Dissident Veteran For Peace

I've gotten several reports from convention attendees now. As if to mock the convention theme of "Sow Justice--Reap Peace," the "Resolution on Justice and Peace in Palestine" was soundly defeated at the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle on Saturday. The Board of Directors rejected the resolution on Wednesday or Thursday (although I was not informed of this until Friday night) necessitating a two-thirds vote of support at the convention business meeting in order for the resolution to pass.

Resolutions Committee Chair Lincoln Grahlfs presented the resolution at the business meeting. According to two eyewitness reports he was openly hostile to the resolution and repeatedly made negative comments during his reading of it. Then, an abbreviated debate on the resolution was permitted where one speaker spoke in favor of the resolution but was not permitted to finish his remarks. A member of my own VFP chapter used his time to smear me personally and was cut off by the VFP president Dave Cline after he started attacking the other VFP co-sponsors of the resolution. Apparently, I was identified as a "troublemaker." He's right about that--I'm trouble for peacethugs, liars, and racists no matter where I find them but especially when I find them posing as peace advocates.

Reportedly, one of the main objections was that the resolution reversed VFP's previous support for a "two-state solution" to the conflict. Thoughtful readers will recall that a "two-state solution" is what the United States killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people to preserve. Rather than let Vietnam be united under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh the Americans blocked elections and propped up a brutal puppet regime in South Vietnam--58,000 Americans died in that fiasco. The U.S. also supported the racist leaders of apartheid South Africa when they set about creating a White supremacist state and several smaller Black colonies better known as bantustans. Fortunately, people of good conscience around the world worked against apartheid and today South Africa is one country with equal rights for all of its citizens.

But racists within the ranks of the peace movement don't support that for Arabs; they support Jewish ethno-religious supremacy in the 78% of Palestine violently seized in 1948--the same year Whites imposed apartheid in South Africa. Well, millions of Palestinian refugees--most of whom live in Palestine or surrounding countries--aren't going away. Only justice will bring peace to the region and in the meantime the conflict will continue to destabilize the entire planet.

Another related complaint was that the resolution was "too controversial" because it committed VFP to supporting a one-state solution and to--God forbid--actually making anti-Zionist peace activities, such as boycotts and divestment from Israel, a real part of VFP's work. VFP leaders have done nothing to implement the boycott and divestment resolution adopted last year and that's, apparently, the way they intend to keep it. Presumably, the cowards who shun this "controversy" don't have the backbone to stand up against the false charges of 'anti-Semitism' that would have come their way if they'd had the temerity to express a "strong preference for the peaceful creation of one democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with equality for all of its citizens" as the resolution called for.

Another specious complaint was that VFP did not have sufficient means to adopt the resolution because it would have directed the Board of Directors "to allocate adequate financial and staff resources to ensure meaningful implementation of this resolution." As far as I know, no one ever explored how much that would cost but financial geniuses on the Board of Directors fortuitously knew that any cost would be too much.

Some VFP leaders, apparently, abused their positions in order to help defeat the resolution. The resolution was submitted to the Resolutions Committee Chair Lincoln Grahlfs four weeks in advance of the VFP convention but Grahlfs never even acknowledged receiving it, although VFP Executive Director Michael T. McPhearson eventually did.

The VFP "Resolutions Notice" says:

V. Resolutions received by the committee at least three weeks before
the convention will be either

1. Accepted as written and promptly acknowledged.
   
2. returned to sender with suggestions for rewriting.
   
3. returned to sender with an explanation of why they are inappropriate.

Yet, there wasn't any communication whatsoever from the Grahlfs or anyone else on the Committee. This deprived the ten VFP members supporting the resolution of time and information to address concerns, come up with alternative language, and to strategize on how to build support for the resolution. Despite repeated inquiries this lapse has never been explained. So much for maintaining "an organization that is both democratic and open" (VFP Bylaws Art. II).

In closing, here are a couple of quotes from one of the convention attendees:

...To me this is a no-brainer. ... I never have had that much to do with VFP. Now, I won't ever have anything to do with them again. Like many peace and justice organizations in this country, they are basically useless.

...

I guess we should not be surprised that Congress votes overwhelmingly for resolutions totally biased towards Israel when the so-called progressive group, VFP, basically votes the same way.

I'm going to stay in VFP and fight for justice and peace and I hope others who were discouraged by the vote on the resolution will stay and fight along with me. The Zionists, peacethugs, and the cowards in the movement want us to give up in frustration--let's not give them what they want.

See also: VFP Palestine Resolution Defeated--Take 2

Last revised: 11/28/2006

Labels: anti-war movement, apartheid, fraud, Veterans for Peace