No choice but to persist

Jewish Women for Justice in Israel and Palestine

No choice but to persist: Israelis resist.

Sue Katz

Because of their dream of living in a just society, many Israelis are finding the strength to maintain their movement groups and to develop new ones in response to the unspeakable deterioration of the situation in Palestine/Israel. Women continue to provide the critical mass of activists, although the men are also hanging on. Here is a selected overview of political groups trying to check the government's excesses of vicious injustice.

The Coalition of Women for Peace is made up of 9 groups which continue to collaborate. There are several small groups - such as Noga, the Israeli feminist magazine, and Tandy, the remnants of the Communist Party's women's group - in addition to the larger organisations, including the three described below.

Bat Shalom is slowly rebuilding ties with Palestinian women after an almost total separation throughout this 2nd intifada. Bat Shalom is also active in the north of Israel where their Arab/Jewish coalition is planning on bringing women's issues into the Land Day demonstrations.

Women in Black continues to have vigils in certain locations and serves as the centre of a powerful international network of WiB vigils against the occupation.

Checkpoint Watch is a group of courageous women activists in Jerusalem who twice a day - at rush hours - physically stand watch against abuse as Palestinians pass in and out of Israel for work.

New Profile, while explicitly feminist, is not exclusively for women. Like most other groups, they do respond to the ceaseless emergencies and they support draft resistance, but their long-term goal is to press for the demilitarisation of Israel. They do a lot of work in schools, pushing a sophisticated analysis of the damage done by an entirely militarised society.

Ta'ayush (which means "partnership" in Arabic) are a fairly new and remarkably creative group of Jewish and Arabic Israelis - men and women - who collect money in order to buy the food and medicine so needed in the besieged villages in the territories. Created originally by a group of Tel Avivians and their friends in Kfar Kassem, they now have chapters springing up around the country. Not only do they form large convoys for delivery of these goods, they also have an on-going campaign to support the cave-dwellers in the mountains south of Hebron whom the Army is trying to move out. Their actions in Israeli Arab villages are highly visible, such as paving a street in an unrecognised (i.e., receives no statutory support) village.

Against the Demolition of Homes tries to mobilise in time to physically prevent demolitions and they also seek to rebuild homes in the territories and East Jerusalem.

Physicians for Human Rights, both Jewish and Arab Israeli Doctors, travel to the West Bank and hold indispensable day-long free medical clinics.

Gush Shalom is a classic direct action group led by Uri Avneri. They organise demonstrations, press releases, and international support.

Yesh Gvul ("There is a Limit") is the political draft resistance movement which is now seeing its members jailed just about every week.

Peace Now, still associated with the Labour Party, is much weaker than they were during the 1st intifada, but they still manage to get people out to demonstrate.

The economic crisis in Israel has opened up another front of activism. The journalist David Remnick recently described the situation in the New Yorker (Jan 7, 2002): "The economy, which had been booming, is in sharp decline. Twenty-three thousand businesses closed in 2001; thirty-five thousand more closings are expected in the first six months of 2002. There are no tourists. The hotels are dark."

The many local groups springing up to protest unemployment and economic disaster are increasingly linking the recession to the occupation. They resent the special economic privileges received by the settlers and they demand more governmental attention to the difficult conditions.

Kav L'Oved ("Workers Helpline") has long been the only source of assistance to the foreign workers who have been brought in to replace the Palestinians. They work under insufferable conditions, without any recourse to strikes or protection. Whether they come from Africa, Thailand, the Philippines, or China, their exploitation is brutal.

One important factor underpinning all of these admirable groups is that many people are involved in several of them. This is bad news, because the small cadre of activists is subject to exhaustion and depression. And this is good news, because it results in strong collaboration and a vibrant network that can work together for the long haul while responding to immediate emergencies. International support continues to be essential to the Israeli left as well as to the Palestinians.

Censorship of opposition activities is virtually absent from the Israeli press. And a similar invisibility demonstrates how little the world press is interested in peace in the Middle East. For example, on December 28th the Coalition organised a demonstration in Jerusalem which drew over 5,000 women and men protesters. In the present environment of a brutal and crumbling society - the national health system is paralyzed, the government is unchallenged, the civic fabric is so dishevelled that people now routinely ignore traffic lights - the size of the demonstration was extraordinary. Did you hear about it?

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