the topic that i wanted to talk about i realize was a topic that the bothers me a lot and it is the role of jews in palestine solidarity movement after nine eleven happened i retired just coincidentally one year i mean one week after nine eleven and i decided that i was going to take a crack at those peace activists and so i joined a learned the tax on the united states were for three basic reasons one was the sanctions on iraq one was the military bases in the middle east th engendered anger in the middle east towards america or at least towards america's government and the third and probably the most pronounced was our blind unstoppable support for the state of israel and its occupation of palestine was the was a core was a core issue and i made myself a little sign that said american jews cole and lead the world to peace tell israel to end the occupation and i carried this sign in front of the hillel campus of university of michigan on saturday morning as some people were coming in to service love the first thing that struck me was the criticism that i received from people in the peace movement that i had joined and a saying peace movement  was went through a number of name changes and today it's called michigan peace works i could not get palestine on the table to be discussed and i didn't understand why there was no traction on this when it was clearly a major issue that's an important issue henry i was told we're going to push this off to the side oh we're going to table and take it up next meeting and i would wait and then next meeting something else would have precedence and i would not get palestine on the table and after going to say all the almost three months or four months of trying in the middle of this actually gone to  my first three trips to observe what was going on i did not understand why this idea is not getting any traction and and though it's not conclusive by any means i did notice that the leadership in this group of people we're we're we're two jewish women and and so it may be at least put a dot on the map this was an incident that happened and in fact one of the jewish women had convinced me for two years that the that to be a in effect of peace activists i first had to have peace in my heart that it couldn't be that it never has and never will and so it wasn't you know and i don't think in terms of like malcolm x that he would think he had peace and heart yet i think he was incredibly affected and he affected me it got to the point where ok i labored on that for a long time trying to get it mild enough to pass muster and turned out to be a relatively weak statement and i said well let's put this to the membership that and they said well we need to have a premium for that you know and so we need and in fact we don't want just a simple majority to carry the day we want a two thirds majority to carry the day i'm saying but wait a minute i can't majority rule we're not this you know well as it turned out  percent seventy eight percent of the members wanted to have that that resolution and and the next steering committee meeting that i attended one woman i can clearly remember her saying i don't think those people knew what they were voting for so you know that's so to me power abusive that they would do that and of course the second thing that happened was that the membership to do that there's a checking account that will deposit your check you know and they'll do what they want to do but you're not going to have much of an input to it and so the third thing that happened of course is that i quit because i you know i just thought that the the jewish community in any city is very focused on promoting the state of israel i doubt that we can identify any other coherent grouping of people coherent committee that supports israel more i don't think for instance that you know pipefitters from jackson michigan support israel more than the jewish community of jackson michigan  it's very powerful they you know you get in trouble when you say jews are wealthy but in our neck of the woods an arbor a year in the winter they will hold a fundraiser for the jewish federation and out six hundred people seven hundred people that attend they'll of always a million dollars and it's not the only that they're wealthy but they they will focus that wealth on the support of the state of israel by their own admission twenty eight percent of the monies gathered goes directly to the state of israel other monies of course do charitable organizational work and stuff like that and that's kind of like dressing up or disguising or masking their support for the jewish state remembered and to me it's just such an incredibly powerful quote it has just made me think so much of it and it goes i guess i just read it the crime against the palestinian people is being committed by a jewish state with jewish soldiers using weapons displaying jewish religious symbols and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organized jews worldwide but the name jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do and and i i differ slightly from paul in that you know when where where we stand in front of beth israel congregation every saturday morning i don't believe anybody in our group is holding the congregants responsible for what israel's doing what we do hold them responsible or accountable for their support of what israel is doing so we we draw that line and we're a and and so to me that's just their very revealing a very shocking but that that tells me that the jewish community is a is a viable target for criticism that gets overlooked somehow the jewish community never gets held accountable and i'm very curious as to why our group which attempts to do this and has attempted every saturday morning to do this for seven and a half of the rifleman i don't know if everybody was a fan of the riflemen or something like that he said that was signed in one episode a man's never wrong doing what he thinks is right for the boy and i just took that to heart and they a peace activist in the cause of palestinian struggle that i would think that the bar rises that he would have to be a little bit more knowledgeable about what's going on in palestine and have a little history that he could count on to promote his his goals and i would think that that person would be you know i would i would require that of somebody that was my bar of expectation and the final bar to me is that if a person is jewish and he is in the palestine solidarity movement i think that that i want to be able you know that that i think he she is poised most favorably to hold the jewish community accountable and so i scratch my head when i when i think that a we're the only group that is doing this and be our harshest critics are for jews in the peace movement that won't hold their own community accountable and and i have a list of thirty four jews who have lied to get out of standing with us who have been in the area giving talks and when i call them and these are people that i think we all know like you know i you know i'm not here to really trash people but i am here to question the and then she said well i don't think i would i would do that you know and i said well how other would other ways the you used to hold your community accountable for the crimes against the palestinian people and she turned on her heel and walked away from me you know and this isn't this isn't you need maybe a benjamin never return my emails and adults are you know at first said she would be enthused about stay in the with the sin and some people you know convinced her that if they s reading my own experience to the table what is it that that the creates the the this this difficulty and i you know i'm certainly no professional psychologist but it seems to me that that jews get into the movement and because they're concerned about palestinian children dying you know certainly when you have an attack on a population that is completely caged in the world's largest concentration camp right there on the banks of the mediterranean and death is just rained down on the four hundred children die well well that causes some activists to take part finally realize and understand that palestine is a zero sum game and by what i mean by that is the classical chess or checkers move you know right when i have always is that you have lost plus all the pieces that are again equal zero and so all the gains made by the zionists as they came and bought land and then as they came and destroyed villages and took them and took you know property and built things on that all came as a result of the losses of the palestinian people and so just this means that you've got to go the other way you've got to start a process by which jewish supremacism was  challenged and and reduced in that in in in they were eliminated in the middle east so when jewish activists come and see oh boy the more i push on this i'm going to come to the conclusion that a jewish state become gate keepers to prevent other people like our group from going any further and challenging the legitimacy of the state of israel challenging jewish supremacism whether it be here in this country or in palestine and so this is keeping role and i can you know the last gate keeping was a it was from the unitarians we had asked them they have a social action group i think it's called unitarians for justice in the middle east uni j m e and we said you know we would like to come to your church and and present a little panel of our people the vigil with us and the unitarians which i'm told are very achieve and so we were prepared to do that but the committee denied our request so and the committee has a jewish woman at the head and so again this is another dot on my map of who's in control here what's going on it's very difficult you know you can't prove any of this in a court of law i was just telling folks at dinner that a friend of ours was a physician is a physician and she had a job as a doctor and she was standing vigil and she comes to work one day and finds that there's a new contract and they want her to sign it and it says i won't participate in any political activities outside of work or to the extent where the jewish community and we have the smoking gun on this and we have a letter to the mayor where the letter says we have been watching you the mayor and the city council for two years now think it was two years ago or vigils and you haven't done anything to protect us let me remind you mr mayor that we represent four hundred sixty families and we vote fifty days later the city council of ann arbor michigan these people elected and sworn to uphold the constitution under which we exercise our free speech they condemn they use the word condemn they condemned our vigils which are nothing more than an expression of free speech on public cops were there every day films were running every day you know and they couldn't find anything that we were doing on because we were kind of complying with our first amendment rights and and so the  interested white folk that wanted to help the black man in his struggle and he eventually came to the point and this was after his fifteen year change and when he became a true want to help us we're not going to let anybody into our new black nationalist movement when i feel that white skin because we see what happens and he he depicted exactly what's happening in the palestinian struggle so peace activists whom we believe is sincere but your job mr white peace activist has to go where the racism is in the country the blacks are behaving in a racist powerful manner the whites are so if you want to help us as a white person you go into your own community and address white racist white supremacist issues there and we as blacks will continue to educate the black population as to what's going on and the two movements will work together by working separately and and when i apply that to our group's efforts i would think and maybe this is vain to say but i would think that if malcolm came back that he would say what we're doing is the right thing we as jews and our friends are holding the the jewish community accountable and that's the job of jews in the peace movement and so my list of thirty four jewish people that won't stand vigil won't you know what are they doing they're getting into leadership positions in the peace movement jewish voice for peace i've been very critical about jewish voice for peace because they're not sincere where do they stand do they want to end the occupation in the west bank and gaza to maintain a jewish state or do they want to end the occupation in gaza in the west bank to dismantle the jewish state we want to dismantle the state we're very upfront and clear about that but why isn't medea benjamin clear up front about that why isn't barbara why don't they write a letter to the editor critical of the rabbis taking children over to israel to be indoctrinated to be have them post with soldiers tanks and on a p c s and stuff like that and in can feeling of versus them the jews worse of the rest of the world because that is what they're doing going over there i see it very clearly when i see a debate between a you know a member of jewish voice for peace in this case was barbie and are very right wing man named don cohen right wing jewish zionist from the g c r c of to try and they're both on the stage together and he stand he stands up and he says i'm a jew i support israel's right to exist as a jewish state and she says nothing you know in terms of i'm saying so you don't do that you know but she didn't indict him he has to understand that the good cop bad cop that we're looking at here the left science right science you know dance that's going on as if there's a difference but when push comes to shove the bottom line is that there is no difference that they both support your knew he was eating you know so maybe maybe with that we can we could end this part of the