by James Bowen, National Chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/848045.html
In the late 19th century, changes in Ottoman law created a new class of large landholders, including the Sursuq family from Beirut, which acquired large tracts in northern Palestine. A similar situation had long existed in Ireland, where most land was controlled by absentee landlords, many of whom lived in Britain.
The 1880s, however, initiated dynamics that led the two lands in different directions. In 1882, the first Zionist immigrants arrived in Palestine, starting a process that subsequently led to the eviction of indigenous tenant farmers, when magnates like the Sursuqs pulled the land from under their feet, selling it to the Jewish National Fund.
In contrast, in 1880, Irish tenant farmers started a process that turned them into owner-occupiers. A former British army officer played a role in this drama, which introduced his name as a new word into many languages.
Western Ireland was again suffering near-famine conditions. The potato crop had failed for the third successive year. Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, agent for Lord Erne, the absentee landlord of an estate in County Mayo, refused the request of tenants for a rent reduction and, instead, in September 1880, obtained eviction notices against 11 of them for failure to pay their rent.
Thirty years earlier, evictions had expelled huge numbers of Irish to North America. But times were changing: A nationwide tenants’ rights movement, the Land League, had recently been formed, under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, a scion of the landlord class, whose pro-tenant sympathies were inherited from his American mother, a woman whose grandfather had been one of George Washington’s bodyguards. Speaking on September 19, 1880, Parnell outlined the strategy of the league:
“When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him at the shop-counter, you must shun him at the fair and at the market-place and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a sort of moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind, as if he were a leper of old, you must show him your detestation.”
Three days later, court officials attempted to serve Boycott’s eviction notices on the tenants, and the Land League policy went into effect. Within two months, Boycott’s name had become a synonym for ostracism, he had left the estate, and both landlords and government had discovered the power of ordinary people. Within a year, legislation at Westminster provided government finance for tenants wishing to purchase their farms.
For too long, Israel has been taking land from which Palestinians have been evicted, and detestation is spreading around the world. In Ireland, photos of Israeli bulldozers are placed beside those of landlords’ battering rams. Even a former U.S. president has recognized hafrada (“separation” in Hebrew) as apartheid. Disgust has reached such a level that even highly conservative institutions that normally try to avoid politics are driven to express concern.
One such body is Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists. Its annual general assembly on March 28 passed a resolution whose full text is: “Mindful of the August 4, 2006 call from Palestinian filmmakers, artists and cultural workers to end all cooperation with state-sponsored Israeli cultural events and institutions, Aosdana wishes to encourage Irish artists and cultural institutions to reflect deeply before engaging in any such cooperation, always bearing in mind the undeniable courage of those Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals who oppose their own government’s illegal policies towards the Palestinians.”
Although on the surface, this is a mild resolution, it is a boycott call in all but name. Its significance was not lost on Dr. Zion Evrony, the Israeli ambassador in Dublin. The very same day, he issued a press release that was replete with cliches that might have worked several decades ago, when Irish people were still unaware of the horrors that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians.
Possibly, the alacrity of Dr. Evrony’s response was due to the fact that the strength of feeling among Irish artists had been rehearsed in the Irish press. Indeed, the proposer of the motion, playwright Margaretta D’Arcy, who is Jewish, had written in The Irish Times on February 16 that, “I was reluctant to advocate a cultural boycott of Israel until I visited the country for the first time last November … I became convinced that a cultural boycott was necessary, if only as an act of solidarity with those in Israel who seek to remove the inequality, discrimination and segregation of their society.”
Continuing, she quoted from “Land Grab,” by Yehezkel Lein, published by B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: “The settlement enterprise in the occupied territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discrimination that has, perhaps, no parallel anywhere in the world since the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
Ms. D’arcy finished by saying: “My uncle went to live in the Holy Land in the 1920s to help set up the utopian dream of peace, justice and equality between Jew and Arab. It was only when I arrived there that I realized how mistaken he was. He would have done better to have stayed in the East End of London to struggle for peace, justice and equality in England.”
Parnell finished his call to action by saying that “there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men.”
They were both right.
Prof. James Bowen is the national chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Catherine,
No real argument on your comments but I dont see what Israel is doing as genocide but self defense. There is collateral damage as in all wars. As a Southern Baptist you must know that God has ordained that the land not be shared or split up but must be inhabited by the Israelites in toto…consult with your pastor on this as the shear volume of supporting scripture is too lengthy to post and would bog down your site. This is not really the focus you intend for your site and I apologize for blowing up this thread.
…Lastly, as many on here have said they want to focus on positive action, then let me point out that a Boycott by its very nature is a negative act. As a baptist I guess I will assume my natural position at the back of the tent. 🙂
Thanks
BTW, I am in Tennessee also and when do you plan another meeting out in Hole in the Wall.
Bill,
Who is libeling and defaming who? When you use the word “antisemitic” its like calling a person heretic or witch. When you read the Bible, if you do, try to do it with an open, not sectarian mind. The pharisees read the scriptures in a way that they could, in good conscience, kill Jesus. Like the israelis can justify killing palestinians. A man’s point of view can justify murder or love. If you were to read the Bible with a view of loving all humanity, your present understanding of certain scriptures might change.
Community with others is based upon a set of common values. Last night there was a progrom on mobsters on the history channel. The observation of Lucky Luciano about his relationship with Meyer Lansky was that they were almost like lovers, if one spoke a word, the other could finish the sentence. This was a great mastermind relationship.
As Jesus said, “if the light that is in thee, be darkness, how great IS that darkness?”
Cyrus Scofield (Scofield Bible) and the elite that supported him could be the origin of alot of your regard for the jewish people as well as your doctrinal views of the scriptures. Check him out.
Bill:
I am also a Christian. As a conservative, I share your concerns with many uses of “community.”
I currently worship with my family at a Southern Baptist church. The faith we share is that God may anoint a person or a people. That, however, does not give them free rein to ignore God’s commandments as much as they want and whenever they want. If they do, they become separate from their anointing. At that point, our loyalty is to God and His commandments, not to a person or a people that has become separate from Him. Throughout the Bible, when Israel disobeys God’s commandments, they are punished. That is because an anointing differs from a open ended license to kill.
I have seen a great deal of time and money spent on persuading Christians to use these passages of scripture to support genocide and other forms of evil (in a variety of contexts, not just as they relate to any particular trible or country) that is so far outside the ten commandments that it leaves me stupefied. Christian networks are being “worked” and manipulated, same as all other networks.
So, yes, skepticism and discretion in all things is what we need. Glad to have you here. If decentralization is to succeed, then we must find a way to communicate and collaborate among our differences, without glossing over them.
I have found that vast differences in ideology make little difference when we get down to using time and money in ethical, productive ways in a place. Things come down to who is who is hardworking, responsible and competent — that is a small group in a very big tent.
Catherine
To All,
I have no jewish blood that I know of…I am a Southern Baptist Christian who knows were my bread is buttered (God) and he has commanded me to bless the Jews (Genesis). Those who bless the Jews are blessed by God and those who curse the Jews are cursed by God. That same book says God has given ALL of the land in question to the Jews as an ETERNAL covenant that he can not break lest he soil his own Name. As such even the Jews can not give the land to others. I do have future “Israeli” citizenship via the blood of one Jewish carpenter named Yeshua BaMashiach (Jesus Christ). I have no hidden agenda and its is really as simple as that. And as such antisemitic rantings insult my adopted ( I as a gentile am the adopted one) kinfolk, I feel I must speak out against their libel and defamation.
As for this site…I heard Catherine on C2Cam and was drawn to her messages of self sufficiency and decentralization of power. My community is my rather large family and my fellow christians not anti-semitic secular humanist greens who are out to save the earth at the expense of individual liberty. I know not all on here fit that description. I distrust “community” efforts as they smell like cults to me. Does it matter if the “rules” that deny the individual his/her rights are federal, corporate business, or of local “community” origin? I really wish to escape it all.
The comparisons between America, Palestine, and Ireland are valid and necessary. Livelihoods are being sold out from under Americans because “too bad you don’t own the company, we can do what we want such as move the factory abroad” even though that worker’s uncles and parents probably built that factory. So in effect Americans blue-collar workers are like Tenant farmers, and are in a way suffering the same fate as the Palestinians.
Incidentally if both both the Isrealis and Palestinians were to have a “truce”, the Palestinians would still be subjected daily to blockades, checkpoints, occupation, harassment, and institutional discrimination. The “truce” and “status quo” is still daily violence against Palestinians.
George,
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that Bill protested a tad too much 😉
Perhaps, like you suggest, it would be a good idea for him to flee from the dangerous antisemites to the safety of Israel.
There, in the land of the unfettered Tapeworm, he can pursue his dream of “increasing his wealth” in “non green” ways while underreporting his “unnoticed” income in the “community” that he so obviously loves.
Catherine,
I have learned so much from all of your work. Thank you once again for being the Angel we can all draw strength from.
David
Bill Jones,
You are so very sensitive to any observation that casts criticism towards israel, jews or zionsim. Makes me wonder if you are indeed irish-american and protestant. Maybe something else…..
When times get bad, alot of xenophobia emerges. That’s natural as a group survival mechanism. It’s natural; its to be expected. If times get really bad, communities and nations even divide. For safety sake you may want to apply for Israeli citizenship. Separate yourself from the anti-semites and go fight for what you love.
Looking at the Palestinian problem, the casualties are disproportionate in the extreme. Palestinians are suffering extremely. Maybe that is what you want in your heart.