Today, December 29, 2012, Israel declared a new national park.Interestingly enough, as with most of the
parks in Israel, this park is complete with “historical ruins,” including a
lovely old stone church.Where do they
get the land for national parks when Historical Palestine is about the size of
Massachusetts, and is home to two nations?The simple answer is, the land came from the same source as all of
the land in Israel—it is land that belongs to Palestinians.The land for this park once hosted a thriving
village, called Biram.The residents of
the village were forced out by the Israeli army in 1949 and were not allowed
back, in spite of a 1951 Supreme Court decision upholding their right to
return. (http://www.facebook.com/welcometopalestine)
Unfortunately, this is just the
latest of the national parks that Israel has established at the expense of
prior residents.Canada Park, a
centerpiece of the national park system, was established at the expense of three
Palestinian villages.
The Wikipedia entry for Canada
Park reads as follows:
Although Wikipedia says that the park is “mostly
in the West Bank,” it does not mention that before Israel captured that land
during the 1967 war, the land was the site of the Palestinian villages of
Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba.The people who
lived on this land for generations are now refugees.
According to Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot
(Remembering), 86 Palestinian villages lie buried under Jewish National Fund parks.A further 400 destroyed villages had their lands passed on to exclusively Jewish communities. Zochrot is trying to educate people to the hidden history behind the establishment
of the national parks in Israel.http://electronicintifada.net/content/canada-park-and-israeli-memoricide/8126
This video shows rare footage of the villages
and interviews several people with first-hand knowledge of the destruction of the villages.
My first year in the Middle East (back when Christmas cards were carved on stone tablets),I was supremely secure in my ignorance.I ground my teeth in frustration as my students told me I couldn’t
schedule the exam on January 7 because it was Christmas.They knew that I had just come from the
United States, and I’m sure they understood that I had lived in a largely
Christian society my entire life.What
were they trying to pull?Christmas was
over—no more need to think about it until next year.
When I arrived at work the next day,
there was a note from the head of the department asking me to come to his
office as soon as possible.Needless to
say, I was ashamed and embarrassed to be told I had been culturally
insensitive, or words to that effect.The students were telling the truth.Some of them did celebrate Christmas on January 7, and some celebrated
on January 6.I delayed the exam.When I tried to reschedule for January 19, I
was told once more that it was Christmas.Surely the students were playing a joke on me.Well it wasn’t going to work.Unfortunately, some of us don’t learn from
our mistakes.
The Armenian Patriarchate of
Jerusalem celebrates Christmas on January 19.
I knew all about the Protestant
Reformation; I knew that Christian sects continue to proliferate.I also knew that calendars had changed
several time since the birth of Christ.How
could I have imagined that the birthplace of Christianity only gave birth to sects
that agreed on a single date for an event that happened over two thousand years
ago and stayed united through all the calendar changes that happened during
that time?
I like to believe it was because I never
asked about the differences between the many churches in Palestine.I focused instead on what they had in common—the
belief that man is worthy of salvation, and the eternal hope for peace on
earth.
Too bad it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
On November 29, 2012 Palestine asked
to be admitted to the United Nations as the 194th nation.In this age of self-determination, where
nations go to war under the banner of making the world safe for democracy,
Palestine continues to be denied independence.
In a vote that showed overwhelming
support by the nations of the world. Palestine
was granted “non-member observer status.” It was an admission that Palestine is
indeed a state. (All pictures from: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/welcometopalestine)
On the floor of the UN General
Assembly, a Palestinian flag was unfurled as the vote showed on the electronic
board.Although this shot does not show
it, there were 41 abstentions.I watched
as UN Web TV streamed the proceedings, and picked up a couple of quotes I’d
like to share.
“Palestine is an open
wound in the
conscience of the world.”
--Turkish
Minister of Foreign Affairs
After the vote, the American ambassador to the UN said, “Tomorrow
Palestinians will wake up and find that nothing has really changed.”Almost true.One of the intangible benefits is being able to stand just a little taller,
knowing that most people in the world recognize the injustice that has been
done to them.Celebrations throughout
the West Bank were more a sense of satisfaction, and they were even more
subdued in Gaza, where thousands have not yet recovered from the latest violent
attacks.
This photo by Ryan Rodrick
Beiler/Activestills.org taken from The State of Palestine 194 facebook page, along with another picture showing a young man daring to scale the wall to plant the flag above the picture, shows
a crowd in Bethlehem, watching the proceedings projected on the apartheid wall—right next to
one of the watchtowers.At least they
found one use for the wall. As one person commented, "In an honest world...this would be on the front page of every newspaper."
Speaking of the Apartheid Wall, several
years ago the UN General Assembly, at the request of [non-state] Palestine,
asked for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice
concerning the Wall.The Court condemned
it, but it was only an advisory opinion.Now that the United Nations recognizes Palestine as a state, it can
bring suit in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal
Court.
The
Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article giving the results of a
survey conducted on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.The original headline for the piece was “Most Israelis support an
apartheid regime in Israel,” but a search for it today yielded a headline “Survey:
Most Israeli Jews wouldn’t give Palestinians vote if West Bank was annexed.”Under the new headline was a note that supposedly
explained what they now consider a headline which “did not accurately reflect
the findings” of the poll.http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/survey-most-israeli-jews-wouldn-t-give-palestinians-vote-if-west-bank-was-annexed.premium-1.471644?block=true
They
didn’t say what they called the situation, if not apartheid.
The Israeli
government and its advocacy groups like to boast of the country's supposed
democratic, multicultural way of life. In reality, Palestinians in Israel
experience systematic discrimination in such a way that calls into question the
validity of the "Jewish and democratic" formulation. By Ben White
It
has been received wisdom in the West for decades to see Israel as "the
only democracy in the Middle East". In recent times, however, Israeli
policies have been subject to increased criticism, particularly in Europe – and
specifically in terms of military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the
territories occupied since 1967.
Unfortunately, criticism
does not seem to have any effect on the actions of the Israeli government.As a recent (October 31, 2012) article posted
by Stop the War Coalition in the UK says, “The facts speak for themselves:Israel is an apartheid state.”The article has links to official UN
documents stating the official definition of apartheid, and gives additional
information of facts on the ground that support the headlines. http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/palestine-and-israel/1992-the-facts-speak-for-themselves-israel-is-an-apartheid-state%20
This month 15 prominent church
leaders sent Members of Congress a letter in which they spoke of “widespread Israeli
human rights violations committed against Palestinians.” They also wrote that “unconditional
U.S. military assistance to Israel has contributed to this deterioration,
sustaining the conflict and undermining the long-term security interests of
both Israelis and Palestinians.”The
full text of the letter can be found at http://www.kairosusa.org/?q=node/55.
The signers of the letter include
leaders of denominations including Presbyterians, Methodists, United Church of
Christ, and the National Council of Churches (USA), among others.
This historic letter is not an
isolated incident.The support by church
leaders of the just cause of the Palestinians has been a little advertised
aspect of the conflict for decades.Another example of such is the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in
Palestine and Israel, which includes Christian leaders from many different
denominations from many different countries. http://eappi.org/en/home.html
Pope Benedict XVI, although not a
signer of the letter, pledged his support for Palestinian statehood on a visit
to Bethlehem in 2009, as documented in the following video.
The International War Crimes
Tribunal is also known as the Russell Tribunal or the Russell-Sartre Tribunal
in recognition of the two founding members: British philosopher, mathematician, and
peace-activist Bertram Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and
playwright. The original tribunal was
convened in November 1966 following the publication of Russell’s book, War
Crimes in Vietnam.The justification
stated for the establishment of the tribunal was the following:
“If certain acts and violations of treaties are
crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether
Germany does them.We are not
prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we
would not be willing to have invoked against us.”
-- Justice Robert
H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
Further tribunals were set up in
later years following the same model.The most recent Russell Tribunal is the Russell Tribunal on
Palestine.
First Session: Barcelona, March 2010 – to consider the complicities and omissions
of the European Union and its member states in the Palestinian-Israel crisis. Second Session: London, November 2010 – to examine international corporate issues
in Israel and human rights law. Third Session: Cape Town, November 2011 – to examine Israeli practices against
the Palestinian people in light of the prohibition on apartheid under
international law. Fourth Session:
New York, October 6 – 7, 2012 focused on “US Complicity and UN
Failings in Dealing with Israel’s Violations of International Law Toward the
Palestinian People.”
Why is this
important?The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (or any of the other Russell
Tribunals) have no legal force behind their findings.They cannot pass sentence on miscreants; they
cannot enforce punishment.What they
accomplish is to let the world know that just because crimes are not punished
or even mentioned in the mainstream media of the U.S. does not mean they have
gone unnoticed.People all over the
world are aware of the injustice of what is being done to the Palestinian
people, and public opinion is growing among the citizens of the world—both great
and small.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed a native American who spoke at the Tribunal, comparing the current situation in Palestine with the terrible acts that the United States had inflicted on him personally and his people. A clip of the broadcast can be seen on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg6kSeq77kA I found the interview very touching on a human level. The entire interview can be found on the Democracy Now website at: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/9/stream
I used to have a sign in my office
that said the average adult attention span was 8 seconds.I put it up as a joke, but it is
frighteningly real.Even though in the
time it takes to walk from my computer to the kitchen, I have often forgotten
what I wanted and stick my head in the refrigerator looking for inspiration, I
did not want to believe the little sign.
I decided to check my second
favorite site for inspiration, the Internet.According to Statistic Brain website (http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/)
the average attention span is indeed 8 seconds.This number is confirmed by Answers.Ask.com.They also say the average attention span of a
gold fish is 9 seconds.I don’t know
about you, but I find that insulting.
The good news is that there are
different types of attention spans.After 8 seconds we do not go wandering around in confused bewilderment,
but go back to the task after a momentary thought of something else.All right, so we don’t wipe the slate of our
minds clean every 8 seconds, because attention and memory are not the same
things.
That is something that mainstream
media seems to forget.They tell us
about a news item, and we seldom get to see how it ends.What were the repercussions?Who was affected?Did they catch the bad guys?We get our 8 second sound bite and the camera
moves on, seldom to return.
How long is memory?Thankfully, longer than attention span, but still not very long—especially
for unpleasant things that happened to someone else.After a certain (or uncertain) number of
years many of people who actually remember the worst events that happen in our
world begin to disappear, and the events themselves blur into romantic celluloid
[does anyone even remember what that word means?] quasi-remembrances that have
lost the horror and terror, rather like ghost stories told around a campfire.That’s fine for events like the sack of Rome,
or the hordes of Khengis Khan thundering across Europe, or what happened to
Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted, but I don’t want it to happen with things that I
remember so vividly that reading about them still brings tears to my eyes.
Thirty years ago this month as many
as 3.500 civilians were massacred in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and
Shatila located in Lebanon.Unspeakable
atrocities were committed and an Israeli investigation concluded that the then
defense minister and later prime minister Ariel Sharon bore “personal responsibility”
for failing to prevent them.
These deaths should not be forgotten
so easily.The men and women who
believed they were under the protection of greater forces deserve better.The babies who will never reach adulthood because
they were victims of the massacre deserve better.The orphans of this tragedy, many of whom are
still in the first flush of adulthood, deserve better.They still have images burned into their
minds that will never fade—and so do many of the journalists and health workers
who were there.
Robert Fisk, one of those reporters,
said, “Massacres are difficult to forget when you’ve seen the corpses.”There are at least 583 videos on YouTube that
come up when you search “Sabra and Shatila.” These links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XbMtJhvfZ0
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4gymxY2zM8
show two of the milder videos. It is possible that all of these videos show shots
of corpses—real human beings destroyed by other human beings.Yet the images on the screen are almost as
devoid of horror as they are of odor.In
one of them (not linked here), you can hear the reporter gagging as he walks
through the streets counting bodies.
No, thirty years is not so
long.“For anyone who was there, the
memories are as fresh as if the killings happened yesterday,” said Robert
Fisk.How many of the children of Sabra
and Shatila still wake up screaming in the night as adults?Some things should never be forgotten.
Seeking inspiration for my next blog post, I came across
a link to NAKBA REVIEW, an online newspaper.http://paper.li/Satyagrahi_ji/1305447315I was immediately drawn to it because it
looked very professional and I loved the format.
The idea behind the online paper is
simple.The articles are written as lead
paragraphs in a news article.If the
reader wants more, he/she can click on the article and a new window opens with
the original source article.As in a
print newspaper, the articles are separated into categories.The reader is free to jump to other
categories immediately (picture a man removing the sports section from a paper
while his wife reads the books section).
The source of the article is given
up front, just as the location of a print newspaper article is given
first.The pictures (including videos)
are amazing/interesting/eye-catching/supply your own adjective.
I followed this REUTERS picture to an article “Parkour around the
World: The Art of Moving” and learned that Palestinian youth in Gaza are training
in Parkour or free-running in cemeteries and in former Israeli settlements.
The point of free running is to get from point A to
point B as quickly and efficiently as possible, not letting obstacles get in
the way.The only tool is the human
body. Another way the wonderful resilient
people of Gaza continue to make lemonade out of the incredibly bitter lemons
life has dealt them.
Sir Isaac Newton would have been proud of how these young people
are defying gravity as they defy the impossible odds of leading a normal life
under conditions that are anything but normal.
Watch the video.As someone who knows the horrors these boys
have experienced, I found it heart-warming.As a mother, I found it heart-stopping.
Rachel
Corrie, for those of you who are not familiar with her, was a young American
college student who went to Gaza to help the people of Rafah whose homes were
being demolished.Sadly, she never came
home.Rachel became the first foreign
national to be killed while protesting Israeli occupation—but she was not the
last.She was run over by a Caterpillar
bulldozer when the driver continued on his course to demolish a family home
despite the fact that Rachel, wearing a day-glo orange jacket, was standing in
front of it.
After
a cursory investigation, Israel closed the case.
The
family filed a lawsuit on the advice of Lawrence
Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who,
on behalf of the State Department, told the family in 2004 that the United
States did not consider the investigation into Rachel’s death to be “thorough,
credible and transparent.” http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/rachel-corrie-blaming-the-victim.premium-1.462179
After
seven years, the verdict was that Rachel was responsible for her own
death.The driver and the Israeli army
were exonerated.Although this verdict
was not unexpected, it still generated cries of outrage throughout the world.
Former
President Jimmy Carter said, “The killing of an American peace activist is
unacceptable.The court’s decision
confirms a climate of impunity, which facilitates Israeli human rights
violations against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territory.” http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/rachel-corrie-verdict-082912.html
TheGuardian
said, “The case laid bare the state of the collective Israeli military mind,
which cast the definition of enemies so widely that children walking down the
street were legitimate targets if they crossed a red line that was invisible to
everyone but the soldiers looking at it on their maps.The military gave itself a blanket of
protection by declaring southern Gaza a war zone, even though it was heavily
populated by ordinary Palestinians, and set rules of engagement so broad that
just about anyone was a target.
Going
even farther, the actual testimony included phrases like “there are no
civilians in Gaza.”How can a community
of 1.7 million people, almost half of whom are under age 15, not have
civilians?Are newborn babies combatants?
Rachel’s
family founded the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice to carry on
the work that meant so much to Rachel and for which she made the ultimate
sacrifice.You can learn more about
their work at http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/
The Palestine Youth Orchestra
recently completed a tour of Italy, overcoming obstacles that young performers
could not even imagine.They have to leave the country by
different routes, getting permission to leave is difficult, and even performing
within Palestine is almost impossible.The following is an information bulletin that tells more about creation
of this incredible group of you musicians that stand out as shining examples of
Palestinian culture.
The Palestine Youth Orchestra , a flagship project
of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine , was created in
2004 with the aim of overcoming geographical boundaries by bringing together
young Palestinian musicians from Palestine and the Diaspora, creating a body of
musicians from different parts of the globe who will address the world with the
harmonious universal language of music.This vision incorporates the enhancement of the Palestinian cultural
identity, creating cohesion amongst the larger Palestinian society – a vehicle
towards nation building in an effort to overcome the barriers that have been
erected between the Palestinians over the past decades.
Another dimension is to facilitate the coming
together of Palestinian youth with their peers from other cultures, creating a
channel for dialogue and exchange and learning about each other.In addition to the guest conductors and
coaches, the PYO invites annually young guest musicians from other countries
further enriching the experience for all participating members. The PYO today
is composed of about sixty young musicians from Palestine, Jordan, Syria,
Egypt, Europe and North America and very recently from South America. They
constitute together a full fledged orchestra on a par with similar bodies
around the world.
The PYO is a
unique ensemble performing the classics of the symphonic repertoire as well as
promoting the works of Palestinian and Arab composers.It is also unique because of what it conveys
to Palestinian society and to the different communities and people abroad who
have the opportunity to attend its performances, the PYO represents a new image
of Palestine,a new generation that
loves life and loves music and is full of aspiration for a better tomorrow.
The PYO members have been honored by prestigious conductors such as
Anne-Sophie Bruening and Walter Mik from Germany and the award winning British conductor
Sian Edwards who led the PYO in three concerts in Jordan, Lebanon and Greece
and will be leading them again in the summer of 2012.
Some countries go to the Olympics in
search of gold medals, but for others the mere sight of their own flag flying
among the flags of the world is its own reward.
Follow the link below to read of
hundreds of Palestinians gathering in Ramallah to see this scene—Judo player Maher
Abu Rmeileh carrying the flag.
Looking for drama?Try the
story of Ali Khousrof (also Khousref or Khosrof), the Yemeni contender in judo.Unfortunately, he lost his first match in the
last minute, but the story of what he went through to reach the Olympics is
inspiring.Read the caption to this
picture (9 of 13) in albawaba: Arabs spring into action: the dash to London
2012.
