Making Mideast Peace a Reality

By Andrea Barron

Over the past several years, many Jewish "peace groups" have formed in the United States as alternatives to older, more "established" organizations such as the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, B'nai B'rith, the Zionist Organization of America, and especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's most powerful pro-Israel lobby.

Differences exist among the five groups profiled below, just as they do among the various political parties and extraparliamentary organizations that constitute the Israeli peace camp. All, however, oppose Israel's 19-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and its rule over the 1.3 million Palestinians who live there. They believe that Israel's security is not strengthened by holding the occupied territories, and that true security will only come when the Jewish state negotiates peace with the Palestinian people. All also are concerned that the dual system of justice operating in the territories threatens Israeli democracy and encourages support for ultra-nationalist Israeli extremists such as Rabbi Meir Kahane. And except for Friends of Peace Now, all of the groups support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and the possibility of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The America-Israel Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (AICIPP)

AICIPP was established in 1982 as an American support group for the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (ICIPP), an Israeli Zionist group that believes peace between Israel and the Palestinians must be based upon mutual recognition between the two peoples. ICIPP's founders include Reserve General Mattityahu Peled of the Israeli Defense Forces and former Knesset member Uri Avnery, editor of the leftist tabloid Ha'Olam Hazeh.

While AICIPP identifies itself as an American rather than a Jewish organization, most of its vocal supporters appear to be Jews. Its 37-member Advisory Council, chaired by Mary Appleman of Chicago, includes six Rabbis—among them Everett Gendler of Lowell, Mass., Douglas E. Krantz of Armonk, N.Y., and Arnold Jacob Wolf of Chicago. The Reverend Gordon Webster of the Presbyterian Church's Peacemaking Program and the distinguished Jewish-American professor Stanley Hoffman of Harvard University are also on the Advisory Council.

AICIPP regularly cooperates with Jewish peace groups and with organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee and the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRQ in sponsoring tours to the U.S. of prominent Israeli Jews and Palestinians. It initiated the March tour of Uri Avnery and Hanna Siniora, the East Jerusalem newspaper editor approved by both Yassir Arafat and Shimon Peres as a possible Palestinian negotiator with the Israelis. Corinne Whitlach, AICIPP's Washington representative, arranged several meetings for Avnery and Siniora in Washington, where both men stressed the need for the U.S. to begin a dialogue with the PLO. The two Israeli and Palestinian editors also met with Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia, Senator Charles Mathias (R-MD), and Representative Matthew McHugh (DAY), and with three of Israel's most outspoken supporters in the House of Representatives, Ben Gilman (R-NY), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), and Larry Smith (D-FL).

The International Jewish Peace Union (IJPU)

The IJPU is an international organization founded in Paris in 1982 as a "nerve network for Jewish progressive organizations that share the goals of self-determination for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples within the framework of two states." It is a member of the United Nations Coordinating Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations on the Question of Palestine, along with organizations such as the National Council of Churches and the World YWCA. The IJPU has chapters and affiliates in France, England, Denmark, and Sweden, where a Stockholm group called Swedish Jews for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace holds regular forums at the local Jewish Community Council. In the U.S., there are chapters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boulder, and New York.

The IJPU Bay Area chapter made news in June of 1984 when it helped place on the Berkeley, California ballot an initiative that would have reduced U.S. aid to Israel in an amount equivalent to that expended by the Israeli Government for West Bank Jewish settlements. AIPAC attacked the IJPU for its actions, and national Jewish organizations are said to have spent over $100,000 to defeat the measure, which gathered 39 percent of all votes cast.

More recently, the IJPU initiated a U.S. tour by the Reverend Canon Riah Abu EI-Assal from the Progressive List for Peace (PLP), an Arab-Jewish party in Israel with two representatives in the Knesset, and Ruchama Marton, an Israeli Jewish psychiatrist active in the PLP. But Elissa Sampson and her husband, Jonathan Boyarin, both leaders in the IJPU New York chapter, said that the IJPU is not a "support group" for the PLP. "We agree with the basic PLP principles like the need for negotiations between Israel and the PLO," Sampson said, "but American Jews should be able to decide independently what they think is the right policy for Israel to follow, without having to search for an Israeli party or group to support."

Unlike the majority of Jews in the IJPU and the other Jewish peace groups, Sampson and Boyarin are both "practicing" Jews who observe the Jewish Sabbath and other Mitzvot (commandments). Boyarin said that Jewish ethics demand that the Palestinians be treated with equal rights and pointed to the Tenth Commandment—"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, or his house, his field, his servants, his animals, or anything that is thy neighbor's." [Author's emphasis] "Israel, therefore," said Boyarin, "is violating the Tenth Commandment by 'coveting' and confiscating Palestinian land."

The New Jewish Agenda (NJA)

New Jewish Agenda, a national organization founded in 1980 with over 40 chapters, sees itself as a "Jewish voice among progressives" and a "progressive voice among Jews." Based on its commitment to the Talmudic precept of "Tikun Olam"—the just reordering of society—NJA has taken positions in support of a nuclear freeze, nonintervention in Central America, women's reproductive rights, economic justice, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians.

In September 1982, after the Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut, NJA organized a demonstration of over 300 people next to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The protest was held "in solidarity" with the estimated 400,000 Israelis who demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand that the Begin government conduct an independent investigation into the Israeli role in the massacre. NJA has also co-sponsored numerous U.S. speaking tours of Israelis and Palestinians, including one by Mordechai Bar-On and Mohammed Milhelm. Colonel Bar-On, a leader in Israel's "Peace Now" movement, now represents the Citizens Rights Party in the Israeli Knesset, while Milhelm, the deposed mayor of the West Bank city of Halhoul, now sits on the Executive Committee of the PLO.

Friends of Peace Now

North American Friends of Peace Now was formed to support Shalom Achshav ("Peace Now"), the Israeli movement founded in 1978 by 350 reserve soldiers and officers from the Israel Defense Forces. Its goal is to "strengthen the commitment of North American Jews to Israel while helping to build the humanistic Jewish state that was the dream of the Zionist pioneers." Friends of Peace Now is the most "moderate" of the five Jewish groups profiled here. It declares that both Israelis and Palestinians must accept the principle of territorial compromise. But while it calls on Israel to recognize Palestinian national rights, Friends of Peace Now says nothing about a Palestinian state or negotiations with the PLO. Like all Israeli Jewish political parties and mainstream American Jewish organization, it states that "Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, must remain undivided."

Friends of Peace Now, with more than 17 chapters in the U.S. and Canada, supports Shalom Achshav's positions within the Jewish community and raises funds for the Israeli group's educational activities in development towns. In December 1985, there were special screenings of the Israeli film Beyond the Walls held throughout the U.S. to benefit the Peace Now Education Fund. Beyond the Walls, nominated as Best Foreign Film in the 1985 Academy Awards, is about Jewish-Arab reconciliation in a maximum security prison inside Israel.

In April, Tzah Reshef, the leading spokesperson for Shalom Achshav in Israel, called on Prime Minister Shimon Peres to declare his readiness to negotiate with "any Palestinian representative willing to talk to Israel, including the PLO." It was the first time Shalom Achshav had ever advocated such a policy. In literature published earlier this year, New York Friends of Peace Now said it was opposed to any dialogue with the PLO because the "PLO does not recognize Israel's right to a sovereign, secure existence." It remains to be seen whether the New York group will follow in the footsteps of Israel's Shalom Achshav and support Israeli-PLO negotiations, or whether out of fear of antagonizing mainstream American Jewish organizations, it will differ with the Israeli organization it was established to support.

Washington Area Jews for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace (WAJIPP)

WAJIPP was founded in June 1982 to protest the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Like NJA and IJPU, it identifies with the Israeli peace camp in general and not with any specific political party or organization. Along with co-sponsoring tours of visiting Israelis and Palestinians, WAJIPP has taken advantage of its location to begin a sustained educational/lobbying effort in the nation's capital. In June 1984, WAJIPP and two members of the Michigan NJA lobbied at the Democratic Platform Committee for an amendment to the Democrats' platform on the Middle East. The amendment called on the U.S. to "encourage Israel to implement an immediate freeze on the construction and expansion of West Bank settlements." Although it did not pass, the amendment was supported by 18 percent of the platform committee, including delegates from the Jackson, Mondale and Hart campaigns.

Last year, WAJIPP member Jerry Segal spoke at an educational forum held on Capitol Hill for members of Congress and their aides, arguing that justice demanded that Palestinians should not have to live out their lives "uprooted, in a stateless diaspora." He insisted that realism as well as justice must be part of any process leading to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that "rejecting Israel has not served the Palestinians well." Segal also said that American Jews must realize that "Israel is now a Middle Eastern superpower and not the poor, weak country it was 40 years ago."

WAJIPP members have also been invited to speak to a variety of audiences in the Washington area—to Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, and Mennonite congregations. Founding member Ellen Siegel, a volunteer nurse in Beirut's Gaza Hospital during the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacres and the only American to have testified in front of the Kahan Commission investigating the massacres, has served as an unofficial consultant to the annual retreat of the Presbyterian Church's Middle East Peacemaking Program. She said that some mainline Protestant Churches are worried about being accused of anti-Semitism just because "they follow their consciences and support Palestinian national rights. But the Presbyterians are as outraged by the Holocaust as any Jew I know, and just as supportive of Israel. I advised them to stress this fact when they talk to Jews about the Middle East, and make sure it is understood that it is not Israel they are against, but Israeli policies in the occupied territories."

Andrea Barron, a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C., is active in Washington Area Jews for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace and writes frequently about the Middle East.