July
2006
Call for A Cease Fire in Lebanon and Israel
Please consider reading through and signing on to the letter below. If you would like to add your name to this letter, please emailwith your full address and any title or religious affiliation you would like to include. The letter will be sent to the leaders of both parties in Congress, the Secretary of State, and the President. The cutoff date to sign the letter is July 28.
We, the undersigned, deplore our government’s cynical, inhumane, and uncritical support of Israel’s military actions in Lebanon. We urge the United States to join the international call for an immediate cease fire followed by negotiations and an exchange of prisoners.
What is happening in Lebanon obviously goes beyond Israel’s legitimate self defense. It lacks all proportionality. According to senior Israeli diplomats, the purpose of Israel’s action is to roll back the clock of history by twenty years. Lebanese civilians, described by several Israeli officials as “collateral damage,” have been dying by the hundreds, precious infrastructure has been destroyed or gravely damaged, and the sovereignty of Lebanon has been trampled in the Israeli rush into escalation backed by the United States.
We believe that this tragic affair could have been avoided by means of a negotiated prisoner exchange as has occurred many times before. Instead, Hezbollah’s provocation served as the pretext for reviving the doomed neo-conservative dream of imposing a new order on the Middle East by force of arms. We do not excuse Hezbollah’s provocation, but we wish that Israel and the United States had responded very differently.
At the moment, war fever is clouding our country’s better judgment, and Americans’ well-founded sympathies for Israel are being exploited for political purposes. We must remind our leaders and our fellow citizens that the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was intended to quickly destroy the PLO. Instead it helped to create Hezbollah. Eighteen years later Israel was forced to withdraw. We fear this history may now be repeating itself.
Without question, the Hezbollah guerillas and their rockets and missiles are a threat to Israel, and Hezbollah forces must be disarmed. But this can only come about through the unified intervention of the international community, working to strengthen the hand of Lebanon’s legitimate government. Continued military action by Israel will have the opposite effect of rallying Arab states and non-Hezbollah Lebanese to Hezbollah’s defense.
We also fear that this war will aggravate the perilous situation in Iraq, where the unprovoked and illegal US occupation has already produced violent resistance, bloody and unceasing sectarian conflict, and a Shia-led regime in Baghdad that is increasingly aligned with Iran.
We therefore oppose further escalation of the ground and air war in Lebanon or any military action against other countries in the region. Escalation on any of these fronts will produce still more anti-US hatred and serve to recruit a new generation of Hezbollah-style militants. The current cynical US attitude that endorses Israel’s continued action for an indefinite period has already greatly inflamed anti-US sentiment throughout the region.
We demand Congressional hearings and media inquiries that will result in a full accounting of any American foreknowledge of this war and of how many U.S. taxpayer dollars have been used to underwrite the current military operation. We demand public assurances that US intends no direct or indirect military attacks on Syria or Iran.
Any solution to this conflict will require, among other accommodations, the end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the establishment of a viable and independent Palestinian state, and a complete and total end to the US occupation of Iraq.
We urge our leaders to recover their senses before more innocent blood is spilled in pursuit of apocalyptic dreams.
This is by far the most thoughtful and informed response to the recent violence that I have come across. I have been filled with rage since the fighting began and was, finally, comforted by reading your post. It means a tremendous amount to know that I am not alone with my views of the current situation. Certainly seeing our mayor and governor joining forces in support of violence can make a reasonable person’s head spin.
I’m with a newly forming group that is campaigning for an immediate cease fire under the conditions set forward by Kofi Annan. If you feel, as we do, that this senseless bloodshed is not the solution, then please visit our website and sign to make your voice heard. http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/
Please pass this on to as many of your friends as possible. We all must rely on the internet to provide the alternative voice. If you would like to link to our website or need more info on what we’re about, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Thanks and keep it up.
Best,
Enver
Response to UCC President John Thomas from The Simon Wiesenthal Center
Dear President Thomas,
We appreciate the clarity of your “Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners.” You have made the sides abundantly clear. On one side are Israel, the United States, the G8, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. All of these faulted the unprovoked murderous cross-border attacks and kidnappings by Hezbollah that have led to suffering of the citizens of both Israel and Lebanon. On the other side are Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, the UCC and John Thomas, who see things differently. We also understand why your remarks during this week of death and misery address only the suffering of your Palestinian friends. History teaches that silence is admittance and your silence over innocent Jewish victims speaks volumes.
We would have thought that your hostility against the Jewish state in the past would have been tempered by developments of the past year, even before the Hezbollah attacks. Israel’s painful dismantling of her Gaza communities; the Palestinian response in directing hundreds of Kassams into civilian populations within Israel’s internationally recognized pre-1967 borders, and then electing a Hamas government; the rabid hatemongering of Iran’s Ahmadinejad (which you yourself noted and reacted against) - any of these might have provided you with an opportunity to add some new words in your lexicon, like balance and responsibility. Instead, you piously advise Israel to lay bare her Jewish, Christian and Moslem citizens to continuous murderous attacks by demanding the removal of the anti-terrorism separation barrier without ever even offering a suggestion of an alternative. You mourn the degradation of Palestinian buildings, but ignore the deliberate targeting of civilians in Israel, including the two Israeli Arab children killed this week by a Hezbollah rocket. You have nothing to say about the hundreds upon hundreds of Kassams and Katyushas that continue to rain down upon Israel’s cities and towns, in the latest attempt to eradicate the Jewish State.
Why now? Perhaps you provide cover for Hezbollah in order to justify your previous behavior. Not too many Americans have had the opportunity of face to face meetings with Hezbollah, but when you first encountered them, as you wrote in your travel diary in 2003, you did so with an attitude of bemusement that they were in the audience. Most Americans, we think, would have bolted in distaste from those who killed hundreds of Marines in Beirut. Has Che Guevara replaced G-d in your theology, so that no “underdog” can ever be called evil, no matter what his actions or moral platform? And why have you abandoned your Christian coreligionists in Lebanon! Can you not see what even Arab heads of state and a UN resolution have noted: that the people of Lebanon are being used as human sandbags by Hezbollah and their masters in Syria and Iran?
At least you are honest. You used to rail about the pressure from the “pro-Israel lobby.” You’ve dropped the code language. It’s Jews you’re talking about, as you admit in your current letter. Your irritation is puzzling, though. You have done a near perfect job keeping those pesky Jews from your offices, and from your convention floor when resolutions about the fate of Israelis came up. If we didn’t know better, we would think you simply don’t like outside interference and pressure. But you have no problem with the pressure from organizations like Sabeel and Al-Awda, both of whom reject the legitimacy of a Jewish state, and both of whom have either partnered with the UCC, or have been listed as a resource. And you don’t mind twisting a few arms yourself, do you? Remember the infamous “midnight meeting” at your General Synod in 2005, when you didn’t like the committee recommendation to the floor, so you substituted your own language, without anyone realizing it and had delegates adopt a resolution different from what they thought they were approving?
Most confusing, perhaps, is what your bias and hostility have to do with Christianity and Christian love. Mercifully, you are not the only Christian role model around. We hope that Jews and Christians alike will not confuse your convoluted thinking with the genuine regard and concern we have seen in other circles, ranging from the Evangelical Right to our very good friends in the Reformed traditions, such as those who successfully led the battle at the recent Presbyterian General Assembly to rewrite policies on divestment and the security fence that were unfair and unbalanced.
In Israel, united in its determination to end the scourge of missiles in the hands of terrorists, people nonetheless stop to read, think, and debate about the calamitous effects of war on people on the other side of the border, particularly civilians. In the midst of their trying circumstances, with two million Israelis in the north hunkering down in shelters, they find room to commiserate with others. Here in America, leaders of other church groups, including those who differ politically with Israel’s decisions, responded to the losses of both Israelis and Lebanese. We strongly suspect that peace will only become possible when both sides at least acknowledge the pain and suffering of the other, even as they pursue their separate agendas. Failure to evidence that mutuality of pain was a missed opportunity for you to teach others what undoubtedly is in the hearts of many of the rank and file of the UCC.
We hope and pray that the good will and good sense that serves as the basis for Christian-Jewish relations in America will continue to prevail, and that one day you too may know the blessings of its spirit.
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Director, Interfaith Affairs
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Associate Dean
-The Simon Wiesenthal Center
Hi! I just put up a very simple downloadable PDF that people can print. It says: “Cease Fire in Lebanon Now.” I’m hoping that folks will print it out and put it in their home windows.
Anyway just wanted to spread the word. Thanks!
Cease Fire in Lebanon Now
http://cease-fire-in-lebanon.blogspot.com/