April 4
GUEST: Elik Elhanan, a soldier in an Israeli Defense Forces combat unit from 1995-98, and current military refuser, talks about the loss of his sister to a Palestinian suicide bomber In 1997 and his subsequent role in the formation of Combatants for Peace.
Elik is a former Combatant for Peace and now lives in the U.S. He was kind enough to fill in at a panel we held in Woodstock when the Palestinian Combatant for Peace was not allowed into the country. In America, we reject the workers for peace and reconciliation at our boarders, lest their ideas about nonviolence infect the citizenry.
Elik is even more moving in person. We had a full house in Woodstock, some 60 people, and he was brutally honest about what his homeland had become. Combatants for Peace operates in Israel as well as the U.S., so their group presentations tend to avoid hot issues like BDS, the right of return, and the one state solution. Combatants would be in a lot of trouble in Israel, even for the mention of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, since individuals and groups can be sued for there for such things. I suspect that their acceptance by our local ministers and rabbis reflect this. Combatants will be relatively safe for their churches and synagogues.
And that is probably a tactic rather than a principle. Combatants can get into communities that other pro-Palestinian human rights groups can't, and that is a big plus. The price paid is that the most important political issues must be muted. Like the role of the U.S. in Israeli apartheid.
Palestinian refugees often hold keys to the houses that they were ethnically cleansed from. U.S. citizens hold the key to ending the suffering and violence in Palestine. End America's support for apartheid Israel, and that includes getting rid of Congress members who are bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby, like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
