Opinion Editorials, September 2011

US Congress members take junket to Israel:

Who wins and who loses?

By Reverend Carolyn Boyd

Redress, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 12, 2011

Carolyn Boyd challenges the US congressional trips to Israel. Eighty-one House members travelled to Israel in August, and there is significant concern that they did not get a full picture of the situation there. Instead, many are suggesting they should have been home in their districts meeting with constituents during this time of economic turmoil.

“What if we stopped the three billion dollars in aid we give to Israel annually and used the savings to create a national jobs-deficit reduction programme?... This is the time to reallocate financial resources to American families and communities and to fix our obsolete, dilapidated infrastructure.” (Rev. Carolyn Boyd)

Americans are frustrated, angry and disappointed in the political leadership of our country. We are enduring one crisis after another: housing, war, jobs, budget, debt and deficit. We are also shouldering our own personal and professional crises. We are governed by political ideologies that are inflexible, uncompromising and that ignore the long-term well-being of our country.

Yet, with all of these pressing and unrelenting national challenges, a record 81 House members, about a fifth of the chamber, spent a week in Israel last month, courtesy of a foundation set up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.

As a participant in the Interfaith Peace-Builders' African Heritage Delegation to Israel/Palestine, who recently returned from a two-week fact-finding study tour, I can attest that Israelis have their own urgent and pressing issues to deal with: ongoing maintenance of the 63-year old occupation (yes, it dates to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians), expensive and unjust military rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory seized in 1967, massive Israeli youth protests regarding the rising cost of housing, food and gas, and the ongoing oppression of Jews of colour and Palestinians who call Israel home.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr, one of the Democrats who visited Israel, said that he was looking forward to learning about Israel's business and commercial sectors as well as the latest tools and technology the country is using to fight terror, but what did he really see? I doubt he saw and experienced what the 14 members of the African Heritage Delegation witnessed.

{More than likely, his delegation saw and experienced the beauty and opulence of Tel Aviv. They enjoyed the finest of foods and perhaps sampled wines from the colonized Golan Heights. They probably witnessed well-orchestrated military exercises and political speeches. I suspect they did not hear, as we did, from Palestinians who are displaced from their homes, whose lands, farms, and olive trees have been confiscated or from the mothers who worry about their sons being bullied, abused and imprisoned by the Israeli police using the most technologically advanced counterinsurgency practices.

I'm sure they did not see, as my delegation did, the rationing of water to Palestinians, the daily blackouts of electricity or the lack of health care services to the elderly or those suffering from Post-Traumatic Occupation Stress Syndrome. No doubt, they did not meet Palestinians, as we did, in Hebron who live each day under the assault of angry, militant Jewish settlers.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who led one of two Republican delegations, stated:

I am pleased to be bringing so many of our new Members of Congress to Israel so that they can learn firsthand about Israel and the important role our key ally plays in the Middle East. The United States and Israel share similar core values of democracy, human rights and a strong national defense.

Yet, Israel is not living up to the definition of a democracy. Israel has dominated Palestinians for 63 years while illegally occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem for the past 44 years. It routinely denies full participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Inside Israel, it is well documented that Jews of colour (Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews), African Palestinians and non-Jewish residents are treated as second- and third-class citizens with diminished human and civil rights. Democracy means more than voting rights for Palestinian citizens. There must be equality under the law, yet that is significantly absent in Israel and dramatically lacking in how Israel administers the occupied Palestinian territory.

There is simply too much at stake in America for our congressional members to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders without the complete picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The situation is vastly different from the one Israel's prime minister depicted recently to Congress.

What if we stopped the three billion dollars in aid we give to Israel annually and used the savings to create a national jobs-deficit reduction programme? Our African Heritage Delegation believes, as many Americans do, that we need a jobs-growth and deficit-reduction programme here at home now. This is the time to reallocate financial resources to American families and communities and to fix our obsolete, dilapidated infrastructure.

The two-tier system of law Israel has established in the occupied West Bank, documented by Human Rights Watch, recalls the Jim Crow laws of the American South and the discriminatory practices of apartheid South Africa. Our members of Congress should loudly reject such discrimination. And they should spend more time with constituents in dire need of their leadership as well as modelling democratic values in their respective congressional districts.

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