and to find out who in your branch/region/group is the contact person. So far, we know of these besides the main US Section Facebook page: Boston, Cape Cod, Pittsburgh, Greater Philadelphia, Essex County (NJ), NY Metro, Houston, Rockport Monthly Meeting, St. Louis, Madison, Des Moines, Portland, Sacramento, San Jose, Peninsula/Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, Monterey County, Fresno, East Bay-San Francisco, Utah. What branches are we missing? Please let us know by contacting Barbara Nielsen (email below)!

Our goal is to have all branches represented on our monthly committee meeting calls so we can exchange information and overcome the “silo” phenomenon of working parallel but not in conjunction with each other. Then we can work on outreach to our at-large members for your activism in your communities as well. This plan moves us forward in both WILPF membership capacity-building and in promoting effective activism in our communities.

For further information, contact the chairs:
Teresa Castillo (taca_03@ymail.com); Barbara Nielsen (bln.sf.ca@gmail.com)

Palestinian girl Malak Al-Khateb, 14, is welcomed by family members as she arrives to Beitin village near Ramallah after being released from an Israeli military prison on February 13, 2015. Al-Khateb, accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, was arrested and subjected to interrogation and harsh treatment without legal representation. She was sentenced to two months in prison and her family was fined NIS 6,000 ($1500). Photo: Oren Ziv, Activestills.org

By Ellen Rosser
Middle East Committee

Palestine, February 2018

The current situation in both Palestine and Israel is unstable: both are in a state of flux. In Palestine, a unity government has been established and has taken over at least part of the government of Gaza. The new government controls the borders and some other functions, but the people of Gaza have not yet received any benefit. The border with Egypt is still closed most of the time and President Abbas has ruled that Gaza must pay for its own electricity.

Given these conditions, the people still exist with only four hours of electricity a day and premature babies in the hospitals are dying from lack of incubators. Hamas, however, has pledged to cooperate with the unity government, which is undoubtedly preventing the small parties like Islamic Jihad from shooting rockets into southern Israel. (In 2014, when Hamas turned the government over to the unity government, Hamas did not continue to function as security and, when the small parties shot rockets into southern Israel, Netanyahu used that as the excuse to attack Gaza with greatly disproportionate force, killing over 2,000 civilians, including more than 500 children.)

Gaza’s problems are compounded by the fact that the US has just put on its Global Terrorist Watch List Ismail Haniya, so that Haniya will not be able to travel to other countries to solicit funds for Gaza or Hamas. Haniya was elected head of the Hamas Politburo in May 2017, making him the group’s senior political leader. The US designation of Haniya as a terrorist is absurd, since Haniya was the one who prevented rockets from being shot into southern Israel and thus has saved Israeli lives. Military figures in Israel confirmed that Hamas squads prevented rockets being shot, and Haniya has long been viewed as part of the pragmatic wing of Hamas. Moreover, the new Hamas Charter, which Haniya helped to create, confirms Sheik Yassin’s previous acceptance of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Elections in Palestine are supposed to occur within six months after a unity government is formed. Abbas has governed for the past eight years without a mandate from the Palestinian people. Indeed, he is quite unpopular: a large majority of Palestinians wish that he would resign.  However, his reaction to Trump’s unlawfully planning to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem may increase his popularity: he has declared that Palestine will no longer participate in security coordination with Israel as it has done since the Oslo Accords. With Palestinian elections coming soon, one wonders if Netanyahu convinced the US to put Haniya on the Global Terrorist Watch List in order to prevent his being elected president by the Palestinian people (as he was in 2006).

The Israeli occupation, meanwhile, has continued its brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. In January, six Palestinians, four of them teenagers, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers (extrajudicial killings). Over 400 Palestinian children are imprisoned (illegally under the Fourth Geneva Convention) in Israeli prisons, including 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier after he shot her 16-year-old cousin Mohammed in the face. And the entire peaceful Palestinian village of Susiya, which is in Area C and therefore under total Israeli control, is scheduled for demolition because is in the middle of Israeli settlements, all of which were illegally built. Israel wants to ethnically cleanse the area, but uses the excuse that Susiya does not have a master plan for building (Israel rarely authorizes master plans for Palestinian villages). The Palestinian people, therefore, continue to suffer.

Israel, February 2018

The situation in Israel is also in a state of flux since Prime Minister Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption. Elections should be scheduled soon to replace him. Since Israel currently has the most right-wing government in its history and Netanyahu is moderate in comparison, it is impossible to determine whether the next prime minister will be more peace-oriented than Netanyahu—or less. For example, when the Knesset recently passed a bill to annex the settlements in the West Bank to Israel, Netanyahu vetoed it, probably to respect Trump’s position that the settlements are not helpful for peace. Netanyahu is obligated to Trump, of course, for Trump’s reckless and illegal decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Even the traditionally peace-oriented Labor Party, the party of assassinated, peace-oriented Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, is not particularly strong on peace anymore. Its new head, Avi Gabbay, who was in Netanyahu’s cabinet, stated recently that no settlers would have to move if peace was achieved. Gabbay has also been quoted as saying, “I believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews…. God promised Abraham the entire Land of Israel, but I also believe that since there are 4.5 million Arabs here, we have to compromise in order to create a situation in which we live in our country with a Jewish majority.” Many think that he would offer the Palestinians not an independent Palestinian state that would meet the requirements of international law, but something less than that, something they could not accept.

Therefore, as Uri Avnery has recently stated, the current prospect for peace between Israel and Palestine is not encouraging. But we still can hope for change—if the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and that inspires many more European countries to recognize Palestine and push for an end of the occupation, or if Russia or China becomes a strong mediator for peace to replace the now disqualified United States, or if the International Criminal Court moves on the Palestinian case and forces the international community to act to prevent further Israeli violations of international law, or if the Israeli left organizes massive demonstrations to force Israel to make peace. We can wish and work for a just peace, and hope that one or more of the above events will materialize to bring an end to the cruel and illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

ANA provided scholarships to over a dozen young people from around the United States to participate in the 2017 DC Days. Credit: www.ananuclear.org/dcdays.

WILPF belongs to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), which focuses on education and issues lobbying in DC. Their annual event, called “DC Days,” is adjacent to ANA’s annual meeting. Many of our members have been participants in DC Days for years. Read about ANA’s DC Days here.

Give Disarm-End Wars a reason to apply for the $600! We need you to tell us about a young person (ages 18–29 only) in your community who would fit the criteria set forth by ANA here. Click here for application for ANA Next Generation Scholarships.

If you think you have someone, email one of us below ASAP. We need to hear from you by March 10 (no later) with questions and possibilities.

DC Days registration info for all of us is at http://ananuclear.org

An interesting report from ANA, their Accountability Audit, is also on that web page.

Contact: Barbara Nielsen (bln.sf.ca@gmail.com) or Ellen Thomas (et@prop1.org) for more info.

The Poor People’s Campaign contingent in this year’s Moral Movement March in Raleigh, NC, led by the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the campaign. Many Triangle Branch members participated, including Lucy Lewis, who said it was a “Great example of the multi-racial, intersectional, values-based statewide coalition we are continuing to build.”

By Mary Bricker-Jenkins
Chair, Poor People’s Campaign Ad Hoc Committee

WILPF US has endorsed and is partnering with the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

But why?

Is it the nostalgia for the heady, hard won victories of the civil rights movement? The certainty that, despite those, racism sears the soul of the nation? Empathy for the rapidly increasing numbers of poor and dispossessed? Desperation over the possibility that our grandchildren’s planet will be a wasteland? Frustration and fear that endless US war-making is the new normal?

Perhaps it’s all of these—and none of these. Perhaps this campaign has given us hope, a hope grounded in some very concrete realities.

For one thing, the campaign acknowledges the validity of the many issues and “silos” we care so deeply about, but moves forward with a fusion approach to organizing and acting: “Forward together!  Not one step back!”

That in turn is grounded in an analysis of the common roots of the conditions we seek to change—poverty, militarism, racism, and environmental devastation—common roots revealed in the lived experience of those directly affected. Grounding the campaign in people’s direct experience yields information and solutions where formal abstractions fail.

And then there’s an achievable goal: to change the national conversation. According to the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the campaign, “If the conversation is wrong, the agenda will be wrong. We aim to change the national conversation.” If that seems too modest, consider that this is a campaign that is intended to build a movement—one that will get to the bottom of things. As Martin Luther King Jr. urged in his Riverside Church sermon, “A Time to Break Silence”:

“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Another wellspring of hope is the vision of 40 days of massive, coordinated nonviolent civil disobedience. Between Mother’s Day on May 13, 2018, and the Summer Solstice on June 21, we are asked to participate in events in our home states and localities, and in Washington, DC.

It is not necessary to do CD to be a part of the events and the campaign; the participation of each of us at any level and in any way will build the campaign. But it is important to pledge your support and state your intended level of involvement here. Much additional information about the campaign is available there and also at the partner organization’s website.

Finally, why WILPF?

Preparing to write this eNews item, I revisited the WILPF-US home page. Here is our vision statement:

WILPF envisions a transformed world at peace, where there is racial, social, and economic justice for all people everywhere—a world in which:

• The needs of all people are met in a fair and equitable manner
• All people equally participate in making the decisions that affect them
• The interconnected web of life is acknowledged and celebrated in diverse ways and communities
• Human societies are designed and organized for sustainable existence

It seems that joining the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival provides a splendid opportunity for traveling the Jericho road to a realization of this vision.

Inset Credits: art.poorpeoplescampaign.org (marchers); Justseeds Collective (sign).