SOLDIER, YOU CAN BE A HERO

Soldier, listen
You can be a hero
Glory is in your hands

Soldier, listen
Your power is great
Your decision is needed

Soldier, listen
If you want
You can disobey
...And truly be heroic

Peace activists,
Human rights organisations
And concerned civilians
Would like to be in your position

So they can say NO and be heroes
They have been trying
But people power
Has proven to be an illusion.

10 million people
Demonstrating worldwide
At the same time
Was not enough
To convince the Bush administration
That the war on Iraq was wrong

Yet, you know it is

Step down soldier (man) from your tank (APC) and show your face.
Tell me your mother's name
Tell me how proud she is of you
Tell me the ethics she taught you
Your individual conscience is a great treasure ...use it
Habibi, take responsibility for your actions.
Don’t be banal like Eichmann.
Don’t hide behind the state.
Don’t hide behind your institution.
Don't hide behind your gun
Show your face
Look me in the eye
Be courageous.
Be revolutionary.
Be just.

Article by a friend from last July (2006)

Please Israel Stop

By Ben Zaadz

July 2006

“If I was in your position…

I’d put down all my ammunition…

and wonder why it had taken me so long”

More of the same. And more of the same. And more and more and more of the same. The bully kills and the victim gets blamed. The symptoms are addressed but not the root causes. The spoilt little brat country literally gets away with murder and no-body has le palle to stand up to it.

Three and a half months ago, there was the case of Akaber Abdelrahmen Zaid, the seven-year old Palestinian girl shot in the head by Israeli specially trained sharpshooters (undercover IDF Duvdevan unit) in a town near Jenin. One article I read voiced the questions many of us were asking ourselves: who would bear responsibility for her death and what would the consequences be for the soldiers/policemen who killed her? At the time the IDF stated that it had regretted the “harm” caused to the child, thus acknowledging that in effect Israeli security forces bore the responsibility. Yet so far it seems as though there have been absolutely no consequences to bear by the individual soldiers/policemen or the institution they belong to or the state that they represent.

Three weeks later, eight-year old Hadeel Rabe’eya Ghaban was killed in Beit Lahiya, Gaza, when at least six artillery shells fired by the Israeli military fell on her family house. The shelling managed to injure seven of Hadeel’s siblings, their ages ranging from 18 months to 17 years old. Again there were no apparent consequences for the perpetrators.

On 9 June, exactly two months and one day after the killing of Hadeel, four children (in most reports it states five but subsequently it was discovered that the fifth sibling killed was over 18 years of age) and three adults, all belonging to the same family, were killed on a beach in Northern Gaza by shells coming from an Israeli gunship stationed off the Gazan coastline. First Israel apologized and, again, gravely regretted the harm caused by the incident. Later Defence Minister Peretz officially denied that the responsibility lay with Israel, insisting that an IDF inquiry had proven that no evidence of IDF shells had been found at the scene of the killing and that, although the gunship had fired shells, the timing disqualified the possibility of those shells hitting the beach when the Ghalia family was killed. Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, begged to differ, after he did find fragments of IDF shells at the scene and embedded in the victims. He also gathered computerized and hand-written hospital records that show that children injured at the beach were admitted to the hospital at a time that would suggest that the blast that caused the family’s death occurred during the time of the IDF shelling. Israel dismissed or declined to accept this evidence, only acknowledging the possibility that unexploded ordnance from an IDF artillery shell fired earlier in the day could have caused the fatal injuries. The dubious fact remains however that the IDF inquiry relied solely on internal sources. Ex-Pentagon analyst Garlasco opined, “an investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly be considered credible…The IDF’s partisan approach highlights the need for an independent, international investigation.” Other voices have also called for an independent investigation such as Amnesty International and the international child rights organization, Defence for Children International, which issued an open letter to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Prof. John Dugard urging them to spearhead this mission.

The response from state governments and intergovernmental institutions has ranged from silent to lame to shocking. Kofi Annan wagged his finger and said in not so many words “Israel, please don’t be so barbaric when you kill. Try to be gentler in your attacks”, while the good ol’ US not only failed to condemn the attack, but went as far as saying Israel had the right to defend itself…Does Israel need to defend itself against an unarmed family of seven picknicking on the beach? I would like to believe not.

Then on 13 June, high precision Israeli Air Force missiles managed to collaterally kill two more Palestinian children (and eight adults) in another attack on a car in Gaza, aimed supposedly at rocket-carrying militants who were supposedly travelling in the targeted car. The spate of child killings continued on 20 June when three more Gazan children were wiped out by yet another Israeli targeted assassination gone wrong.

Then came the 25 June kidnapping incident; the subsequent “Saving Private Shalit” mission has wrought even more senseless destruction and killing on Gaza. The body count is on the rise and nobody is doing anything effective to stop it. I say effective, because there have been attempts by civil society all over the world to try to bring Israel to its senses. Hundreds of articles and reports have been written in the wake of this latest intensification of killing and collective punishment, denouncing and strongly criticizing Israel’s actions and urging, begging, for someone, SOMEBODY, SOMETHING to stop this insanity. In her article “Kidnapped by emotions”[1], journalist Akiva Eldar reminds the Israeli and foreign public that Prime Minister Olmert was spouting a very different tune to the gun-totting kill ‘em all attitude of recent weeks when he addressed a New York Jewish audience just one year ago when he was still deputy PM. He spoke of wanting to be friends, partners and good neighbours with the Palestinians. He spoke of daring to take the risks to move towards better understanding and greater trust. What made him change his mind? A few pathetic Qassam rockets? I am becoming increasingly suspicious that Israel does not want peace; that they do not want a solution to this never-ending conflict.

With this desperate conclusion, I see no point in civil society continuing to toil over hundreds of reports and articles, bearing witness to these atrocities. Regardless of how well-argued, well-researched and well-referenced these commentaries are they are falling on deaf ears, so we might as well find another purpose for them. How about printing them all off and using them to build the coffins of the next victims of Israel’s indiscriminate killing – judging by the latest trend, we will need all the paper we can get.

Let this one go into the coffin of the youngest victim; insert it on the inside panel, closest to the heart.

Ben Zaadz is human rights activist from the UK. This is his first article.

---

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/732054.html

By Bassemah (2)

What connects me to a place

I’ve always known but never occupied,

whose vivid memories dance like fairy tales in my mind?

Their stories become my connections

brought late at night

mixed in with ancient lullabies.

The water had to be boiled for the bath

in the village.

The baker only a short walk away.

The strength of her grandmother,

the cruelty of her school teachers,

boundless dreams,

and the fondness of her love

swim in the sea of my memories.

Love letters carved onto oranges,

read in tree branches,

consumed without a trace,

with the insatiable want of a forbidden fruit

live in my narrative now.

He was a city boy, an Old City boy,

and reckless.

More connections I discovered

at sunrise before school

over strong coffee and cigarettes.

He was young, a boxer, and a charmer.

He defended the weak in the streets,

held a Jordanian rifle,

an antique,

on this side of the fence,

and hunted birds with the boys

in the hills near the caves.

He flirted with British girls

because he could,

and left his homeland at nineteen

for a better life

and forty years.

To them I am connected.

And to the refugee I’m connected

Who inherits not a fortune in property

but a fortune in loss?

Ours is a connection to what we

are prohibited from knowing again.

Pushed off at gunpoint,

or by stories, and recollections…

a massacre at a bordering village,

or killed,

leaving those left to grieve

in suicidal desperation.

How can we talk about connections?

Ours were severed in 1948

with more to fade since ‘67

and daily in hostilities at airports

and checkpoints

or demolitions

for the birth of another homeless

family

longing for that which connected them

to their past,

to their future,

seeing and hearing and smelling it

crushed before them,

surrounded by rocks

and well guarded machine guns.

We are longing for that connection

which bleeds inside of us

like aching memories of that tender soil

clinging to the severed remains

of yet another tree of olives uprooted,

disconnected from its home

In Palestine.

03/2005 Bassemah

By my dear friend Bassemah

Palestine

A tree with scaly branches was

born in me and

my country change

her name and people.

They wear icicles on their tongues,

our replacements.

I saw them pierce my mother’s breast

every time she remembered.

And when I tell them where

I am from

I see the ice fly from their lips

and their laughter at my back.

En masse the hearts rot to black

theirs and ours.

The streets they smirk at my heels,

the ones

my great-grandfather built.

Now they smirk at his grave.

The color of forgetful eyes

is false.

Oppressed becomes oppressor.

And those unheard will be forgotten soon.

These biting thorns have shaped a land

where once olive groves

dug deep into the sand.

Bassemah

Fall 1996-Chicago

THE NEW MILLENIUM PLUS SEVEN

Heroes

We need to be heroes
And give our lives to the truth

We cannot stay silent
We must not be mute

We need to be heroes
And be ever versatile

And keep on pushing ourselves
Yet always with style

But we are so angry, all the time
That we don't know, where to begin

And we don't know, what, or who
Is worth investing in

Yet, we want to inspire and be inspired

We want to desire and be desired

We want to burn and create fire

But I'd say, most of all,

We want to never, ever, ever

Get tired

A poem by a friend

Paying the price of stubbornness

There are some lessons,
I just don't want to learn
And some tears,
I just don't want to cry
And therefore,
Sometimes,
I am simply left to yearn
Because fear,
Forces me,
To let life pass me by
As I look on,
Paralized,
Alone,
Left out in the cold,
Because,
There are just some hands,
That I can't stand to hold.

JESUS CAMP (ARMY OF GOD)

DEAR ALL,

The following link leads to a report on a recently released documentary about a boot camp - with a difference- for kids in the US. This horrific docu shows details of Jesus Camp, where children are trained to be "warriors" in the Army of God. Watch, be horrified and pass it on - to show how sick the organisers behind this initiative are....

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp4e5_jesus-camparmy

REGAINING YOUR BRAIN

some recommended sites for REGAINING YOUR BRAIN

www.Globalresearch.ca
www.Democracynow.org
www.Freepress.org
www.Axisoflogic.com
www.Counterpunch.org
www.Mediamatters.com
www.Commondreams.com
www.Regainyourbrain.org
www.Prisonplanet.tv
www.Rockymountainnews.com
www.Physics911.org
www.Tinyurl.com
www.Informationclearinghouse.info

BACK TO THE WORD THING

"It's all a battle of words, you see, and most of them are lies...listen, son, said the man with the gun...there's room for you inside." PINK FLOYD, Dark Side of the Moon

If you can be told....

If you can be told what to see or read...
then it follows,
that you can be told what to say or think...


Defend your universal human right to speak and think for yourself ... no-one else will do it for you

WORDS ARE MEANINGLESS AND FORGETTABLE?

So the song by Depeche Mode goes. Hmm, I agree but that's not what I wanted to point out about words today
I just want to say that there is too bloody many of them
Too many words, saying nothing
KILIMAT FA'DI - EMPTY WORDS

We are wafflised every day - avalanched, overwhelmed, washed away by torrents of words, when the underlying message of each communication could be often explained with "cúpla focail".

Luis Borges once said (or I'm sure he said it more than once - he probably said it hundreds of times) that most books could be written in a few pages. Why write a novel of 300 pages when a short story could suffice?

So I have decided to focus on the message -
The short sweet message


And what's the message for today?
"All has been said (and written): the problem is no-one is listening"

Stay tuned

Walking in Ramallah

Blue skies, warm sunshine, throwing beautiful light on the cream-coloured stone houses

Litter galore on the broken pavements and patches of green between roads and buildings

Wadis (valleys) dotted with rocks, rusty cans and olive trees

Hills

Half-finished houses and burnt out cars

Stone steps down to the wadi and back up again

Donkeys and wild dogs

Quaint little houses with overgrowing grape vines and sofas in the yard

A show of force from the Manara square (centre of town) – some Katay’ab* members hanging out of jeeps,

Brandishing snarls and serious guns,

While coffee-drinkers look down from the first floor

“Stars & Bucks” Café

(Does the entrepreneur owner know that the management of the famous chain he’s imitating is Zionist?)

The Katay’ab guys have a megaphone:

They deny responsibility for

A burnt out shop owned by a Hamas supporter – torched some days ago

Women – veiled and unveiled - with children in tow, carry their shopping home

The Muqa’ta - the president’s compound, where Arafat was once under house arrest - under construction and under guard

Green uniforms, bored looks and red berets

The arid botanic garden

The air is pregnant with invisible spies and collaborators, lurking undercover

Pirate DVD heaven

Cries of “Taxi, taxi, taxi?”

Cries of the fruit sellers

Peasant women in traditional dress sitting on upturned plastic buckets and selling

Herbs, figs, pomegranates

A bodybuilders’ emporium and umpteen money changers/ jewellery shops

More guns – small guns, big guns, bigger guns, toy guns, guns with bullets, guns without

Guns on posters, cradled in the arms of martyrs

”Palestine over all” placards on the roundabout

This the idea of some brave local women –

“We want to scream NO to the infighting. This is not what Palestine is about!”

Sha’bab** everywhere – walking, smoking, observing

Drinking Nescafé in plastic cups from street vendors

No jobs, no wife, no life, no future

Jesus wept and Mohammed prayed

Old kuffiya-clad men smoke hookah and play shesh-besh (backgammon)

Beside the hi-tech shop with the plasma screen TVs

And stores selling grain and nuts and strange powdery white rocks kept in white buckets

Looks like chalk,

Tastes like yoghurt

Oh Ramallah!





*Katay’ab is the Arabic term for the Al Aqsa martyrs’ brigades – armed wing of Fateh

**Sha’bab is Arabic term for youth

LO AND BEHOLD - ANOTHER FACT-FINDING MISSION!

Hi all,
Here is John Dugard's (UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) address to the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council on 5 July before the Council passed the resolution (on 6 July) to dispatch him on (another) urgent fact-finding mission....While this resolution can be seen as an encouraging sign that at least something resembling acknowledgement of the atrocities being committed by Israel has taken place on the diplomatic level (a tiny acoustic drop in the ocean of deafening diplomatic silence), unfortunately the wording of the resolution is so general (it does not specify when the mission will take place, which parts of the OPT will be visited, which "facts" will be gathered and to what purpose) that it cannot be taken as anything but a gesture. Facts will be collected and they will end up in another report by Dugard to be presented to the Council, which will end up in BEST CASE SCENARIO another deliberation in another Session (ordinary or special) that will BEST CASE SCENARIO end up in another resolution to carry out another fact-finding mission....and so forth.

However, Dugard's report is an excellent advocacy resource - as an independent expert and widely recognised scholar, he sums up the situation here very well. I believe it facilitates understanding the context of the current events in Gaza. It can be used to help others understand this too.... So pass it on HINT HINT!!!

For more details on the Human Rights Council first Special Session and its first resolution: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/index.htm

Why not go out on a limb?

- Isn't that where all the fruit is?

MACONAMI

check out www.patriziaferrara.com