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Wadi Foquin is a village of 1,300 people about 5 miles southwest of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. It lies in a rich agricultural valley on the Green Line—the Israel-Palestine border—with the Israeli town of Tzur Hadassa overlooking it on one side and two Israeli-only settlements, Hadar Betar and Betar Illit, on the other side, in Palestinian territory. Betar Illit has a current population of 50,000 and is planned to eventually accommodate 100,000.

Like many other villages in the West Bank, Wadi Foquin is losing generations-old farmland due to settlement construction and extension of Israel’s separation barrier, both illegal under international law. Since 1948, in fact, fully three-quarters of the village’s land has been expropriated by the Israeli government. Dynamiting for settlement construction has also dried up many of the natural springs used for irrigation, and construction debris and raw sewage discharged from Betar Illit have contaminated fields and made them unsuitable for growing. Village life is further constricted by Israeli military checkpoints and Israeli-only bypass roads, which limit access to markets, jobs, schools, and healthcare facilities. 

Friends of Wadi Foquin has worked to provide financial assistance for projects supporting the economic survival of the village, made annual visits to Wadi Foquin, and—as the village has come under increasing threat from settlement expansion—advocated for its survival on Capitol Hill. This community development project is supported by the United Methodist Church, through its General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). Projects include Bee Project, Youth Leadership, Women’s Initiative, Community Center and “Come & See Exposure Trips.”

On March 18, 2024, the radio show, Speaking of Palestine, interviewed Adam Manasara from Wadi Foquin. To listen: https://archive.org/details/speakingofpalestine20240325

Friends of Wadi Foquin website: https://www.friendsofwadifoquin.com/

To donate to Friends of Wadi Foquin: https://www.friendsofwadifoquin.com/donate.html

This is an excerpt from the 4/1/24 “Speaking of Palestine” radio show about targeted vs untargeted Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions actions.

My dearest community,

These past few months have been rough. It seems as though everything I thought to be true of humanity has been challenged. I, and every Palestinian I have spoken to, am living in this very other realm of shock and isolation.

What is happening to the people of Gaza and the West Bank has not only deeply emotionally affected Palestinians everywhere, but has also affected our actual physical safety all over the world. We have watched Palestinian youth being shot and stabbed here in the United States. We have seen Palestinian business owners
being targeted. At this point, each of us has a story of experiencing racism. When our friends ask us the most benign question of “How are you?” we stare blankly, wondering what words we are supposed to use. Simply put, we are not okay. We may never be okay again.

I spoke with a cousin of mine who is a dentist in Amman, Jordan. We are from 1948, which means our family was driven out of our hometown of Al Lydd, Palestine during the first Nakba. I was worried about him and all of my family living in various Arab countries. I asked him, “Are you okay? Are you feeling safe with the war happening so close by?”

What he told me kind of rocked my world. He let me know that of course they are sad and angry, they are feeling all of the feelings that we Palestinians in the States are feeling, but they are more worried about me. Worried about me? I’m on the other side of the world! It didn’t compute. But then he went on to tell me that they have each other, they live in a world where they can openly mourn, openly express enraged feelings about the genocide, but they know that I live here. They know that being Palestinian in America is not an easy thing. They know that I have to hide my pain, my sorrow, my grief, my anger, here, in the land of the free. They know that
America is a country built on racism. He told me that they wished I were there. They would feel better if I were there. They would worry less about me if I were… closer to the war? I have sat with this. Turning it over in my head.

I have come to realize that somewhere deep inside of me I have been holding on to a belief, probably more like a hope, that this country (or at least the progressive circles I move in) stands for justice. Somehow I believed that the same people who have performatively championed the rights of the LGBTQ++ community, and who were aghast at the Mexican children being put into cages, and who planted Black Lives Matters signs in their front yards; these people who have recited land acknowledgments, and who have read all the books on white fragility and who learned to shame other white folks for their colonized mindsets, these people who abhorred Trump and all he stood for, would call out Biden and unwaveringly call for a ceasefire.

 Boy. Was. I. Wrong.

What I have learned of my community is that performative action is fickle. That unless these words have been popularized by celebrities and big box companies, that unless the risk to speak up is calculated in that it will make a person appear risky without any real risk being taken, then silence is the action. “Your silence is violence.” This phrase has taken on a whole different level of meaning for me.

In moments when I allow myself quiet reflections not haunted by the images of mourning mothers holding the bodies of their beautiful children now dusty and broken, limp and lifeless in their arms, I wonder if people understand what it is like to have been born with a political identity. I wonder if people understand the difference between choosing a cause and being the cause.

My sense is that most people do not know that we can never go home, take off the indicators of solidarity, put our keffiyehs away, carefully store our protest signs in the closet, and take rest. Unless you have watched your people continuously be killed by police and military who are never being held accountable, unless you have had to debate the right for your people to exist in humanitarian conditions, you may never really understand what it is like to never have rest.

When your DNA is deemed terrorist there is never a moment of solace. When knowing that children with your name, familiar dinners, and the songs of your childhood, have all been systematically and intentionally destroyed, there can never be rest. Palestine is in us. We are honored to be of those people with great faith and
strength, and it is a heavy burden that we must always carry.

I feel so much guilt in my sadness. I feel so much guilt in my pain. How does racism that I experience here compare to carrying their children’s body parts in bags? How does my exhaustion here compare to amputating their child’s legs without anesthesia? I often wonder if I even have a right to cry.

Someday I want to write a beautiful poem about the freedom of my people. I am saving the words in my heart, dropping them like pennies of hope. I wonder what it will feel like to only write about the beauty of my homeland, of my people. It might feel strange, unfamiliar, to no longer beg for their lives to be seen.

I am wet with grief. Their grief. My grief. It is a part of our identity. Grief and strength. Grief and faith. Grief and food. Grief and music. Grief and dance. Grief and survival.

It is not complicated. Nothing about this is complicated. Killing innocent people is never complicated. Also, racism is not complicated. Othering is not complicated. But what can you say when people refuse to acknowledge humanity? What can you say when people turn a blind eye to images of dead and dying children? I
wonder, “How can I make you see what I see?” Do you know your privilege? I know mine. A bed. Food. Water.

My greatest privilege is my voice. Words. Free Palestine!

Hanan Huneidi is a queer Palestinian community activist and educator.

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Not that long ago the Jews were in need of protection from genocide at the hands of the Nazis who were determined to construct a racially pure state by extinguishing all the Jews and the other non-Aryans. But today the state of Israel is committing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza in its own pursuit to create an ethnically pure Jewish-supremacist state that requires the subjugation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and of the Palestinian territories.

In stating this fact I intend no endorsement or sympathy for the horrific Hamas attack on Israel—taking over 200 hostages, murdering 1400 Israelis and injuring hundreds more, most of whom were civilians, and hunting them down in their homes and at a dance festival that was reminiscent of the massacres that happened throughout Jewish history. The savagery of the Hamas attack has awakened primal fears of annihilation that many Jews carry in their psyche and it must be condemned as a war crime. All that said, I understand the deep sense of rage, humiliation, and desperation from which it springs.

The 75-year-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians did not just start that day with this singular event and it is disingenuous to overlook this crucial reality. There is a context and a complex history, much of which has been systematically excluded from the biased Western media that must be understood and confronted.

That crucial history includes among other things the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in the first days of the Jewish state known as the Nakba; the horrific massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin; the brutal 56-year-long occupation of Palestinian land in violation of international law and numerous UN General Assembly resolutions; and the 16-year siege of Gaza with its relentless carpet bombing of a captive civilian population with no place to hide—a siege that is a death-grip on Gaza because Israel controls the amount of food, water, fuel, medicine, electricity etc that the 2.3 millions Palestinians living there are allowed.

It is sheer delusion and magical thinking to believe Israelis can ever be safe and secure as long as Palestinians are living under the Israeli boot. Any oppressed people will naturally seek to obtain their freedom and will resort to violence in their pursuit of that freedom especially if their aspirations are thwarted and denied as they often have been even when pursued non-violently through appeals to conscience and international law. We Jews should understand this given the fact that our desperate plight fell on deaf ears despite the horrendous history of discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and ultimately the genocide of the Holocaust that we endured. As Jews we must rise above our understandable fears and impulse toward vengeance and never sink so low as to exploit our own suffering in order to impose suffering on another. Never Again must mean Never Again for Everyone.

This madness must stop before this conflict becomes a flash point that drags the larger region into a state of war. Because Israel is the vastly stronger party to the conflict due to its overwhelming military power and the iron-clad support of the U.S. government, it

is incumbent on it to reach out and pursue genuine negotiations with the Palestinians who wish to find some common ground before we all perish in the barbarism descending upon us. The most urgent task for the moment is to bring an immediate halt to Israel’s savage bombing of Gaza and get life-saving food, water, fuel, medicine, electricity etc to its beleaguered people.

This tragic conflict can never ultimately be resolved through military might. I think it is impossible at this point to envision the exact contours of any agreement that might bring an end to this bloody conflict. But one thing is for certain—there is no perfect agreement whereby each side gets all of what it wants. The best agreement must affirm the fundamental humanity of both peoples, set aside selective moral outrage, and strive to obtain the fullest possible measure of freedom justice, dignity, security, and self-determination that meets the legitimate concerns and aspirations of both peoples.

David Glick; October 29, 2023 Fairfax, CA 94930

First Monday of the month on KBBF (FM 89.1) NCCP will air a program focussing on different aspects relating to lack of human rights in Palestine.

Link below features an interview of Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal in which she discusses the challenge to students  on university campuses who advocate for Palestinian human rights. Please take a listen and let us know your response.

https://www.radiofreeamerica.com/show/son-del-caribe-2-la-voz-de-su-comunidad

 

Los Angeles Times Article – July 8th, 2017

“There are many reasons people may be barred from entering the state of Israel. If they present a risk of criminal or terrorist activity, for instance. If they tell lies at the border or don’t cooperate with border officials. If they’re suspected of trying to immigrate illegally.

But now Israel has added a new rule — to implement a noxious law passed by the Knesset in March — requiring border authorities to refuse entry also to people who have publicly supported a boycott of the country. These visitors would be turned away not because they are suspected of a crime or pose a security risk, but because they have expressed an opinion in favor of a nonviolent protest movement that is unpopular in the country.

Frankly, this is not an attempt to combat anti-Semitism, as some claim, nor will it end what the law’s backers call the “delegitimization” of the Jewish state. It is, rather, an attack on freedom of expression and on political dissent. It is a disappointing step backward for a country that routinely boasts of its robust democracy and presents itself up as a bastion of freedom in an unfree part of the world.

Truly free countries tolerate peaceful dissent.

The law was passed to battle the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The loosely organized BDS movement, begun more than a decade ago and modeled on the international boycott campaign that targeted South Africa under apartheid, calls on people and companies to boycott Israel until it ends its occupation of “all Arab lands,” tears down its border barrier separating Israelis from Palestinians, ensures equal legal rights for Arab citizens and acknowledges the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the former homes of their families in Israel.

Some supporters of BDS accept the “two-state solution” in which a secure Israel and an independent Palestine would exist side by side; others don’t. Over time, alternative boycott calls have emerged: Some critics of Israel’s policies, for instance, call for a boycott only of goods produced in Israeli settlements; others would target all Israeli goods. The new law does not distinguish between the two.

It is not entirely clear whether the government intends to keep out only leaders of the BDS movement or whether the law could be applied equally to, say, a college student who has posted a pro-boycott message on Facebook. According to the newspaper Haaretz, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wants to set up a database of Israeli citizens who promote or support BDS; the government already has created an “intelligence unit” to gather information on BDS activists from abroad, the newspaper reported.

Refusing entry to the country’s critics isn’t unprecedented; Israel has turned away travelers for political reasons in the past, including denying a visa earlier this year to a researcher from Human Rights Watch. It has also restricted the foreign travel of Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement.

Some other governments have rallied to support Israel. In France, for instance, an appeals court upheld “hate crime” convictions for several supporters of BDS. In the U.S., a number of states have enacted laws barring their agencies from doing business with companies or individuals that endorse boycotts against Israel.

This page has never called for a boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel and has been consistent for decades in supporting a two-state solution. But whether one agrees with the goals of BDS or not, the fact remains that boycotts are a form of speech, a classic tool of peaceful political expression.

Israel, a country that has faced more than its share of wars, terrorism and other violent threats, has over the years built a strong democracy marked by vigorous debate and a tolerance of alternative points of view, at least for its own citizens inside its own borders. It should not backslide.

Truly free countries tolerate peaceful dissent. The 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories seized during the Six-Day War has gone on for too long and must eventually be brought to an end. For Israeli authorities to demonize — or exclude — those who publicly oppose it is a terrible mistake.”

This was a posting we found from the LA Times: