In a meeting with local Israeli peace activist groups in 2006, Jeff Halper, the founder of Israeli Committee Against House Demolition(ICAHD), asserted the position that up to the present, the peace movement in Israel had been little more than a “voice in the wilderness.” Although his house demolition activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have continued, his organization thereupon joined the international peace movement, developed subsidiaries in the US and UK, ran ads in the New York Times, while Halper himself took to the road on speaking tours. One focus of this move to internationalize ICAHD was reaching out to diaspora Jews, as indicated by this latest report of his activities, Jeff Halper in Italy & Amsterdam, which appeared today, May 12, 2008.
Jeff Halper, ICAHD’s Director-Coordinator, continues his six-month advocacy campaign (with short home visits). He was just in the US where, among other things, he convened a meeting of 22 “strategic Jews” to discuss how to move the Jewish community towards a more constructive position on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
He just finished three days in Torino (Turin), Italy, where he met with Jewish and Palestinian activists and spoke at a nation-wide rally for peace in the Middle East (see photo). Currently he is in Amsterdam at the invitation of A Different Jewish Voice.
Future trips will take him to the UK, Ireland, Norway, Australia — and back to the US. Its all tiring (“I’ve got to turn this over to younger people,” says Jeff), but systematic international advocacy is a key to ICAHD’s strategy to pressure Israel to end the Occupation.
Jeff Halper was in the US this April on a speaking tour that covered North Carolina, Philadelphia, and New York to introduce his new book, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. It was just published by Pluto Press.