so as the reverend said there is complexities but there are but many times the complexities are used to distract or or deny that there's also universe and very simple and very well known dynamics and processes at play so i will start with my own personal connection to to the region surrounding gas and to the g kilometers from the gaza strip in southwest israel he was asked to go there by the government or invited by by the government to help revive that is a promising young farmer he was twenty one he was a recent immigrant from caroline india where his family never really dealt with farming but they arrived in israel the entire community almost out of a pure ideology and a feeling that out of it could say out of love and two years later he got married to the lovers in his life my mother in law in the same place and i got into the picture thirty two years after that when i met the love of my life in a came to visit her at her parents place and just like with their daughter i failed with them in love at first sight hardworking people very honest very very wise modest and i'm pretty sure when they got a lot of that small piece of land in southwest israel they were not quite aware or even they were aware he was told they were told it was totally alright wots the recent history of that piece of land that part of israel was actually  was too strong to be overcome so the eventual ceasefire found them holding on to that territory with a few palestinian villages in it as well and one of the officers were there was  who later became a as you know the leader of egypt and in that agreement if they finally of course they got other there because there was an armistice and they had one and from what i've read explosions started sounding in those villages and houses starting blowing up in the corners of the villages and eventually if you live here is left and their descendants and we too moved in that region later in the mid ninety's we bought a house in a village not far from it these are not the same villages in the same names and exact location as a palestinian ones but but it's the same land basically  we bought a house there when we moved in and i was somewhat more aware maybe of history by then but i also thought it's all right because now we had a peace process with a palestinian and you know anyway nine hundred forty eight were raised to think that bygones are bygones about nine hundred forty eight it's beyond dispute so we tell ourselves and being i don't know somewhat left of center i not dawned upon me back then been have been to guys several times i think maybe once as a child passing through going to sinai but all the times i've been there is that there is adult were as a soldier a wearing a uniform and once visiting my brother who was a soldier there and that's all and that is very quite typical of israeli experience guys are far more than the west bank even is guarded behind was always guarded  behind fences and and heavily policed even when it west bank was considered the sile so you know where the current situation reflects the attitude and treatment of guys since ever since israel took over solution in resolution of the situation and and therefore these rallies left to their own devices or the israeli state taught its citizens whether immigrants or children or whatever all kinds of hogwash about who these people are whether they're in gaza the west bank inside israel or or in the palestinian diaspora and how to address them or whether at all to taken a very very icy very moral twist to go back to my wife's parents so they still live in their home my father in law now he's very ill and they were actually last thursday that is ten days ago there was this second day of the operation they had a doctor's appointment at ashkelon i was going on is the main town and it's far closer it's closer to guys even and we were there than where they live and a during the appointment my father in law was lying on the bed and the rocket alarm rang about four times and each  time my mother in law and the doctor had to run out there was the instructions and the security guard stayed with my dad in law and he has not just these few months he become less lucid than before really expect to remain completely clear of the effect iran gaza and and he and he and that games fire at civilians is criminal no matter what's the color or the nationality of the person holding the trigger but what we've been holding guys under it is inconceivable that we ask for peace and quiet so my  share with you the conditions of the people living in gaza but i find so i served in there in the i served in the i d f i'm not a security expert but i think i understand security more than many of those so called security experts and whoever tells you that security can be a range by holding a million people in imprisoned he is lying to you there  simply scam artists con artists there is no just if occasion and no security pretext can justify what's being done to gaza which is basically an open air prison so this has to end and  i hope with the immense backfire really that this operation has been for israel's government that we might be a few steps closer to that the this operation has be especially for the last twelve years since the collapse of the oil slow process twelve years they've been anyone who watches fox news so i don't and i don't have cable but i hear enough and i see clips so fox news would be a mild approximation of the echo chamber that the israeli mainstream has bubbled into self into the last twelve years and really i mean for me it's comical in one way but another way it's very painful because these are people you know i grew up with i know and i love them and they're good people in principle but if you put it again just like we put the people of gaza in a physical you know in a physical barbel in closing it from the world israel itself in a mental bubble and told itself total total crazy things for twelve years and that's how they convince themselves of this operation could be a good idea on any plan which is not in it at least this time reality came back to to hold them before the damage was even more terrible i mean as it is one hundred seventy two palestinians and six israelis died as far as i know the count and that's terrible but you could have been far far worse and  yeah if i may and i there's some somebody who didn't deserve credit i mean that deserves credit and didn't get almost any credit for the fact that this operation ended so fast and this is president obama and i've seen it i've read i wrote i've written that my last blog post if you look it up is it is saying that and i've gotten some heat over that from other anti war people and the fact remains that this operation ended our under seven days and the entire israeli establishment is  is walking around like somebody who got a kick in you know where and you know it's not the egyptian president to stop him ok they play their role but an egyptian president in the just came into power a few months ago and still can't figure out his o role in his own country could not do it to him to them and wasn't there some ass fighting either even though that that any wasn't even the resistance in inside israel which i want to say mercifully is waking up again but it's still a small minority it was a president that's already been maligned a lot and has disappointed us in the first term he has not been as bold as he could have been with respect to israel palestine but he has his style you know he doesn't go  on and on and it doesn't use the bully pulpit and start verbal the trashing people he works his own way as he sent secretary of state he called on the phone constantly he made sure that israelis give respect to egypt rather than i can or it which was all too convenient for the israeli government if they want it and and you know where i'm pretty sure that when secretary clinton got to jerusalem and then to cairo and then flew back to jerusalem it was a clear message that she's not leaving without a deal and maybe that's the first thing she actually told the people in jerusalem that she's not going to leave without a deal so that's why we're here now and not in the middle of a ground attack because a ground attack was planned and the entire israeli reserve forces was called up for the first time in thirty years and if you suspect like i do and like most israelis or maybe half of israeli suspect that this operation didn't have anything to do with the upcoming israeli elections then the most stupid thing that a a bunch of much a right wing politicians would do to increase their popularity for the election would be to call up all their reserves a bunch of macho men like themselves have them hyped them up with with rhetoric while their families at home might be sitting in shelters and have them stew in their own juice and tell each matches stories and then go back home knowing that they had a ceasefire and never got the chance to go in so there was no bluff here and there was somebody stopping them and i am and grateful that this happened even if i don't have somebody  waving a big big its needs me sign and i am also hopeful that in the next four years even though no one man can bring a change in the seas has to become from the grass roots and from the various sides involved that we are going to see better leadership from here from america for the for the coming four years thank good evening thank you for joining this important discussion i'd like to start by just giving you one example of a young person that i've come to know in gaza her name is she is twenty two years old she's a student at allows her university in gaza city and we've worked together on a number of projects to try to promote development of the technology sector within gaza she is a bright energetic talented young lady full of potential full of energy and she lives a fairly typical experience in  gaza she's a hard worker she studies hard and often without power and electricity and often cut off from from the internet and persevered through these frequent bombing campaigns and i've seen her through her disappointments and challenges she had applied to a number of interned ships in cairo and was approved but then was to travel she was rejected in terms of traveling to ramallah where we had also prepared a number of technology training events and so she would express her frustration and blog about it and was kind of painful to see but a fairly typical experience within gaza but i've also seen her development i've seen her overcome these challenges alternately she was able to secure a interned ship in cairo one of the first time she was able to leave gaza experience the world and you really saw someone really coming into into full bloom and during the past couple  weeks things were of course very tense we kept in touch via facebook and skype and her facebook statuses said things like my neighbor was just killed  also i'm going to sleep if i'm going to die and i'd prefer not to be awake to witness it another one in caps it has never been that close to my house before and another one i need something to distract me from all of this death around any idea for me to start coding she put out there and people started giving her some ideas to start coding i'll come back to story in the end but when i think about a solution to the crisis in gaza i think about what with this solution really mean to someone like layla and for us to think about a solution it's critical that we really identify and recognize what the underlying problems are and i'd like to just quickly address the three problems that i think are really of the highest order that need to be addressed if we're going to have a durable solution to this conflict the first problem is  gaza one point seven million who are bottled up in this tiny strip of land eighty percent are refugees they've been denied their right of return for over sixty four is just one example it's only one example maybe the most extreme example but really only one example of this zionist formula in the sinus formula as it's been practiced is quite simple more land less palestinians more land for jews less land for palestinians and when the palestinians can't be removed the should be confined and disconnected as confined and disconnected as possible and this is g this is jerusalem this is across the west bank crossed the jordan valley this is across israel it's across the negev in the south it's problem was made absolutely clear when on a letter on november sixteenth from the mer of upper nazareth shimon gaps role in a letter to the interior minister we can have a separate discussion about the interior minister and his quotes about bombing gaza back to the middle ages but in this letter this mare wrote as a response to same inconvenient demographic threat to the state of israel they represent a very inconvenient reality to this sinus program but to me the to stem the growth of the historic arab city of nazareth and the villages around it so it was actually put in place again to disconnect palestinians and it was done so according to this zionist formula and i think it was was described this policy this program was described pretty accurately by  a well known as early general who said quote when we have settled the land all the arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around bottle you could call it a bun to stun you could call it unclear if you could call it a reservation prison you could call it whatever you want to call it i will use general a tons worth of bottle but we have these bottles all over there are still still trying to make nazareth a bottle jerusalem is a bottle of the cities across the west bank is the bottle so here's the point if we are to solve the problem of gaza we first must solve this underlying view that palestinians can be bottled up because they represent some inconvenient demographic threat to the state of israel and to be direct this means recognizing the right of palestinians refugees to return to their homes full stop this is a legal right it's a moral right and the passage of time and delay tactics of the israeli government in no way less in this right problem number two the occupation of gaza the occupation of gaza has been in place for forty five years and continues to be in place despite what many commentators have said that israel withdrew we know gaza is a tiny piece of land if you were to go from the south to the north and try to run a marathon you need to make a u turn ok you can't make it all the way if you are to try to go to the east you're cut off you disconnected from palestinians in the west bank if you're to try to go to the west you can't there's a naval blockade that controls access to the sea if you try to go up into the air you can't the airspace  reserved for israel's drones and jet fighters if you want to go down into the ground to fix your sewage systems you can't because of the limitations that israel has imposed upon gaza and as  goldstone report outlined that in addition to controlling borders coastline and airspace israel continues to control gaza stella communications water electricity and sewage networks as well as the population registry the flow of people in goods into and out of the territory while the inhabitants of gaza continue to rely on the israeli currency this occupation and on top of this occupation as we know there's been an even more devastating siege for the past six years i don't know how many people have heard about this red lines document ok redlines document prepared it's right here in full view all of these charts and sheets and so on which detail the calorie consumption of palestinians in gaza and what it did was calculate i'll take you through the calculations that palestinians in gaza would need an average of two thousand two hundred seventy nine calories to avoid malnutrition and if israel were supplying all of gaza's food that would be one hundred and seventy point four truckloads a day but these planners then deducted sixty eight point six truckloads to account for the food that could be produced locally and then deducted thirteen truckloads to adjust for the culture and experience gazans food so as to be different than the typical israelis concern consumption and then other counterbalancing calculations led by the coordinator of government activities in the territories clearly they still view gaza as part of the territories to conclude gaza needed one hundred six truckloads a day and in the period between two thousand and seven and two thousand and ten israel allowed an average of sixty seven trucks a day so if you can calculate people's calories down to individual calorie you are an occupier as as well a pretty sick mind now this is not new number one let's realize that this crisis is tied to israel's forty five year occupation it predates how mouse it continues to be in place today and exist whether or not how mass is in place today none of us should be confused about that and if we look at the palestinian authority in the west bank led by mahmoud abbas he's given israel just about everything it's asked for and its occupation continues and settlement construction continues at a feverish pace and he has really very little to show for it so as an occupier of gaza israel has a legal obligation to protect the people being occupied not to wage war military an economic war against this population so the discussion should not be about easing restrictions the discussion should be about ending the occupation the third and last problem i'll discuss the formula was really presented as a kind of savior that would end the occupation lead to statehood lead to a solution and in my opinion it may be one of the most one sided misunderstood deals created in history and we're still haunted by today it's not something with all due respect that ended twelve years ago and a construct of all is still in place today so what did what was the change brought about by us from israel standpoint it was really a kind of magic formula in that it shifted their responsibility for maintaining the occupation to the people who were being occupied that is really an amazing shift so it created the palestinian interim government authority that it could now subcontract its security responsibilities to and now this authority suddenly became responsible for any act including any act of resistance that took place among any member of this population of millions and it's part of the p l o renounced the use of terrorism should think everyone can agree with but also any other act of violence and assumes responsibility to prevent violations and discipline violators so also put in the requirement of maintaining complete peace and quiet and any time there isn't complete peace and quiet that means the palestinians are not meeting the obligations of the ingredient that they signed so that is really becomes the only role for palestinians maintain peace and quiet for israel and what can palestinians do in that scenario well they can bring issues to the negotiating table and israel can say yes or israel can say no and i think we know that quite often israel said no and during the one nine hundred ninety s while peace negotiations were happening if it wanted to double the number of settlers over the west bank and what was this territory that was being discussed it could and it did the u s was not there to counterweight hold israel accountable you know would have to of course disagree with assaf around the role of obama i think it's an interesting theory but in my view the us president could not be more one sided than obama has been including in the most recent crisis so we have just two minutes please so we have a situation today where no one is holding israel accountable not the u s not the u and why do i bring that up here and talk about this construct of when hamas has not agreed to off slow and doesn't recognize us little well because i believe that the same formula basic formula has carried over and hamas is operating with similar expectations now that the p a has within the west bank it is responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in g whether these acts are created within hamas or by some other group outside of hamas that's what this agreement that's what the cease fires are about and we know that when conditions are so bad an occupation continues there are some percentage of human beings who eventually choose not to stay quiet this is a basic fact of life so what do we do i think the answer is really two simple things number one we need to focus on these core issues we cannot solve this problem until we unwind the formula until we end the occupation of gaza and until we recognize the rights of refugees over the ongoing zionist expansion people need to know that we need to remind people of that the second one we need to create some accountability in the system for israel today it has all the choices all the carrots and none of the sticks and there's an important global b d s movement boycott divestment and sanctions and there are very concrete steps that people can take so to close i'd like to bring this example back to the story of layla and while she was born and ruf our city she does not consider to be her home to layla her home is currently in israel she's never been there her grandmother fled when she was a thirteen year old girl on a hot day in july of one nine hundred forty eight this thirteen year old girl was baking bread she heard zionists forces were attacking and despite her hurry to escape she took the baking supplies with her as she believed this is only going to be a momentary thing and this refugee grandmother now tells a story of starting to bake bread in one country and finishing breaking bread and another country that she's remained in now her granddaughter layla not only deserves to live without the threat of bombs but she deserves the right to reach their full potential she deserves the right to can return to the place she considers home as much as any young israeli does and personally i don't think we should be bound to the construct of that was architected by the late prime minister of being who is a hero to many on the israeli left because as we know it's robina himself who architect many terrible things in his life including the expulsion of layla's grandmother and sixty thousand other unarmed civilians when he was a lieutenant colonel in one nine hundred forty and signed the expulsion order leslie the lay edward sayed wrote in two thousand and one the weapons the week in stateless cannot ever give up our its principles and its people to ending lee defend the high moral ground to keep telling the truth or minding the world of the full historical picture to hold on to the lawful right of resistance and restitution to mobilize people everywhere and to depend neither on the media nor the israelis but on oneself to tell the truth when will we as a people resume assume responsibility for what after all is ours and stop relying on leaders who no longer have any idea what they're doing it is this spirit expresses my humble intention of being with you here this evening thank you very  much thank you thank you for speaking to us and thank you everyone for coming a week ago i had this crazy idea in my mind that there was about to be a war and there was about to be an invasion and what could i do i didn't want to sit there filling my hands in my lap and saying there's nothing that i could do other than sit back and watch this disaster unfold and i started calling some friends locally activists locally and said if i tried to organize this program would you know do you think it would be worth the idea would you support it and most  yes and so that's how this event started only a week ago and thanks to that network of people and thanks to facebook and twitter and social media we have all of you here tonight and i want to thank you for for coming some of those people that i spoke to that were supportive were dick black who's been my partner in speaking locally against a possible war in iran is really sharing this vision of mine and helping me make it happen and bring you here tonight and there's someone who isn't here tonight who i want to remember and that is brenda bents who lived on a number of these events in the past couple of years and brenda passed away a number of months ago and i she was my partner in doing these sorts of events and i'm thinking of her now in her  memory and she's here with us in spirit the israeli palestinian conflict is a complex story has many elements many actors in many roles but essentially it's a three legged school stool one leg is israel one leg is palestine and one leg is the us in my own person i represent two of those legs unlike us off my friend here here who spoke earlier i'm not israeli i'm an american jew but by virtue of my upbringing and my identity as a jew israel has played a critical role in my life its policies in its security and its wellbeing are important to me it's why i write the blog that i've written for the last nine years every day turning out material that tries to build support for peace and justice in that region since i was a teenager is just said i've devoted a major part of my life to envisioning an israel that was peaceful democratic and tolerant at one time most american jews and israelis shared such a vision but gradually unlike israel's current leaders i believe the fate of israeli jews and palestinians are inextricably intertwined what one harms one harms both there's no way one succeed and triumph unless the other does if one fails the other will fail in short they must live together or die together there are many reasons why i do what i do and write what i write among them i want the american people and their leaders to know if there are american jews who are not apologists for the worst excesses of the current israeli government i want  that if their leadership or organizations want to become reflexive defenders of the netanyahu government there are those in this community like me who won't allow them to have a monopoly and finally i want israelis to know that there are american jews who care about israel but who will not stand idly by while this country sells its birthright for a mess of power inch tramples on democratic values and messengers palestinians and their supporters whether they're american or arab i'm here to tell you something that you already know american and israeli policy in gaza is a failure every argument offered by president  or prime minister netanyahu to justify the siege and the recurring series of wars and assaults fails on its face some of you may have seen you see from when ayers bit in the new york times yesterday in which he offered this liberal zionist approach that the new york times tends to take in its coverage of the gaza siege is not only a violation of international law because it international law prohibits collective punishment of civilian population it doesn't even serve a pragmatic purpose in israeli terms there are two or arguments that are offered in favor of the siege that it stops terror attacks against israel and it the popularity of hamas which in israeli terms is a terrorist organization the recent assault by the euphemistic biblical term pillar of cloud or pillar of defense and we can talk a lot about that another time that's another interesting misuse or use of religious terminology prove that hamas has been able to arm itself despite the siege it proved that the siege if anything strengthened  as and didn't weaken it by almost every account the latest crisis has rendered fatah and the p a completely irrelevant politically this suits israel just fine because it wants no viable represent recognized this is meant that despite weighty matters that needed to be discussed by both sides like the shell eat prisoner exchange or cease fires during operation cast lead or the cease fire that was announced a few days ago none of them could be discussed with the major interlocutor which is hamas it meant that egypt led by the muslim brotherhood had to take the lead role in representing  s and egypt under the egyptian brotherhood is not exactly the country that is the fondest in the eyes of the united states or israel so in effect they have they have bolstered the prestige  two two movements two nations that they would prefer not to have done and this is what their policy has has cost the announced terms of the cease fire this week showed possible cracks in the facade that the that israel and the u s have created regarding hamas not only did is really greed to stream movement in the border zone it agreed to relaxing restrictions on gaza fishermen and to end the siege in truth it offered to change those procedures in the context of negotiations that would be led by egypt and as you know egypt is going through its own domestic drama right now so we're not sure what's happening with those negotiations but hamas in the new york times says that there already have been such meetings which to me is a very good sign israel of course refuses can see there been meetings refuses to concede that it will make any changes but that is almost to be  expected the new york times also announced that gaza fishermen have for the first time in i think six years gone beyond the israeli imposed three mile limit for fishing and they've gone six miles out and nobody from the israeli navy stopped them and this is remarkable because those fishermen have a long history of being terribly harassed by the israeli navy by their ships being sunk and them injured and not being able to fish so this is another change that we hope is going to continue and be expanded a few days ago two thousand cars and celebrated their newly won freedom to move within these really impose no go zone on the border and unfortunately the i d f rewarded them with bullets which killed a twenty year old gazan farmer and wounded ten others israel i think paid a heavy price for that act because i don't that anyone outside of israel had much understanding of why it would be necessary to kill an unarmed civilian just because he was taking a walk in land that was his which he was hoping that he'd be able to form again we don't know what exactly was agreed by the parties negotiating the ceasefire there may be side agreements secret side agreements there but if they do lead to lifting the siege it can't happen a moment too soon has only one choice one pragmatic realistic choice in relation to gaza it has to recognize hamas it has to end the siege and it has to demand that hamas be accountable for things that happened in gaza it in that in his mind is the only way in which israel can expect that there can be any quiet in the south and  washington or in in television and i'm sorry to say that president obama i think is among them he failed to compel israel to  and i think he deserves a certain level of credit for that highly critical of all the things that he didn't do that he could have done aside from that i don't think that obama would have made the effort that he did in the ceasefire and less he felt that an invasion of gaza would have upset the applecart of all the other issues they need to deal with in the in the middle east the main one of which is iran a possible invasion of gaza threatened his ability to negotiate his way out of the iran impasse impasse i made the argument in my blog and this idea was originally given to me by tick blacky who's who's with us tonight  that obama was as supportive as he was of the israelis refusing to criticize them conceding that they had a right in his eyes to defend themselves from hamas rockets  because he needed to build up credits in the bank with israelis and the israel lobby when he planned later on to take a more conciliatory approach towards iran and i don't know whether that is actually going to happen i don't know what will happen with iran but my sense is that he wants to take a position that is very much opposed to the israeli position at the right moment of negotiations with the iranians i have to concede that it's a losing proposition to bet that barak obama who i call the democratic kissinger would put forward a principled farsighted proposal that would resolve all the differences with iran but i think we can expect that he might be able to put forward some proposals that would be pragmatic and would lessen tension and would end the chance that israel or anyone will go to war against iran  which just as a few days ago there was a real possibility of there being a war in gaza i still think there is a real possibility of there being a war against iran even a scaled down u s agenda like the one that i'm talking about w there are those who argue in israel and elsewhere that the gaza salt was a test run for an israeli attack on iran an article in the new york times honestly compared israel's attack on gaza to what happened in the spanish civil war in which nazi germany provided the weapons for franco to fight and win the war there and that and he had in his hand that crazy exploding cannon ball that he showed during his u n general assembly speech that was supposed to represent the iranian nuclear bomb and in this cartoon bibi's body dissolves in the bottom of his body dissolves into the shape of bombs being dropped on gaza so in that sense he's he's managed to integrate visually this whole notion of gaza iran united together the fate maybe united together i hope that's not the case but you know it's a very compelling visual image i'm afraid my friends that we have to wage this war for peace on two fronts one in gaza and another in iran it makes it very hard for us because no sooner do we stop one bit of mayhem than we have to or face the prospect of another but i'm confident that in the long run history bends in an arc toward the just and not the powerful we've only face the gazi each for six years only in quotes are these really occupation for forty five years the knocked off for sixty four years no one thought the berlin wall would fall or that soviet union would implode no one thought peace would come to northern becoming president as happened in two thousand and eight he would have thought a year ago that on songs tucci would be a nobel laureate and that she would welcome brock obama to burma in the first visit by us president we have to be optimists despite the immense suffering it causes endured injustice can't continue forever there's a scientific principle that given a choice between a simple and a complicated proof of a problem the simpler answer is always right this is also true in politics a status quo that is contorted into moral knots cannot survive eventually it will collapse under the weight if its own inconsistency and lies simple basic truths and realities will win eventually there will be just as there will be palestine hamas will be recognized the siege will end not because israel will want it but because common sense and pragmatism will force the world to understand it must be this way the alternative is endless war bodies stacked like cordwood and a barren desolate middle east drag which drags the rest of the world into the maelstrom no one wants that thanks a lot