Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Beauty and the Beast
The rains finally came--torrents, crashing thunder, our little Cello raging back at the house shaking bolts, and then taking final refuge under the covers; La Professora was his refuge as she is mine. New York appears to me now as almost weather less except if you are poor.
I was telling a friend today while we were eating breakfast at Brunetti's in Carlton, my friend Patty who helped me set up this journal, that I know perhaps readers expect me to write about sex or my life here--a sort of travelogue and I am pulled by the blue green of the seas, by the flat expanses of vast plains, gum trees so economically dotting the horizon, their layered blue green canopies letting the blazing blue light in or catching the red glazed sunsets in their wide spread arms or the forest gums, each a tapestry of browns and ochres, grays and yellows, barks hanging in strips, or rolling off the trunks in long white sheets--the paperbark trees that line our street--the thump of the Kangaroo's massive tail as the creature took fright at my passage through its territory and in long jumps made its way over the Nicholson River as Cello huddled between my feet. I have seen things here--the red monolith of Uluru, the totem of a people, rising from the desert lands outside of Alice Springs, a living mammoth form of red pitted rock, telling its people's creation stories; the tourists who insist on climbing on its flanks even as its Aboriginal custodians plead with them not to--this is the confusion of desires that we do so badly at. Yes, I want to tell you all of this but other things have happened this week as a result of our participation in the demonstration a few days ago. One I can share with you--there is a website called S.H.I.T.--Self-Hating and Israeli-Threatening Jews--its opening image is of a toilet bowl and superimposed over it are a few names of Jewish dissenters, those who have dared to write, to speak, to criticize, to question the wisdom of the Occupation and all it had engendered--the implication is we need to flush away these people--they are human waste. A friend had prepared me, you are on the list, she said. And with over 7,000 other Jewish thinkers and writers there I was. I ask you to visit this website--to decide for yourselves is this the discourse you want. There are no names taking responsibility for this list, no way to respond--I am honored to be on this list, in the company of so many who are struggling to break the prevailing national narratives of both Israel and the United States in the Middle East--a list of Jewish questioners, what a novel idea--the yellow D for dissent--we are the traitors who must be flushed away--yes, there are blue blue seas here, and blue-stone cobbled lane ways that in the closing years of the 19th century were used for night soil collectors.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Vigil at the Casino
I knew what I had found familiar about the motion of my hands as I looked down upon my early morning task—rolling up the long hand-made Women in Black banners with their white painted words protesting the Israeli occupation and asserting that we refused to be enemies was much like the opening of the Torah scrolls; these were my sacred Jewish words, and I had the responsibility of carrying them, not through the seated crowds of the synagogue, but onto the number 55 tram that rattled its way past the zoo, past Victoria’s Market and left me off in the heart of downtown Melbourne, right in the midst of the packed end-of-the-work day mobs pushing to make their trains out of Flinders Station. I was a 68 Jewish woman rushing to meet my comrades, Marg and Alex, for a peace vigil outside the Crown Casino, the Crown Casino, that most worldly of places which caters to high rollers and desperate housewives, was where the United Israel Appeal had chosen to have its “gala” dinner and the new Labour Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, was to honor the gathering with his presence and his words of support. We had decided that we too should be part of this event—standing along the driveway entrance to the massive hotel along with members of Palestinian advocacy groups.
Here I drop whatever bravado has been hiding in my words—our usual Women in Black vigils are done in a rather safe place—on a wide, bustling shopping street in downtown Melbourne. There in our hour, we come across a wide spectrum of citizens and they come across us. We do not stand in the heart of the Jewish community here, in Ackland Street with its Eastern European bakeries and cafes or on Balaclava Street with its wonderful kosher market places or in front of the Synagogue in Toorak. As an old New Yorker, I have to smile here—many Jews in Melbourne live in their own part of town, they are not “everywhere,” as in New York—that is why, several months ago, I was asked by two Gentile Melbourne women soon leaving on their first New York visit—“please tell us where the Jewish section is?”
But this vigil was going to be different and it was. All through the confrontations and the glares from the hundreds of cars that drove past us, I kept thinking of the courage of the women who stand in Hagar Square in Jerusalem, particularly after the killing of the Yeshiva students and the women and men in the occupied territories who dare to speak for non-violent protests after their streets have been littered with the bodies of children. I will not speak for Alex or Marg, but only for myself of what the confrontations meant to me—the image of car after car pulling into the hotel’s entrance, the looks of shock as the passengers first saw the gathered Palestinian protestors with their signs, Israel Equals Apartheid, and then as they turned their heads and saw our banners and our tee shirts that read in Hebrew and Arabic, end the occupation. We had already had our pictures and names taken by a short man in a white business suit who said he was part of the Crown Casino security force—reminding me of the FBI surveillance of the peace marches in the early sixties—but what struck me the most in the faces I saw through the car windows and on the people who walked by us on their way into the dinner, was the fear I saw—first fear, then rage when they realized we were also Jewish. “You should be ashamed of yourselves…Don’t you worry, Israel is STRONG! …Traitors…How can you do this?”Younger women put protective arms around yarmulked old men. We were tref personified. The enemy from within. I stood sometimes answering that the occupation was the greatest shanda (shame) of all using my Yiddish tongue, my beloved few words of Yiddish handed down to me by my mother and her New York garment industry world. Women’s faces turned to me in disgust and soon I just stood, looking very hard at what I was seeing and feeling all the losses that my positioning had engendered. I knew what I was seeing, the careful dressing for the public celebration of Israel, of being Jewish, the carefully coiffure hair, the well made dresses, the lame tops—this was an Affair. The Prime Minister was speaking to the cream of Melbourne’s Jewish community, this was an Affair. And there we were, so few in number, but enough to bring back the fear, the fear that allows the most brutal of repressions because you know under it all, they will hate us again. All around me on this “festive” night was despair—the anger and pain of the Palestinians with their flag, trying to break into this ever moving column of supporters of their suffering, not with their bodies, with their shouts and their signs and their words, perhaps sixty of them and three of us, rooted in our own knowledge that terrible things were happening in the name of Jewish safety, and that as Jews, we could not be silent partners in the disaster that is the occupation, and to the celebrants in their tightly closed cars, where even a few voices of dissent, brought it all back and in my so sad heart, I felt as Jewish as I have ever been—standing on the margins of history but so strangely, so Jewishly, right in the heart of it.
Here I drop whatever bravado has been hiding in my words—our usual Women in Black vigils are done in a rather safe place—on a wide, bustling shopping street in downtown Melbourne. There in our hour, we come across a wide spectrum of citizens and they come across us. We do not stand in the heart of the Jewish community here, in Ackland Street with its Eastern European bakeries and cafes or on Balaclava Street with its wonderful kosher market places or in front of the Synagogue in Toorak. As an old New Yorker, I have to smile here—many Jews in Melbourne live in their own part of town, they are not “everywhere,” as in New York—that is why, several months ago, I was asked by two Gentile Melbourne women soon leaving on their first New York visit—“please tell us where the Jewish section is?”
But this vigil was going to be different and it was. All through the confrontations and the glares from the hundreds of cars that drove past us, I kept thinking of the courage of the women who stand in Hagar Square in Jerusalem, particularly after the killing of the Yeshiva students and the women and men in the occupied territories who dare to speak for non-violent protests after their streets have been littered with the bodies of children. I will not speak for Alex or Marg, but only for myself of what the confrontations meant to me—the image of car after car pulling into the hotel’s entrance, the looks of shock as the passengers first saw the gathered Palestinian protestors with their signs, Israel Equals Apartheid, and then as they turned their heads and saw our banners and our tee shirts that read in Hebrew and Arabic, end the occupation. We had already had our pictures and names taken by a short man in a white business suit who said he was part of the Crown Casino security force—reminding me of the FBI surveillance of the peace marches in the early sixties—but what struck me the most in the faces I saw through the car windows and on the people who walked by us on their way into the dinner, was the fear I saw—first fear, then rage when they realized we were also Jewish. “You should be ashamed of yourselves…Don’t you worry, Israel is STRONG! …Traitors…How can you do this?”Younger women put protective arms around yarmulked old men. We were tref personified. The enemy from within. I stood sometimes answering that the occupation was the greatest shanda (shame) of all using my Yiddish tongue, my beloved few words of Yiddish handed down to me by my mother and her New York garment industry world. Women’s faces turned to me in disgust and soon I just stood, looking very hard at what I was seeing and feeling all the losses that my positioning had engendered. I knew what I was seeing, the careful dressing for the public celebration of Israel, of being Jewish, the carefully coiffure hair, the well made dresses, the lame tops—this was an Affair. The Prime Minister was speaking to the cream of Melbourne’s Jewish community, this was an Affair. And there we were, so few in number, but enough to bring back the fear, the fear that allows the most brutal of repressions because you know under it all, they will hate us again. All around me on this “festive” night was despair—the anger and pain of the Palestinians with their flag, trying to break into this ever moving column of supporters of their suffering, not with their bodies, with their shouts and their signs and their words, perhaps sixty of them and three of us, rooted in our own knowledge that terrible things were happening in the name of Jewish safety, and that as Jews, we could not be silent partners in the disaster that is the occupation, and to the celebrants in their tightly closed cars, where even a few voices of dissent, brought it all back and in my so sad heart, I felt as Jewish as I have ever been—standing on the margins of history but so strangely, so Jewishly, right in the heart of it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Both Sides of the Green Line
Because public speaking about the injustices of the Israeli occupation are growing more and more taboo, in so called-democratic discourse, and because so many of us know so little about the complexities of life in the occupied territories as well as in Israel itself for its own Palestinian citizens, I share with you a letter, the classic form of reporting from between the cracks, below the gaze of controlled news accounts. A text of dreams, lost ways, crumbling streets and complex courage.
Dorothy Zellner reports from Israel/Palestine, March 12, 2008:
Hello, all--So far, I've been in the Ben Gurion airport (very gruelling security process), Ramallah, Budrus and Jenin on the West Bank, and so far in Israel, Haifa*, Arrabe* and Sakhnin* in Israel...The city names with the stars indicate Palestinian locals within Israel itself: I remind you that 20% of the Israeli citizenry is Palestinian.
Certain Outstanding Impressions
The checkpoint between Jenin,WB, and Afula, Isr (Jalma). Never have I seen such an edifice. Kafka himself would have been delighted. You get there and see no directions, just a full-height turnstile (like in the subways), a disembodied voice telling you to go ahead, but the turnstile is locked, so you have to shout, "Open the door!" Then you walk along a winding corridor, next turnstile-door, also locked, so you have to shout. This is repeated seven times. The corridors wind this way and that. (I think Dante referred to the seven gates of Hell.) Meanwhile you see nobody in authority, just a few Palestinians coming the other way, obviously the favored few who have obtained a permit to go back and forth from the West Bank to Israel and vice versa. We have permits obtained by the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Finally, the end of the corridor, only there are three doors, none of which are marked. Where to go? we shout. Disembodied voice issues some directions. Aha, people at last! A female guard in a windowed office by a turnstile, waist high, accepts our passports. We wait. We see above our heads a runway with an armed guard, automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, peering down on us. Two men appear to question us: where have you been? How did you get to Ramallah? F. answers tartly that we came through the checkpoints where a soldier was asleep. Who do you know? etc. Finally Y. alertly says that we have permits--oh, says he man, and in a few minutes we go through yet another subway-style turnstile and are---out in the free air, in Afula, in Israel. Last night I dreamed I was blind. I mean I didn't dream that I was blind in the intellectual sense: I mean, I opened my eyes in the dream and everything was orange: I couldn't see. A later dream (I haven't been sleeping well on this trip) is about a friend from college who no longer speaks to me because we disagree over Israel/Palestine. today I understand the first dream--it was about my being unable to find the way out of that building at Jalma....
By now, midway in our trip, we have been in three Palestinian cities/towns and there is simply no way to avoid the fact, even if one wanted to, that Palestinian citizens of Israel are disadvantaged, as the foundations like to say. Not only is there less expenditure for schools, health care facilities, etc., which you probably know all about, but I learned on this trip that public tax money exists in the form of matching funds to all Israeli towns. Needless to say, the Palestinian towns cannot put up enough funds to obtain significant to obtain significant matching funds, so garbage is obviously uncollected in various areas, the electricity suddenly goes out, etc. Also needless to say, there is less industry (not enough investment) and much fewer shops (same reason). There are also many unfinished floors in buildings with gaping windows. Unemployment is higher. The list goes on. The people we visited have organized women's groups, local health care initiatives and more, and we met today a representative of an Arabic theater, herself a Jewish Israeli. So there are many efforts being conducted on the ground.
Here's an interesting twist to the two -state solution issue: several Palestinian citizens fear a so-called state organized along the so-called road map because they are afraid of transfer,i.e. expulsion to the so-called new Palestinian state, which will be composed of several discontinuous fragments. This fear is not paranoia. Members of the Knesset, Lieberman and others, have withing the past three weeks openly called for transfer. Everyone who gave their opinion about this said they would refuse to go--they won't go anywhere--this is their country, too--they will resist.
Well, my traveling companions are waiting for this computer and I am hoping for a decent night's sleep, so I will end. This will at least give you an idea about my trip. I should add that everywhere we have gone in Israel proper and the West Bank we have met fascinating, courageous, intelligent people--I am not talking about supposed wild-eyed militants. I am talking about ordinary people who are in a terrible situation and doing what they can to make things better. They don't fall into any neat ideological categories--they are using what they have on hand on both sides of the Green Line to bring justice here, in many different ways.
I hope to continue when next I have a half hour, which I estimate will be in two or three days! We are busy every second with back-to-back meeting and getting lost in the car or at a checkpoint, and there's a whole lot more I could and will tell you.
Best to all,
DZ
Dorothy Zellner reports from Israel/Palestine, March 12, 2008:
Hello, all--So far, I've been in the Ben Gurion airport (very gruelling security process), Ramallah, Budrus and Jenin on the West Bank, and so far in Israel, Haifa*, Arrabe* and Sakhnin* in Israel...The city names with the stars indicate Palestinian locals within Israel itself: I remind you that 20% of the Israeli citizenry is Palestinian.
Certain Outstanding Impressions
The checkpoint between Jenin,WB, and Afula, Isr (Jalma). Never have I seen such an edifice. Kafka himself would have been delighted. You get there and see no directions, just a full-height turnstile (like in the subways), a disembodied voice telling you to go ahead, but the turnstile is locked, so you have to shout, "Open the door!" Then you walk along a winding corridor, next turnstile-door, also locked, so you have to shout. This is repeated seven times. The corridors wind this way and that. (I think Dante referred to the seven gates of Hell.) Meanwhile you see nobody in authority, just a few Palestinians coming the other way, obviously the favored few who have obtained a permit to go back and forth from the West Bank to Israel and vice versa. We have permits obtained by the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Finally, the end of the corridor, only there are three doors, none of which are marked. Where to go? we shout. Disembodied voice issues some directions. Aha, people at last! A female guard in a windowed office by a turnstile, waist high, accepts our passports. We wait. We see above our heads a runway with an armed guard, automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, peering down on us. Two men appear to question us: where have you been? How did you get to Ramallah? F. answers tartly that we came through the checkpoints where a soldier was asleep. Who do you know? etc. Finally Y. alertly says that we have permits--oh, says he man, and in a few minutes we go through yet another subway-style turnstile and are---out in the free air, in Afula, in Israel. Last night I dreamed I was blind. I mean I didn't dream that I was blind in the intellectual sense: I mean, I opened my eyes in the dream and everything was orange: I couldn't see. A later dream (I haven't been sleeping well on this trip) is about a friend from college who no longer speaks to me because we disagree over Israel/Palestine. today I understand the first dream--it was about my being unable to find the way out of that building at Jalma....
By now, midway in our trip, we have been in three Palestinian cities/towns and there is simply no way to avoid the fact, even if one wanted to, that Palestinian citizens of Israel are disadvantaged, as the foundations like to say. Not only is there less expenditure for schools, health care facilities, etc., which you probably know all about, but I learned on this trip that public tax money exists in the form of matching funds to all Israeli towns. Needless to say, the Palestinian towns cannot put up enough funds to obtain significant to obtain significant matching funds, so garbage is obviously uncollected in various areas, the electricity suddenly goes out, etc. Also needless to say, there is less industry (not enough investment) and much fewer shops (same reason). There are also many unfinished floors in buildings with gaping windows. Unemployment is higher. The list goes on. The people we visited have organized women's groups, local health care initiatives and more, and we met today a representative of an Arabic theater, herself a Jewish Israeli. So there are many efforts being conducted on the ground.
Here's an interesting twist to the two -state solution issue: several Palestinian citizens fear a so-called state organized along the so-called road map because they are afraid of transfer,i.e. expulsion to the so-called new Palestinian state, which will be composed of several discontinuous fragments. This fear is not paranoia. Members of the Knesset, Lieberman and others, have withing the past three weeks openly called for transfer. Everyone who gave their opinion about this said they would refuse to go--they won't go anywhere--this is their country, too--they will resist.
Well, my traveling companions are waiting for this computer and I am hoping for a decent night's sleep, so I will end. This will at least give you an idea about my trip. I should add that everywhere we have gone in Israel proper and the West Bank we have met fascinating, courageous, intelligent people--I am not talking about supposed wild-eyed militants. I am talking about ordinary people who are in a terrible situation and doing what they can to make things better. They don't fall into any neat ideological categories--they are using what they have on hand on both sides of the Green Line to bring justice here, in many different ways.
I hope to continue when next I have a half hour, which I estimate will be in two or three days! We are busy every second with back-to-back meeting and getting lost in the car or at a checkpoint, and there's a whole lot more I could and will tell you.
Best to all,
DZ
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
We Covered Our Eyes
Words do fall into waiting places, waiting for the spirit, the body, to seize them again, warm and living things, anxious to do their work--words do not fail me, I fail the words. Here in Australia just yesterday, the government sang the praises of a free and democratic Israel, a leading newspaper headlining Israel as the island of civilization in a barbaric region.
March 8, 2008--Haaretz, again the words of Gideon Levy:
"Twilight Zone: A Great Darkness Has Fallen"
Operation Warm Winter ended without a single Israeli journalist setting foot on the Gaza`side of the Erez border crossing with Israel. Even the military correspondents, who usually recount the brave acts of our forces from inside their jeeps and armored vehicles, were not taken this time to report on the raids in Jabalya and Sajiyeh. A handful of other correspondents, those who are still interested in what the Israel Defense Forces leaves behind after its campaigns of killing and destruction, stayed home. They have been holed up in their houses for over a year and a half already.
March 3, 2008, words of Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist living in the Gaza strip--find his words at RafahToday.org:
Yesterday I found arms and legs and fingers scattered in the streets everywhere. And this was the situation--burned flesh in the streets with children and kids and women. And so far, 130 Palestinians were killed in the last few days. Out of the 130, there are thirty-nine children, ten women, in addition to 370 children who were injured in the head and the upper side of the body, this which makes the whole situation at Kamala Adwan hospital quite difficult for the ambulance crews to deal with such cases...let me say here that among the people who were targeted or injured, there were three journalists, and one of them was severely injured in the northern part of the Gaza strip. We were shot at at different places, in addition to three medical workers and rescue teams who were injured, beside Mahmoud Zakut, who's a medical worker who was droven over by an Israeli tank while he was inside the area of the northern part of Gaza Strip, Jabaliya refugee camp, as he was trying to evacuate some bodies of the people...
Gideon Levy:
Don't believe the microphones you sometimes see in TV reports on Gaza, adorned with the logo of the Israeli television channels. They are meant only to deceive us. don't believe the meager reports in the press from Gaza that are written by Israeli correspondents. They are all done by phone, with all the limitations that involves. Not one local journalist, neither Jewish or Arab, neither Shlomi Eldar nor Suleiman al-Shafi, neither Amira Hass nor this writer, has passed through the Erez terminal since the end of November 2006. The press in Israel is under a major black-out; the IDF is not allowing it to do its job. Gaza, an hour and a half drive from Tel Aviv, is outside the range of journalistic coverage. Daring Israeli correspondents have traveled to Irag and Lebanon, Syria and Iran, to report to their readers what is happening there--but not to Gaza. It's as though the Strip, which is central to our diplomacy and security, and where everything that happens affects the Negev and the rest of the country, has been declared a closed military zone, as though it were beyond the Mountains of Darkness.
Mohammed Omer: ...and look at what Israel--the weapons that Israel is using. It is heavy weapons, and they are targeting also these civilian houses, so I'm not sure if we can compare the primitive weapons that the Palestinian resistance is using with the well-equipped army, one of the most powerful armies in the world, Israel. And they are using missiles that burns the bodies. And I can tell you and I can tell all the American people listening to this interview, that they're using the missiles that they're burning the bodies --and it can make a smell--it smells real bad here,. It smells like if you are--if you are--like an American barbecue, actually--but this is not an--this is not a cow, this is not beef; this is human being's flesh. It is scattered in the streets...
Gideon Levy:...This blackout on the actions of the IDF and the Shin Bet security services, and the fact that the Israeli press is forbidden to cover what is happening in the Strip, has been accepted with exemplary silence. The press bowed it s head, submissive and obedient, as in the bad old days when it maintained other disgraceful silences, from Qibya to Kafr Qasem....A rare coalition, almost wall to wall, seems very pleased with Gaza being closed off to coverage; When readers don't want to read, the government and the defense establishment don't want things to be read or broadcast, and the reporters, editors and publishers don't want to anger anyone either. They are all very pleased with the fact that Gaza is beyond the pale. Thus Israel has covered its eyes and looked away from what is happening on the other side of the fence, and a great darkness has fallen on the abyss.
Mohammed Omer: People here still don't have food. They have difficulty accessing food, have difficulty accessing different kinds of things. And probably you can hear the Israeli F16 right now. It's hovering in the sky and it has been bombing since the early morning and that was the case since the last few days. There is shortages of fuel as well for the ambulance workers. And I've been talking to one of the medical workers here, and he confirmed to me that 70 kinds of medicines that they could not find in the Palestinian hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza strip...
Gideon Levy: The exclusion of Gaza from Israeli coverage is critical. Just when millions of viewers and readers the world over are having their perception of the country shaped by the terrible pictures being broadcast from Gaza, occasionally in an exaggerated manner, they are witnessing an almost total absence of coverage from the Israeli side. It is one thing to hear or read that the IDF killed, assassinated and prevented some action, and another thing to see the result on the ground. Someone--and it must be an Israeli journalist--also has to reach the stricken and bleeding places after the missile has fallen, the shell has landed, the bulldozer has destroyed, the water has run out, the fuel is finished and the electricity is turned off. Someone has to tell the Israeli reader that when the IDF announces that it dropped a bomb on 'unoccupied huts,' as it did that day after the assassination of Shehadeh, it was in fact a house of several stories filled with residents, including many children.
Mohammed Omer: Such attacks makes Hamas stronger by people. And one hour from now, there will be demonstrations all over the Gaza Strip from the mosques and from the South, from the north, from the Middle East. And there will be tens of thousands of people going out by these demonstrations and calling for Hamas to take revenge for the killing of these Palestinians. So I can tell you that this is strengthening Hamas, and this is empowering Hamas...And people believe that, you know, the problem is not with the rockets; the problem is with the occupation... In Bethlehem, in Jenin, in Nablus, in Ramallah, there is no rockets but still the occupation is existing. ...The occupation kills on a daily basis. Forty-five Palestinians were injured and one Palestinian was killed, mostly students, they were coming in a protest in solidarity with Gaza in Hebron yesterday...So there is no dialogue, and there is no peace when it comes to this, but I can tell you that this shows that the Israelis are--they mean to make situation miserable for the Palestinians.
Gideon Levy: The deliberate covering of our eyes has gone even further this time....Part of the local, popular press that shapes mass opinion--the Yedioth Ahronoth and the Maariv dailies to be specific--decided that the killing of over 60 residents of Gaza in one day by our soldiers is not a story. The proof: there is no mention of it, not even implied, on the first pages of these two newspapers, their obvious showcase....This is how one shapes the opinions of the public--and also how one brainwashes it...The local popular press, almost free of censorship, highly professional and in part also selling well, opted for the gravest things of all: self censorship, of the kind that will never arouse any signs of opposition.
One day, when the historian or researcher burrows in the archives of these newspapers and tries to understand what happened here, he won't be able to understand a thing. He will only know that we had a press here that betrayed its role.
Mohammed Omer: I'm receiving news here from one of my colleagues here, and he says that the Israeli warships also in the Eastern-in the western part of the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip are firing rockets towards the fishermen and towards the houses of civilians. We're not sure if there are casualties, but they are confirming that the tanks in the north are launching rockets, and the Israeli warships in the south are also launching missiles towards the fishermen and the civilians' houses....
(I want to thank Jewishpeacenews. net for providing the interview with Mohammed Omar and Amira Hass conducted by Amy Goodman and to Rela Mazali, also of Jewish Peace News, for posting the article by Gideon Levy, who I see more and more as the poet of a terrible time, a terrible news. WWW. Haaretz.com)
March 8, 2008--Haaretz, again the words of Gideon Levy:
"Twilight Zone: A Great Darkness Has Fallen"
Operation Warm Winter ended without a single Israeli journalist setting foot on the Gaza`side of the Erez border crossing with Israel. Even the military correspondents, who usually recount the brave acts of our forces from inside their jeeps and armored vehicles, were not taken this time to report on the raids in Jabalya and Sajiyeh. A handful of other correspondents, those who are still interested in what the Israel Defense Forces leaves behind after its campaigns of killing and destruction, stayed home. They have been holed up in their houses for over a year and a half already.
March 3, 2008, words of Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist living in the Gaza strip--find his words at RafahToday.org:
Yesterday I found arms and legs and fingers scattered in the streets everywhere. And this was the situation--burned flesh in the streets with children and kids and women. And so far, 130 Palestinians were killed in the last few days. Out of the 130, there are thirty-nine children, ten women, in addition to 370 children who were injured in the head and the upper side of the body, this which makes the whole situation at Kamala Adwan hospital quite difficult for the ambulance crews to deal with such cases...let me say here that among the people who were targeted or injured, there were three journalists, and one of them was severely injured in the northern part of the Gaza strip. We were shot at at different places, in addition to three medical workers and rescue teams who were injured, beside Mahmoud Zakut, who's a medical worker who was droven over by an Israeli tank while he was inside the area of the northern part of Gaza Strip, Jabaliya refugee camp, as he was trying to evacuate some bodies of the people...
Gideon Levy:
Don't believe the microphones you sometimes see in TV reports on Gaza, adorned with the logo of the Israeli television channels. They are meant only to deceive us. don't believe the meager reports in the press from Gaza that are written by Israeli correspondents. They are all done by phone, with all the limitations that involves. Not one local journalist, neither Jewish or Arab, neither Shlomi Eldar nor Suleiman al-Shafi, neither Amira Hass nor this writer, has passed through the Erez terminal since the end of November 2006. The press in Israel is under a major black-out; the IDF is not allowing it to do its job. Gaza, an hour and a half drive from Tel Aviv, is outside the range of journalistic coverage. Daring Israeli correspondents have traveled to Irag and Lebanon, Syria and Iran, to report to their readers what is happening there--but not to Gaza. It's as though the Strip, which is central to our diplomacy and security, and where everything that happens affects the Negev and the rest of the country, has been declared a closed military zone, as though it were beyond the Mountains of Darkness.
Mohammed Omer: ...and look at what Israel--the weapons that Israel is using. It is heavy weapons, and they are targeting also these civilian houses, so I'm not sure if we can compare the primitive weapons that the Palestinian resistance is using with the well-equipped army, one of the most powerful armies in the world, Israel. And they are using missiles that burns the bodies. And I can tell you and I can tell all the American people listening to this interview, that they're using the missiles that they're burning the bodies --and it can make a smell--it smells real bad here,. It smells like if you are--if you are--like an American barbecue, actually--but this is not an--this is not a cow, this is not beef; this is human being's flesh. It is scattered in the streets...
Gideon Levy:...This blackout on the actions of the IDF and the Shin Bet security services, and the fact that the Israeli press is forbidden to cover what is happening in the Strip, has been accepted with exemplary silence. The press bowed it s head, submissive and obedient, as in the bad old days when it maintained other disgraceful silences, from Qibya to Kafr Qasem....A rare coalition, almost wall to wall, seems very pleased with Gaza being closed off to coverage; When readers don't want to read, the government and the defense establishment don't want things to be read or broadcast, and the reporters, editors and publishers don't want to anger anyone either. They are all very pleased with the fact that Gaza is beyond the pale. Thus Israel has covered its eyes and looked away from what is happening on the other side of the fence, and a great darkness has fallen on the abyss.
Mohammed Omer: People here still don't have food. They have difficulty accessing food, have difficulty accessing different kinds of things. And probably you can hear the Israeli F16 right now. It's hovering in the sky and it has been bombing since the early morning and that was the case since the last few days. There is shortages of fuel as well for the ambulance workers. And I've been talking to one of the medical workers here, and he confirmed to me that 70 kinds of medicines that they could not find in the Palestinian hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza strip...
Gideon Levy: The exclusion of Gaza from Israeli coverage is critical. Just when millions of viewers and readers the world over are having their perception of the country shaped by the terrible pictures being broadcast from Gaza, occasionally in an exaggerated manner, they are witnessing an almost total absence of coverage from the Israeli side. It is one thing to hear or read that the IDF killed, assassinated and prevented some action, and another thing to see the result on the ground. Someone--and it must be an Israeli journalist--also has to reach the stricken and bleeding places after the missile has fallen, the shell has landed, the bulldozer has destroyed, the water has run out, the fuel is finished and the electricity is turned off. Someone has to tell the Israeli reader that when the IDF announces that it dropped a bomb on 'unoccupied huts,' as it did that day after the assassination of Shehadeh, it was in fact a house of several stories filled with residents, including many children.
Mohammed Omer: Such attacks makes Hamas stronger by people. And one hour from now, there will be demonstrations all over the Gaza Strip from the mosques and from the South, from the north, from the Middle East. And there will be tens of thousands of people going out by these demonstrations and calling for Hamas to take revenge for the killing of these Palestinians. So I can tell you that this is strengthening Hamas, and this is empowering Hamas...And people believe that, you know, the problem is not with the rockets; the problem is with the occupation... In Bethlehem, in Jenin, in Nablus, in Ramallah, there is no rockets but still the occupation is existing. ...The occupation kills on a daily basis. Forty-five Palestinians were injured and one Palestinian was killed, mostly students, they were coming in a protest in solidarity with Gaza in Hebron yesterday...So there is no dialogue, and there is no peace when it comes to this, but I can tell you that this shows that the Israelis are--they mean to make situation miserable for the Palestinians.
Gideon Levy: The deliberate covering of our eyes has gone even further this time....Part of the local, popular press that shapes mass opinion--the Yedioth Ahronoth and the Maariv dailies to be specific--decided that the killing of over 60 residents of Gaza in one day by our soldiers is not a story. The proof: there is no mention of it, not even implied, on the first pages of these two newspapers, their obvious showcase....This is how one shapes the opinions of the public--and also how one brainwashes it...The local popular press, almost free of censorship, highly professional and in part also selling well, opted for the gravest things of all: self censorship, of the kind that will never arouse any signs of opposition.
One day, when the historian or researcher burrows in the archives of these newspapers and tries to understand what happened here, he won't be able to understand a thing. He will only know that we had a press here that betrayed its role.
Mohammed Omer: I'm receiving news here from one of my colleagues here, and he says that the Israeli warships also in the Eastern-in the western part of the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip are firing rockets towards the fishermen and towards the houses of civilians. We're not sure if there are casualties, but they are confirming that the tanks in the north are launching rockets, and the Israeli warships in the south are also launching missiles towards the fishermen and the civilians' houses....
(I want to thank Jewishpeacenews. net for providing the interview with Mohammed Omar and Amira Hass conducted by Amy Goodman and to Rela Mazali, also of Jewish Peace News, for posting the article by Gideon Levy, who I see more and more as the poet of a terrible time, a terrible news. WWW. Haaretz.com)
Monday, March 3, 2008
Australia, Gaza and Israel
Yes, we have returned and we have seen such beautiful country, a country doing a beautiful thing, welcome to country, and we are sorry. Never before have indiginous Australians been welcomed into the seat of power in this country, the halls of government in Canberra, halls so ironically lined with Aboriginal art, the building itself shaped like the iconic hunting tool of the first Australians, the bomerang. Welcome to country was danced and chanted and then the new Prime Minister here, Kevin Rudd, said these words: Today we honor the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations--this blemished chapter in our nation's history. The time has come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past...We apologize for the laws and policies of successive governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry
To the mothers and fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliment of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart, resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written...
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility...
(The Age, Wednesday, February 13, 2008, p.1)
And all the time we traveled the 1200 km, I kept thinking of the people of Gaza, of as Hannah Arendt has written, the basic human freedom of movement; even more for the people of Gaza trapped as they are between two unmoved violent forces--the Israeli military and the Hamas militants, no place to run, no place to escape from advancing Israeli tanks, a trapped people targeted at will, a Holocaust we will bring to them, says an Israeli politician--the most shameful words from a Jewish mouth. Yes, we saw the beauty of free and wild beaches, the green of peaceful ocean bays, the joy of dolphins arching their backs out of the sea to take in the life giving air so they could resume their travels, the rivers that break out of the bush and return to the sea, the unbroken bush at the end of land masses, the places of a people's history with names like Wreck Bay, the rolling pasture lands and then that most strangest of national capitals, Canberra, built stone by stone up from a farmer's paddock--a huge sprawling country seat of national discourse, with the blue mountains behind it and the imposing escarpment of the Macquarie Pass guarding its entrance--the national art galleries still awaiting the stories they will tell. And now home where the news awaits us.
A note from Dorothy:
Hello, all--Nothing to add to this except my usual refrain: of course the fact that there is (albeit very small) Israeli opposition to the current nightmare is totally ignored in the U.S.
From Haaretz, February 3, 2008, the words of Gideon Levy:
'Restraint' is Deceitful, and 'Forbearance' is Vain
Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, "A present there will be no major ground operation." It's incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians then have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.
This victimhood is not new, nor is our self-deception. The current lie: 'restraint.' Israel is demonstrating restraint in the face of Qassams; this assertion continues to spur the commentators and security experts to urge it to embark on the anticipated 'major operation.' But this operation began long ago. It reached its peak yesterday.
Our desperate attempt to have our cake and eat it too, to claim that there is no 'major operation' at a time when the IDF is killing dozens every day, is nothing new. It has existed since the days of the 'enlightened occupation' and 'purity of arms,' through the 'major operation that has yet to begin'--all of them impossible desires. A senior minister who was asked last week about the seige of Gaza replied: 'Occupation of Gaza` is less moral. In this way, we have once again established ourselves a relative and distorted values system, with no absolute morality, only a double standard, Behind every action of ours in Gaza, even the terrible one this weekend, hides an option that is even worse. The fact that we are not yet carrying it out helps to present ourselves in a positive light, to boast how moral we are.
During the past two years, we have killed almost 900 Gaza residents. About half of them were people who did not take part in the fighting. That is how restraint looks. At a time when we are counting the Qassama and their victims, in Gaza they are counting the dead...
Imagine if the Palestinians were to kill dozens of Israelis, including women and children, in one week, as the IDF did. What an international outcry we would rise and justifiably. Only in our own eyes can we still adhere to our restrained, forbearing image, All the talk about the 'major operation' is designed to achieve only one goal; to show it is possible to be even more violent and cruel.
That is an extremely pathetic consolation. The siege, the assassinations and the raid this weekend are terrifying enough. The claim that as opposed to them, we do not intend to kill children and citizens, is also overused and deceptive. The gun sights of Israeli weaponry are sophisticated. If the Palestinians had Apache helicopters and sophisticated drones like ours, we can assume that they would choose more strategic targets than the yard of a hospital in Ashkelon or a parking lot in Sderot. The Qassam is the weapon of the poor and helpless.
In the South, a war of attrition is taking place between the strong and the weak. It will not be stopped by military means. It is therefore suprising and depressing that to see the uniform chorus of trhe residents of Western Negev, city dwellers and kibbutzniks, the direct victims, in favor of the IDF's pointless fighting. How is it that in the entire South, not a single different voice can be heard, calling for a change in direction? How is it that no group of Sderot residents, yes, they of all people, is shouting in protest?...
The residents of Sderot and now Ashkelon as well, have to look and see beyond the fence that is meant to protect them, and is imprisoning their neighbors. To understand that as long as things are so bad there, things will be bitter for them as well. That as long as we don't talk to them, nothing will change. They, who know that every assassination is followed by the 'Color Red' Qassam alert, fear and anxidety, who know that dozens of assassinations have not improved their lives at all, that the present raid will not help either, should be the pioneers who bring about the change we need...Perhaps the good will originate from the South and someone there will call for something else?
As I type these words in, my rage grows at the American communities that will not allow a candidate to express his sympathy for the suffering of the Palesitinians, at the cowardliness of the politicians who back down in the face of the monolithic wall of hands of Israel brigade, at all of us who are allowing these silences. In the above article, Levy calls on those who are in danger to break the unending chorus of yes more violence, yes more of their deaths, bomb them into the sea. And we in America, who face no danger, cannot even begin to question in the best democratic and Jewish manner, this seemingly seamless support for a heartless and damning policy. Our silence joins us in those words, unthinkable, from a Jewish mouth: we will unleash on them a Holocaust. How do you say sorry for this?
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry
To the mothers and fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliment of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart, resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written...
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility...
(The Age, Wednesday, February 13, 2008, p.1)
And all the time we traveled the 1200 km, I kept thinking of the people of Gaza, of as Hannah Arendt has written, the basic human freedom of movement; even more for the people of Gaza trapped as they are between two unmoved violent forces--the Israeli military and the Hamas militants, no place to run, no place to escape from advancing Israeli tanks, a trapped people targeted at will, a Holocaust we will bring to them, says an Israeli politician--the most shameful words from a Jewish mouth. Yes, we saw the beauty of free and wild beaches, the green of peaceful ocean bays, the joy of dolphins arching their backs out of the sea to take in the life giving air so they could resume their travels, the rivers that break out of the bush and return to the sea, the unbroken bush at the end of land masses, the places of a people's history with names like Wreck Bay, the rolling pasture lands and then that most strangest of national capitals, Canberra, built stone by stone up from a farmer's paddock--a huge sprawling country seat of national discourse, with the blue mountains behind it and the imposing escarpment of the Macquarie Pass guarding its entrance--the national art galleries still awaiting the stories they will tell. And now home where the news awaits us.
A note from Dorothy:
Hello, all--Nothing to add to this except my usual refrain: of course the fact that there is (albeit very small) Israeli opposition to the current nightmare is totally ignored in the U.S.
From Haaretz, February 3, 2008, the words of Gideon Levy:
'Restraint' is Deceitful, and 'Forbearance' is Vain
Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, "A present there will be no major ground operation." It's incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians then have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.
This victimhood is not new, nor is our self-deception. The current lie: 'restraint.' Israel is demonstrating restraint in the face of Qassams; this assertion continues to spur the commentators and security experts to urge it to embark on the anticipated 'major operation.' But this operation began long ago. It reached its peak yesterday.
Our desperate attempt to have our cake and eat it too, to claim that there is no 'major operation' at a time when the IDF is killing dozens every day, is nothing new. It has existed since the days of the 'enlightened occupation' and 'purity of arms,' through the 'major operation that has yet to begin'--all of them impossible desires. A senior minister who was asked last week about the seige of Gaza replied: 'Occupation of Gaza` is less moral. In this way, we have once again established ourselves a relative and distorted values system, with no absolute morality, only a double standard, Behind every action of ours in Gaza, even the terrible one this weekend, hides an option that is even worse. The fact that we are not yet carrying it out helps to present ourselves in a positive light, to boast how moral we are.
During the past two years, we have killed almost 900 Gaza residents. About half of them were people who did not take part in the fighting. That is how restraint looks. At a time when we are counting the Qassama and their victims, in Gaza they are counting the dead...
Imagine if the Palestinians were to kill dozens of Israelis, including women and children, in one week, as the IDF did. What an international outcry we would rise and justifiably. Only in our own eyes can we still adhere to our restrained, forbearing image, All the talk about the 'major operation' is designed to achieve only one goal; to show it is possible to be even more violent and cruel.
That is an extremely pathetic consolation. The siege, the assassinations and the raid this weekend are terrifying enough. The claim that as opposed to them, we do not intend to kill children and citizens, is also overused and deceptive. The gun sights of Israeli weaponry are sophisticated. If the Palestinians had Apache helicopters and sophisticated drones like ours, we can assume that they would choose more strategic targets than the yard of a hospital in Ashkelon or a parking lot in Sderot. The Qassam is the weapon of the poor and helpless.
In the South, a war of attrition is taking place between the strong and the weak. It will not be stopped by military means. It is therefore suprising and depressing that to see the uniform chorus of trhe residents of Western Negev, city dwellers and kibbutzniks, the direct victims, in favor of the IDF's pointless fighting. How is it that in the entire South, not a single different voice can be heard, calling for a change in direction? How is it that no group of Sderot residents, yes, they of all people, is shouting in protest?...
The residents of Sderot and now Ashkelon as well, have to look and see beyond the fence that is meant to protect them, and is imprisoning their neighbors. To understand that as long as things are so bad there, things will be bitter for them as well. That as long as we don't talk to them, nothing will change. They, who know that every assassination is followed by the 'Color Red' Qassam alert, fear and anxidety, who know that dozens of assassinations have not improved their lives at all, that the present raid will not help either, should be the pioneers who bring about the change we need...Perhaps the good will originate from the South and someone there will call for something else?
As I type these words in, my rage grows at the American communities that will not allow a candidate to express his sympathy for the suffering of the Palesitinians, at the cowardliness of the politicians who back down in the face of the monolithic wall of hands of Israel brigade, at all of us who are allowing these silences. In the above article, Levy calls on those who are in danger to break the unending chorus of yes more violence, yes more of their deaths, bomb them into the sea. And we in America, who face no danger, cannot even begin to question in the best democratic and Jewish manner, this seemingly seamless support for a heartless and damning policy. Our silence joins us in those words, unthinkable, from a Jewish mouth: we will unleash on them a Holocaust. How do you say sorry for this?
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