PJPP speaker: How Eugene can promote world peace

Presenter: Church Women United of Lane County welcomed People for Justice and Peace in Palestine (PJPP) and the Rev. Alex Awad to speak June 5 at Valley Covenant Church. Independent videographer Todd Boyle was there.

Mary Sharon Moore (CWU): I’m Mary Sharon Moore. I’m currently president of Church Women United of Lane County. So we welcome you… I consider Rev. Alex Awad to be a true spiritual elder and a wisdom carrier. His commitment to nonviolent and just solutions to Palestine is a model for us all. 

How many are here today from PJPP? Put your hands high. Thank you for being here. A truly important group and doing necessary work. 

Alex served as pastor of an international church in East Jerusalem and… he may share more things about his life as he speaks. So please, Alex, come forward and share your program. Let’s welcome you. 

Rev. Alex Awad: So, what PJPP is all about: We are a group of people who have seen, witnessed—through TV, through news—what’s happening in Gaza, what I would call the genocide in Gaza. And we decided to come together and say: What are we going to do about it?

We have Muslims, we have Jewish people, we have Christians, we have people who don’t belong to any faith. We come together and we discuss the situation in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and we try to brainstorm about what we can do to educate others.

Our purpose we have threefold purpose: educate, advocate, donate. And donate so that we don’t only talk about the Gazans in their misery, but we try to do something about the situation in Gaza.

And many of you here, many of you here, have helped us raise a lot of money for Gaza—contributed, some of you bought tulips and daffodils and plants in order to help us send $12,300 to the people of Gaza.

So so so thankful I am. And, and that’s only one. That’s one of the activities. So really, the people in Gaza and in the West Bank, they know that there are people in Eugene, Oregon who care for them. That’s the most important thing, that they are not left alone. There are people who care for them. That’s good. 

I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. This is a neighborhood in Jerusalem called Musrara, where I was, where my family were until 1948, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Musrara is only five minutes’ walk from Damascus Gate, if you know Jerusalem. So it’s not too far from the wall of the city.

And yeah, in 1948, there was the first Arab-Israeli war, and we were pushed out of our homes and we became refugees. My dad, Elias Awad, was shot and killed in 1948 and left my mother with seven children. When I was two years old, I was a Palestinian refugee.

And I belong to a Palestinian Christian family—I would say Palestinian Christian Arab family. Let me explain what I mean: Palestinian because we were born in a country we consider Palestine, regardless of what others call it. I consider it Palestine. All right. 

And we are Arabs because we speak the Arabic language. The definition of Arabs are people who speak the Arabic language and identified themselves with the Arabic culture. So if you go to Cairo, learn Arabic, speak Arabic and say, I’m an Arab, then you are an Arab. So simple, so simple. Yeah. Okay.

All of my brothers and sisters ended up in boarding schools—the brother who started Bethlehem Bible College, his name is Bishara, and the brother who started an organization called Nonviolence International in Washington, D.C., his name is Mubarak Awad—because my mother became a registered nurse, and she has to work in the hospital. She couldn’t keep seven children with her at home.

So we thank God for a mother who was a committed Christian, and she raised us up to say, “Don’t never look backward, always look forward. Never ask ‘Why, God?’ Always ask, ‘How, God?’ And never harbor hatred in your heart. Always forgive, even forgive your enemies.”

So this is how we grew up.

An important day in my life: 19 February 1977. I became an American citizen and I put my hand up with a group of internationals and we pledged allegiance to the American flag.

I was so proud, so proud at that moment to be an American citizen 50 years ago, I was so proud of America. I knew America has problems, but I thought America was trying to fix those problems and bring about justice, freedom, and liberty to the rest of the world. 

So when I stand after 50 years and talk about America complicit in genocide, I am not too happy about this. I’m not too happy about what I’m sharing with you today. But unfortunately, this is the reality. 

And I think there is something fishy about this situation of the link between the United States government and Israel. And it’s not healthy for America. It’s not healthy for any of us. 

So the question is here: What went wrong? Is the U.S. complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza? That’s what I want to focus on—U.S. complicity in the genocide, and here are five points: 

(1) Funding the genocide with billions of dollars. Israel could not have done it without the money that went from the United States. Then in addition to $3.(some) billion dollars that our government gives to Israel every year, 

(2) Sending the arms to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs. And these bombs would destroy a whole block. A whole block in one. And kill everybody who would be in that block. 

(3) Providing Israel with intelligence and surveillance.

(4) Defending Israel at the United Nations and granting it immunity. So in all the countries in the United Nations come and say, ‘Hey, there is something wrong,’ the U.S. will put their hand up, use their power of veto, the veto power to block any move towards ending the genocide in Gaza.

(5) And also blaming the Palestinians for the genocide. You know, ‘Oh, it’s Hamas’s fault.’ 

Yeah, Hamas is at fault. I don’t deny that. Hamas started the war on Oct. 7, and they are certainly take a part of the fault but you know, okay, kill Hamas, you know, 100,000. But why do you have to kill women and children and babies and so on? They are not the ones who started Oct. 7.

And then blaming, yeah, blaming Palestinians for genocide and who I hold responsible, of course: the Democrats. Or Joe Biden. He allowed it to happen during his watch. Gaza will haunt Joe Biden as long as he lives because he allowed it to happen. He had the opportunity to put a stop on it, and he refused to do that.

And he wanted to claim that he is a Zionist and that he would support Israel no matter what. And he did, even refusing to look into the suffering of the Palestinian people who also was behind it.

Trump to Netanyahu: ‘Finish the job.’  You know, ‘Finish the job.’ Netanyahu knew exactly what Trump meant by saying finish the job: Destroy all of Gaza.

I’ve been to Gaza before this happened. It was quite different, really. Any of you else have been in Gaza? Yeah. It was really, in a way, beautiful city by the Mediterranean Sea. And now it is in rubbles, 90% of all houses are destroyed.

So pathway to genocide. And here it is: Christian Zionism. How religious beliefs shape political support. The growth of secular and religious Zionism as a political movement. The role of AIPAC. AIPAC means American Israeli Political Action Committee. That’s AIPAC and its influence on U.S. policy, the rise of the neoconservatives politics and its alignment with the Zionist political establishment.

When Christian Zionism started, it wasn’t a big movement and it didn’t have much power. But today, Christian Zionists are in the White House. Christian Zionists are telling Trump what to do. You know, Christian Zionism has captured and, you know, really taken over American foreign policy in the Middle East, many of Trump’s advisors. And before that, Biden’s advisors were Christian Zionists.

Secular and religious Zionism. That is the other aspect. You have Christian Zionism on one side, you have secular Zionism on the other side. Like Herzl, for example, Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. He was not religious at all. He was Jewish. But he said about himself, he eats pork and he never observed the Sabbath. And he started, you know, secular Zionism.

These are, you know, Zionists who are committed to Israel and to the goals of the state of Israel. And they have collaborated with neocons to have a war on Iraq and the war on Iran and war in Libya and war in Sudan.

So the neocons have involved the United States in many, many wars on behalf of the State of Israel. That is how we got here. 

Secular Zionism saw the Jews as persecuted in Europe, and they wanted a homeland for the Jewish people somewhere in the world. And then they decided Palestine should be that home, not out of so much religious convention, but out of sympathy with Jews who suffer so much in the Holocaust. Yeah, that is secular.

And then, you know, I mean, that is a good goal. I’m not against that. It’s a good goal for Jews who are persecuted to find their homeland and to live at peace and justice. The only problem comes when they become so powerful that they decide to do a genocide.

So Zionism, as we understand it today, is different than Zionism as it was when Zionism started, when people are running from Nazis and we are supporting them. Yeah, we are supporting The Zionist movement because at that time we thought of it as a humanitarian thing to do. We want to help people who are suffering. There’s nothing wrong with helping people who are, regardless of their ethnicity.

However. However, gradually, gradually after 1967 the Israelis started feeling their power and with billions of dollars in weapons and in cash from the United States, they became so strong and with that strength become the arrogant. Netanyahu now tells the United States president what to do instead of the other way around. They really have a big control on the American government.

We look at our history even as Christians, and we are ashamed of a lot of things that happen in the name of Christ, in the name of the church, when Christ and the church have nothing to do with it, really.  

Any kind of movement that will dehumanize people, kill people, injure people, and consider people not worthy of living, and they need to be pushed out of their land, that is an evil crusade.

So what is the consequences of the things that we’ve been talking about? Well, there is a political risk right now. Any politician who wants to run for office today, if he doesn’t align with AIPAC and Zionist most likely he, he or she will not win office. This is how powerful they are. 

And look at what’s his name? (Rep. Thomas) Massie. He lost his bid for election because the Zionists put over $20 million dollars against him. They have the money and they can use the money to bring down any politicians. This is reality in America today. 

This is reality. The political risk is there for any politicians, not even there, anywhere in the United States. If you are not going to be aligned with the Zionists, you will cause yourself to be a political risk.

Accusation of antisemitism is very strong. You know, I have been accused of being antisemitic just for telling people my story. The story of what happened to me and my family. Just saying that I immediately become antisemitic and antisemitic laws—there are many, many states in the United States today that have antisemitic laws, and if you violate those laws, you can be fired from your job.

And then assault on academic freedom. You know, when students in Harvard, in Columbia, in many universities went out, you know, the Zionists used their power and their money to say to the university, ‘Okay, if you allow this to happen, we’ll cut the funding.’ And many universities backed off because they didn’t want their funding cut.

But the American people are gradually waking up. Not only there are many Jewish people resisting what Israel and the United States are doing. You know, like Jewish Voice for Peace and many, many other Jewish organizations. There is now a resurgence in the American mind and heart as regarding as the situation in Palestine.

For a long time you see that Israel had the sympathy of the American people. But after Oct. 7, the sympathy is shifting and more American people all throughout America. There is more sympathy towards Palestinians than towards the Israelis. And that is not because of anything Palestinians have done. It’s because what the Israelis have done. It’s because of what happened in Gaza.

And this is also interesting. CNN report Israel’s favorability down in most segments of the American public. They are finding that people have more sympathy towards Palestinians than towards Israelis. Why, are the American people antisemitic, all of them? Or are they opening their eyes to see the reality of what’s happening in the Middle East?

So how to translate the shift with American people to action that would contribute to peace in Israel and in Palestine? And that’s really what interests me and interests us as a group. How can we take advantage that the American people are now opening their eyes to make it work on the ground in Israel and Palestine to see changes on the ground? This is what we need.

So we have challenges because here they are, the Zionists still have the billionaires. That’s the reality. They still control Congress. That’s a reality. They still dominate in the White House. That’s a reality. They still have the State Department. That’s a reality. 

So even though the American people have shifted, yet in the White House, in the Congress, in the State Department, they have not changed. 

We as the American people have to look at this and say, why is this gap between where Americans are and where our government is? And how can we bridge that gap where the American government will start doing what the American people want?

For example, more than 80% of the American people don’t want the war in Iran. But the government is not listening. Most of the American people want to end the genocide in Gaza, but the government is not listening. 

So here it is. How can we get the government to listen to us? We the people, we the people of the United States, what can we do about this? We are the majority of humanity, not only in the United States, but all over Europe, all over Africa, all over Latin America. Wherever you go in the world, more people are sick and tired of what’s happening in Gaza and in Iran, and they want to change it.

So we the people are really on the right side of history, it’s the government that is not. So most Americans are on the right side of history, but the government is not. Many Jewish organizations are on the right side of history, but hard-line Zionists are not. A few elected officials are on our side, like Bernie Sanders and others, but the majority are not.

So we need to work so that we shift the balance of power in the United States.

When will Oregon recognize the Palestinian state? When will Eugene recognize— I’m putting seeds in your head. 

Let Eugene be the first city in the United States to recognize a Palestinian statehood. (Hear! Hear! All right!) All right. Okay, let’s work on it, guys. And if we do it, then Salem will do it. If Salem will do it, Portland will do it. If Portland will do it, Washington, D.C. will do it. Okay, so let us work on that.  

Presenter: The Rev. Alex Awad spoke June 5. You can see the entire program on Todd Boyle’s YouTube channel.