Hind Awwad, while still a young lady, is already coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) national Committee (BNC) in Ramallah. As coordinator, she is the face of the boycott against Israel. She considers it important to develop a BDS movement that is initiated and led by Palestinians, rather than by the international solidarity movement.
Hind Awwad sees herself as a third-generation Palestinian refugee. Her grandparents come from Lifta, an abandoned Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Friends School Class of 2005 in Ramallah and then attended Swarthmore College in the US. While in college, she was active in Palestine groups and takes pride in their campaign for the college to divest from any investments in Caterpillar Inc. because it sells D-9 Bulldozers to the Israeli military. After graduation she returned to Ramallah and joined the BNC to contribute to the (BDS) movement.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) refers to a campaign first initiated on 9 July 2005 by 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations in support of the Palestinian cause ". The three stated goals of the campaign, however, go beyond an end to occupation but include implicitly the end of Israel. The goals are:
1.An end to Israel's "occupation and colonization of all Arab lands", as well as "dismantling of the Wall;"
2.Israeli recognition of the "fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;" and,
3.Israeli respect, protection, and promotion of "the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194."
The campaigns of the BDS are directed at: boycotts (Academic, Consumer, Cultural, Student, Trade Unions), Divestment, Sanctions, Military Embargo, and specifically target Israeli agriculture exporter company Agrexco, Veolia and Alstom, two French companies involved in the construction and management of a light railway in Jerusalem, and the Jewish National Fund (JNF)
From the point of view of Israeli supporters, BDS Works To Delegitimize Israel. The call to "boycott, divest, and sanction Israel" is the newest weapon in the ongoing effort to destroy Israel. Using words, images, and actions to spread misinformation and lies, boycott activists try to delegitimize and demonize Israel and brand it as the pariah of the international community. They call for boycotts to promote their views and to isolate and cripple the Jewish state.
Hind Awwad recently toured Europe to support the worldwide BDS campaign. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof interviewed Hind Awwad in Bern, Switzerland.
She expressed her negative opinion of the Palestinian Authority. “One has to look at it in perspective. The PA is unelected. It is there because of the US. It does not represent Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It is complicit in Israel’s oppression. It is a sub-contractor of the occupation.”
Her extremist view of the Israeli occupation was that Palestine included all of Israel and there would be no acceptance of a neighboring Jewish State. “I think the BDS campaign has done a lot for Palestinians. It has ended the Israeli left’s domination of the discourse which was limited to the occupation, dismissing the rights of Palestinians in Israel and the rights of the refugees. BDS has allowed us to set the terms of the discourse and define our rights. We work towards a complete rights-based solution. It keeps us going. It shows there is hope in the midst of home demolitions, land confiscations, violations of rights and discrimination in Israel.
It seems that the Quakers Movement (The Religious Society of Friends) had a significant impact on the militancy of Hind Awwad.
She graduated from the Ramallah Friends Schools, an elite Private School founded by Quakers in the city of Ramallah. The Friends Girls' School was inaugurated in 1869.
In 1910, the Quakers built the Ramallah Friends Meetinghouse and later added another building that was used for community outreach. The Friends International Center regularly hosts meeting with NGOs such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the Christian Peacemaker Team.[9]
CPT, for instance, has two teams in the Palestinian territories, one in Hebron and one in At-tuwani. Part of their daily routines includes school patrol, and monitoring settler violence and soldier home invasions. The CPT says the Israeli occupation is "violent", and that reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis can only flourish when the occupation ends.
The Friends House in Ramallah has been described as veritable points of pilgrimage for Christians of varying denominations as well as Quakers. Upon return to their own countries and churches, those political pilgrims then faithfully parrot the information fed to them there by career activists such as Kathy Bergen and Jean Zaru, apparently believing that it also has some kind of theological dimension. In turn, activists such as Bergen, Zaru and Naim Ateek are heavily supported financially by church members in the rest of the world.
Hind Awwad also graduated from Swarthmore College, a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The school was founded by a committee of prominent liberal Quakers of the day. Swarthmore was established to be a college, "...under the care of Friends. Within a century of its founding, Swarthmore’s student body would cease to be predominantly Quaker and became officially non-sectarian in the early 20th century. Today only about ten or twelve students per grade identify themselves as Quaker.
But this does not mean that the Friends traditions have disappeared from Swarthmore’s campus. Today, the college is known for its commitment to social responsibility and the legacy of Swarthmore's Quaker heritage. Swarthmore’s Meeting House continues to offer un-programmed Quaker meeting. Attended largely by Quakers from the surrounding community, the meeting welcomes all students interested to participate.
Quakers in Britain are taking an active part in BDS activities with a decision from April 2, 2011 on a boycott of products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The British Quakers (Society of Friends) have 23,000 members and 475 meeting houses. The decision was made by the representative decision-making body for Quakers in Britain, Meeting for Sufferings. They acted in response to the call by Palestinian Quakers for Quakers around the world to consider boycott, divestment and sanctions because of the worsening situation caused by Israel’s occupation. The Meeting has not yet considered a Quaker view on divestment and sanctions. They consider this boycott to be a nonviolent move for peace for Israelis and Palestinians.
Portions from the text of the minute follows:
We were informed that most Jewish Israeli Peace Groups support the boycott of settlement goods, and only some support a boycott of Israel. A just peace for Palestine means security for Israel too, and nonviolent protests by both Israelis and Palestinians for the end of the occupation are heartening to observe.
For nine years Quakers have been witnessing individually and through the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) to the human rights abuses of the military occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Today we have considered whether we should add nonviolent action to our witnessing – not as punishment or revenge, but as an external pressure to achieve change.
We understand the history and the trauma of the past, but it is Israelis who are the stronger and they need to make the changes.
We consider we should now act publically and, well-informed, be able to explain our action to others - because people matter more than territory, and because we approach others with a desire for peace.
In the face of the armed oppression of poor people and the increasing encroachment of the illegal settlements in the West Bank, we cannot do nothing.
Our hearts are full of compassion for Israelis and Palestinians, all of whom are suffering from the effects of the occupation.
We are clear that it would be wrong to support the illegal settlements by purchasing their goods. We therefore ask Friends (Quakers) throughout Britain Yearly Meeting to boycott settlement goods, until such time as the occupation is ended.
We are not at this time proposing to boycott goods from Israel itself, being unwilling to jeopardise continuing dialogue with Israelis and British Jews.
We pray fervently for both Israelis and Palestinians, keeping them together in our hearts. We hope they will find an end to their fears and the beginning of their mutual co-existence based on a just peace. And so we look forward to the end of the occupation and the end of the international boycott. We envisage our future relationship with both peoples as one of loving and generous co-operation.
Ruth King on her web site http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/ describes the action in an article titled “British friends no more: UK Quakers join the Israel bashing.” British Quakers get infected with Boycott Derangement Syndrome
She points out that the Quakers during the Nazi era did much to rescue Jews, and especially “non-Aryan Christians,” from the Reich. But the Quakers are highly motivated by their pacifism and idealism. However, that very pacifism and idealism has drawn them into an all too easily duped naivety and into stances which are incompatible with the hard facts of this world as it is.
Moreover, like most if not all small Protestant sects today they would appear have been hijacked to some extent by committed political leftists. Leftism is not always the expression of noble idealism or what is correct and righteous and just, no matter how much some people would like to believe it is. And some of the lefty infiltrators of the Quakers and other religious groups are anything but naive.
Israelinurse commented on the Quaker decision to boycott Israel on the eChurchWebsites, a Christian Website.
She calls the resolution to be “Pacifist Aggressive: the Quaker echo chamber which empowers terrorism.” The Religious Society of Friends has so far avoided addressing the subject of this echo chamber in which, rather than seeking out truth (which is, after all, what they claim to be ‘friends’ of) and a balanced view of the Arab-Israeli dispute, the symbiotic relationship between Palestinian Christian groups and foreign churches (embellished by connections to politically radical NGOs) has resulted in only reinforcing existing myths.
It is those myths which enable Quakers to host extremist groups on their own premises, lend their support to a boycott movement dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and view terrorism through the filter of rose-colored spectacles. It is the reinforcing of existing myths which has turned them and some other churches into Israel obsessives; a fact which not only prevents them from having honest discussions about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also apparently renders them dumb and blind on subjects such as the killing of civilians by the Syrian regime in recent months.
As long as that echo chamber exists, the Quakers are likely to continue to avoid taking a long hard look at their pacifist-aggressive tendency which allows them on the one hand to promote an agenda aimed in part at hampering Israel’s capacity for self-defence, whilst on the other providing material and moral empowerment for terrorist regimes and dictatorships.
Furthermore, since 2002 Quakers in Britain have trained human rights observers for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a World Council of Churches (WCC) initiative which was established in response to a call made by the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, and Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), part of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, co-ordinates the EAPPI in Britain and Ireland. The observers, called ecumenical accompaniers, work with Palestinians and Israelis to promote nonviolence by their protective presence, to monitor human rights abuses and to advocate for an end to the Israeli occupation.
The programme acts to send internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation and to provide protective presence to vulnerable communities, monitor and report human rights abuses, and support Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace. When they return home, they are expected to campaign for a just and peaceful resolution to the occupation.
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