Jeff
Halper - An Israeli challenging the occupation
Jeff Halper leading one of his ICAHD tours in E1, an area of the West
Bank just outside Jerusalem. Halper and others accuse Israel of planning to
build Jewish settlements there to destroy any hopes of a Palestinian state
(Jonathan Cook)
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 29 August 2015 11:43 UTC
‘In
an endless war on terror, we are all doomed to become Palestinians’
The co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions shares his views on Palestine-Israel relations
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=495217839069635401#editor/target=post;postID=6723139175863653888
Jeff Halper co-founder and director of ICAHD (ICAHD USA)
Palestinian state (Jonathan Cook)
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Monday 14 April 2014 09:30 UTC
Last update:
Thursday 12 February 2015 8:30 UTC
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Jeff Halper is the first to admit that he is “off the radar” of fellow
Israelis. He has been arrested for standing in front of bulldozers about to
demolish Palestinian homes more times than he cares to count. His construction
is dwarfed by the scale of Israel’s destruction. He and his volunteers have
rebuilt 187 Palestinian houses out of a total of 29,000 destroyed. He counts it
as a success that 175 of them are still standing.
He has had his EU funding withdrawn and his Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD) only really campaigns abroad. Operating on the fringe
of the fringe at home, even his partners on the left are only willing to go so
far, before they feel they are betraying their Zionism.
With a white beard and a hearty chuckle, it is difficult to picture this
Father Christmas lookalike in front of a bulldozer. Like many lifelong
activists, he is surprisingly upbeat, or rather, one senses he can’t allow
himself to appear otherwise. The status quo, he claims, is the darkness before
the light.
Like most people he sees absolutely no chance of the Kerry initiative
succeeding, but its failure, will be salutary as it will put an end to the
pretense. The fog will lift not only about the peace talks themselves, but
about the permanence of settlements, annexation of land and the Palestinian
Authority itself which may be forced to resign or collapse.
Halper’s favoured solution is a bi-national state, a fusion of what he
calls cultural Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. This annoys everyone.
Israelis see it as a betrayal, but Palestinians see talk of a binational state
as a way of legitimising Zionism through the back door.
But things, in Halper’s world, can only get better. For all his
optimism, he retains an unvarnished view of the here and now: “One of the
reasons why it is hard for us to work in Israel is because all the issues we
work on, the Arabs, peace, occupation, are non-issues for Israelis. “ In a poll
taken in the last election campaign in Israel, the occupation came in at number
11 on the list of priorities.
“One party ran on the issue of gay rights. Another [the Labour party]
said they were a social democratic party that only deal with internal Israeli
issues and specifically did not take a position on the occupation.” He said, “It’s
kind of an invisible issue. The Israelis are so insulated, they don’t go to the
West Bank, they don’t see the West Bank, they hardly ever see Arabs…”
The invisibility of the Arabs works well as long as they stay in their
place: “If you bring a plumber in to fix your bathroom you call an Israeli
plumber but you know he will bring an Arab with him to do the work or to paint
your house. If you go to a restaurant you know the waitress is going to be
Jewish Israeli but in the kitchen they’re going to be Palestinians or Bedouins.
Everybody is in their place.”
Halper shies away from the word racism, preferring instead separation:
“To Israelis, Arabs are background. They’re wallpaper somewhere. The Israeli
mentality is we don’t notice them, we don’t see them, we don’t encounter them,
and if we do encounter them and they are in their place that’s fine. There is
no way in which I will let them into my space, but at the same time I think the
Arabs don’t want to be in the Israeli space either, so there is a separation.”
Halper arrived in Israel in different times. Born in Northern Minnesota
in 1945, he never knew Jews. He grew up with Bob Dylan, went to Woodstock, went
to jail in Mississippi, was part of the anti-war movement, and sees himself
very much as a product of the 1960’s. He was deeply affected by the book Roots by
Alex Haley which was published in the wake of the Civil Rights and African
American movements. He was similarly entranced by Cesar Chavez and La Raza, as
well as the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Halper grew so intrigued by the idea of reclaiming his own roots that it
led to Israel. He came to the Middle East describing himself then as a cultural
Zionist, but has been struggling with the word ever since: “I wanted to be part
of a project of reviving the national language and having a university and a
literature, being a part of that national project, but not Zionist in the
political sense of saying there has to be a Jewish state. Today I avoid the
term Zionist because I think it’s just too loaded. So when people ask me if I’m
a Zionist, I say I’m an Israeli. There’s nothing wrong with the Israeli
component as long as it’s not territorial, not colonial and if it’s not
oppressive.”
As such, Halper is in a group you can count on the fingers of one hand.
While there certainly are other Israelis who support Palestine, most draw a
line much sooner than he does “because ultimately they are Zionists” and “since
they are Zionists they can’t go there. You simply get to a point where you say
OK, this is as far as I’m going. The minute I say the word apartheid, they say,
we are a human rights organisation we are not political. So we can’t say the
word apartheid because that’s a political term. The implication of the end of
Zionism for them, they just can’t contemplate.”
Despite having been a civil rights activist, a Vietnam war resister,
refusing to bear arms during his mandatory Israeli military service, and
raising two children who would later go on to be imprisoned for being
conscientious objectors he does not consider himself to be a pacifist. While he
says he is certainly not “for war” he “does recognise situations in which you
do have to respond in an armed way.”
He concedes that “under international law Palestinians are allowed to
resist occupation, colonisation and oppression by armed force - although you
are not allowed to attack civilians.” But then the question is that the best
strategy or not. In the case of Palestine, he estimates that 95% of Palestinian
resistance is peaceful non-violent resistance and credits that as the way
forward. He sees the work he does with ICAHD as going hand in hand with that
Palestinian civil resistance and as such, the way forward for ultimately
bringing peace to the land.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.DQDSCLne.dpuf
‘In
an endless war on terror, we are all doomed to become Palestinians’
Halper’s new book sheds light on the arms industry, arguing that Israel
is now the go-to nation for armies and police forces around the world
Jeff Halper leading one of his ICAHD tours in E1, an area of the West
Bank just outside Jerusalem. Halper and others accuse Israel of planning to
build Jewish settlements there to destroy any hopes of a Palestinian state
(Jonathan Cook)
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 29 August 2015 11:43 UTC
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 29 August 2015 11:43 UTC
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Topics:
Tags:
For 18 years Jeff Halper has been on the front lines of the
Israel-Palestine conflict, helping to rebuild Palestinian homes in the occupied
territories demolished by Israel. As he prepares to step down as head of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), he is publishing a new
book on Israel.
Halper’s main conclusion is disturbing. Israel, he says, is globalising
Palestine.
The former anthropology professor’s wide-ranging research has forced him
into an expertise he is not entirely comfortable with: the global arms
industry.
Halper argues that Israel is cashing in – both financially and diplomatically
– on systems of control it has developed in the occupied territories. It is
exporting its know-how to global elites keen to protect their privileges from
both external and internal challengers.
In a world supposedly mired in an endless war on terror, we may all be
facing a future as Palestinians.
Halper’s book, entitled War Against the People, due out next
month, suggests that Israel provides a unique window on some of the most
important recent developments in what he terms "securocratic warfare".
The book’s central thesis emerged as he tried to understand why tiny
Israel hits way beyond its weight economically, politically and militarily. How
does Israel have so much clout – not only in the US and Europe but, more
surprisingly in countries as diverse as India, Brazil and China?
None of the usual explanations – Holocaust guilt, the power of lobbies,
even the growth in Christian fundamentalism – seemed to provide a complete
answer.
Global pacification
Zeev Maoz, an Israeli political science professor based in California,
set Halper on a different track. “He has observed that one of the Zionist
movement’s fundamental tenets was to tie its wagon to a hegemon, serving it,”
Halper says.
The Zionists did that early on by cultivating British support in Palestine.
Once established as a state, Israel helped the French and British at Suez in
1956, and after 1967 Israel served as a US surrogate in the Middle East during
the Cold War.
Today, Israel’s growing influence, Halper claims, reflects its
positioning of itself at the heart of the rapidly burgeoning “global
pacification” industry, advising and assisting militaries, police forces and
homeland security agencies around the world.
In the post-9/11 world, Israel is security king – or “securityland”, as
a leading Israeli analyst recently described
it.
And significantly, Israel is starting to parlay this usefulness into
wider political and diplomatic support, says Halper, even as the international
community grows exasperated by nearly 50 years of occupation. Such backing,
including from much of the Arab world, often remains hidden from view.
US president Dwight Eisenhower’s grim warning from the 1950s that a
rampant “military-industrial complex” was threatening to become the real power
behind the façade of popular democracy needs updating, says Halper.
He describes the emergence of what he calls the MISSILE complex:
full-spectrum dominance by the US and its allies through the joint activity of
the military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence and law
enforcement.
After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes,
Israel is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as
a giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics
and weaponry.
An arms superpower
As we meet at his home in West Jerusalem, Halper is keen to stress that
he is only sketching the outlines of the new US-led global pacification
industry. He has entered largely uncharted waters. Journalists, analysts and
academics have shied away from the necessary research, he claims, preferring to
keep within their narrow specialisations.
Halper is interested in “big-picture” analysis, joining up the dots. And
doing so has forced him to explore unfamiliar territory, reading up on key
texts in security studies, poring over the works of terrorism experts, and
meeting decorated generals.
Halper points out that Israel spends about 8 percent of its GDP a year
on the military, about twice the per capita expenditure of the United States.
Despite its size, Israel has more military aircraft than any European country.
Israel has four of the world’s top 100 arms manufacturers, and is ranked
among the top 10 arms dealing countries, in some assessments as high as fourth place. The Global Militarisation
Index has crowned Israel the most militarised nation on the planet
every year since 2007.
In May Israel won a new accolade, becoming a “cyber superpower”, its
companies selling about a tenth of the world’s computer and network security
technology.
That focus on the military and weapons systems has led Israel into
official military relations with 130 countries, many of them dictatorships
known for their human rights violations. Reports suggest that Israel engages in
more dubious and secretive deals with additional regimes.
This month the United Nations disclosed that Israel was breaking a western arms embargo
on selling weapons to South Sudan, fuelling the civil war there. Critics have suggested that Israel also has advisers and trainers
operating clandestinely in South Sudan.
End of conventional wars
But Israel’s real talent, says Halper, has been to exploit a new
emphasis on “securocratic warfare”.
“Wars between states are largely a thing of the past,” he observes. “In
the new kind of warfare, F-35 jets and nuclear weapons are far less useful.
What is needed now are the skills Israel has developed after a century of
‘counter-insurgency’ against the Palestinians. Israel is the go-to country when
it comes to securocratic warfare.”
The need for this kind of warfare was highlighted following the US
attack on Iraq in 2003, he notes. Conventional wars between states have
traditionally involved three phases: operational preparations, the actual
attack, and the outcome.
But Iraq – as well as Afghanistan before it – showed a fourth stage: the
need for stabilisation and peace-keeping following regime change.
The pacification industry that has boomed post-9/11, Halper notes, is
spreading back to the West. As the military takes on many of the duties of a
police force in external wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, back home the police
become ever more militarised. Police in Ferguson look indistinguishable from
their compatriots in the US army in Iraq.
“What we are seeing is the rise of the human-security state – endless
‘war on terror’, the world in a permanent state of emergency. The traditional
hard walls between the police and the military, between domestic and overseas
intelligence agencies – between the FBI and the CIA , if you like – crumble.”
Warrior cops
For elites who see danger lurking around every corner, Israel has the
answer: what he calls the “warrior cop”. For decades Israel has been operating
paramilitary forces like the Border Police, as well as intelligence services
like the Shin Bet, whose area of operational responsibility is not constrained
by distinctions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Israel created the model long ago of the military and police working
together, and now it is well-placed to train the world,” Halper concludes.
That point was underscored this week when the Israeli government announced that
a long-time army officer, Gal Hirsch, would become the head of Israel’s
national police force.
What is at stake? Are the US and Europe not trying to defend themselves
against real terror threats?
Halper believes it is important to examine these developments within a
larger framework: the capitalist world system.
It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global
terror threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised,
creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US
and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands.
Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital
and labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into
wastelands or slums.
The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as
great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their
desperate plight.
This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has
developed its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper.
The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states
concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare,
migration threats, and much more.
“The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel.
Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a
tourist destination, not a regional hegemon.”
A place at NATO’s table
Israel’s arms industry isn’t just aimed at making money. “It puts Israel
at the table with NATO countries.” Israel conducts military exercises with
NATO, and helps develop Watchkeeper drones for the Europeans.
It also has increasingly close ties, says Halper, with regimes that are
ostensibly its enemy, such as Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis are funding ISIS
[Islamic State], so how does one explain their alliance with Israel? The common
denominator is ‘security politics’. No two countries have interests more alike
than Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
When the Saudis unveiled the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Halper
argues, they offered, in return for an end to the occupation, the Arab world’s
recognition of Israel as the regional hegemon.
Is Israel’s usefulness paying off diplomatically?
There are indications that increasingly it is. The Economist recently noted that India, which has long track record of supporting
the Palestinians, was among five countries abstaining at the UN Human Rights Council
last month on a resolution criticising Israel for its conduct in Gaza last
summer in a 51-day attack that killed more than 500 children.
The magazine added that Israeli officials believe the international
community’s growing dependence on its arms will reduce its vulnerability over
the long term to the boycott (BDS) movement.
Halper points out that Nigeria, another country that has become reliant
on Israeli arms, recently also betrayed its traditional support for the
Palestinians.
Nigeria saved Israel and the US great embarrassment last December when
it voted in the UN Security Council against a Palestinian resolution
demanding an end to the occupation. The US had feared that it would have to
cast its veto.
Halper emphasises that the US is still the world’s largest arms dealer
by some margin. But in its scramble to fill the niches, Israel helps shine a
light on the arms industry’s true purpose: not security, but pacification.
"When you call it ‘security’, you shut down the debate. Who doesn’t
want security? But when you reframe it is as ‘pacification’, the real goals
become much clearer.”
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-we-are-all-doomed-become-palestinians-1441741137#sthash.k5XZwv02.dpuf
More than 1,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel protest house demolitions #Occupation
Settlers clash with Israeli police as West Bank demolition begins #Occupation
- See more at:
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-we-are-all-doomed-become-palestinians-1441741137#sthash.K9Wgq5cI.dpuf
- See more at:
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-we-are-all-doomed-become-palestinians-1441741137#sthash.K9Wgq5cI.dpuf
Jeff
Halper is the first to admit that he is “off the radar” of fellow
Israelis. He has been arrested for standing in front of bulldozers about
to demolish Palestinian homes more times than he cares to count. His
construction is dwarfed by the scale of Israel’s destruction. He and his
volunteers have rebuilt 187 Palestinian houses out of a total of 29,000
destroyed. He counts it as a success that 175 of them are still
standing.
He has had his EU funding withdrawn and his Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) only really campaigns abroad. Operating on the fringe of the fringe at home, even his partners on the left are only willing to go so far, before they feel they are betraying their Zionism.
With a white beard and a hearty chuckle, it is difficult to picture this Father Christmas lookalike in front of a bulldozer. Like many lifelong activists, he is surprisingly upbeat, or rather, one senses he can’t allow himself to appear otherwise. The status quo, he claims, is the darkness before the light.
Like most people he sees absolutely no chance of the Kerry initiative succeeding, but its failure, will be salutary as it will put an end to the pretense. The fog will lift not only about the peace talks themselves, but about the permanence of settlements, annexation of land and the Palestinian Authority itself which may be forced to resign or collapse.
Halper’s favoured solution is a bi-national state, a fusion of what he calls cultural Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. This annoys everyone. Israelis see it as a betrayal, but Palestinians see talk of a binational state as a way of legitimising Zionism through the back door.
But things, in Halper’s world, can only get better. For all his optimism, he retains an unvarnished view of the here and now: “One of the reasons why it is hard for us to work in Israel is because all the issues we work on, the Arabs, peace, occupation, are non-issues for Israelis. “ In a poll taken in the last election campaign in Israel, the occupation came in at number 11 on the list of priorities.
“One party ran on the issue of gay rights. Another [the Labour party] said they were a social democratic party that only deal with internal Israeli issues and specifically did not take a position on the occupation.” He said, “It’s kind of an invisible issue. The Israelis are so insulated, they don’t go to the West Bank, they don’t see the West Bank, they hardly ever see Arabs…”
The invisibility of the Arabs works well as long as they stay in their place: “If you bring a plumber in to fix your bathroom you call an Israeli plumber but you know he will bring an Arab with him to do the work or to paint your house. If you go to a restaurant you know the waitress is going to be Jewish Israeli but in the kitchen they’re going to be Palestinians or Bedouins. Everybody is in their place.”
Halper shies away from the word racism, preferring instead separation: “To Israelis, Arabs are background. They’re wallpaper somewhere. The Israeli mentality is we don’t notice them, we don’t see them, we don’t encounter them, and if we do encounter them and they are in their place that’s fine. There is no way in which I will let them into my space, but at the same time I think the Arabs don’t want to be in the Israeli space either, so there is a separation.”
Halper arrived in Israel in different times. Born in Northern Minnesota in 1945, he never knew Jews. He grew up with Bob Dylan, went to Woodstock, went to jail in Mississippi, was part of the anti-war movement, and sees himself very much as a product of the 1960’s. He was deeply affected by the book Roots by Alex Haley which was published in the wake of the Civil Rights and African American movements. He was similarly entranced by Cesar Chavez and La Raza, as well as the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Halper grew so intrigued by the idea of reclaiming his own roots that it led to Israel. He came to the Middle East describing himself then as a cultural Zionist, but has been struggling with the word ever since: “I wanted to be part of a project of reviving the national language and having a university and a literature, being a part of that national project, but not Zionist in the political sense of saying there has to be a Jewish state. Today I avoid the term Zionist because I think it’s just too loaded. So when people ask me if I’m a Zionist, I say I’m an Israeli. There’s nothing wrong with the Israeli component as long as it’s not territorial, not colonial and if it’s not oppressive.”
As such, Halper is in a group you can count on the fingers of one hand. While there certainly are other Israelis who support Palestine, most draw a line much sooner than he does “because ultimately they are Zionists” and “since they are Zionists they can’t go there. You simply get to a point where you say OK, this is as far as I’m going. The minute I say the word apartheid, they say, we are a human rights organisation we are not political. So we can’t say the word apartheid because that’s a political term. The implication of the end of Zionism for them, they just can’t contemplate.”
Despite having been a civil rights activist, a Vietnam war resister, refusing to bear arms during his mandatory Israeli military service, and raising two children who would later go on to be imprisoned for being conscientious objectors he does not consider himself to be a pacifist. While he says he is certainly not “for war” he “does recognise situations in which you do have to respond in an armed way.”
He concedes that “under international law Palestinians are allowed to resist occupation, colonisation and oppression by armed force - although you are not allowed to attack civilians.” But then the question is that the best strategy or not. In the case of Palestine, he estimates that 95% of Palestinian resistance is peaceful non-violent resistance and credits that as the way forward. He sees the work he does with ICAHD as going hand in hand with that Palestinian civil resistance and as such, the way forward for ultimately bringing peace to the land.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.OEVH9q5J.dpuf
He has had his EU funding withdrawn and his Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) only really campaigns abroad. Operating on the fringe of the fringe at home, even his partners on the left are only willing to go so far, before they feel they are betraying their Zionism.
With a white beard and a hearty chuckle, it is difficult to picture this Father Christmas lookalike in front of a bulldozer. Like many lifelong activists, he is surprisingly upbeat, or rather, one senses he can’t allow himself to appear otherwise. The status quo, he claims, is the darkness before the light.
Like most people he sees absolutely no chance of the Kerry initiative succeeding, but its failure, will be salutary as it will put an end to the pretense. The fog will lift not only about the peace talks themselves, but about the permanence of settlements, annexation of land and the Palestinian Authority itself which may be forced to resign or collapse.
Halper’s favoured solution is a bi-national state, a fusion of what he calls cultural Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. This annoys everyone. Israelis see it as a betrayal, but Palestinians see talk of a binational state as a way of legitimising Zionism through the back door.
But things, in Halper’s world, can only get better. For all his optimism, he retains an unvarnished view of the here and now: “One of the reasons why it is hard for us to work in Israel is because all the issues we work on, the Arabs, peace, occupation, are non-issues for Israelis. “ In a poll taken in the last election campaign in Israel, the occupation came in at number 11 on the list of priorities.
“One party ran on the issue of gay rights. Another [the Labour party] said they were a social democratic party that only deal with internal Israeli issues and specifically did not take a position on the occupation.” He said, “It’s kind of an invisible issue. The Israelis are so insulated, they don’t go to the West Bank, they don’t see the West Bank, they hardly ever see Arabs…”
The invisibility of the Arabs works well as long as they stay in their place: “If you bring a plumber in to fix your bathroom you call an Israeli plumber but you know he will bring an Arab with him to do the work or to paint your house. If you go to a restaurant you know the waitress is going to be Jewish Israeli but in the kitchen they’re going to be Palestinians or Bedouins. Everybody is in their place.”
Halper shies away from the word racism, preferring instead separation: “To Israelis, Arabs are background. They’re wallpaper somewhere. The Israeli mentality is we don’t notice them, we don’t see them, we don’t encounter them, and if we do encounter them and they are in their place that’s fine. There is no way in which I will let them into my space, but at the same time I think the Arabs don’t want to be in the Israeli space either, so there is a separation.”
Halper arrived in Israel in different times. Born in Northern Minnesota in 1945, he never knew Jews. He grew up with Bob Dylan, went to Woodstock, went to jail in Mississippi, was part of the anti-war movement, and sees himself very much as a product of the 1960’s. He was deeply affected by the book Roots by Alex Haley which was published in the wake of the Civil Rights and African American movements. He was similarly entranced by Cesar Chavez and La Raza, as well as the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Halper grew so intrigued by the idea of reclaiming his own roots that it led to Israel. He came to the Middle East describing himself then as a cultural Zionist, but has been struggling with the word ever since: “I wanted to be part of a project of reviving the national language and having a university and a literature, being a part of that national project, but not Zionist in the political sense of saying there has to be a Jewish state. Today I avoid the term Zionist because I think it’s just too loaded. So when people ask me if I’m a Zionist, I say I’m an Israeli. There’s nothing wrong with the Israeli component as long as it’s not territorial, not colonial and if it’s not oppressive.”
As such, Halper is in a group you can count on the fingers of one hand. While there certainly are other Israelis who support Palestine, most draw a line much sooner than he does “because ultimately they are Zionists” and “since they are Zionists they can’t go there. You simply get to a point where you say OK, this is as far as I’m going. The minute I say the word apartheid, they say, we are a human rights organisation we are not political. So we can’t say the word apartheid because that’s a political term. The implication of the end of Zionism for them, they just can’t contemplate.”
Despite having been a civil rights activist, a Vietnam war resister, refusing to bear arms during his mandatory Israeli military service, and raising two children who would later go on to be imprisoned for being conscientious objectors he does not consider himself to be a pacifist. While he says he is certainly not “for war” he “does recognise situations in which you do have to respond in an armed way.”
He concedes that “under international law Palestinians are allowed to resist occupation, colonisation and oppression by armed force - although you are not allowed to attack civilians.” But then the question is that the best strategy or not. In the case of Palestine, he estimates that 95% of Palestinian resistance is peaceful non-violent resistance and credits that as the way forward. He sees the work he does with ICAHD as going hand in hand with that Palestinian civil resistance and as such, the way forward for ultimately bringing peace to the land.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.OEVH9q5J.dpuf
Jeff Halper - An Israeli challenging the occupation
#RoadToPeace
The co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions shares his views on Palestine-Israel relations
Jeff Halper co-founder and director of ICAHD (ICAHD USA)
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.OEVH9q5J.dpufvvJeff Halper - An Israeli challenging the occupation
#RoadToPeace
The co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions shares his views on Palestine-Israel relations
Jeff Halper co-founder and director of ICAHD (ICAHD USA)
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.OEVH9q5J.dpufvvvvJeff Halper - An Israeli challenging the occupation
#RoadToPeace
The co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions shares his views on Palestine-Israel relations
Jeff Halper co-founder and director of ICAHD (ICAHD USA)
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeff-halper-israeli-challenging-occupation-1451159231#sthash.OEVH9q5J.dpuf
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Halper - An Israeli challenging the occupation - See more at:
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