‘We are constantly caught between the world as it is and the world as we would wish it to be.’
These words expressed a dilemma at the heart of a very stimulating consideration of the situation in Israel and Palestine at Meeting for Sufferings, held at Friends House on Saturday 5th February.

Marigold Bentley, assistant general secretary of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) and secretary of the Quaker Council for Church Interfaith Relations (QCCIR), was addressing a request received from the Palestinian churches in support of a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The Kairos Palestine document ‘A Moment of Truth’ has asked for a response to the call for a system of economic sanctions against Israel.  At the heart of the Kairos document is a call to ‘repentance’ and an appeal to the international community to acknowledge its complicity in the suffering of the Palestinian people. Marigold recognised the deeply religious basis of the Kairos document and talked about the background to Quaker involvement in the region and initiatives such as theEcumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) programme.

She stressed that the advocacy of Friends should not only be directed at national government but at church and faith communities. She also made clear that the boycott was not on products from Israel itself,  but from those produced by Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.

The huge range of products that are now created in the occupied territories was highlighted. A Friend said: ‘it seems that every bit of land that has been taken has something produced and exported from it.’

Several Friends spoke out strongly in support of the campaign to boycott these goods. One Friend urged Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) to give an unambiguous response on the issue. What was happening in the occupied territories, she said, was morally wrong.

A number of Friends who had been to Israel and Palestine spoke of their experiences and their concerns. Another Friend spoke passionately about her experience of seeing the suffering and humiliation that the Palestinian people endured on a daily basis.

The tradition of Quakers taking a neutral stand was raised and it was stressed that sometimes ‘we have to take an unpopular position and abstain’. A Friend urged Quakers to address the ‘pain suffered by both sides’ and that we ‘need to witness that there has been pain on both sides’. There were also a number of voices calling for restraint and highlighting the complexity of the situation. By jumping on the bandwagon of boycotts would some people judge Friends as ‘anti-Semitic’? Friends were never ‘herd followers’ and why should they be now? Some Israeli peace activists, it was stated, were against a policy of boycotts because it played into the hands of anti-Semites.   

A representative from the north of England talked of the fear and pain experienced among some Jewish people in Britain today. He spoke of how the doors of his Quaker meeting were left open during worship; but the doors of a synagogue nearby had to be closed during worship.  

Ultimately, a Friend said, we must do something that is pragmatic. What response will actually work? What response will help the Palestinian and Israeli people in the long term? Would boycotting goods from the occupied territories do this? Would sanctions on Israel work? Did they work in South Africa?

There was unity, throughout the meeting, that it must be made clear that Quakers acted not just because they cared about the suffering presently endured by the Palestinian people but because they also cared about the people of Israel. How, a Friend argued, can we change ‘hearts and minds’? That was the key question. She commended the EAPPI programme for expressing a Quaker way of working that was ‘rooted in love’ and urged us to find ‘a creative way of changing the hearts and minds of people in this country’.

At the end of a very interesting, thoughtful and interesting meeting it was clear that unity had not been achieved on a definite response to the Kairos document.

Comments

• Posted by miriam on February 13, 2011

  I was heartened to see that meeting for sufferings has considered the Kairos document at last. With our strong leading, experience and peace stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict, we Quakers have a lot to offer the peace process. The Quaker decision to support the boycott and divestment of goods from the occupied territories is long overdue and a debate is urgently needed at local and national level in BYM. We should have non doubts about adding our voices to this call. We can and should say a decisive NO to trading in these goods that are taken illegally. Quakers have always given strong support to the United Nations. We should have no doubts about supporting the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 calling on Israel to withdraw from the Palestine territories it occupied in 1967. Israeli expropriation of Palestinian resources from the occupied territories and and continued collective punishment of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, including denial of medical care and house demolitions are also in breach of the Geneva convention, which we Quakers have also supported. The call to boycott and divest is an opportunity for us to stand up and be counted. That we Quakers find the human rights violations committed against the Palestinians a violation of all we stand for.
  Our commitment to equality means that we will stand up and be counted when we witness abuses around the world as well as in our own communities with our friends and neighbours down the road, at the synagogue or mosque if it happens to them too, with gay and lesbian members of our meetings vulnerable to attack, to Moslems in our community fearing attack from white racists, and wherever else we might find it. The idea that a well tempered Quaker refusing to buy goods produced in breach of the Geneva convention or labelled by Waitrose as Israeli products when they are Palestinian….do we really think that is an act of anti-Semitism? I think not! British Quakers conduct in the 2nd world war must surely give the lie to any such charges. There are very many of us in membership who are ethnically Jewish. We are attuned to the whiff of anti-Semitism. To boycott produce from the occupied territories is the right thing to do. Each one of us can begin our own boycott right now, find the information on the internet and just get started. Meanwhile, we can work towards a decision at yearly meeting that can express what we really feel about what is happening there and lend our support, our experience and our commitment to peaceful ways, to the peace process.