Bonnie, the Backyard Bunny

A forwarded message from a wise and thoughtful advocate for justice, Susan Letendre, New England Director of Witness for Peace, about her great new children's book, Bonnie the Backyard Bunny. Click on the video and the link at the bottom, and support this important (and also fun) new enterprise. The world deserves it.

Stan

For two years, I have been working across U.S. policy barriers to craft a beautiful children’s book of this story –Bonnie, the Backyard Bunny- and it is now illustrated by one of Cuba’s most famous artists, Saulo Serrano. I am now raising funds to publish.

Over three years ago, I gave a sermon at a local congregation, and told an original story to the children about a real bunny who lives in my garden. They loved it, and many parents asked me to publish the story as a book as they wanted to buy it.

This happened repeatedly, so, over the past two years, I have been working across U.S. policy barriers to craft a beautiful children’s book of this story –Bonnie, the Backyard Bunny- and have it illustrated by one of Cuba’s most famous artists, Saulo Serrano.

Bunny who lives in my garden. They loved it, and many parents asked me to publish the story as a book as they wanted to buy it. This happened repeatedly, so, over the past two years, I have been working across U.S. policy barriers to craft a beautiful children’s book of this story –Bonnie, the Backyard Bunny- and have it illustrated by one of Cuba’s most famous artists, Saulo Serrano.

It started with a sermon I delivered at a local congregation, where I told an original story to the children based on a real bunny who lives in my garden. They loved it, and many parents asked me to publish the story as a book so they could buy it. This happened again and again, and then Saulo Serrano volunteered to illustrate it, so I was hooked, and, I admit, very excited.   

The difficulties - in communication, insuring that no money changes hands, lack of postal service and good technology - have been overcome. Now I have launched an Indiegogo campaign to publish it in English, then Spanish. (www.igg.me/at/BonnieBook)

This week, Presidents Obama and Raul Castro made mutual commitments to release prisoners and normalize relations. Bonnie reaches across the U.S. embargo put in place over 50 years ago that has separated our peoples.  The story celebrates the belief, of people in both countries, that everything in the world fits together, everything has a place.  It is a story of gratitude, and especially poignant at this historic moment.

Even with the changes, according to U.S. law, Saulo still cannot benefit from a book published here, I cannot travel to Cuba for this purpose, and it is doubtful whether we can share the work done here to facilitate publishing there. (We will see if regulations change any of this.)

The crowdfunding campaign that is now over halfway to goal! The beauty of crowdfunding is that you can donate $1 and make a difference. But if you give more, there are beautiful gifts (listed on the site) including the book itself! Please help make this book a reality by donating to Bonnie, the Backyard Bunny. Leave a message on the site, if you will, and spread the word to others. Crowdfunding works when a lot of people know about the campaign. Just click this link: www.igg.me/at/BonnieBook.

And as Bonnie says in her heart,

because bunnies don’t talk out loud,

“Thank you.”

Call your Congressperson

Diana Burdett, RI

As a former Justice and Peace Advocate for the UCC and one who, with Peter Wells (Area Minister of the Massachusetts Conference), helped to develop the Justice and Peace Action Network, I underscore what Edie Rasell (Minister for the economic justice program team of the UCC) has said about the tools being available for people to become informed about justice issues and to take action.

I feel that our "New England Justice Leaders" network is a self selected group of really committed justice activists, and while we may need to find a source of strength to continue our activism (and the new program on how to become an economic justice covenant church does include a section on self care), we need to find a way to get other people of faith to act on their faith.

It may sound simplistic, but members of Congress listen to their constituents, and if no one calls, they listen to their donors. Most people don't let their Reps and Sens know how they feel about issues, but they do a lot of complaining! Our voting turnout is only about 40%. The Evangelicals have no problem linking religion with politics (usually anti-gay and anti-women) and we need to do a better job of equating Jesus' teachings, particularly on economics and the sharing of abundance (ex: fair taxation) with our everyday living and with our elected reps at all levels. Instead we stand by as we watch the poor and middle class paying more and getting less. So much for the common good.

I am Director of a non-profit agency which deals with the most marginalized people in our society: the homeless, people struggling with mental illness and addictions and, prisoners upon re-entry, and the resources are dwindling. Grants are being held back; "Bridge Fund" monies are being given ($100) every 4 months instead of every 2 (like anyone could live on that anyway). The most disturbing is our daily client choice Food Pantry which is for people with housing - the working poor, elderly and disabled. In two years our numbers have gone from 500 people a month of whom 20 were children to 6200/month (unduplicated) with nearly half being children. It is the canary in the coal mine as people seek to stretch overburdened budgets by accessing food pantries. School children do not receive free breakfast and lunch during the summer and working people have to find child care. Food Stamps usually run out after 2 weeks. People with Green cards cannot get Food Stamps for five years and people who are undocumented are not eligible for any programs, but we serve everyone. The Emergency Food and Shelter Grant which helps pay for the food for our Food Pantry and Meal Site ($18,300 last year of which the first payment has always been received in March) has not yet even been awarded and we've been told it will be 40% less thanks to Congress.

Every day we hear from people who are losing their homes because they can't pay rent or utilities, so there will be a whole new crop of homeless people. Funds were eliminated that helped with supports to prevent homelessness and local Community Action programs have no funding to assist with utilities. A person working a minimum wage job receives $1200/month in gross pay, just barely covering $900/mo for rent. Add utilities, food, child care and transportation to work, and they are in the hole before the month begins. In the richest country on planet.

Feds Say Major New York Gas Pipeline Poses Safety Risk

by Nicholas Kusnetz ProPublica, Aug. 5, 2011, 11:04 a.m.

A major natural gas pipeline stretching across southern New York may be at risk of rupturing and poses a safety threat, according to a recent inspection by federal regulators.

The pipeline's owner, Millennium Pipeline Co., has reduced pressure on the line, lessening the risk of explosion, but there are concerns that its problems may extend beyond a leak spotted by workers in January.

The leak resulted from a faulty weld that hadn't passed an inspection but was installed anyway, a review by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration found [1]. An order issued by the agency

2014first reported Wednesday by NaturalGasWatch.org [2], a website that tracks gas pipeline safety2014said other sections of the pipeline also appear to have been installed without proper evaluation.

"Other welds with similar defects may also develop leaks and potentially lead to a rupture of the pipeline," the order says.

Damon Hill, a spokesman for the safety administration, said the pipeline's operator, Columbia Gas Transmission, has until the end of the year to inspect the line and fix problems.

Theresa Gibbon, a spokeswoman for Millennium Pipeline Co., confirmed the company is working with federal regulators but would not specify what measures it is taking.

The Millennium pipeline cuts through New York's southern tier and is a potential end point of a number [3] of proposed pipelines carrying gas from Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale [4]. It passes through several towns along its route [5].

Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant, said an explosion on the line could be significantly larger than the one that killed eight people in San Bruno, Calif., in September because the Millennium operates at more than double the pressure, even after the recent reduction.

The San Bruno blast [6] was the most deadly in a series of high-profile [7] oil and gas pipeline accidents that have drawn attention to a lax regulatory system. A December investigation by the news organization Remapping Debate found that regulation of more than 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines across the country is largely left to the companies [8] that operate the lines. One recent report showed that these companies have funded and shaped most of the safety studies [9] that guide federal regulation.

The number of major accidents has more or less held steady [10] in recent years. Still, Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group, said the problems with the Millennium line, along with some of the recent accidents, raise questions about whether the regulatory system is breaking down.

"As we allow the companies to do their own inspection and their own engineering to decide how to deal with pipelines in the ground, the question arises, do they have enough information," he said. "This is another case where it seems like, oops, they messed up."

Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

"Essentially game over" for the climate.  That's what climate scientist James Hanson calls the proposed Keystone XL pipeline -- which would carry oil out of Canada's vast tar sands oil fields to Texas, where it will be refined, then burned across the globe, dealing a catastrophic blow to our chance of returning earth to a stable climate.  This project requires a presidential permit to start building -- and it is President Obama's decision alone to grant or deny that permit.

I just signed a petition to President Obama asking him to deny the permit for the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline.  This is a fight we can not lose.

Please join me in taking action now: Sign the Petition Here

Thank you for considering such an important issue!

Robert Hyde

New York Times

August 4, 2011

The Wrong Worries

By PAUL KRUGMAN

In case you had any doubts, Thursday’s more than 500-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows confirmed it: The economy isn’t recovering, and Washington has been worrying about the wrong things.

It’s not just that the threat of a double-dip recession has become very real. It’s now impossible to deny the obvious, which is that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.

For two years, officials at the Federal Reserve, international organizations and, sad to say, within the Obama administration have insisted that the economy was on the mend. Every setback was attributed to temporary factors — It’s the Greeks! It’s the tsunami! — that would soon fade away. And the focus of policy turned from jobs and growth to the supposedly urgent issue of deficit reduction.

But the economy wasn’t on the mend.

Yes, officially the recession ended two years ago, and the economy did indeed pull out of a terrifying tailspin. But at no point has growth looked remotely adequate given the depth of the initial plunge. In particular, when employment falls as much as it did from 2007 to 2009, you need a lot of job growth to make up the lost ground. And that just hasn’t happened.

Consider one crucial measure, the ratio of employment to population. In June 2007, around 63 percent of adults were employed. In June 2009, the official end of the recession, that number was down to 59.4. As of June 2011, two years into the alleged recovery, the number was: 58.2.

These may sound like dry statistics, but they reflect a truly terrible reality. Not only are vast numbers of Americans unemployed or underemployed, for the first time since the Great Depression many American workers are facing the prospect of very-long-term — maybe permanent — unemployment. Among other things, the rise in long-term unemployment will reduce future government revenues, so we’re not even acting sensibly in purely fiscal terms. But, more important, it’s a human catastrophe.

And why should we be surprised at this catastrophe? Where was growth supposed to come from? Consumers, still burdened by the debt that they ran up during the housing bubble, aren’t ready to spend. Businesses see no reason to expand given the lack of consumer demand. And thanks to that deficit obsession, government, which could and should be supporting the economy in its time of need, has been pulling back.

Now it looks as if it’s all about to get even worse. So what’s the response?

To turn this disaster around, a lot of people are going to have to admit, to themselves at least, that they’ve been wrong and need to change their priorities, right away.

Of course, some players won’t change. Republicans won’t stop screaming about the deficit because they weren’t sincere in the first place: Their deficit hawkery was a club with which to beat their political opponents, nothing more — as became obvious whenever any rise in taxes on the rich was suggested. And they’re not going to give up that club.

But the policy disaster of the past two years wasn’t just the result of G.O.P. obstructionism, which wouldn’t have been so effective if the policy elite — including at least some senior figures in the Obama administration — hadn’t agreed that deficit reduction, not job creation, should be our main priority. Nor should we let Ben Bernanke and his colleagues off the hook: The Fed has by no means done all it could, partly because it was more concerned with hypothetical inflation than with real unemployment, partly because it let itself be intimidated by the Ron Paul types.

Well, it’s time for all that to stop. Those plunging interest rates and stock prices say that the markets aren’t worried about either U.S. solvency or inflation. They’re worried about U.S. lack of growth. And they’re right, even if on Wednesday the White House press secretary chose, inexplicably, to declare that there’s no threat of a double-dip recession.

Earlier this week, the word was that the Obama administration would “pivot” to jobs now that the debt ceiling has been raised. But what that pivot would mean, as far as I can tell, was proposing some minor measures that would be more symbolic than substantive. And, at this point, that kind of proposal would just make President Obama look ridiculous.

The point is that it’s now time — long past time — to get serious about the real crisis the economy faces. The Fed needs to stop making excuses, while the president needs to come up with real job-creation proposals. And if Republicans block those proposals, he needs to make a Harry Truman-style campaign against the do-nothing G.O.P.

This might or might not work. But we already know what isn’t working: the economic policy of the past two years — and the millions of Americans who should have jobs, but don’t.

How Much Harm Will it Do?

Stan Duncan

Now that we have raised the debt ceiling (or paid off the hostage-takers, depending on your point of view) it might be a good time to review how much damage the deal will do to the economy, to the recovery, and to ordinary people trying to hold down jobs.

Before I try to total that up, here is a brief overview of how we got here. You can skip down if you already know all of this.

Our US debt itself (the fact that we have borrowed money) has been around for a long time, but the deficit (the fact that we spend more than we make) was pretty much eradicated during the Clinton years. When president Clinton left office we had a surplus of about $412 billion and we were on track for eventually paying down the total debt itself (which was about $8 trillion). When President George Bush left office eight years later, the entire surplus was gone. The deficit had grown to over $500 billion, and the debt was around $14 trillion.

Liberals and conservatives argue over how much influence President Clinton or the high tech explosion had to do with that, but the fact remains that we had a surplus during his administration. He raised taxes and social spending and unemployment went down. And when people are employed they pay taxes. Remember that part: when people are employed, their taxes lower the deficit.

President Bush had two unfunded wars, three unfunded tax cuts (one in the spring of 2008 that no one talks about), an unfunded prescription drug program, and a recession. The unfunded programs and tax cuts were like paying money out and the recession kept money from coming in (actually the recession did both: tax revenue went down and expenditures for unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc. went up).

At the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 both the Bush and Obama administrations spent hundreds of billions in stimulus to help stave off an economic meltdown. However, a good amount of President Bush’s spending was in loans to Wall Street, which have been paid back, and much of Obama’s was for jobs, which came back in terms of workers paying taxes, so in the long run neither of their programs impacted the deficit in the way that the wars, tax cuts, the drug program and recession did. Economists differ on how much all of these things drove up the deficit (see my previous post on that), but by any estimate except Rush Limbaugh’s, when President Obama took office the US deficit had soared upwards by trillions of dollars.

To be fair, this description of the origin of the deficit comes mainly from economists and observers from the right, left and center. There is an alternative view from people like Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who argues that the deficit is the result of the “out of control spending” of unnamed members of Congress (apparently Democrats) between 2000 and 2008, and the “Job-killing tax increases” that President Obama might be pushing on us one of these days. Even though evidence for this view is difficult to come by, it seems to be the predominant opinion held by the media, the White House, and both houses of Congress.

So, where are we now? At the beginning of 2011, the Republican leadership in Congress announced that they had kidnapped the debt ceiling and would not let it go free until they had been paid an astronomical ransom in cuts in social spending. And if the Obama administration did not agree to their demands, they would blow up the economy by refusing to allow the federal government to borrow money. That act would throw our tepid recovery back into a deeper recession, families and jobs would be ruined for decades, and our future as a global economic player would be in jeopardy. They didn’t really want to do it, they said, but they had no choice because otherwise somewhere a few decades from now there might come a time when someone might get hurt if they didn’t do it. (They didn’t put it in quite those terms, but you get the idea.)

It is a form of what I call “Economic Apocalypticism,” the belief that we need to cause a catastrophic human apocalypse right now, with pain, suffering, and hunger, in order to create a pure capitalist order generations from now for our grand children. As examples of this, look at the draconian cuts in social spending imposed on poor and developing countries in the 1980s by the IMF and the resulting rises in poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy. It is sometimes referred to as “Shock Treatment” by economists like Jeffrey Sachs and others. It means: cause agony and death for hundreds of thousands of innocent people right now on the gamble that their grandchildren might be able to claw their way back into a middle class life years from now. The theory was common currency in the economic development circles of two decades ago and is apparently also behind the death threats of Congressional Republicans today.

The Democrats and the Obama administration inexplicably believed that the Republicans were not bluffing in their threats to destroy the economy, and moved into protracted hostage negotiations over how much to give up to keep them from killing the planet. Then, according to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Congress agreed to ninety-percent of their demands, with an additional promise that a bi-partisan panel will be set up to decide how much more will be given to them later.

So, what is the damage?

Let’s begin by acknowledging that cuts in social spending will hurt the economy and drive up the deficit. We often hear that it will, of course, also cut the deficit, but not by as much as you think because the people you fire will no longer pay income or sales taxes. Firing people can lower the deficit, but it also to some degree increases it—that in addition to causing fear and pain to millions of innocent families. Cutting social spending in the middle of the worse job losses in seventy years is much like bleeding hemophiliacs to see if it will help them get well. It wasn’t successful in the 1200s, and it probably will not work today.

How much damage will it do? First, the debt reduction plan will cut $3 trillion from Federal spending over 10 years. That comes out to about $300 billion in spending reductions per year. The higher amounts of that, however, are set to be cut in future years so that people won’t feel as much of it before the elections, so for our present numbers let’s assume that only $100 billion will be cut next year.

So, deduct that $100 billion from our annual spending, which is presently around $3.5 trillion, and it will shrink the GDP by about 3%. (The math is 100/3,500.) That, by the way, is probably a bit low because it doesn’t take into account the “Multiplier effect.” Every time a dollar changes in hands there is a value added to it, which adds to the GDP. Direct Government expenditures can increase the GDP by anywhere from 1.20% to 1.75% (tax cuts, on the other hand, are usually a loss). So, the overall loss to the economy is probably larger than my simple equation.

According to a rule of thumb called “Okun's law,” if the GDP is depressed by 3%, then the unemployment rate should go up by about half that, or 1.5%. That is of course, assuming that only jobs will be cut and not waste, so to be fair, let’s assuming that in this first year we will only drive up unemployment by 1%.

Right now unemployment in America is 9.2%. Add another one percent to that and we get 10.2%. What this means is that the number of jobs lost by this act then, comes out to be about 1.5 million jobs next year. And that’s just at the start. More government-caused job losses are to come. Each year they will get larger; each year we will depress the GDP further and hurt families deeper.

Already cut backs in jobs and benefits on state and local levels are one of the major contributing factors in our high unemployment and low tax revenue and the first line of hurt will be state and local governments. One out of every three dollars of state spending comes from the federal government — $478 billion alone in 2010. That will definitely be cut. In the first half of 2011 almost all of the job gains in the private sector were lost again by firings in the public sector. From August 2008 to the present, over 577,000 jobs have been lost to government belt-tightening.

Some of the biggest items that are to be cut in the bill are spending on education and Medicaid for the poor That won't hurt many in Congress, who are generally richer than "average" Americans and prefer private schools for their children, but for the rest of us, it could be one more step in our national decline. Note that nearly every state government has already set its budget for the next two years assuming a certain amount of federal dollars to come in. With this bill, all of those programs will have to be cut back. Local governments will probably try to raise property taxes to raise revenue, but that would be one more drag on the housing market that’s already dragging the bottom. Many local municipalities are already filing for bankruptcy and that will accelerate depending on how fast Washington’s cuts begin impacting them.

As long as we believe that the pain and fear of our recession is not related to Wall Street gambling, Mortgage loan scandals etc., but out-of-control spending by God knows who in our pasts, and that the only way out of it is through cuts in taxes for the wealth and benefits for the poor, and that the only way to find God’s final realm for the next generation is by balancing our checkbook on the backs of the poor, the sick, the elderly and the very young, then we will continue to decline into what looks from this side as an abyss of madness and evil…but that’s just my opinion.

The Executive Council recommends this resolutions be sent to a committee of the

General Synod

APPROVED AS AMENDED

PUTTING OUR MONEY WHERE OUR VALUES ARE:

EVALUTATING CHURCH FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Submitted by the Central Atlantic Conference

SUMMARY

Abusive practices at our biggest banks have done deep damage to our economy in the last few years. This resolution asks all settings of the United Church of Christ congregations and church bodies (local congregations, Associations, Conferences, and the national setting, church, etc.)—to use our money to provoke change in discerned unethical practices of financial institutions, or move our money to financial institutions that represent our faith values. the practices of big banks, or move our money to local banks that have records of fair lending and investing in our communities.

BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL RATIONALE

Usury is the practice of overcharging borrowers. It has been prohibited by religious, legal, moral, and social codes since the beginning of recorded human history—in Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:19-20, and and Ezekiel 18:19-23.

Usury was illegal in the United States until 1978. But it is now rampant in credit card and mortgage lending, payday lending, auto loans, rapid tax refund operations, and even in public bond deals. The end of usury laws in America launched an era of deregulation that allowed financial markets to run wild, helping to produce the present economic crisis. God calls us to seek justice, care for he poor and love our neighbor: Proverbs 31:8,9; Isaiah 1:17; Micah 6:8; Matthew 5:6, 7:12, 25;14-30, 40; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 10:30-37;

RESOLUTION

Whereas God calls us to seek justice, care for he poor and love our neighbor, and

Whereas the amoral business practices of the largest American and transnational some financial institutions have contributed to the done deep economic damage done to our families and communities, and Whereas usury is against our tradition and the traditions of other faiths, and prohibited in our tradition and in other faiths, and Whereas our congregations and other church bodies invest in these financial institutions and can thereby exert pressure relative to banking practices by way of collective action, and

Whereas there are community bank alternatives that may be more accountable to small and medium investors and more deeply invested in the communities where they do business,

Therefore, be it resolved by the Twenty-eighth General Synod that all settings of the United Church of Christ (e.g., local congregations, Associations, Conferences, the national setting church, etc.) are requested to faithfully examine their banking relationships with financial institutions, and, where practical and prudent, deliberately move toward relating to financial institutions that have records of fair lending, business and investing practices as each body discerns for its setting. and investing in the communities where they do business.

FUNDING

Funding for the implementation of this resolution will be made in accordance with the overall mandates of the affected agencies and the funds available.

IMPLEMENTATION

Justice and Witness Ministries are requested to implement this resolution.

Prayers for the People of Japan

Rev. Dr. Fran Bogle

Loving God, we open our hearts to you.  Embrace our sisters and brothers  in Japan. We pray for all who are struggling after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear.  

Sacred comforter, be with all who grieve. Be with those who live in fear of a phone call that will plunge them into mourning. Be especially with the many people who are homeless and have had their livelihoods and communities destroyed.

Spirit of life, sustain the aid workers, government leaders and courageous workers in the nuclear plants who are trying the best they can. Guide them as they recover and honor the dead and try to mend the broken reactors.  Help us find new ways to reach out with love to our neighbors.

Holy hope holder, fill everyone touched by this disaster with the strength to get through each day. We pray that they will find a bit of peace and hope wherever they are.  Remind us that our sisters and brothers need us to walk with them as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Let us walk together as your son Jesus walked with us.   Amen

Separate and Unequal: Journey in the Holy Land

 Part three of an account of her journey to Israel Palestine by The Rev. Branwen L. Cook, Chair of the Massachusetts Conference Israel-Palestine Task Team and Pastor of the Roslindale Congregational Church, UCC.

You look out the window of your bus and looming ahead is a huge concrete wall, stories high, topped by an ominous-looking guard tower. You might be leaving Bethlehem just to travel the few miles to Jerusalem, but every time you want to go in or out of Bethlehem you must go through a checkpoint because this small city has been walled off by Israel, surrounded almost completely, and is dependent on the disposition of a few youthful soldiers posted at the gates. Your vehicle pulls to a halt; there is an ominous pause. Then a college-aged person in uniform, carrying a large automatic weapon, sidles slowly up to the driver’s window and a few words are exchanged. Your Palestinian driver answers some questions in Hebrew and perhaps produces some papers. Then another pause – sometimes only a moment or two, sometimes longer. The bus is waved on and begins to move. Suddenly you realize you were holding your breath, figuratively if not literally. And then you remember you are an American citizen and you have very little to fear in this situation. The people at risk are Palestinians who are forced to go through this scenario day after day – for access to work, college exams, hospitals, friends, family members, and the olive groves that have been in their families for hundreds of years. Sometimes the result is that they are very late for work, or not allowed through at all. Sometimes a person who is very ill is unable to reach the hospital in time; a baby is born in a car or someone dies of pulmonary edema, waiting at the checkpoint. As you pass through the high wall you see again the artwork and commentaries by Palestinians -- expressing objection, hope, or humor.

But the checkpoints are not simply in areas where Palestinians cross into Israel proper – as one might expect, since Israel claims such measures are for purposes of security for the Israeli population. If this is so, then why are there checkpoints within the West Bank itself, between one Palestinian village and the next? We asked our guides and we asked the human rights workers we met. One answer we received was, “Who knows?” The implication is that this is another form of harassment, a way to make life a little more uncomfortable for the indigenous population. As we traveled around inside the West Bank itself we encountered what the locals humorously refer to as “flying checkpoints”: by the roadside an army vehicle, a few soldiers, a line of Palestinian vehicles and taxis waiting in the sun. The drivers are questioned; often they are made to get out of the vehicle, along with any passengers, and told to empty the contents of their bags on the ground. It has been documented on film and in interviews that some soldiers take the attitude that it is their job or even duty to harass Palestinians. The rules are made up on the spot but the overall philosophy comes from the top. Israel claims to be “the only democracy in the Middle East” and the US gives Israel support to the tune of $19 per every American citizen every year, but I was reminded of the Kafka novels The Castle and The Trial – in which life is portrayed as a maze and there are no explainable events – Kafka’s critique of mindless totalitarianism.

The idea of a maze is further substantiated by the impossibly complex way the land of the Palestinian people is divided into three areas: A, B and C. The smallest is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the largest by Israel, and in between is an area of joint control. Although the PA is in control of one of these areas, it is important to keep to understand that any control the PA has must be understood in the frame of Israel’s ultimate control. The Palestinian Authority is not an autonomous governing agency, but something more like the oldest child who is babysitting for younger siblings -- in charge, but only as an extension of the parents. This kind of confusion about authority and lack of any semblance of democratic process in the larger society is a constant feature of life in Palestine. In each of the three areas mentioned above, there are differing rules and regulations. If a Palestinian travels to the next village he may suddenly find himself subject to entirely different laws, which may be broken without even realizing it. Further, if you are Palestinian and have lived in this place your entire life – as did your parents and grandparents back through many generations – you dare not go anywhere without your identity papers, and the repeated experience of being examined as though you were an interloper.

The average tourist is insulated from all this, traveling on Israeli-only roads and having no exposure to the people living under occupation. They may possibly go to Bethlehem for a few hours, but we stayed in a Bethlehem hotel for five nights, and with local families for four more. Our exposure to the living situation was not sugar-coated. And yet, the culture, the hospitality, the accommodations – all were utterly appealing and genuine. Here is an entire population living without enough water for daily needs along with scarcity of work, deep poverty and never-ending rules that prevent freedom of movement and subject entire neighborhoods and towns to violence from the army and illegal “settlers.” Yet they begrudged us nothing, were friendly and generous, intelligent and knowledgeable.

There are many water issues in this area as might be expected, and I am not an expert, but I will make a few observations. Israelis are able to build large homes in the places where Palestinian homes on Palestinian land have been demolished; Israelis have water in abundance, and, like the upper-middle-class Western societies from which these expectations emerge, water is available in such abundance that they build swimming pools, plant king palms that require 300 gallons of water per day to thrive, and – as they so proudly claim-- turn the dessert into green lawns. One can tell where the Palestinian homes are located because they have to put rain-water collector tanks on top of their roofs in an effort to supply daily needs, since they generally receive only a few hours worth of water daily, and sometimes less. The Jordan River is disappearing as the water table decreases. Until the creation of the state of Israel, the indigenous population lived carefully within the parameters of the natural environment, taking only the water that was needed, growing and eating the foods that appear there naturally, not stressing the water table nor forcing the land to grow what is not natural to it.

Not only were we shocked to learn of the blatant discrimination against the Palestinians with respect to the water-access, but we were stunned to find much evidence of deliberate acts such as the following: on the edge of Bethlehem we visited a church with gardens in which the monks have carefully grown vegetables for generations. It is an ancient place and backs up into a hillside. In recent years Israeli “settlers” (a polite word for the colonizers who build illegally on Palestinian land) have built on the top of the hill and run their sewerage down the hill to pollute the gardens of the church. This was not a small thing, as the effluent was observable all over the area above and abutting the church’s land, and, depending of the breeze showed it’s nature by the odor. Perhaps this image is a metaphor that describes the attitude of Israel toward those whose land it occupies: despotism and lack of accountability are key. While the damage is apparent to those who are occupied, less apparent -- yet real -- is the hidden effect on the occupier. In our meeting with B’tselem, the premier human rights organization of Israel, which carefully documents the abuses of Israel toward the Palestinians, we heard this theme: Israel cannot continue in such wanton lack of simple decency toward others and not have it effect profound destructive changes within itself.

One final item, pointed out to us with especial clarity by B’tselem, and by the Palestinian justice organization Addameer. Israel applies one system of civil justice to Israelis and another system – that of military courts – to the Palestinians. By virtue of the fact that Israel is an occupying power, civilian Palestinians are subjected to a system of military justice that is harsh, inscrutable, and arbitrary. To apply a military system to a civilian population is one more of the illegalities of the Israeli occupation – to say nothing of the inhumanities. One effect of this bifurcated system is easy to encounter if you get to know a few of the local people: almost every Palestinian male has been arrested and imprisoned. The profiling is simple: any male Palestinian between ages 15 and 45 is automatically suspicious. And there are thousands of hidden laws to catch them in. It is illegal to display the flag of Palestine. That does not mean that every time the flag appears, someone disappears, but it does mean that this law comes in handy any time the Israeli Defense Force wants to incarcerate someone. In fact there are so many small laws that can be broken that a Palestinian is always in danger of incarceration. It reminds me of the expression “driving while black” – a reference to racial profiling that occurs in our own country, but is not, any longer, enshrined in law. That’s a step. But for Palestinians there are thousands of small laws that amount to nothing more than the infraction of “living while Palestinian.” For example, the requirement to check with authorities before you plant something in front of your house, and the law against transporting anything by donkey, which I think would have made life even more difficult for Joseph and Mary.

When we sat for a couple of hours at the Jenin crossing, we decided that if Mary and Joseph had been required to go through what local people encounter in travel today, their trip from Nazareth would have taken so long that Jesus would have been born in Zababdeh, or maybe Nablus.

On the more serious note of the plans that Israel has for the little town of Bethlehem, we need to become more aware of what may occur in the future and how the wall and illegal Israeli acquisition of land may eventually prevent any of us from visiting the place of our savior’s birth.

By: Branwen L. Cook - Journey to Israel-Palestine On 2/16/2011

Birds of Paradise: A Journey to Hebron

Part two of an account of her journey to Israel Palestine by The Rev. Branwen L. Cook, Chair of the Massachusetts Conference Israel-Palestine Task Team and Pastor of the Roslindale Congregational Church, UCC.

We arrived in the offices of a new magazine named “Birds of Paradise” – loosely translated from the Arabic. It was mid-morning on a beautiful October day. Our group was small: all from the Boston area we were two United Church of Christ ministers, two Episcopalian lay women, and one Jewish woman. Our guide, who creates trips such as this two-week-intensive education tour, is an American Presbyterian who has devoted the greater part of the past dozen years to living in the West Bank. She knows people, has some facility in Arabic, and knows the culture. This is a great advantage for the traveler. Instead of the typical pre-packaged, superficial tourist experience, In His Steps: Pathways of Peace provided us with deeper experiences. We arrived in Hebron, having had been driven there from our hotel in Bethlehem. The journey took no more than a half hour and again I found myself surprised by the smallness of the West Bank.

We entered the second floor of a small office building on the outskirts and were greeted warmly, then ushered into a good-sized room that had been set up with chairs and sofas. We were seated and introduced to three or four female staffers along with their editor-in-chief, the only man on the staff. Conversation blossomed easily among all of us. Their command of English was impressive, and by this time – 5 days into our stay – we were familiar with local customs; we were not surprised when trays of refreshments arrived: water, juices, tiny and delicious cups of Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom and sugar. And then lunch: swarma, salad, hummus, falafel, lubne – delicious and in abundance, standard hospitality. We learned about the magazine and were given copies of the most recent edition. We were asked about our trip, and there was special interest in our presentation to the Beit Fajjar Mosque of a letter of solidarity from the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC and a dozen other organizations and individuals who had signed on to our expression of care and sympathy for the burning and defacing of the mosque by “settlers” from a nearby colony of illegal Israelis. (See article in previous issue of Everflowing Streams)
After lunch we began the second part of our day in Hebron. With an escort of three women and a young man who made the point to bring up the rear, making sure we were all safe, we walked out to the street and began our tour through the Hebron souk to the Abrahami Mosque and Tomb of the Patriarchs in the city center. The source of concern for safety was not what most people imagine – that the West Bank is full of terrorist Arabs. The concern came from the fact that we were in company of Palestinians in a place that Israelis have colonized – an illegal action by an occupying country. The attitude of these so-called “settlers” has made life in Hebron miserable and contentious, establishing themselves all over the city.

Some buildings have been acquired by Israelis by subterfuge and outright fraud, others by sheer intimidation. The result is that around 400 settlers now occupy dwellings all over the city, living on top of the shops and stalls of Palestinian businesses. The Israelis throw garbage from their windows so much that the Palestinian shopkeepers have resorted to hanging netting above all their stalls. Many streets and alleyways have been closed off by the Israeli Defense Forces which keep 2000 soldiers in the city for the sole purpose of protecting the illegal settlers. The IDF have closed many streets, preventing normal access from one place to another. On a previous trip Christian Peacemaking Teams showed us the circuitous route that a child in a wheelchair was forced to make to his school each day because of the street closure by his house.

As we walked through the souk we could see clearly the economic depression. It is more profound here than in other areas in the West Bank, which generally struggles due to the Israeli restrictions, tariffs, and simply the lack of tourism. Our hosts told us that because being in the streets here is so difficult due to the threats and attacks by Israelis, that they avoid everything but the most necessary shopping excursions; thus, the shops selling decorative items, pottery and even clothing are often forced to close for lack of business.

As far as who needs protection, it is hard to discover any information indicating that the illegal settlers do. All reports from Christian Peacemaking Teams and other international accompaniers as well as Israel’s premier human rights organization, B’tselem, decry the harassment that is commonly meted out by settlers to the indigenous population.

As we passed one alleyway, our hosts suggested going down to a home at the far end. The narrow area with closed and shuttered windows, the light filtering down from a blue sky, and the eerie sense of abandoned life was intriguing. As we walked we casually snapped photos until a threatening voice out of nowhere said, “No pictures! No pictures!” The source was Israeli soldiers positioned on rooftops and in windows with their guns pointing ominously in our direction. At the end of the alley our hosts led us up an ancient outside staircase into a stone apartment on the second floor. This was the home of a 5-yr-old boy who had been attacked by settlers when he was outside playing: they had thrown a toxic liquid into the child’s face, blinding him. Inside the home we were introduced to the parents of the boy and greeted with a reserved, watchful friendliness. They have several young children who all sleep in one room. We were shown their bed which had above it a 3 or 4 inch round hole, a window onto the sky. However, settlers are able to creep over the rooftops and outside staircases, and one night had come to the roof just above the small window; from there they put a poisonous asp into the window. In the morning the father found the snake on the bed with his sleeping children, but, (as he told us, Allah be praised) it had not bitten them. He had killed it, and showed it to us. They also explained that they were very fortunate in the matter of their blinded son: international medical people had taken him to Jordan for an operation. All of this story was known to and had been documented by the news magazine. Their poverty and depression were palpable. They showed us a few small hand made things they were selling, and several of us gladly bought something.

In the city square we were directed to observe that the main street – as wide as a one lane road – was designated for Israelis only. If you are of the indigenous Palestinian population your travel is limited to a narrow sidewalk along the edge. Not bad for walking perhaps, but what if you have a cart or a donkey? Or what if you object to being treated as a second class citizen, or worse?

There is no recourse for Palestinians. Everything we observed further confirmed the opinion, expressed by Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu among others, that Israel has instituted an apartheid state. The roads are separate. The wall is not a security barrier for it is open in many places, and it does not follow the line of demarcation between the two potential states. Instead it wanders around inside Palestinian territory, gobbling up (under the guise of “security” land and homes that have been built by and dwelt in by Palestinians for generations. Nonsensical checkpoint between one West Bank town and the next make for outrageously slow travel. The constant uncertainty for Palestinians is an obvious form of harassment: whether a person one can even get to their own farmlands, olives, relatives, places of employment or even hospital is entirely in the hands of a hostile occupier. In it’s service, there are two systems of justice. If an Israeli or an international is picked up at a demonstration, they are taken to Israeli civil court and released in a perfunctory manner. If a Palestinian is picked up at the same demonstration that person is taken to an Israeli military court, and is very likely to be placed in administrative detention, which means simply that he is kept for as long as Israeli officials choose, without charge, proceedings or counsel. Yes, Virginia, it is apartheid, and the more shocking because it has been instituted in “the only democracy in the Middle East,” as Israel’s propaganda and U. S. media claim.

Is there hope? Visit and see for yourself the many venues of hope. The news magazine Hebron is one sign of hopeful, loving and generous people, working hard and producing a beautiful magazine – whose name in Arabic I dare not write here in case I should compromise them by doing so. Call me paranoid, but when I took pains to remove the microchip from my camera and hide it separately in my checked luggage before the return flight, I thought that that was a bit paranoid too. However, both the camera and the chip were confiscated in Ben Gurion Airport. Was it because it was my second trip in 2 years? Who knows?

If you are interested in unconventional travel or simply want to check out the organization that the Israel-Palestine Task Team of the Massachusetts Conference Mission and Justice Commission has designated as its partner for travel, go to www.ihsholyland.org.  Among other things there you will find more about medical teams and future trips currently being planned. Or respond to the conference office with questions/comments for me.

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By: Branwen L. Cook - Journey to Israel-Palestine On 1/18/2011