As many of you probably know, a controversy has recently broke out at my school, the University of St. Thomas, over a decision to not invite Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the annual PeaceJam event. Evidently, the St. Thomas administration thought Tutu was too controversial because of his statements in opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Our Justice and Peace program has been at the center of the controversy. In fact, the faculty member who initially got Tutu to agree to coming, recently lost his grant to continue working for the university. And, of course, the Director of the program lost her job over the controversy.All of this is strange considering that I saw Ann Coulter speak a couple years ago at St. Thomas. In her speech before a full auditorium, Coulter made dozens of racists comments. Unfortunately, she received a standing ovation.As we anticipated, last week the City Pages featured an article on the controversy. Many other newspapers from around the country and the world picked up the story. It was one week ago today that the piece was published in the City Pages and I just received an email from the president of St. Thomas addressed to faculty, staff, and students. In the email, Dennis Dease says that he had made a mistake and decided to change his mind on the issue. In the letter he extends an invitation to Tutu to speak at a forum that addresses the Israel-Palestine conflict. He explained that two Jewish groups have already agreed to sponsor the event.
As you might have guessed, this controversy has stirred things up a bit at St. Thomas, but not as much as one might have hoped. Of course, all the faculty from the theology department and Justice and Peace program are freaking out, but the student body doesn’t seem too upset by the whole thing. Yesterday, during the lunch hour, a few people were protesting and holding up a sign that said, “Let Tutu Speak.” I spoke with my friend and legendary activist Marv Davidov about it. He was determined to get the New York Times to cover the story. As I lit his cigarette for him he said, “They thought this thing would blow right over, but they were wrong, cause we’re not going to let it.” If you know Marv, you know that he’s serious.Well, evidently, it didn’t take too long for the University to reverse its decision about Tutu. Although I am happy to hear that Dease recognizes his mistake, I am not confident that this really marks a significant change in the administration. The larger issues have to do with the future of a fairly radical Justice and Peace program at aconservative Roman Catholic institution. Unfortunately, it appears that the future of the program is in jeopardy. As a graduate of the university and someone who was actively involved in the Justice and Peace program, I am deeply saddened by all of this, but I’ve been trained to not go down without a fight.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine/Lebanon
How do I as a pacifist respond to the mass demonstratoins of Hizbollah in Lebanon? Many Lebanese Christians and Muslims have united to support the cause against Israeli repression and the complicit Lebanese “US-backed government.” Israeli state terrorism breaks my heart. I hate to see houses bulldozed and children murdered. Israel’s latest offensives in Gaza and Lebanon were disastrous. Hizbollah gained massive support for their actions, but were their actions effective? Will a violent revolution gain the respect of Western powers. If Hizbollah leaders take over the Lebanese government, they will most certainly attack Israel. We all know what happens when you attack Israel, whether it be with pebbles, rocks, or homemade bombs - the Israeli military fires back unproportionately and kills thousands of innocent men, women, and children, while displacing hundreds of thousands of others from their homes.Is the answer to Israeli oppresion a violent revolution in Lebanon? No. Israel will respond and the results will bring further damage to Lebanon and Palestine. The attacks on the Lebanon this past year brought them back 50 years. The environmental damage alone will take decades to clean up. Lebanon and Palestine cannot afford another attack.
It is sad that we sit and watch desperate Lebanese people form a revolution that will be demolished by Israel. They feel that this is their only hope. The United States government is responsible. The people of the United States must put pressure on the government to stop their support for Israeli terrorism. This is the only way forward. I am not hopeful, but I’m not prepared to watch Lebanon go up in flames again.
Aerial view photos of the destruction of Lebanese cities. Indiscriminate bombing? Decide for yourself.
Published on Monday, August 21, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Four dead as mine-clearing teams fear death toll from Israeli weapons could soar
by Declan Walsh
When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun.
Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up. The terrifying blast flung her to the ground, thrusting metal shards into her liver. Hassan’s abdomen was cut open. Merwa was hit in the leg and arm.
“We thought it was just a little ball,” said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre’s Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.
Her mother watched anxiously. “The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah,” said Najah Saleh, 40. “But what did these children ever do to them?”
Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer’s 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes.
Mine-clearing teams scrambling across the region have logged 89 cluster bomb sites so far, and expect to find about 110 more. Meanwhile, casualties are being taken into hospital - four dead and 21 injured so far. Officials fear the toll could eventually stretch into the thousands.
“We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse,” said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.
Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. “We’re finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere,” Mr Clark said.
The bombs are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that can kill within 10 metres (33ft). But up to a quarter fail to explode, creating minefields that kill civilians once the war is over. A decades-old campaign to ban them has failed.
Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world’s largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.
In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the town hospital. “That’s about as inappropriate [a use of cluster bombs] as you can get,” Mr Clark said.
In Yahmour, a hilly frontline village that has become a complex urban minefield, minesweepers from the UK-based Mine Action Group have cleared the main roads and some house entrances. But danger lurks everywhere. One elderly woman lost her leg in an explosion last Monday as she swept her yard.
Now holes pock the road, yellow tape appears around fields and houses, and residents tip-toe around the “grape bombs”. Ilham Tarhini, 45, stood at her front door appealing for help. After returning from refuge in Syria three days ago she found tiny bomblets poking from the soil of her garden of olive trees. From where she was standing she could count eight: “I’m afraid to step into the streets.”
But the most volatile payload sat in Jamil Zuhoor’s living room. During the war an unexploded rocket packed with bomblets punched through his front wall, skidding to a halt before a chest of drawers. “I can’t see us moving back in here for another year at least,” he said, shutting the door of his shattered house.
The UN is appealing for money and minesweepers. With such help it hopes the worst-hit areas can be cleared within six months, Mr Clarke said. But until then residents live in fear.
Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. “It’s like we are living in a prison,” said Aisa Hussain, 38, a Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside his house.
Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another tiny black canister perched under a tree. “You see what America is sending us,” he said bitterly. “This is their idea of democracy.”
Backstory
Cluster bombs were first used by the Germans in the second world war but have become a standard weapon for many countries, including Britain, France and Italy.
The most popular delivery device, the American-made M26 rocket, scatters 644 bomblets over 20,000 square metres. Under test conditions up to 23% of bomblets from the M26 failed to explode on impact. The United States keeps 370,000 such rockets in stock.
The M26 inflicted hundreds of civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003, says Human Rights Watch, over populated areas. The British army used M26s in the 1991 Gulf war
The US halted cluster bomb exports to Israel in 1982 after indiscriminate use against civilians but rescinded the ban in 1988. Belgium is the only country in the world that has banned cluster bombs.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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Over 250 people have been massacred by the Israeli militrary machine. Thousands and thousands have fled there homes fearing more indiscriminate bombing of infrastructure and civilian homes. Against international law Israel is not bombing militrary targets but civilian infrastructure and homes. The US-UK administrations have pledged full support for Israel, along with future Democratic Presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton. Clinton speaking at a UN gathering spoke of our undying support for Israel for their American values and principles. It seems Hilary is right. The US funded Israeli military reflects the targeting techniques and tactics of the US military, indiscriminate bombing on innocent civilians. Hizbullah like Al-Qaeda is a group created and sustained by US foreign policy and Israeli cooperation. Blair and Bush have given an Israel a one-week window (after a whole of week of Israeli bombing) to demonstrate the breadth of the US-Israeli military establishment in the middle-east. It is the latest episode of dispropotionate military action in the Middle East. In Iraq, against an unorganized loosely formed group, popularly known as Al-Qaeda, the US justified blowing to shreds cities and infrastructure to establish US permanent military bases around oil reserves. Hizbullah like Al-Qaeda was allusive, weak, and relatively tame, until Israel invaded Lebanon. After the attack on innocent civilians Hizbullah will grow and become more militant, more organized, and more adament against Israel. A direct parallel can made with the growth of Al-Qaeda in the past three to four years.
The argument of the Bush-Blair team is that Hizbullah must be taken out because they are “the root” of the problem in the area. Hizbullah is not the root of the problem. This group, like Al-Qaeda was created out of the US-Israeli oppressive forces in the Middle East.
The international community has had a slow and inadequate reaction to the Israeli invasion.
Since the people of Palestine democratically elected Hamas, in one of the most fair and clean elections ever, liberal democracies around the globe have denied Palestinian people food and water. Now, with over 80% of the Palestinian people living in poverty and as the Red Cross reports on the verge of a “humanitarian disaster” liberal democracies continue to stand by there oppressive policies against Hamas and more accurately against the Palestinian people. Again and again the liberal democracies around the world show their true colors. Democracy, when it suits the interests of the elite, is required or you’ll be bombed. However, when the people respond to injustices and overwhelmingly elect an administration that is perceived to be violent, the elitist liberal democracies of the world cut off life lines so civilians suffer and die, make assassination efforts, and develop secret coups to overthrow governments. As a result, more and more groups like Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda come out of the woodwork. Who is violent?
As a pacifist I reject the violence of Hizbullah. As a pacifist I reject the oppressive and coercive force of Israel and its war on the poor. Israeli occupation is violence and creates Hizbullah. I am against Hizbullah, but we must confront the root of the problem. We must confront the Israeli military machine and the government who supplies them and funds their actions, the US.
United for Peace and Justice Condemns Israeli Attacks on Gaza, Calls for an End to U.S. Support of the Israeli Occupation
Ten months ago Israeli military forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip, part of the Palestinian lands long occupied by Israel. On Tuesday, June 27th, the Israeli military launched an all-out assault on the people of Gaza, and there seems to be no end in sight.
The destruction of vital bridges and power stations, which led to the cut off of electricity and water for well over 1 million people, is nothing short of collective punishment imposed on a civilian population. Israel has also taken nearly 100 elected officials and leaders of the Hamas party as prisoners in the last few days.
Israel’s massive military assault on Gaza is clear evidence that Israel remains the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, despite its unilateral withdrawal of settlements last year. Israel has been seeking to bring down the Palestinian government by bringing pressure to bear on the civilian Palestinian population, and is using the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier as a pretext to do that. (More background information below.)
United for Peace and Justice condemns this brutal attack and calls for an end to U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip.
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE CALLS FOR:
1) An immediate end to the assault on Gaza by the Israeli military forces.
2) Cut off of U.S. financial and military aid to Israel that makes it possible for such assaults to be carried out, as well as U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
3) Immediate shipments by the U.S. government of humanitarian aid (especially food and medicines) for the people of Gaza.
YOU CAN TAKE ACTION TODAY:
1) Call the White House (202-456-1111) and the U.S. State Department (202-647-4000) to demand that the U.S. take immediate action.
2) Send a letter to your local paper and speak out against the latest assaults by the Israeli government on the people of Gaza.
3) You can help get much-needed medical supplies to Gaza — click here for more information and to make a donation.
BACKGROUND
During the month of June the Israeli military forces carried out several deadly attacks in Gaza. On June 9th, 8 Palestinians were killed and 32 injured when a beach was shelled (see report from Human Rights Watch for more information on this incident); on June 13th a missile attack on a highway in Gaza killed 11 people and wounded another 30; and on June 20th another missile attack from Israeli forces killed 3 children and wounded 15 more people.
In retaliation, Palestinian militants raided Israeli military positions near Gaza on June 25th, during which 2 soldiers were killed and Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured. Israel then threatened an attack if he was not freed and began deploying tanks along the border. Their attack began after Israel rejected Shalit’s captors’ demand for the release of all Palestinian women and Palestinians younger than eighteen in Israeli prisons. (There are some 9,800 Palestinians being held: 335 of them are children and several dozen are women.)
Just before midnight on June 27th a large scale military assault on Gaza was launched by Israel. Fighter planes hit three bridges along the main north-south highway in Gaza. Another strike hit Gaza’s main power plant and knocked out the electricity in densely populated Gaza City. This power plant provided 42% of the power to Gaza’s 1.3 million residents, and now Gaza is completely dependent on Israel for power. It could take as long as a year to get the plant operational again. Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and a war crime. Israel’s use of U.S. taxpayer-supplied weapons to target civilian infrastructure is also a violation of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act; UFPJ calls upon the White House and Congress to investigate these violations of U.S. law and take appropriate action to shut off future weapons transfers to Israel as a result.
At about 2:30 in the morning the Israeli military forces started to move into Gaza and take control of areas east of the city of Rafah. A little after 5am fighter plans flew low over Gaza, causing intentional sonic booms which reportedly shattered windows. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said their goal was “not to mete out punishment but rather to apply pressure so that the abducted soldier will be freed. We want to create a new equation — freeing the abducted soldier in return for lessening the pressure on the Palestinians.” Such deliberate collective punishment of a civilian population is also a violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.
According to the June 29th edition of the NY Times, the Israeli forces have expanded their assault: “In the West Bank city of Ramallah this morning, Israeli forces detained 20 lawmakers and 8 ministers in the 24-member cabinet, including Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti, security officials said. Today, an Israeli warplane fired a missile in Gaza City that an Israeli spokeswoman said hit a soccer field near the pro-Hamas Islamic University. Reuters reported that the missile hit inside the university …. The Israelis also detained about 20 Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament as they made arrests in Ramallah, Jenin, East Jerusalem and elsewhere.” And the shelling and sonic booming has continued over these past few days.
The Times went on to say, “On Wednesday, the crisis seemed to be tipping toward escalation as Israeli tanks hunkered down inside southern Gaza at the airport after warplanes had knocked out half of Gaza’s electricity and pounded sonic booms over houses. Also on Wednesday, Israel battered northern Gazan towns with artillery and sent warplanes over the house of the Syrian president [in northwest Syria], who is influential with the Palestinian leader believed to have ordered the kidnapping.”
According to reports in the Syrian press, the 4 Israeli fighter planes were forced out of the airspace by Syria’s military. As bad as the situation is, things could get even worse if Israel does not stop its assaults. But the Israeli government is taking an extremely hard line: Prime Minister Olmert, as quoted in the NY Times, said, “We won’t hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family.”
All of this comes in the midst of a severe economic, humanitarian crisis throughout Gaza and the West Bank. In January of this year international aid to the Palestinians was cut off after the Hamas party won the elections, leading to extreme shortages of food and medicine, as well as other supplies and necessities. Last week, the Senate passed its version of the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which proposes additional economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Palestinian people for exercising their right to vote. The Senate bill, which was approved by unanimous consent, comes on the heels of the House passing its version of the bill last month. UFPJ has signed a statement to Congress, organized by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, calling on it not to impose sanctions on the Palestinian people for voting.
Listen to the song here
Billy Bragg
Tuesday March 28, 2006
Guardian
Rachel Corrie went to Gaza to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians, whose voice is seldom heard in her country, the US. That she herself should be silenced - first by an Israeli bulldozer, next by a New York theatre cancelling a play created from her words - is a testimony to the power of her message. This song was written on a plane on March 20 and recorded at Big Sky Recordings, Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 22. The tune is borrowed from Bob Dylan.
An Israeli bulldozer killed poor Rachel Corrie
As she stood in its path in the town of Rafah
She lost her young life in an act of compassion
Trying to protect the poor people of Gaza
Whose homes are destroyed by tank shells and bulldozers
And whose plight is exploited by suicide bombers
Who kill in the name of the people of Gaza
But Rachel Corrie believed in non-violent resistance
Put herself in harm’s way as a shield of the people
And paid with her life in a manner most brutal
But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.
Rachel Corrie had 23 years
She was born in the town of Olympia, Washington
A skinny, messy, list-making chain-smoker
Who volunteered to protect the Palestinian people
Who had become non-persons in the eyes of the media
So that people were suffering and no one was seeing
Or hearing or talking or caring or acting
And the horrible math of the awful equation
That brought Rachel Corrie into this confrontation
Is that the spilt blood of a single American
Is worth more than the blood of a hundred Palestinians
But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.
The artistic director of a New York theatre
Cancelled a play based on Rachel’s writings
But she wasn’t a bomber or a killer or fighter
But one who acted in the spirit of the Freedom Riders
Is there no place for a voice in America
That doesn’t conform to the Fox News agenda?
Who believes in non-violence instead of brute force
Who is willing to confront the might of an army
Whose passionate beliefs were matched by her bravery
The question she asked rings out round the world
If America is truly the beacon of freedom
Then how can it stand by while they bring down the curtain
And turn Rachel Corrie into a non-person?
Oh, but you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears.
· My Name Is Rachel Corrie, co-edited by Alan Rickman and Guardian features editor Katharine Viner, opens at the Playhouse theatre tonight. Telephone 0870 060 6631. Listen to an exclusive download (MP3) of the song here.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
