A different view from a Jewish woman

Michael Miller
RELIGION BEAT
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Anna Baltzer's words spill out with the nervous passion of someone who wants to save the world if only someone would listen.
The 28-year-old Jewish American woman, though, is focused on a small patch of the world known as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. She'll give her view of the Israeli-Palestinian situation at a talk at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Horowitz Auditorium in Bradley University's Caterpillar Global Communications Center.
It won't be a view that you're used to hearing from someone who's Jewish, though.
Baltzer has visited Israel and the occupied territories several times since late 2003, when, she said, she went to work for International Women's Peace Service documenting human rights abuses in the West Bank. She ended up on that path after talking with Palestinian families while backpacking in Iran and Syria.
"I didn't believe what they were saying," she said. "It made me curious enough to go around and do some research."
Her view now is that the Israeli government is oppressing the Palestinian people thanks to what she said is a Zionist vision of a Jewish-only state and a desire to control resources and wield power.
She calls for Americans - especially Jewish Americans - to do their own research on the Middle East on how Israelis are treating Palestinians beyond what's reported in the mainstream U.S. media. She also calls for divestment of stock in companies that do business with Israel - one of which is Caterpillar Inc., after which the BU building in which she'll be speaking is named.
The oppression, the author of "Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories" said, is in the form of such policies as forcing Palestinians to use older roads, limiting Arab Israelis' ability to buy property, setting up checkpoints that can turn a 15-minute trip to a hospital into a day-long wait, and building a wall that separates Palestinian towns and villages from each other.
Israeli deputy consul general Andy David in Chicago, though, said that while more than 90 percent of land in the country is owned by the government and the Jewish National Fund, it is available for leasing to any Israeli citizen, whether Arab or Jew. He said Arabs also enjoy full rights of participation in Israeli government.
The Myths & Facts Online Web site says Israel is trying to balance security concerns with humanitarian needs in the territories, and has gone out of its way at times to assure medical care for some Palestinians.
The worst thing about the situation from the American point of view, Baltzer said, is that U.S. tax dollars sent to Israel are in large part making alleged mistreatment of Palestinians possible.
"We're basically paying for a lot of what (Israel) is doing," Baltzer said.
She encounters, of course, resistance from the U.S. Jewish community.
"I try to remind them that it's really important to distinguish what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Israeli and what it means to be Zionist," she said.
Pointing out that her grandparents were Holocaust victims, Baltzer said that "For me as a Jewish person, as someone whose family has suffered, we need to be speaking out against human rights violations perpetrated on the basis of religion or ethnicity."
She claimed that the majority of Jewish Israelis "tend to be very critical of what the Israeli government is doing."
"It's really the Jewish-American population that tends to be sort of unconditionally supportive of Israel," Baltzer said. "I do feel as a Jewish person it's important to speak out against atrocities being done in my name and as an American."
And that business about Palestinian groups like Hamas calling for the destruction of Israel? What they're really talking about is destroying Israel as a state only for Jewish people, Baltzer said.
"If you ask a Palestinian person, 'Do you recognize the right for there to be a state on your historic homeland that explicitly excludes you and your children?', and Palestinians say no, to me that's not antisemitism. They're talking about a particular political ideology."
Baltzer said she doesn't condone violent attacks against Israelis.
"Israelis have been under attack, but the solution is not oppressing people. That's not going to bring resolution to anybody."
She also said that rhetoric isn't the solution and not something everyday Palestinians spend much time on.
"They, like everyday Israelis and Americans, are just trying to live a normal life with their families and communities in peace," she said. "If anything, focusing on the rhetoric is distracting from the real issue at hand, which is at present very urgent human rights issues on the ground."
MICHAEL MILLER covers religion for the Journal Star. Write to him in care of the Journal Star, 1 News Plaza, Peoria, IL 61643, call him at 686-3106, or send e-mail to mmiller@pjstar.com. Comments may be published.
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