FORpeace - the blog of the Fellowship of Reconciliation

FOR Calls For Action To Prevent Desecration Of Mamilla Muslim Cemetery In Jerusalem

Bill Winston — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:47:57 +0000

Over the past couple of years a number of friends, most particularly Gershon Baskin of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research Institute (IPCRI) have periodically distributed information concerning the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem which is the proposed site for a Museum of Tolerance. Mamilla Cemetery is an historic site and a Muslim burial ground.

A vote is expected at the United Nations next week. A petition is being circulated to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on March 22nd.

The issues were recently reported at the Inter-Faith Peace Builders conference in Washington, D.C.

FOR encourages readers to be informed and to sign the petition.

The petition demands that the competent Israeli authorities act:

1. To immediately halt further construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center "Museum of Tolerance" on part of the Mamilla Cemetery site in Jerusalem;

2. To declare the entire historic site of the Mamilla Cemetery an antiquity, to be preserved and protected henceforth by its rightful and appropriate custodians, the Muslim Waqf (public endowment) authorities in Jerusalem;

3. To recover and rebury where they were originally found all human remains removed from Mamilla Cemetery, in coordination with the competent Muslim authorities in Jerusalem; and,

4. To document and reveal to families who claim their ancestors are buried in Mamilla, or to their representatives, the whereabouts of human remains and artifacts, as well as archaeological fragments and monuments exhumed in the construction.

For more information, visit the Mamilla Campaign website. Below is a summary of issues:

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Here is a summary of the Basic Facts regarding Mamilla Cemetery.

THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER AND THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL ARE BUILDING A "MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE" ON CENTURIES-OLD MUSLIM GRAVES.

History - Since the Seventh Century, the Ma'man Allah (Mamilla) cemetery has been the most important Moslem burial site in Jerusalem. It contains the remains of leaders of Saladin's army, Muslim scholars, and important Jerusalem families going back at least one thousand years. It is a well delineated 33 acre site that was in use until 1948 and was fastidiously respected by the Ottoman rulers and the British Mandate. It contains tens of thousands of graves in several layers as well as gravestones, monuments and the two-thousand year old "Mamilla pool."

SINCE 1948 - After the 1948 War, the site was expropriated by the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. The Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry originally recognized the great importance of the site to the Muslim community. However, the traditional caretakers of the cemetery, the Trustees of the Islamic Endowment (the waqf), were not allowed to maintain and protect the cemetery and it was neglected and vandalized. In the 1960's, half of it was turned into an "Independence Park." A parking lot was built over another part of the cemetery in 1964. A school, playing field and an underground parking garage were built on it. During the garage excavations, human remains from exposed graves were seen scattered about the construction site. During this time Palestinians protested these desecrations with appeals to the Israeli mayors of Jerusalem, petitions to UNESCO and public demonstrations. At present, only a fraction of the original cemetery is identifiable, with few grave markers remaining visible.

The "Museum of Tolerance" - The Jerusalem Municipality, ignoring public protests, deeded part of the cemetery to the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles and in 2002, approved plans for the construction of the "Center for Human Dignity - Museum of Tolerance" on the site. Digging on the site, which began in 2005, has resulted in the exhumation of hundreds of graves and remains, some dating back to the 12th Century. The Chief Excavator for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Gideon Suleimani, issued a report and has attested in an affidavit to the fact that there are at least 2000 graves under the project site, in four layers, in addition to hundreds already exposed. He further attested to the intense pressure exerted on the IAA by the SWC and Israeli politicians and developers to approve construction on the site.

The Israeli Courts - Public outcry, including opposition to the location of the project at the Mamilla site by the Mayor of Jerusalem and other prominent Israelis, failed to halt the construction activity. Families whose ancestors lie buried at the site, together with others, sued in Israeli courts to stop the excavations. The complainants lost in the Israeli High Court in 2008. In ruling against the families the High Court relied upon the determination of a low level Muslim judge from Jaffa that the cemetery had been "desanctified" because of disuse. The judge, acting at the behest of the Israeli authorities, was convicted of fraud in the same year, and his ruling has since been overruled by the highest Islamic authorities in Israel.

Petition to the United Nations - A Petition For Urgent Action on Human Rights Violations by Israel: Desecration of the Ma'man Allah (Mamilla) Muslim Cemetery in the Holy City of Jerusalem was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights with various United Nations agencies on Feb. 10, 2010, on behalf of sixty individual Palestinians whose ancestors are buried at Mamilla, and numerous Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. NGO's who oppose the SWC project. The Petition cites numerous violations of International Law and requests the U.N. agencies to investigate and, ultimately, ask Israel and the SWC to stop excavations, recover remains, release remains to Islamic authorities for proper reburial and designate the entire Mamilla cemetery as a protected religious site. For the text of the petition and further information, go to:www.mamillacampaign.org.

A Public Petition - A public petition was drafted on behalf of all persons, regardless of ethnic or religious background or nationality, who are outraged by the desecration of the Mamilla burial site. When signed, it will be publicized and presented to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the U.N., the Israeli authorities, and the U.S. government, demanding the same relief requested in the formal petition to the U.N. bodies.

Take Action to stop violence in the Middle East: Travel to Israel and Palestine This Summer

Bill Winston — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:30:47 +0000

Last month Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB) reported on the crackdown on human rights defenders, activists working for justice, and other nonviolent leaders in Israel and Palestine.

Now, when leaders and activists are most threatened, it is also a vital time to visit the West Bank and Israel. Interfaith Peace-Builders is organizing two delegations this summer: The first is a May delegation led by Anna Baltzer and Cathy Sultan. A second delegation is planned for July by Jacob Pace and Miryam Rashid.

Since 2000, Interfaith Peace-Builders has sent over 500 people (students, educators, working professionals, activists, retirees) on 32 fact-finding delegations to Israel and Palestine. IFPB started the program when Israelis and Palestinians first invited them into their homes, offices, and places of worship to learn from them about their lives and their work for justice.

Today, IFPB delegations continue as a testament to the transformative power of learning directly from Israelis and Palestinians and those living in region. You are invited to travel with IFPB this summer to learn more, gain skills for advocacy on this issue, meet with individuals directly impacted and network with others working in Israel and Palestine.

May 2010 Delegation: Voices of the Peacemakers - From Roots to Reconciliation

May 23- June 5, 2010 - Delegation Leaders: Anna Baltzer and Cathy Sultan

This delegation, co-sponsored by IFPB and the National Peace Foundation, will explore Palestinian and Israeli efforts to achieve peace and a resolution to their conflict based on justice. The delegation will feature meetings with Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers - leaders of civil society groups, grassroots organizers, religious leaders and more. Given the current situation in the West Bank, the delegation will focus on learning about the current challenges facing nonviolent activists resisting occupation. May also marks the annual commemoration of Israel's independence and the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) and the birth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Join in this unique opportunity to learn about the current situation. The on-the-ground experience will enrich your understanding of the conflict as you meet courageous Israelis and Palestinians working for peace and justice.

DEADLINE TO APPLY: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until late March. Spaces are already filling up. Apply soon to reserve your space!

July 2010 Delegation: Tomorrow's Leaders - Youth Realities and Peacebuilding Initiatives in Palestine and Israel

July 24 - August 6, 2010 - Delegation Leaders: Jacob Pace and Miryam Rashid

This delegation is co-sponsored by IFPB and the AFSC-Great Lakes Region. Two thirds of the Palestinian population and one third of the Israeli population are under the age of 25. More than just numbers, youth in Israel-Palestine play important roles in community development, lead nonviolent struggles for justice, and work together across national lines towards reconciliation. They are also among the conflict's most tragic victims.

This delegation will explore issues relevant to young people in the region, including efforts to educate and empower future generations working towards a just resolution to the conflict. Our itinerary will feature meetings with Palestinian and Israeli youth and youth workers as well as leaders of civil society groups, grassroots organizers, religious leaders and more.

DEADLINE TO APPLY: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until late May. Spaces are already filling up, so apply soon to reserve your space!

For those who cannot travel this summer, IFPB will have a November 2010 Delegation. We also are already planning for 2011 delegations. To express interest in future delegations, send an email to office@ifpb.org.

Visit the IFPB website (delegation section) to learn more about delegations, including cost, and possibilities for financial aid.

IFPB, founded in 2001 as a project of FOR, became an independent nonprofit organization in 2006.

Nominate peace leaders for the Fellowship of Reconciliation's annual awards

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:24:25 +0000

Each year the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) awards two peace prizes to individuals or organizations whose commitment to peace, justice, and reconciliation is recognized as extraordinary. The awardees receive a cash prize and a commemorative scroll. FOR members and supporters are encouraged to submit nominations for the 2010 awards.

The deadline for nominations is April 30, 2010.

Walks for Peace - The Journey to end Nuclear Weapons 2010

Bill Winston — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:59:28 +0000

As plans are underway for an international conference in New York City on Nuclear disarmament, peace walks are planned (and in many cases are underway). Various Buddhist communities have organized walks and invited others to join them either in the walk or by providing hospitality. Walkers include Buddhist monks and nuns. All are welcome. One sponsoring community writes: "Please join us by walking for an hour, a day, or for the entirety. You can support us by organizing a community potluck, a sharing circle, a visit to your mayor, a place for our walkers to sleep, or coverage by the local media. Also please keep this walk in your thought and prayer."

Information on four walks has been shared with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. All four walks culminate in New York City for the Rally and March on Sunday, May 2nd. The May 2nd Rally is an international call for an end to nuclear weapons in the US and around the world.

Walks will pass through Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York State, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Vermont.

For information on these walks, see the downloadable flyers available on the FOR website or contact the specific sponsoring organization and walk coordinator.

Registration opens for International Conference on Nuclear Weapons in NYC

Bill Winston — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:43:28 +0000

Registration has opened for the International Conference, which will focus on eliminating nuclear weapons and addressing related nuclear issues. The conference will be held in New York City on April 30 and May 1st to coincide with the official report to the United Nations monitoring the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The conference at Riverside Church features speakers from around the world and opportunities for workshops in four areas: nuclear weapons abolition, peace, environmental sustainability, and economic justice.

The registration fee is $30 per person (students with ID, $20). Early registration is encouraged. See the attached registration form available as a downloadable form. Space is limited to 800 to 1000 attendees.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA is coordinating accomodations for out of town attendees, on a first-come first serve basis. New York area FORers and friends are offering accomodations (including sofas) while many houses of worship and faith based communities are offering social halls for those with sleeping bags and bedrolls. For more information, contact preston@forpeace.net or communications@forusa.org.

In addition to the conference at Riverside Church on April 30 and May 1st, related activities are planned in New York City, including an Interfaith Convocation on Sunday, May 2nd, followed by a Rally and March to the United Nations.

Make plans now to attend these important NPT events on April 30 to May 2nd.

FOR embraces plans to end Nuclear Weapons in four years and calls for letters to Senators

Bill Winston — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:50:20 +0000

In January, during his State of the Union message to a joint session of Congress, President Obama said his administration would make a treaty with Russia a priority. The President noted that the country is "confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people – the threat of nuclear weapons."

The President has noted before that limiting nuclear weapons is not enough. His State of the Union message renewed previous statements by Mr. Obama that nuclear weapons must be eliminated. He acknowledged that his vision is in line with "the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan" envisioning a "world without them [nuclear weapons]."

President Obama went on to say that the US and Russia are "completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April's Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring forty-four nations together behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years…"

To advance a nuclear free world, the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA encourages readers and friends to write members of the US Senate to encourage immediate action the treaty when presented. The draft letter attached contains suggested wording for your letter. To find the names of the Senators representing your state, consult website such as Friends Committee on National Legislation or the website of the Senate of the United States.

PS: If you have not signed the petition to President Obama calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, please do. You can sign the petition online, one of the most effective ways to ensure your voice is heard. Signing the petition helps to provide the needed political support for these initiatives and the elimination of the nuclear threat to move forward in the administration and in Congress.

Memorial to Life a project of FOR

Bill Winston — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:50:21 +0000

Ever think about those killed in the war in Iraq? You know the collateral damage of war - the people who didn't sign up for a war.

Conservative estimates peg the war dead at around 100,000. Other scientific estimates, which take into account unreported deaths, range up into the 1.4 million range. It's an impressive toll for 8 years of war.

The Iraq Memorial to Life - a project of the Fellowship of Reconciliation - is a memorial to Iraqis who have been killed as a result of the war.

It is an attempt to keep us from forgetting these Iraqis.

The war to many is wounding down. It seems remote and distant. We would rather not remember anyway.

But real human persons with feelings, families, dreams and aspirations have been affected.

We frequently say let us never forget in face of human tragedy and loss. With good reason. Without memory, we seemed doomed to repeat our history of war and violence.

The Memorial to Life will be displayed in Washington State, on the National Mall in Washington D.C. and in Central Park, New York City.

Thousands of memorial markers, carefully arranged, will powerfully bring home the full extent of Iraqi deaths to the American public and its legislators. The grieving that has long been a daily part of Iraqi life will be memorialized in our town, and spread outward, community by community, as the display moves across the country. Reactions to both regional and national displays will bring attention to the human suffering caused by the Iraq war. For details about the Memorial and its tour, please download the attached PDF.

Please spread the word. Please remember.

For more information, visit the website iraqmemorialtolife.org for more details or email peace@iraqmemorialtolife.org.

FOR part of international effort to abolish Nuclear Weapons

Bill Winston — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:28 +0000

Make your plans today to be there to call for a peaceful, nuclear free, secure, and just world for us all!

Advocates for peace will be meeting in New York City on April 30-May 1st. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA) is one of more than 200 sponsors of the International Conference. The conference coincides with the five year review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Every five years a report is delivered to the United Nations which reviews not only the compliance of nations with the treaty's provisions but also recommends additional steps toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

FOR-USA invites and encourages its members and friends to attend the international conference (April 30 - May 1) as well as a Rally and March planned for Sunday, May 2nd near Times Square.

The International Conference opens on Friday evening, April 30th at Riverside Church, NYC and continues all day, Saturday, May 1st. Conference speakers include:

Tadatoshi Akiba - Mayor of Hiroshima, President, Mayors for PeaceHelen Clark* - United Nations Development Program, former Prime Minister of New Zealand

Mikhail Gorbachev - Gorbachev Foundation, Former President, Soviet Union, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient - (confirmation of attendance pending)

Zia Mian - Princeton University, Program on Science and Global Security

Natalia Mironova, Institute for Public Policy and Law, President of the Movement for Nuclear Safety - former Member of the High Ecological Council of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

Ban Ki Moon* - Secretary General of the United Nations

Nadine Padilla, - Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment - MASE a New Mexico Native American opposing uranium mining

Vandana Shiva* - International Forum on Globalization

Terumi Tanaka - Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- & H Bomb Sufferers' Organizations)

Workshops are planned as a part of the conference allowing break out sessions in four areas:
1.   Nuclear Weapons Abolition
2.   Peace Issues
3.   Economic Justice and Human Needs
4.   Environmental Sustainability and Health

The International Conference (with workshops) on April 30-May 1 requires registration a fee. Registration details and additional information about the May 1st Rally and March to the United Nations (including a Noon Interfaith Convocation) will be posted as it becomes available. Don't forget to sign the petition to President Obama in support of efforts to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons. Click here for the petition.

Raising the Ashes - Pilgrimage to Auschwitz

Alan Levin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:29:41 +0000

Film and Discussion

at FOR

521 No. Broadway, Nyack, NY

March 21, 2010

2 - 5 PM

The next film to be shown as part of the Phil Greenspan film festival at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack, NY will take us on a healing journey to what is acknowledged by most to be akin to the heart of darkness; Auschwitz. Directed by actor Michael O'Keefe, who participated in the pilgrimmage, the documentary brings us close to the stories of the 150 people that talked, comtemplated, prayed and meditated on and around the grounds of Auschwitz during the 1996 event. The group was composed of Americans and Europeans who are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and secular and who share their reflections during their time together.

0 0 0 Actor Michael O'Keefe directed this documentary, shot on video and transferred to 16mm, about a five-day interfaith retreat at Auschwitz. Teacher and activist Roshi Bernie Glassman brought together 150 people from different religions, including a few descendants of both camp survivors and Nazis, for a "healing experience". With soundtrack songs by Patti Smith and Neil Young, footage of guests at the retreat are intercut with black-and-white atrocity footage. O'Keefe reads a poem by a camp survivor.

After the film we will have a meditative discussion led by 0 0 0 Francisco "Paco" Genkoji Lugoviña. Paco is an ordained Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen lineage and in the Zen Peacemaker Order; is a member of the Zen Peacemaker Circles and Peacemaker International; and is the founder of the Hudson River Peacemaker Center-House of One People in Yonkers, New York where he has a fledgling sangha.. He works with gang members and other youth groups in Council Circle format and meditation practice. Francisco has participated in pilgrimages to Tibet, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and in the streets of New York City. He has an admirable history as a community organizer and civil rights activist spanning his college and professional careers. Additionally, Paco has been active in community and political affairs in New York City for most of his adult life.

It is our hope that this event will be a prayer for everyone to learn the lessons of the Holocaust to not inflict suffering on any people, anywhere, again.

More information about Raising the Ashes can be found at Michael O'Keefe's site.

Choosing Legislators from Within Corridors of Fear

John Lindsay-Poland — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:16:16 +0000

A war that goes on for 46 years -- some would say over 60 years -- gets tucked into all the most obscure tissues and corners and stories of a people. Its toxins surprise with surreal grotesquerie and impossible reasons. So in Colombia, our country's "closest ally" in South America, where capitalism and competition have extended so far that purchasing and sale of kidnap victims and electoral votes have become signatures of a ruthless business sense. Where politics is a business.

I just returned from a two-week trip to Colombia as part of an international pre-electoral observation mission, in advance of March 14 Congressional elections, which will be followed by a presidential election on May 30. Just three months before Colombians elect a president, the incumbent front-runner -- Álvaro Uribe Velez -- has not yet declared whether he will run for a third term, which would require a constitutional amendment and a national referendum. The nation's highest court is deliberating on whether the petitions and financing for such a referendum are legal. The uncertainty around Uribe's candidacy has led the media to focus intensely on re-election, and neglect issues of debate for the Congressional campaign.

Our group of 22 people from seven countries fanned out in four groups to diverse regions, but we found remarkably similar practices. We talked with a range of political parties, election officials, social movement groups, organizations of people displaced by violence, journalists, and government officials, both elected and those from oversight agencies. Many people were able to tell us exactly how vote-buying and -selling works. If you are a community leader of a thousand people, a party may buy your votes, and the more votes you have to sell, the more you're paid, per vote. The bigger the crime, the bigger the reward.

In many places our group visited, there is fear, and a wide distance between what ordinary people say and the discourse of government officials. The fear is located deep in the country's emotional life, product of violence that has affected people throughout society. The city of Medellin, for example, had become the model for Uribe and Bush to bring U.S. Congressmen to show how far Colombia had come since the days of narco-capo Pablo Escobar murdering judges and setting off car bombs. But last year Medellin saw its homicide rate more than double, to some 2100 murders.

Medellin was also the site this month of the trial of soldiers for the 2005 massacre in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. A human rights attorney from the Judicial Freedom Corporation, CJL, with whom we work, and who has worked on cases involving the former Army commander, received credible information last week that a local armed group has been paid to kill him.

The generalized fear that we witnessed is a structural deterrent to the free debate necessary for democratic elections. If you are afraid what you say may offend an armed group, you'll never touch a controversial issue. And if you can't enter into substantive debate, why not buy and sell your political decisions? Political debate becomes a function of not only fear, but commerce.

We also heard people tell us that the national social aid agency, responsible for benefits for everyone from retired persons, to food for children, to those who are poor, to the country's nearly five people displaced by violence, was telling residents in Medellin that if President Uribe is not re-elected, they would lose their benefits. Lately, as the prospects for changing the constitution to permit re-election have looked dimmer, agency officials have said that if Uribe's protégé, ex-Defense Minister Juan Manual Santos, is not elected, they would lose their benefits.

It was our announcement on Monday of this alleged crime, known in Colombian legalese as "constrainment of the voter," that detonated a mini-scandal. The media attention so far is limited to Colombia. Maybe international media will pick up on the questions raised by these electoral issues, or maybe they'll respond like a U.S. military officer with experience in Colombia to whom I commented that the process is corrupt. "What country in Latin America isn't?" he asked me, as if to say, "So what?"

We did not go to Colombia to tell people that our system is better than theirs. Several Colombians commented on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited corporate contributions in political campaigns, something that is not legal in Colombia and that those who commented on it found offensive.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of an army-paramilitary massacre in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó that took the lives of two families -- including community co-founder Luis Eduardo Guerra, and three children aged 2, 6 and 11. They were killed with machetes, and dismembered. At the Fellowship of Reconciliation's National Council meeting in Nyack, NY, we remembered the events as our team recounted them. Many are still seeking justice for the crimes committed. Memory of what happened supports that pursuit, and values the living community in San José that continues to work the land and advocate protection of campesinos in the area.

Does anyone really "Rethink Afghanistan"?

Alan Levin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:33:32 +0000

At the beginning of the screening of Rethink Afghanistan at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I challenged the mostly "anti-war" audience to really look at the film critically and to examine the extent to which it would be genuinely persuasive to someone that did not already agree with the premise that the U.S. military role in Afghanistan was a bad thing. The film, produced and directed by Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Foundation can be seen at their website, in segments that are added to as the war continues to go on. Since our screening on 2/14/10, more segments have been made available that challenge the rationale of Obama's declaration to add another 30,000 troops.

In the film, Greenwald (pictured below right) takes us through the various rationales for the war; security of the U.S. against terrorists, protecting the women of Afghanistan and restoring democracy. For each issue, we see a series of interview clips with ex-intelligence and military experts, scholars and analysts from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, and Afghan women and men, challenging each of these justifications for the war. We see the intense suffering of women, children and civilians caused by U.S. bombs and we also see dramatic analyses of the financial costs to our own country. Convincing enough to me. But then I was already a believer.

What of those who disagreed? We were fortunate to have present some who offered a different perspective. Present was a family with Afghan roots, a man who had immigrated to the U.S. during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan who agreed with most of the film, but questioned the lack of information about what he saw as progress within Afghanistan as the hold of the Taliban was pushed back. His perspective was that the U.S. role could be helpful, but he was sympathetic to the idea that the bombing was destructive to that cause. Interestingly, his son was totally against the military invasion and wanted U.S. troops to withdraw. Another woman present seemed to support the Obama policy and found the film to too one-sided. Most of the audience argued for the idea that the U.S. motive for being there was control of the world's resources, that military occupation could bring no good and that the film was fair.

Interestingly, when I asked if anyone had changed their mind or perspective due to the film in any way, no one said they had. It left me with a question; What does change a person's mind about war? Or anything else for that matter?

Returning to Gaza: 60 years later, visiting the same refugees my father once knew

David Hartsough — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:44:31 +0000

By David Hartsough

On the first anniversary of the war on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, close to 1,400 people from more than 40 countries came to Cairo, Egypt planning to go to Gaza and help end the siege, a total blockade which began in 2007 and continues today. Unfortunately, under extreme pressure from Israel and perhaps the United States, the Egyptian government did not allow most of us to enter Gaza. However about 90 from the Gaza Freedom March did get into Gaza from Dec. 30, 2009 to January 2, 2010. I was privileged to be part of that group.

The people of Gaza were so happy we had come, and also deeply appreciated the more than 1,300 others who were not allowed in, but marched in solidarity with us in Cairo. Gaza is like a large prison. The people of Gaza are all but completely cut off from the rest of the world. They cannot travel or visit relatives living outside the armed apartheid wall which borders all of Gaza, and family members and relatives living outside the area cannot visit their families in Gaza. Only very limited food and medical supplies are able to get in, building supplies and all the other necessities of life can not be imported, and no goods are exported.

The people are suffering severe trauma. During Operation Cast Lead a year ago, the Israeli military subjected the people of Gaza to horrendous violence for more than three weeks. Israeli air strikes killed over 1,400 Palestinians. Five thousand people were injured, and more than 50,000 were left homeless. While there, we saw massive destruction of thousands of homes, 700 factories or places of business, 24 mosques, 10 water or sewage lines, 34 health facilities including eight hospitals, many schools and U.N. buildings, and millions of dollars in destroyed infrastructure During the attack 13 Israelis were killed by rockets shot from Gaza. (Click here for more from AFSC on the crisis in Gaza.)

My dad had worked in Gaza back in 1949 with the Quakers, distributing tents, food, and medicines to the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was particularly painful for me to realize that now, 61 years later, not only those refugees, but their children and grandchildren, are still living in refugee camps in the prison called Gaza.

In one refugee camp we visited which had been severely hit by the Israeli attack last year, we met a family who had lost 28 of its extended family members in the attack. The mother shared her deep grief at the loss. There was nothing for the children to play with. There were holes in the roof of their small home through which rain flowed. The cement blocks in the upper part of the small house, which had suffered severe damage, were re-laid with mud after the bombing, because no cement is allowed into Gaza. She had a picture on the wall of all her lost family members. How horrible for anyone to have to endure this tragic loss!

One happy note was that a member of Veterans for Peace from New Mexico had brought 50 beautiful teddy bears, which we were able to give to some of the children in the camp. This brought great joy amidst all the destruction.

We visited schools where the children had such beautiful faces shining amidst the ruins of their school buildings. In order to accommodate all of the students, the schools now have two shifts each day in the parts of the buildings which were left standing after the siege, but there are only a bare minimum of school supplies. Building supplies are not allowed into Gaza to repair the schools or medical centers, or homes, and they rarely get school supplies.

We visited an orphanage, supported by the Lutheran church, where each child had lost both of their parents. It was very well organized and very neat; the children had clean clothes, adequate food, and even comfortable beds to sleep on which were decorated with beautiful stuffed animals. We had lunch with the children -- each of us at a table with six children of the orphanage. Although we were not able to communicate much with words, we were able to communicate with loving smiles.

One of the highlights of our time in Gaza was to have with us four Hasidic Orthodox Jewish Rabbis from the organization Orthodox Jews Against Zionism or Naturei Karta International. They were dressed with their black coats and black broad rimmed hats and curls of hair down the sides of their faces, and were carrying a banner with a Palestinian flag and the message, "Judaism Demands Freedom for Gaza and All Palestine," and buttons which said "A Jew is not a Zionist." The people of Gaza were thrilled to meet these Jewish people who were committed to honoring the humanity of the Palestinian people and came all the way to Gaza to proclaim their support for the Palestinians and an end to the siege of Gaza.

THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH -- December 31, 2009:

The original plan had been for the 1,340 internationals to join 50,000 Gazans on the Freedom March. However, under the new constraints, 90 of us marched to the Israeli border crossing called Erez, along with 1,000 Gazans. We brought our demands to the Israeli government to end the siege of Gaza, and let the people live!

I marched with two school teachers who were deeply moved that people from other parts of the world cared about their fate, and were willing to go through all the roadblocks and hurdles and expense to get into Gaza to join them. We marched through kilometer after kilometer of bombed out homes, factories and shops. We saw men gathering up the rubble, recycling the rebar, and grinding up smashed cement to make new cement to rebuild their homes and buildings.

One of the great joys for me was meeting Mustafa (from Gaza) whose father had worked with my dad and the Quakers in a refugee camp in Rafah back in 1949. The Quakers and the U.N. distributed food, tents, and medicine to over 250,000 refugees who had to flee their homes in the 1948 war. Mustafa, following in his father's footsteps, works for an NGO doing both humanitarian relief and training in conflict resolution, peacemaking, and active nonviolence.

It is so sad to think of the many generations of children who have had to grow up as refugees over these 61 years. Many families still have the keys to their original homes in what is now Israel, and keep them with the hope that someday they might be able to return to their homes.

Some of our group went out with fishermen in their small fishing boats. Israel does not allow them to go out beyond 2.5 kilometers to fish and, there are few fish available so close to the shore. In the past they used to go out 60 km. If they ever stray beyond the imposed 2.5 km limit, they are often shot at by Israeli soldiers. When unarmed internationals are present on the boats, they offer some protection.

The farmers have a similar problem. Gaza's most fertile land is close to the Israeli border. If the farmers cultivate too close to the so-called apartheid wall, which separates Gaza from Israel, they may be shot by Israeli soldiers.

NGOs in Gaza also feel pressure from Hamas, the elected Palestinian government there. A women's NGO told us that because they were affiliated with Fatah (the other main Palestinian political party) they are given a hard time and sometimes even arrested.

Others are closely watched. It is often said that people who have been oppressed often end up being oppressors to others. This has happened to many Israelis who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust and are now oppressing the Palestinians. It seems that Hamas, whose members have suffered 61 years of oppression by Israelis, are now oppressing their own people, the Palestinians in Gaza.

Reflection: Somehow, we have to get out of this vicious circle of violence and oppression and counter-violence. All of us -- Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans (whose government supports the Israeli apartheid regime and the war and siege of Gaza) -- must come to understand that security comes NOT through more arms and guns and oppression of others. It can ONLY come by treating all people as children of God, and with respect and dignity as our brothers and sisters. If we -- Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans -- could only understand this, we and the whole world would all be much more secure.

Even though we may not like the elected Hamas government, the United States needs to get clear on whether it really supports democracy and the right of people to elect their own government, or if we support democracy only when the people elect the government we would like them to vote for. Former President Jimmy Carter, who headed up an election monitoring mission during the Palestinian elections, said: "The elections were completely honest, completely fair, completely safe and without violence." Should the United States, Israel, and the rest of the world force the people of Gaza to suffer untold misery because we do not like their elected government? And is the Hamas government more terrorist than the U.S. government which is raining bombs and death on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan?

After all that I directly experienced, not only in Gaza, but in Palestine, the West Bank and Israel, I came to firmly believe that the U.S. needs to stop sending the more than $3 billion a year "blank check" to Israel! We, the citizens of the United States, are paying for the bombs, guns, bullets, planes, and bulldozers; and we are supporting the settlements in the West Bank which are taking away the homes and farmlands of the Palestinian people.

The whole world needs to bring pressure on Israel to end the siege of Gaza. We need to support Palestinians engaged in nonviolent struggle to liberate their country from the occupation by Israel. I ask you to consider this important question: "Wouldn't American taxpayer money be much better spent supporting Mustafa and others training Palestinian young people in conflict resolution and active nonviolence rather than in giving many billions of dollars to the Israeli government for more weapons, planes, ammunition and the building of more walls?" I hope you will join me in the growing worldwide movement to help end the siege of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine and the West Bank.

David Hartsough is a Quaker, father and grandfather, director of PEACEWORKERS, based in San Francisco, co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, and recently spent a month in Palestine and Israel.

Keeping the promise alive

Ethan Vesely-Flad — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:39:44 +0000

For many years, today's date in U.S. calendars seemed to be an odd, cynical juxtaposition of politically and socially-inflected observances: Presidents' Day, right in the middle of Black History Month. One the one hand, white powerful men were being honored at the same time as those who had fought enslavement, dispossession, and imprisonment at their hands. That is, it felt an oxymoron until the dramatic election of Barack Obama. The new issue of The New Yorker magazine brings us back to the thrilling feelings many of us felt one year ago at Obama's inauguration -- when Rev. Joseph Lowery closed the momentous program with a stirring invocation -- through an extraordinary photo spread honoring African Americans leaders (or their descendants) of the civil rights movement.

The photographs by Platon are absolutely stunning, and an accompanying essay provides a brief but compelling look at the depth of meaning of Obama's presidency to black America one year into his tenure. Better yet, for those who don't subscribe to the print magazine, the online version of this retrospective, titled "The Promise," offers even richer multimedia content, as it includes audio interviews with many of those profiled. Fellowship of Reconciliation members James Lawson and Rep. John Lewis among the historic individuals featured in it.

Another significant date in black history took place last week, when the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison was commemorated on February 11th. I remember well that historic moment when he walked out of Paarl Prison, in the way that those of previous American generations might recall the moment they had watched a human first walk on the moon, or learned of the death of John F. Kennedy or Dr. King, or perhaps Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was a turning moment in our global history, one no less extraordinary than the fall of the Berlin Wall just a few months earlier.

Mandela lives and continues to stand tall, and is a testimony to the power of the spirit to create change despite all the forces that seem to stand against it. And as we consider his legacy, I am now looking forward to the impending release of a series of documentary films on the role of the international community in supporting Mandela's African National Congress and other South Africans that struggled mightily against apartheid. You can learn more about this series, titled "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?" on the Clarity Films web site: stay tuned for more news about this in the coming months.

Elizabethan Detention

Preston Davis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:03:02 +0000

About 15 minutes is all it takes, maybe less. From Manhattan, you take the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey's Route 9/1, a left on to North Avenue and a quick right on to Dowd Avenue, and there: you've arrived at the Elizabeth Detention Center. You wouldn't be the wiser if you missed it, though.

To give you a lay of the land, the Elizabeth Detention Center is a windowless converted warehouse owned and operated by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private corrections company in the United States. The facility is huddled amongst the other masses of industrial buildings just down the street from the Anheuser Busch Company and across the street from the Newark International. It's hard to believe the inconspicuous facility houses 300 detained asylum seekers and other non-criminal non-citizens. These people are hidden but not forgotten.

The Sojourners Immigration Detention Visitor Program, funded by the Riverside Church, has been making visits to detainees at Elizabeth since 1999. The program also works to assist in providing post-release services for recently released immigrants and asylum seekers.

This past Saturday I joined the Sojourners’ volunteers at Elizabeth. We moved from the flurries outside into the converted warehouse, through the security and into a room for visitors, separating us from the detainees by a thick partition of glass. Sojourners’ program co-coordinator Nate Crimmins paired each of the volunteers with a detainee that had requested a visit. Then you’re there for what you came for. You sit at your individual carrel face-to-face with another human who is suited in a criminal jumpsuit, though no crime exists. You’re there to talk, or listen, as the case may be. Conversation can move from the life on the “inside” to anything as hope-filled and grand as the World Cup.

While I was there I couldn’t help but think of the most recent issue of Fellowship, particularly the article by Jacki Esposito of Detention Watch Network on the crisis of immigration detention. I was sitting in the heart of it, and this man across from me was living through it. I wondered if he thought of himself as just another number, one more immigrant to the half a million that will be detained this year and put into a facility just like this one, or worse. Did he know there are thousands just like him, spread out across the United States in detention centers because they were fleeing religious or political persecution? Did he count himself as lucky because he had representation for his trial, while the overwhelming majority, 80%, has no such luck? Mostly, I just wondered how this particular man, who had been living in this detention center for almost half a year, could smile continuously during our conversation. How does one under so much adversity find hope?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that many of these detainees continue to defy overwhelming odds to find hope. This
man did by remembering his wife and two children. Others do it by having programs like Sojourners coming to visit them. And many dream of the day they will simply know the day’s weather, not because a visitor told them, but because they experienced it for themselves.

If these detainees can do it, so can we. That should motivate us all to continue to work harder and longer for just immigration.

Iran: Sanctions Bills in Congress Threaten U.S. Diplomacy as Iran Appears to Accept Uranium Deal

Mark Johnson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:44:46 +0000

I had lunch this week with a labor union organizer from Iran seeking support for the rights of workers in Iran. One of his biggest fears was that the implementation of additional sanctions would serve the interest of Iranian leadership making the case for foreign intervention as the reason for solidarity across all sectors in Iran. While it may appear that factions in Iran are sharp and irreconciliable there is a clear warning that movements in the direction of reform, and the well-being of the Iranian public, would be severely affected by new sanctions. Jim Fine's assessment below extends that analysis and provides background we should have in hand on the state of the sanctions legislation in Congress. Mark C. Johnson

From Jim Fine at FCNL:

The Senate's approval by voice vote January 28 of a new Iran sanctions bill (S. 2799) poses a serious challenge to the Obama administration's policy of diplomatic engagement with Iran in both the immediate and long-term future.

The bill now goes to conference where Senate and House leaders will negotiate to reconcile differences with a bill passed by the House in December. The administration must decide how strongly to press lawmakers to change provisions in the bills that would prevent the U.S. from gradually easing sanctions in the future in response to positive actions by Iran.

The importance of avoiding crippling restrictions on U.S. diplomacy was underscored this week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran was prepared to accept a deal to ship most of its enriched uranium out of the country in return for the future delivery of fuel rods for a Tehran reactor that produces medical isotopes. Iran agreed to the U.S.-proposed plan last October but later backed away after the deal was caught up in Iran's domestic turmoil, with reformers opposing the plan and others, including President Ahmadinejad and the chief of the Iranian armed forces, supporting it. If Ahmadinejad's Feb 2 announcement leads to implementing the deal, it could set U.S.-Iran relations on a course to resolve concerns over Iran's nuclear program and achieve increased cooperation between the U.S. and Iran, including on Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the most restrictive provisions of the Iran sanctions legislation moving through Congress is a measure in the House version that would prevent the president from easing economic sanctions until he can certify that Iran has ceased "nuclear-related activities, including uranium enrichment." Iran has a right under the non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium and most analysts say that a realistic agreement with Iran would include continued Iranian enrichment in return for intrusive international inspections. Legislation making it impossible to lift sanctions as long as Iran enriches uranium could prevent future agreement with Iran.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he would consider changes sought by the administration, and a State Department official has pledged to "work constructively with conferees as they work on the final version of this legislation," but the administration has so far not made clear how hard it will press for changes.

New questions about the direction of the Obama administration's Iran policy were raised, moreover, by its announcement last week that it was deploying anti-missile defenses in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Arab states. Some observers have seen the move as a reversion to the policy of the Bush administration and expressed fear that it could provide Iranian hard liners with a pretext to move decisively to crush the Iranian reform movement.

For more on Congress and Iran sanctions see posts by Jim Fine and Jim Cason on the FCNL 2C blog site.

Colombia: School of the Americas light?

Susana Pimiento Chamorro — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:41:13 +0000

The Colombian military and police have, by far, the worst record of human rights abuses in the Western Hemisphere. Over the last 7 years, more than 2,000 innocent civilians have bee killed by the Colombian army and then presented as guerrilla or paramilitary killed in combat to bump up the body count numbers and qualify for bonuses, vacation time and promotions. The Army has also been involved in the execution of horrific massacres of innocent civilians, including children such as Santiago and Natalia Bolivar and Deiner Guerra (18 months old, 5 and 11), chopped up with machetes in February 2005 along with their parents, all San Jose de Apartado Peace Community members.

The record of the Colombian Police is not brighter. Human Rights Watch, in recently released report, describes on going links between the police and the “heirs of paramilitaries”, bands that, although have undergone slight changes such as leadership, names and areas of influence, continue working as death squads, threatening, killing and raping union leaders, human rights defenders and community leaders, particularly those working to defend the rights of the victims of paramilitary abuses and restitution of forcebly grabbed land .

Ironically those tainted institutions are being hailed as models delivering training to the armed forces of countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Colombian daily El Espectador unveiled the existence of military cooperation agreements signed by Colombia with Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone and Togo. The text of such agreements is unknown. Military personnel from the United Kingdom, Chile, Spain and Ecuador would have also received training by Colombian armed forces, as well as the police from Panama, Haiti, El Salvador, Argentina and Trinidad and Tobago.

The United States has a key role in the rise of the Colombian armed forces in the military education ranking. Outsourcing training has been a key component of the October 2009 US Colombia Military Cooperation agreement –the same agreement that opened all Colombian military bases and locations to US use.

Colombia has also gotten in the business of providing assistance to Afghanistan military and police forces. Its record has been extolled as the reason for their involvement in Afghanistan. In a July 27, 2009 CBS piece, Lara Logan excitedly reported Colombian participation in the Afghanistan war, noting that “with the help of America’s best warriors, Colombian Special Forces have become some of the finest soldiers in the world”. Logan backed her claims on Col assertions of Colonel Greg Wilson’s assertion that "I would rank it as one of the top special operations in modern day history" and finished her piece with the statement of an unnamed top US official saying "The more Afghanistan can look like Colombia, the better."

The US military incursion in Afghanistan has had devastating in terms of collateral damage. It took over 2,400 civilian casualties in 2009 alone according to a UN report released in past January. A pretty grim picture that would only worsen if started to resemble Colombia.

Gaza Freedom March: A summary report of the Interfaith Satyagraha Walk

Mark Johnson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:35:28 +0000

Even though we might be made blind to the evil afoot, we will not be silent. This is the lesson of modern history. We will sing a new song as strangers in a strange land: Let My People Go. While the Egyptians, Israelis, and Americans conspire to keep us from seeing the conditions of life in the world’s largest prison (sorry, no visiting hours this month), there is a chorus, a voice, 43 nations rich, which is lifted in greater harmony and crescendo than ever before to call for raising the siege of Gaza and thereby increasing the security of Israel.

So many of the metaphors and rhetorical flourishes of chants and psalms that were a part of the gathering in Egypt, in support of ending the blockade of Gaza, come out of the stories of exile and Diaspora of the Jewish people. The Gazans have now been recast as the persecuted of the lands of Judea and Samaria. In so many of those stories Pharaoh was the tyrant, making Egypt an easy party to demonize and hold responsible for our sense of being held hostage by the State. But the response of the French Embassy, U.S. Embassy and Congressional representatives, and the United Nations all make clear that the levers of power are shared, if not completely controlled, by Egypt’s partners. So much of the experience appears to have been intended to divert attention from the continued blockade of Gaza and focus attention on the delegation’s challenges. In the end, the strategy failed if it is judged by the level of international press attention and the radicalizing of a tipping point of the travelers on this pilgrimage. We may have come hoping for a miracle, but we left prepared to make our own changes to the balance of power in the world.

Divide and Conquer

The organizing structures of the March lent themselves to the Egyptian tactic, implemented from the beginning, to separate the mass of 1,362 delegates into smaller groups and to prevent their ever collecting in one place at one time. The Gaza Freedom March quickly grew beyond its capacity to organize in an unknown venue.

Organized around multiple identities and thus diluting the cohesive potential of the affinity groups, the March was often consumed by trying to create or recover consensus and distracted from its goal of throwing a bright light on the siege of Gaza. Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and I co-convened a spiritually-focused affinity group under the name of the Interfaith Satyagraha Peacewalk. We included more than 40 individuals in our conversations prior to arriving in Cairo, but we never gathered more than two dozen in any one meeting. I was also understood to be a part of the New York Delegation, and others in our group saw themselves as similarly geographically affiliated, nationally affiliated, part of the Women’s Group, trainers in nonviolence, or engaged in a hunger strike.

There was no tested decision-making process to guide tough decisions which had to be made in short periods of time. Offers to convene groups for training were advanced but only slowly embraced and even then competed with other choices at any given hour. And yet these challenges also worked, in the end, to open possibilities of new tactics and rising leadership.

Public Training in Nonviolence

The tolerance for smaller gatherings also offered some ironies. A team of ten of us drafted a curriculum for preparation in nonviolence practices after demonstrations at the U.N. headquarters and a solidarity gathering at the Journalist Syndicate on December 29th and 30th. Lacking a suitable meeting room in any local hotel, we broadcast a set of meeting times for the largest public plaza in the area, Tahrir (Independence) Square. As we started in a group of 30 to do our first two-hour session, a plain-clothed officer approached me about our intention – “was this going to lead to an action?” I answered that we were simply an international community of like-minded individuals, and since we were not allowed to gather in a single large group, we thought we would spend time getting to know one another in smaller groups throughout the day. (Meanwhile an American group was being man-handled at the doors of the U.S. embassy and the sidewalk encampment of 250+ at the French Embassy continued under close police containment and supervision). A number of plain-clothed policemen were assigned “for our safety” to keep others away from us and to listen in on our conversations. (During one of the dyad exercises I had a long conversation with one of the officers assigned to us. His English was unaccented and we shared our educational backgrounds, our interests in literature. I explained our reason for being in Egypt and our desire to go to Gaza. It seemed to be enough of an explanation for him to wander further away for the balance of the exercise.) Another circle of 30 gathered with Starhawk an hour and a half later and as the sun set we finished a day of rudimentary preparation for nonviolence for a large number of novices who had come expecting to being walking in solidarity in Gaza, not confronting shield-faced, trudgeon-belted, uniformed policemen on the streets of Cairo. If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans...

Women First

The community may have underestimated the depth of male chauvinism in Egyptian society. Significant leadership from the very beginning had come from Code Pink and from women throughout the peace movement with particular history in the Israel/Palestine conflict. International leadership provided by women was also evident form the beginning. Given the fact that conservative and fundamentalist Islam (threads of which were evident in the police assigned to our “care”) condones physical punishment of non-conformists and of women before men, putting women at the front of actions was taunting the Egyptians. The plains-clothes policemen (wearing winter jackets to conceal pistols), took clear pleasure in striking women and pulling them about by their hair. Men they kicked while they were down in puppy piles, and pummeled to the point of drawing blood. I was impressed with the leadership and inspired, learning to allow myself to let go of an ego-grounded call to the front line and serving instead to pull people over the barriers into safer areas of sidewalk.

We Are Not Afraid: The Power of Nonviolence

The turning point in the relationship with the Egyptian police, I thought, was that once confined to “Free Gaza Plaza” the gathered began to celebrate with song and dance. The beauty of song is often its simplicity. The phrases “Free Gaza,” “We shall not be moved,” and “We are not afraid” were so easily understood to say that those attacked were unmoved by violence and intimidation that a grudging respect seemed to emerge on the police lines. Voices rose with greatest passion and authenticity on precisely those phrases. By the time the Horah circle transformed to a Dabke line, the soldiers began expanding the space in which the group was confined by stepping back a few paces every few minutes, dropping their interlocked arms, and allowing restrained smiles to break their lips. When the group voted to disband after six hours, the restraining lines opened and people walked away without further molestation ... to plan another action.

Strangers in a Strange Land: Culture Is Still a Mystery

One can only speculate. It is hard to imagine what advantage accrued to Egypt of holding the GFM in Cairo for a week. Certainly a week of tourism dollars was welcome, though this was not a group that booked four-star hotel rooms, ate three meals a day, or shopped for antiques. It would have been easier, I would have thought, to provide the buses requested and taken the group to Al Arish and locked us down with the few who had made it that far before the masses arrived. But perhaps the same level of containment was not possible at that distance from Cairo. After the March there have been hints that various governments were sharing intelligence of prospective violence once the group were admitted to Gaza. The coincidence of the announcement and beginning of work on a subterranean wall along the Egypt-Gaza border had led to some public exchanges of gun-fire near the Rafah border. The gate had not been opened in some time, no doubt intensifying conditions there. The Viva Palestina caravan, led by British MP George Galloway. was scheduled to arrive just ahead of the Gaza Freedom March. The anniversary of Operation Cast Lead and the recent release of the Goldstone Report, while purposefully chosen and fortuitously leading to heightening the media potential of the March, also likely increased the levels of concern by all parties. And finally, the culture of totalitarianism is, oxymoronically, impenetrable.

The Spectacle

I remember once trying to find an open checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem in a private car of a Palestinian colleague from East Jerusalem. We would fall into a line of cars that appeared to be moving through a checkpoint, only to have it closed and to see all the cars in line do simultaneous 180 degree turns and head to another checkpoint, racing through back streets which became clogged with the routine and to repeat the exercise at the next gate. It reminded me of nothing more than a Keystone Cops silent movie. It defined life in the occupied territories as a Tragedy disguised as a Comedy.

It redefines the Gaza Freedom March effort to lift the siege of Gaza in the same way. The drama was intense, and as one analyst from the Palestine Think Tank suggests, surely Israeli, Egyptian, and American strategists are still laughing at the naïveté of confronting state power with the tools of civil society. But the underlying point is that this is an ongoing tragedy and we are all the authors and actors, not simply the audience.

Joseph Kip Kosek, in his book Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy, points repeatedly to E.A. Ross’s sociological analysis of the role of spectacle in the work of active nonviolence. The banner headlines and photo-montages in all of the major Egyptian newspapers suggest that Cairo has not enjoyed such spectacles in a long time (one headline, over a photograph of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and FOR members Russ Greenleaf from Louisville, Kentucky, and Margaret Hawthorne of Amherst, Massachusetts, suggested there had been no protests in front of the Israeli embassy in decades). While a symbolic truck-load of humanitarian aide was delivered to Gaza with the two-bus delegation, and while some portion of Viva Palestina’s caravan has now crossed into Gaza, the repeated affirmation was that we were not gathered to distribute charity but to raise awareness and stand in solidarity with an oppressed people.

Someone will finally calculate the number of stories, column inches or press minutes of airtime, number of videos posted on YouTube, but until that time my anecdotal experience is that though there was not widespread coverage in mainline U.S. media, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, and the Christian Science Monitor were only a few of the many that did carry stories. The world press and blogosphere was very busy. It also appears that the hunger strike, a quintessential act of witness and solidarity, was the lead story for many news sources and clearly affirmed with appreciation by those in the Gaza Strip. The goals of media attention and solidarity were realized.

The Costs and Constraints of Delegation Leadership

I engaged from the beginning in the Gaza Freedom March in partnership with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb who had proposed an Interfaith Gaza Satyagraha as an affinity group within the larger march, part of a tradition of nonviolent pilgrimages and as a safe haven for those whose faith grounded their participation and who feared that the role of witness might be obscured by political tensions, realities, and necessities.

One of my strengths is logistical thinking. It was sorely tried by conditions in Cairo, but to the extent it could be brought to bear it did strengthen the group’s spirit. We had three weekly calls before leaving for Egypt, and we met five mornings for worship and reflection while in Egypt. We gravitated to one another’s presence in actions and wore a white sash (courtesy of Julie Moenck from Colorado) as a reminder that we represented a peace witness of love and solidarity.

We created a peace line between some delegates who wished to agitate the young policemen surrounding us, and along the lines they formed at both the United Nations headquarters and in “Free Gaza Plaza,” as the area opposite the Egyptian Museum was labeled. We led singing and dancing and witnessed silently to slogans and chants. Many of our number joined the fast inaugurated by Hedy Epstein, though not all the fasters identified with the Interfaith Satyagraha. Some rituals grew out of the whole community’s sensibilities: a candlelight vigil on New Year’s Eve in Tahrir Square, for example. Other commitments of the whole community sprang from input we offered early on, such as the signing of a commitment to nonviolence, and a proposed walk in the Satyagraha tradition of Gandhi. We served as a weaving that brought the moral/ethical, theological, political, and pragmatic commitments to nonviolence that were present in the motivations of many into relationship with one another.

One internet story on the GFM concludes this way: “However, for millions of Palestinians who routinely feel abandoned by the international community, the most poignant effect of the Gaza Freedom March may be the message of worldwide solidarity embodied by marchers. 'During these years, we have felt unheard, unnoticed, and even unworthy,' writes Zeina Abu Innab, a Palestinian resident of Jordan. 'You have revealed that this is no longer the case... You have shown us that somewhere, sometime, there are people who hear the cries of Palestinians under siege and occupation. ... You have given us strength by proving to us that we are no longer alone. This is an aspiration that we do not take lightly.' Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza, adds, 'For us, a population of 1.6 million being imprisoned and starved, the gratitude we express to you, the Gaza freedom marchers, is immense. Thank you all from the depth of our hearts!'”

Iran Crises...

Leila Zand — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:08:29 +0000

Iran is experiencing a very important and delicate time in its modern history. These days there are hot conversations among Iranians, both inside the country and in the diaspora as well as among many who are interested in the future of the Middle East. There are many arguments in trying to figure out that among different groups and players within the Iranian political theater who is right and who is wrong? Which one, the “Greens” or the government is betraying the most important elements of the Revolution of 1979?

The three parts slogans, which became three ideological pillars of the Revolution has been Independence, Freedom and Islamic Republic. 31 years ago these three slogans was repeated over and over from variety of groups within the Iranian political spectrums.

What has happening in Iran since the presidential election of June 2009, and the aftermath unrest, shows people still are seeking the Revolution’s promises. After 31 years of the Islamic Revolution people are still demanding Independence, Freedom and Islamic Republic (or, as sometimes we hear in recent demonstrations, Iranian Republic). Many religious observers believe what is happening in Iran is not Islamic. And of course by looking at what has happened since the election it is very easy to figure this out that the current condition in Iran has created a huge crack in Freedom and Republic as well.

Iranian people have the experience of Revolution, War, “Reconstruction”, Reformist era and finally “Principlist” are in the office. With all these experiences they are in a situation to recognize what they want and to be clear about their ideal future for their country. They are the ones who came to the conclusion and maturity to stand for the rights that they feel has been taken away from them.

This is their decision and understanding of their condition and as Victor Hugo reminds us “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

And we, who believe in sadi's wisdom

“The human race is a single being

Created from one jewel 

If one member is struck 

All must feel the blow 

Only someone who cares for the pain of others

 Can truly be called human

Will stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iran. We need to hear their voices and their nonviolence demands for change.

We at the same time are aware that any foreign interference will destroy the Iranians’ dreams. But in this process there are individuals and groups whose main concern is their own interests not the Iranian people’s.

The sanctions introduced by the conservatives in the House and Senate http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60R7HB20100128?type=politicsNews%3FfeedType%3DRSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Politics+News%29&utm_content=Twitter

not only eliminate administration’s efforts toward solving the problem through the political path, but also is causing more difficulty for the "Greens" and their dream of freedom and democracy in Iran. Imposing sanctions is an act of war, and in this, the Iranian democratic movement will be the first to be negatively affected. We are urging our senators and representatives to lift these new sanctions as well as the previous ones.

FOR joins call to protest Supreme Court "Citizens United" ruling

FOR — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:46:59 +0000

Mark Johnson, director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and several other FOR members were among more than 200 national leaders of religious organizations who wrote to Speak of the House Nancy Pelosi today calling for passage of the Fair Elections Now Act. In response to last month's extraordinary 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court on the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, faith communities across the religious spectrum, faciliated by Common Cause, contacted Congress today to express their deep concern for swift action. The letter reads:

February 3, 2010

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

As religious leaders, we believe in equality and justice for all people and in building the common good. In a democracy, these ideals cannot be realized, however, if the rules governing the electoral process actively or passively favor one segment of the population over another.

We believe existing campaign finance laws already permit the unfair influence of persons and groups with extraordinary wealth over the political process by providing them with special access to elected officials. This special access ultimately results in legislative outcomes that reflect the needs of those with the financial means to make political contributions, and not the needs of the poor or disenfranchised.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will surely amplify the voices of the wealthy campaign donors and bring new powerful players to fore at the expense of everyone else.

We believe Congress must address both the Citizens United decision and the problems of the current campaign finance system by passing the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752 and H.R. 1826). This measure would empower average people to participate in politics with small donations, and would return the gaze of our elected officials solely to the needs of their districts and the nation as a whole, rather than the interests of those with significant financial resources for campaigns.

We pledge our support and we pledge to work among members of our churches, synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras (a Sikh place of worship) and temples throughout the nation to encourage support for your efforts to bring about reform. As you know, the Fair Elections Now Act was sponsored by Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in the Senate and House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) and Congressman Walter Jones (R-N.C.) in the House. In the House, the legislation has attracted nearly 130 cosponsors. With a strong Fair Elections system in place, candidates will spend less time courting the narrow slice of Americans who currently fund campaigns and engage a larger, more active citizenry.

We hope in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision you will support the Fair Elections Now Act so that Congress can act effectively on the people’s business.

Signed,

[Click here to see a list of signatories.]

National radio/TV programs on Bayard Rustin & Martin Luther King

Ethan Vesely-Flad — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:52:07 +0000

Martin Luther King scholar Richard Deats -- who was also close friends with the King family and a member of the national commission to create the Dr. King Holiday -- was the featured guest on a national webinar hosted last week by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. An audio file of the program will soon be available on FOR's website for on-demand listening.

In the meanwhile, devotees of Dr. King will find another interview interesting: during PBS's "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" program last month, Cheryl Sanders, an ordained minister and professor at the Howard University School of Theology, spoke about Dr. King's legacy. Like Deats, Ms. Sanders stressed Reverend King's strong anti-militarism stance -- an important and oft-overlooked perspective, especially in this historical moment when the U.S. is actively engaging at least two wars (some argue that Yemen is a third conflict where U.S. military forces are in a state of war). The video segment is about 12 minutes long.

Meanwhile, National Public Radio is broadcasting this month a Bayard Rustin program. My friend Walter Naegle, who was Rustin's life partner when he died in 1987, sent the following note:

It is called "Who Is This Man?" and is part of the second season of "State of the Reunion." The program includes interviews with friends and colleagues of Bayard, as well as with historian John D'Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life of Bayard Rustin. There are also clips of Bayard speaking and singing. It is an interesting mix of fact and opinion and gives a very good overview of Bayard's influence and the sweep of his career.

In the New York City area it will be airing on February 10th at 8 pm on WNYC (93.9). Public radio stations in other parts of the country may be airing it at other times, so check your local station's schedule.

You can also visit the website for the program to listen to it at any time. On the website it is divided into three segments.

The website will also be posting additional content --- extended interviews, photographs, etc.

I warmly encourage FOR members and friends to check out this wonderful new resource on one of the most inspiring nonviolence leaders of the past century.

A Sermon on Haiti: Dr. King on the problem of suffering

Richard Deats — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:59:23 +0000

Like all of us, Dr. King faced the problem of suffering and evil. There are many wonderful things in life, many so pervasive that we don’t even think about them -- like hearts that beat continually, eyes that see, ears that hear, arms and legs that move: these we take for granted and may never have thought of them as daily miracles.

But we also have minds that think and that raise questions as seen, e.g. in the age-old questions pondered in the Bible: why do the wicked prosper? Why do we suffer? Why does evil occur? I am sure many of you have thought about this with the destructive earthquake in Haiti.

Someone wrote in The New York Times this week in an article about Haiti: “God is angry.” The fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson said that France had ruled Haiti and that in order to get rid of the French two centuries ago Haitians made a pact with the devil, and they have been cursed ever since! I find such thinking appalling with its view of a capricious and wicked God. In a similarly callous vein, Rush Limbaugh said, “ the earthquake was made to order for Obama, it just gave him a big chance to burnish his image in both the light-skinned and dark skinned parts of the black community.” Such comments are so insensitive and inappropriate that they must be clearly rejected.

But let’s face it: sometimes people attribute especially evil things to God’s anger and punishment. Natural calamities, such as earthquakes and floods and extreme storms, are believed by many to be sent by God as punishment.

But wait a minute! People who live on a fault line, or below sea level, or on the side of a volcano are in danger of destructive natural disasters. Scientists are beginning to understand what disasters are coming because of global warming. We ignore this at our peril, as some are doing by rejecting the role of science in understanding the created universe.

In the past year, Haiti suffered from four very destructive hurricanes and now this earthquake. These calamities are tragic occurances in a nation near a dangerous fault line and in a part of the world where erratic weather patterns have been creating havoc.

Because Martin Luther King only lived until he was 39, we don’t have a lifetime of speeches and writings (as we do with Gandhi, who lived till he was 78). What I do know about his response to evil and its interpretation is the following:

Examine the writings and actions of Dr. King and you find that he always holds up the idea of God as seen in Jesus -- a God who is compassionate, a God who is Love, and his godliness is expressed in a way that shows love, not hate; good, not evil. He doesn’t sink a ship that is overtaken by a hurricane. He doesn’t destroy New Orleans to punish those who live there. Nor did he cause the destruction of the World Trade Center because he was mad at feminists and homosexuals, as the TV evangelist Jerry Falwell said at the time.

When Dr. King’s brother drowned and when his mother was shot, Dr. King grieved and he reached out his hand to comfort the sorrowing family. When a mentally deranged woman stabbed him in a bookstore in NYC, he didn’t bring charges against her, but called for her psychiatric examination and care. When his home was bombed in Montgomery as he was preaching, he rushed home to be with Coretta and their daughter Yoki, then he called on the large crowd that had gathered in the yard to get rid of their weapons and plans for vengeance and stressed the nonviolence of the movement. The last event of his life was planning to bring together poor people -- black and white, yellow and red -- in a poor peoples’ march on Washington to deal concretely with the evils caused by poverty.

On September 15, 1963, racists planted a bomb in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama -- in those days called ‘bombingham’ because of its violent response to the civil rights movement. The bomb exploded in the girls’ restroom, and four girls preparing to participate in a performance at church were killed when the bomb went off.

Dr. King was asked to preach the eulogy at the funeral. Along with his words of comfort to the grieving families, he referred to the girls as “martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” He said, “they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering Is redemptive ... The spilt blood of these innocent girls ... may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.”

Then he added “At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. ...But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace” (A Testament of Hope, James Washington, editor, pp. 220-223).

Dr. King was right: the death of the four girls led to a redemptive tide that turned many away from resistance to justice and freedom and to begin supporting efforts for human dignity. Hard and awful lessons can and do lead us to a renewal of struggle and the rising of a new dawn of hope.

Let us pray that the terrible suffering in Haiti can lead not only to immediate humanitarian relief but to the kind of long-term efforts that can successfully address the widespread poverty and ecological devastation of that island nation.

As we ponder the meaning of evil, let us resolve to work for the good and to bring healing and life-affirming possibilities even in the midst of tragedy.

[Ed.: This sermon by the Rev. Richard Deats, editor emeritus of Fellowship magazine and past executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was delivered on Sunday, January 17, 2010 on the occasion of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Spring Valley, New York.]

Haiti Untold: Nonviolence and Humanization at the Grassroots

Ivan Boothe — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:26:05 +0000

By Randall Amster, professor of peace studies at Prescott College, and executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. Reposted from Waging Nonviolence.

A number of commentators have questioned the accepted logic that disasters bring out the worst in people, directly challenging the pervasive “looters run amok” imagery often perpetuated by the media and held out by lawmakers as a rationale for military occupation. Having done relief work following Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, I have found that people are more likely to work together – even if only out of necessity – when severe hardship strikes. In fact, it is precisely the isolation and individualism of ordinary daily life that tap into our worst instincts, while the removal of these impediments can actually liberate our better qualities.

As Dustin Howes recently observed, “the vast majority of people in Haiti responded to the earthquake with the apparently just as natural of an impulse to help one another.” The New York Times has uncovered a widespread ethic of “communal rationing” in Haiti, in which “no matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.” As the article explains, many Haitians “are finding ways to share. In several neighborhoods of Carrefour, a poor area closer to the epicenter, small soup kitchens have sprung up with discounted meals, subsidized by Haitians with a little extra money…. [Three women there] started cooking for their neighbors the day after the earthquake. On many mornings, they serve 100 people before 10 a.m. Smiling and proud, the women said they did not have the luxury of waiting for aid groups to reach them in their hilly neighborhood.”

This is the untold and largely unreported state of the crisis in Haiti. Amy Goodman filed a series of reports for Democracy Now! from places where relief had yet to be delivered. In Leogane, the epicenter of the quake where perhaps 90% of the city had been destroyed, Mayor Santos Alexis noted that aside from people occasionally taking food from destroyed stores, “there’s no violence really in Leogane.” Still, the mainstream relief agencies remain obsessed with security concerns, to the extent that they will drop small amounts of food from above rather than land and talk with the people on the ground. As Mayor Alexis lamented, the people “feel humiliated, because of the airplane flying and dropping some bread to them. They feel very embarrassed by that.” Haitian expatriate blogger Wadner Pierre likewise reflects on these unfortunate realities, and how they stand in contrast to baseline Haitian values:

My beloved country is one where people know how to do ‘konbit’ (put their hands together) to help their brothers and sisters. But because so many of the organizations now involved in the relief effort do not know Haiti well and do not have Haitian employees who speak the local languages, the situation may worsen… Why are American relief organizations… humiliating people by dropping food and water to them by helicopters? Would they treat American citizens in this manner?

When we consider the practice of nonviolence, one of the foundational premises is humanization, of both self and other. In Haiti, the chasm between survivors and most of the aiders prevents the discovery of a mutual humanity from which empathy may spring, making truly “humanitarian” relief efforts problematic if not impossible. A key aspect of grassroots work in the region has been to reclaim this basic humanity, providing a voice to the Haitian people themselves so that we can see, across the chasms of distance and status, that they are people with the same complexities and desires as ourselves. (A 2008 grassroots video project called “Looking Through Their Eyes” effectively captures this sense of commonality.)

Sasha Kramer, co-founder of the nonprofit organization SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods), which collaborates with local communities on “empowerment” projects, has been living and working in Haiti since 2004 and reflected on the current situation in an interview with Goodman:

[W]hen the large aid groups circulate around Port-au-Prince, they’re often in sealed vehicles with their windows up, and what this means is that they’re not able to develop good relationships with community leaders. Often they don’t speak Creole, as well, a lot of their international employees. So when a large disaster like this happens, and they need to be able to get into the neighborhoods to distribute the food, they are afraid to go in, because they don’t have the connections they would need in order to keep them safe and distribute the food in an organized manner… So it’s been this very self-perpetuating process, where, at this point, the Haitians on the ground who are ready to do something have no way to connect with the people down at the UN base who have all the materials to make a difference.

In an update on SOIL’s blog, Kramer elaborated on this critical issue that directly impacts whether life-saving aid reaches the people who need it:

I have been amazed to visit friends working with large NGOs in Port au Prince only to learn that they are forced to operate under security restrictions that prevent any kind of real connections to Haitian communities… The creation of these security zones has been like the building of a wall, a wall reinforced by language barriers and fear rather than iron rods, a wall that, unlike many of the buildings in Port au Prince, did not crumble during the earthquake. Fear, much like violence, is self perpetuating. When aid workers enter communities radiating fear it is offensive, the perceived disinterest in communicating with the poor majority is offensive, driving through impoverished communities with windows rolled up and armed security guards is offensive and, ironically, all of these extra security measures actually increase the level of risk for aid workers…

This distancing effect prevents aid from reaching desperate people and sows the seeds of conflict in an already precarious situation. Against this, grassroots groups like SOIL have made long-term commitments to (and close personal connections with) the communities they seek to empower, developing “integrated approaches to the problems of poverty, poor public health, agricultural productivity, and environmental destruction,” and “developing collaborative relationships between community organizations in Haiti and academics and activists internationally.” (Their important work is depicted in a recent video report from New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof.)

The challenge of fostering nonviolence in a disaster zone can be met through basic approaches such as this that focus on collaboration and solidarity. “We should get to know the Haitian people and make a commitment to improving their lives in the long term,” notes a recent blog focused on promoting “non-military ways of solving conflict.” In this spirit, in 2006 a Campaign for the Reduction of Violence was launched in Haiti, working toward “the peaceful transformation of conflicts, in cooperation with five key sectors: young people, women, artists, media workers and teachers.” This largely unnoticed spirit of nonviolence in Haiti, as Wadner Pierre wrote in November 2008, often emerges in time of crisis, and is intimately connected to the nonviolent struggles of people around the world:

[W]hen I think about these non-violent resistances – the Indian Resistance against Britain’s rule in Indian, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States against segregation, the Chilean Resistance against the former dictator General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the South-African Resistance against Apartheid, the Haitian resistance in the 1990s for the return of constitutional order in Haiti when former Haiti’s first democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted in 1991, and the ongoing resistance in grassroots movement for Aristide’s second return from his exile in South-Africa – I have no doubt that non-violence philosophy is the best way that smart and intelligent people should and must use to overcome suffering, and to defeat any violent and oppressive system… I wrote this article/analysis to pay homage to… my adoptive father, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a follower of Dr. King, who committed his entire life in fighting for social justice and equality for all Haitians whoever they are and wherever they are.

If Haitians are to surmount this time of profound crisis and rebuild their society, these values of social justice and conflict transformation must be given space to reemerge. The untold stories of people practicing true humanitarianism in Haiti can serve to remind us that, even in a disaster zone, those in great need can offer hope and guidance in our shared struggle to create a peaceful world. As SOIL’s Kramer concludes:

The most striking thing I have noticed while visiting the many camps throughout the city is the level of organization and ingenuity among the displaced communities. Community members stand ready to distribute food and water to their neighbors, they are prepared to provide first aid and assist with clean up efforts, all that they are lacking is the financial means to do so… Each day I am awed and humbled by the dedication and compassion of my colleagues, both Haitian and international and touched by the outpouring of love and support that we have received from around the world.

These lessons of nonviolent cooperation may well determine Haiti’s future in the days ahead.

Rethink Afghanistan

Alan Levin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:50:40 +0000

Rethink Afghanistan is a ground-breaking, full-length documentary focusing on the key issues surrounding this war.

Sunday, Feb. 14, 2-5 PM

Fellowship of Reconciliation

521 No. Broadway, Nyack

845-358-4601 ext. 32

contact: Alan Levin, alevin@SacredRiverHealing.org

Many people are confused about the war in Afghanistan. There is the issue of women’s rights and how we are there to protect women. There is the issue of international terrorism and that we are there to defend ourselves from attack. There is the fact that our current President is respected by many as a man of peace and in fact the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and yet he is ordering an escalation of the war. All these issues are addressed and will be discussed in the film and in a respectful discussion following the screening.

Please see http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ for a trailer and more information about this important film.

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this message.

Devastation Politics

Liza Smith — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:05:37 +0000

I haven't been looking at the photos about Haiti. I haven't been reading the news or listening to the radio for hours, either. Maybe I get enough death from Colombia in my inbox every day. Maybe I question what good listening to those stories will do, as I sit and work from my kitchen table in rainy Oakland. Maybe my body and heart know that I don't need to see the photos of people mobbing a plane arriving with water, to understand that the devastation is huge.

Even without indulging in the news frenzy, Haiti is on my mind. My friend who has a half-Haitian daughter was posting on Facebook this week as to the whereabouts of her daughter's family members. My housemate and her boyfriend talked about it while washing dishes. At the grocery store on Monday, there was a barcode next to the machine where you swipe your card to pay, encouraging donations to Doctors Without Borders. After buying deli olives and dried ancho chiles for the mole I was going to make that night, I donated a petty $5.

I can only imagine the way the story is being told in the mainstream media -- and it is disturbing for all the usual reasons: it is sensationalized, it is bloody, it is the "poor black people of Haiti," and it is children with big, needy, terrorized eyes. Worse still, I imagine that the story being told is devoid of any analysis that includes an understanding of history, colonialism, racism and neoliberalism that has made Haiti what it is today.

My knowledge of these historical dynamics is as slim as the next person's: I know that Haiti is extremely poor, that its slave rebellion led to its independence and that the US has something to do with its misery. A quick glance at Wikipedia confirms my vague ideas about Haiti's past and present: it was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion. Most Haitians live on less than $2 per day and there is a 50% illiteracy rate. Foreign aid makes up approximately 30–40% of the national government's budget, but ironically Haiti's debt to big banks, ends up canceling out all the money it receives from foreign aid. According to a recent article posted in the Nation, "in 2003, Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million. In other words, under a system of putative benevolence, Haiti paid back more than it received."

The US has been involved in the way that the US knows best: by undermining democracy and implementing neoliberal policies that do nothing but increase the wealth of the rich and the devastation of the poor. The US occupied the island from 1915-1934 and gave military and economic aid to Haiti's dictatorship in the mid 1980's. In 2000, US Marines were involved in "removing" then democratically-elected President Aristide from his home (or kidnapping as Aristide claimed), after he was ousted by a paramilitary coup. Currently, the US controls about 30% of the Inter-Development Bank's shares, the same bank which Haiti struggles to pay back.

All this to say, there was devastation in Haiti long before the earthquake hit, but we weren't paying attention. Now there are dead bodies rotting in the streets. The devastation, which has been festering for 500 years, has intensified and been amplified; the stench is unbearable. All of a sudden, everybody scrambles to help out.

And the money has been pouring in: Shakira, Lady Gaga and Wyclef Jean are only a few of the big name artists who are donating all of their proceeds from concerts and online sales to Haiti relief efforts. The US government has promised $100 million and many other governments and organizations are rushing to Haiti's aid. I don't question whether or not we should send money: of course we should. It would be far worse to stand with our arms crossed in the face of such devastation. But I do ask why do we have to wait for bodies to be rotting in the streets before waking up to the grim reality of what is going on in our world?

What is it about the "help" from the rich (mostly white) world that seems so conditional, so near-sighted and so superficial? It is because we are, time and time again, not committed to long-term, deep cultural, political and racial change. We go crazy when a disaster hits: organize events and donate and pat ourselves on the back for coming to the rescue of those "poor people down there." And yet, in the long run, what are we doing to fundamentally transform the systems that create a lack of infrastructure and extreme poverty in the first place, making countries like Haiti underequipped to respond to a natural disaster? How do we, in the rich world, benefit on a daily basis from neoliberal policies that create misery for so many people around the globe? And why aren't we rushing to change these systems, as if the stench of rotting bodies was unbearable, day in and day out?

In fact, the scramble to provide relief in the face of disaster is problematic, as Naomi Klein points out in her book The Shock Doctrine. These kinds of catastrophes don't serve to rebuild societies for the benefit of poor people, but are used as a special opportunity for "disaster capitalists" to descend and make money off of the destruction. In 1999 on his way to the Economic Forum in Davos, Guatemala's foreign minister said bluntly "destruction carries with it an opportunity for foreign investment." The tsunami in Asia, was a case in point: six months later a total of $13 billion had been raised--a world record. But unfortunately, the reconstruction effort turned out to be "a second tsunami of corporate globalization" according to a Sri Lankan activist quoted in Klein's book. A year later, a respected NGO ActionAid, which monitors foreign aid spending, surveyed fifty thousand tsunami survivors in five countries. They found the same patterns everywhere. "Residents were barred from rebuilding, but hotels were showered with incentives; temporary camps were miserable militarized holding pens, and almost no permanent reconstruction had been done; entire ways of life were being extinguished." If we are not careful, our "help" will be used to further entrench the misery of many for the benefit of a few. And once the photos and news stories are not headlines anymore our urgency will fade; we will become complicit; we will wait until the next disaster hits.

Haiti was the birth-place of black resistance in the Western Hemisphere. That spirit of rebellion has been squashed time and again through dictatorships and neoliberal agendas, leaving the people devastated. Their devastation has deep roots, roots that travel like an Aspen grove's for miles and miles underground and reach up through the earth to touch our feet, to let us know that our histories and fates are intertwined. So as we donate to Haiti relief today, let's not forget to understand this crisis in its entirety -- as a result of our shared past and as a reflection of deeply flawed systems that we are part of. We must work diligently to transform them. And their transformation depends on our commitment to be in it for the long haul.

For further action/information: join the group No Shock Doctrine for Haiti and check out Incite's blog with ideas of how to work towards long-term change for Haiti here.

Mahatma Gandhi: In the Midst of Darkness

Rene Wadlow — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:58:06 +0000

“I do daily perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and re-creates. That informing power or spirit is God. I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see in the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, God is light, God is love. God is the supreme good.” Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas K. Gandhi was born into a political family. His father was diwan of the small princely state of Porbandar. The diwan was the combination of prime minister and chief administrator — a function that was often passed on through the family. While Gandhi’s father died while he was finishing high school, the broader family saw the future of Mohandas as a political administrator, perhaps of an even larger princely state. As British control of India was growing, it was useful for a future political administrator to have an English law degree and to have seen English ways first hand. Thus in 1888 he was sent to England to get a law degree. He took his studies seriously and passed the examinations ranking high in his class. He acquired a taste for jurisprudence and for arguing in a legal way. Gandhi understood that a course of legal study was merely the gateway to a profession in which acumen, initiative and accumulation of experience would be factors deciding success.

Gandhi had promised his mother to continue the family’s strict vegetarian diet and so he found vegetarian restaurants in London and made friends. He joined the editorial board of the newly-created The Vegetarian journal and started writing articles on Indian food. The journal editor, Josiah Oldfield, was a practicing barrister and social reformer. Through Oldfield, Gandhi met Edwin Arnold, author of a verse biography of the Buddha, The Light of Asia, and a verse translation of the Bhagavad Gita The Song Celestial and a verse life of Jesus The Light of the World. The Jesus of The Light of the World was not a god come to earth but a man who achieved perfection through renunciation and selfless love and thus became divine. Sin is imperfection and disappears as man become perfect.

Gandhi was also introduced to the Theosophical Society, meeting with Madame Blavatsky who was then living in London and Annie Besant, whom he would again see in India after his work in South Africa. Gandhi was particularly friendly with Archibald and Bertram Keightley, uncle and nephew, who had edited Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine for publication in 1888. Madame Blavatsky’s The Voice of Silence was published shortly after Gandhi met her, and the book was an influence in his work in South Africa. The Voice of Silence is a collection of aphorisms which elaborated the doctrine of liberation through service to others, and introduced into theosophy the Buddhist concept of the bodhisattva — the enlightened being who postpones indefinitely his entry into nirvana, in order to serve others. The voice of the silence is the inner voice heard by the sufficiently pure, the voice of ‘thy inner God’, the ‘Higher Self’. It leads the hearer ‘unto the realm of Sat, the true.

After a short stay in India, Gandhi was called to work on a civil suit concerning Indian merchants in South Africa. He left for South Africa, thinking of spending one year. He spent 21 years in South Africa and left with an international reputation which he was eager to put to work in India.

In South Africa, Gandhi was to work closely with people from a number of religious backgrounds. An advisor, Raychandbhai was a Jain, and his employer, Dada Abdullah Sheth, was a Muslim. Gandhi had close relations with South African Quakers. He also continued close written contact with Edward Maitland who had been vice-president of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society and a founder of the Esoteric Christian Union. It was Maitland who introduced Gandhi to the writings of the American New Thought writer Ralph Waldo Trine, in particular his In Tune with the Infinite or Fullness of Peace, Power and Plenty (New York: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1899, 175pp.) For Trine, spiritual power — also termed ‘thought power’ and ‘soul power’ — could be acquired by making oneself one with God, who is immanent, through love and service to one’s fellow men. Trine promised that the true seeker, fearless and forgetful of self-interest, will be so filled with the power of God working through him that “as he goes here and there, he can continually send out influences of the most potent and powerful nature that will reach the uttermost parts of the world.”

For Trine, thought was the way that a person came into tune with the Infinite. “Each is building his own world. We both build from within and we attract from without. Thought is the force with which we build, for thoughts are forces. Like builds like and like attracts like. In the degree that thought is spiritualized does it become more subtle and powerful in its workings. This spiritualizing is in accordance with law and is within the power of all.

“Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of its cause.”

It is from Trine’s writings that Gandhi received the term “soul power or soul force” — the term Gandhi translated from English into the Indian term satyagraha. Satyagraha is most often translated today by the term nonviolence, but there was already in use in India the term ahimsa — a meaning non and himsa violence. Gandhi wanted another term that was more active, and he took from Trine the term ‘soul force’.

Another theme which Trine stressed and which Gandhi constantly used in his efforts to build bridges between Hindu and Muslim in India was that there was a common core to all religions. “There is a golden thread that runs through every religion in the world. There is a golden thread that runs through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the world’s history, through the lives of all men and women of truly great and lasting power… The great central fact of the universe is that the spirit of infinite life and power is back of all, manifests itself in and through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light, Providence, the Over-Soul, Omnipotence or whatever term may be most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to the great central fact itself.”

Gandhi became a representative for the Esoteric Christian Union in South Africa, though as he wrote later “the man whose one aim in life is to attain moksha need not give exclusive devotion to a particular faith.”

Once Gandhi returned to India in 1915, in order to develop popular support, he had to find Indian, particularly Hindu, colourings for his ideas. Gandhi’s renderings of traditional Hindu beliefs can be understood in the context of Esoteric Christianity (and theosophy, where the two systems overlap). Such unorthodoxies include Gandhi’s very positive notion of rebirth as an opportunity to strive for spiritual improvement; his version of the Hindu concept of avatar, which he expounded particularly in his writings on the Gita , as a mortal man who achieves perfection, rather than as a flawless incarnation of God; his polite but persistent refusal to find a guru, and insistence that each individual is responsible for his own spiritual development; his claim that he, who was not even a Brahmin, was entitled to interpret the Hindu scriptures with only his purified conscience for a guide, and treatment of the Mahabharata and Ramayana as inspired allegory; his substitution (with varying emphasis at various times) of the notions of service, sympathetic suffering and renunciation for the traditional Hindu notion of yajna (sacrifice in the sense of an offering to God); his conflation of Indian ascetic practices (tapascharya) with an un-Indian aspiration to condition the body for spiritual effort. Gandhi regularly proclaimed his ambition to see God, preferably face to face in this life. His use of the term was Esoterically Christian. ‘Seeing God’ he wrote ‘means realization of the fact that God abides in one’s heart.’ The man ‘who sees God in the whole universe’ he also wrote ‘should be accepted as an incarnation of God.’ For Gandhi, seeing God was both the critical experience on the way to becoming one with God, and also, in its final fullness, the end point of that journey, when God would take over for the time he remained on earth.

While Gandhi was ‘Hinduizing’ his public persona and his manner of life with deep appeal for many ordinary Indians, his efforts at satyagraha ‘soul force’ – nonviolent action – never attracted Hindu religious leaders. Gandhi’s close co-workers were non-religious like Jawaharlal Nehru, Muslims like the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ Abdul Ghaffar Khan and non-Indian Christians like Madeleine Slade and C.F. Andrews. Rich Hindus like G.D. Birla gave money to the cause of Indian independence and Gandhi’s leadership but were not close co-workers. There were no gurus on the frontlines of protests, and finally, it was a member of a militant Hindu movement, the RSS, Nathuran Godse, who killed Gandhi on 30 January 1948.

The 32 years of nonviolent effort to liberate and reform India ended for Gandhi in the Hindu-Muslim violence which followed the partition of India and Pakistan, leaving 15 million refugees and half a million dead. Gandhi and many others shared the blame for these horrors. Despite his unorthodoxy, despite his friendships and alliances with Muslims, he was seen as ‘Hindu’ politician, incessantly invoking Rama and publicly embracing the ascetic practices associated with Hindu holiness. The message he wanted India, as a nation, to broadcast to the world was a mixture of Hinduism and Christianity, philosophically alien to Islam. He never dissociated himself sufficiently from the Hindu communalist wing of Congress. He demurred at being treated as an avatar by the masses, but left no doubt that his spiritual aspirations might as well be so understood by the ignorant. In the early months of 1946, as communal hatred smouldered in India, he was touring the country holding vast prayer meetings, complete with mass chanting of the Ramdhum, which were now his preferred means of exposing himself to the crowd. He saw the chanting as a form of synchronized spiritual experience, evoking the power of silent thought and connecting the mob to God When he began to include readings from the Koran, fanatical Hindus turned up to heckle. Communal feeling, however high-mindedly invoked, was a tiger he could not ride.

During the 1940s until his death, Mahatma Gandhi concentrated his efforts on Hindu-Muslim reconciliation as there was a growing feeling of rejection among the Muslims and thus their desire for a separate state—Pakistan. Gandhi did not see the growing rise of right-wing, narrow and violent Hindu communalism. His close associates either did not see the dangers of fundamentalist Hinduism or did not discuss it with him. Unfortunately, Gandhi surrounded himself only with “yes men” and more often by “yes women” who were not in touch with the violent movements among the Hindus. There were no representatives of orthodox Hinduism in his entourage nor did orthodox Hindu religious leaders take part in his satyagraha campaigns.

When he was warned by the police that Hindus might kill him a few weeks before his death, Gandhi refused armed police protection. Thus it was that Nathuram Godse greeted Gandhi in the traditional Hindu way and fired the killing shots. Gandhi had said “A bullet destroys the enemy; non-violence converts the enemy into a friend”, but he had had no time for such a conversation.

The Death of Democracy

Bill Winston — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:52:11 +0000

The Supreme Court of the United States has delivered a real blow to democracy.

Today's announcement from the Court has overturned laws restricting the amount of money corporations can spend in political campaign. The majority says this is a violation of the First Amendment - freedom of speech. This is not good news. Yes, it continues the American tradition of treating corporations as the equivalent to a human person, but there is the rub. Corporations may be managed by people and have boards and stockholders, but the corporation itself is not a person. It is only treated as one in law so that it can own property and assets, and borrow and trade.

While, the American origins of corporate law may have been laudable, when taken to extreme as the Court has done, it creates a monster.

The justices have in effect said that huge amounts of money can be spent by corporations to pursuade voters. The special interests of corporate America is already well represented in Washington. To enlarge the voice, vote and impact of these corporations is a huge mistake. Where will the human person find his or her voice in this forest of corporate political media? The citizen even more silenced and more marginalized from the political process. How will the playing field be even remotely level for small nonprofits, for small business, for the average Joe and Jill?

A criticism frequently voiced by independent voters today is that niether political party represents their interests or viewpoints. We know the difficulty of a third party candidate breaking into the public forum amidst of our stronghold of the two party system. Today's decision will make that even more difficult and unlikely.

Where does the answer lie?

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. That is not to say there isn't one, but it certainly is not an easy one.

The answer lives in citizens, voters and individual btreaking out the doldrums of a complacency and nothing can change, organizing themselves into a force to be heard. We cannot rely upon institutions to make the case for the human person. People will have to band together and organize to do that for themselves.

The motto must be - nothing will be changed if I do not speak, and nothing can be said loudly enough to be heard if I do not organize and band with others.

Tough minds, tender hearts

Kathy Kelly — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:18:34 +0000

I spent Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday in Washington, D.C. as part of the Witness Against Torture fast, which campaigns to end all forms of torture and has worked steadily for an end to indefinite detention of people imprisoned in Guantanamo, Bagram, and other secret sites where the U.S. has held and tortured prisoners. We’re on day nine of a 12-day fast to shut down Guantanmo, end torture, and build justice.

The community gathered for the fast has grown over the past week, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence members are now joining us for the Peaceable Assembly Campaign. This means, however, that as more people sleep on the floor of St. Stephen’s church, there is a rising cacophony of snoring. Our good friend, Fr. Bill Pickard, suggested trying to hear the snores as an orchestra, when I told him I’d slept fitfully.

There is a young boy in Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, in Pakistan, who also lies awake at night, unable to sleep. Israr Khan Dawar is 17 years old. He told an AP reporter, on January 14th, that he and his family and friends had gotten used to the drones. But now, at night, the sound grows louder and the drones are flying closer, so he and his family realize they could be a target. He braces himself in fear of an attack.

We’re told that we will be more secure if the CIA continually attack the so-called lawless tribal areas and eliminates “the bad guys.”

In late May and early June of 2009, while visiting in Pakistan, a man from the village of Khaisor, also in North Waziristan, told us about his experience as a survivor of a drone attack. Jane Mayer, writing in The New Yorker, mentioned that the people operating the drones and analyzing the surveillance intelligence have a word for people like him who managed to survive a blast and run away. They are called “squirters.” So, I suppose he would have been considered a squirter.

This man, at some risk to himself, walked a long distance and took two buses to meet with us. Because of travel restrictions, we would not have been allowed to visit him in North Waziristan. His village is so remote that there are no roads leading up to it. Five hundred people live there. Often, western media refers to his homeland as “the lawless tribal area.” One day, three strangers entered Khaisor and went to the home of vigil elders. For centuries, villagers have followed a code of hospitality, which demands that when strangers come to your door, you feed them and give them drink. It’s not as though you can point them toward a Motel 6 or a 7-11. The strangers were welcomed into the home they approached and they left after having been served a meal. They were long gone when, at 4:30 a.m. a U.S. drone, operated by the C.I.A., fired 2 Hellfire missiles into the home they had visited, killing 12 people, two of whom were village elders. Children were dismembered and maimed.

“What do people do?” I asked, “if you’ve no Emergency Medical Teams, if you’ve no roads?” I was wearing a “tbutta” the long scarf that Pakistani women traditionally wear. “You see your scarf,” my friend said. “We wrap it around the wounded person, as tightly as we can, to stop the bleeding.” I could imagine the white scarf I wore becoming blood-soaked, in seconds.

The CIA uses sophisticated technology, extensive education and a great deal of money to collect intelligence. The drone surveillance produces picture images so vivid that when the CIA targeted a Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, they knew that he was on the rooftop of his in-laws’ home. His wife’s parents, both doctors, were tending him, and had inserted an IV into his arm, giving him fluids. The drone attack killed all of them, and Mehsud’s wife.

The CIA made fifteen attempts to kill Baitullah Mehsud. In the fourteen previous attempts, people were killed who may not have been members of a Taliban group. Some may have been family members of the murdered victim. Baitullah Mehsud’s successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, was known to be more violent and unpredictable and also media savvy. According to speculation, the Jordananian suicide bomber who killed nine CIA agents, Dr. Al-Balawi, had gained credibility with those same agents by providing information about drone targets. But, the information he supplied named political rivals of Hakimullah Mehsud, or people suspected of disloyalty or people considered to be expendable.

This past weekend, celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth, we’ve been guided by his words. One mantra for us, from Dr. King, urges us to develop tough minds and tender hearts. With tough minds, we must ask why we are being told that the drone attacks are successful.

With tender hearts, let us mourn for the families, friends and community members of the nine CIA agents who were killed in the suicide bomber attack at a CIA base in Afghanistan. Their arms will ache, longingly, for loved ones who will never return. In the spirit that says everyone in, nobody out, let us realize their humanity.

The CIA asks “who are the bad guys” so that they can eliminate them.

We are fortunate to be guided by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who asked the same question, but Dr. King actually, earnestly wanted to understand the humanity of his adversaries. At the time, he was speaking of the Viet Cong. He urged his listeners to try and understand how they are seen by their adversaries.

We need tough minds and tender hearts to build a world wherein the United States will not be seen as a menacing, fearful force. Let’s work toward a world wherein 17-year-old youngsters won’t lie awake at night, listening to low-flying drones and readying themselves to die.

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, which is also maintaining a presence in Washington, D.C.

Dialogue - a Way to Reconciliation

Jonette O. Miller — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:34:46 +0000

I live in the mid-Hudson Valley, technically “up North.” I often visit my mother who is currently living in a nearby nursing home. I used to have conversations with one of her co-residents, (I’ll call her Mrs. P). Mrs. P is an elderly white woman who likes to tell “humorous” stories about black people and white people that most often include thinly-disguised racist stereotypes. Frankly, I’ve grown tired of them. She seems to unconsciously have a thing about ethnicity. I say ‘ethnicity’ rather than ‘race’ because both religion and science agree there is only one race – that being the human one. But I digress.

My tiredness turned into recycled frustration when, right before Christmas, another resident shared she heard a man say when he saw a Christmas ornament decorated with the face of President Obama, “We finally found a way to hang that man from a tree.” A while later, my husband shared he’d seen an internet comment on the Tiger Woods scandal stating: “You have to be careful – because everybody knows those black/white guys are sneaky.” It’s clear to me, while written as a comment on Tiger Woods (even though his ancestry is African American/Filipino), that the message’s intent was also directed towards our 44th President. And now given some of the paternalistic, ‘blame-the-victim’ reporting on what’s happening in Haiti, I’ve just about had it. When does it stop? While there is a tendency for some to think with President Obama’s election, America’s historical black/white problems have been resolved, the truth is we haven’t yet reached the ‘mountaintop’ that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of.

My frustration has been somewhat assuaged in my re-reading of Mary Catherine Bateson’s 1990 book, Composing A Life. Bateson, a cultural anthropologist writing about the creative life cycles of women, states in one chapter: “Exposure to other ways of doing things is insufficient without empathy and respect,” and, later in the same chapter, “An encounter with other cultures can lead to openness only if you suspend the assumption of superiority, not seeing new worlds to conquer, but new worlds to respect.” OK – here in the 21st century, we know we’ve gotten lots more ‘exposure’ to other cultures and other ethnicities – but how do we change the old, conquering, assumed superiority mindset to one of inclusion, understanding and respect?

Simply with ‘Dialogue.’ I believe true understanding and communion can only manifest when we (meaning us and them – whoever ‘us’ and ‘them’ are to you) commit to come together across the table regarding issues of culture, ethnicity, gender orientation and/or class. However, I know dialogue can potentially be both frustrating and dangerous, because in order to be successful, it usually involves a long process (revelation doesn’t always happen like a light bulb turning on), plus, unfortunately, everyone doesn’t always come to the table for the same reasons.

However, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., this is a commitment we must make. Even if time after time, our best efforts are met with misunderstanding, derision and even, outright rejection, we must remain committed to being present to foster empathy and respect and speak truth in love. Therefore, as a part of my small, individual act of service to celebrate Martin Luther King’s work and legacy, I purpose to again spend time with Mrs. P. and start to learn more about her story and her life choices, and hopefully, share me and my story with her as well.

Free Palestinian Journalist Jared Malsin Let Them Know We are Watching

Mark Johnson — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:29:09 +0000

Jared Malsin, Chief English Editor of Ma'an News Agency is being detained at Ben Gurion airport pending deportation. The deportation is being challenged in Israeli courts, and with a hearing scheduled for Sunday, January 17th, in Tel Aviv Central Court (though we still don’t know the time). His luggage has been released. He was permitted a brief phone call Friday afternoon during a visit by US consular staff. Castro Daoud, his lawyer, was given access to Jared by the Israeli authorities yesterday.

Jared’s friend, Faith Rowold, was deported at 6am Friday morning and is now in Prague.

More details about the case and the Israeli authorities’ reasons for denying Jared entry are in the attached press release and on the Ma’an News Agency website at http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=254021 and http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=253864.

These are being updating as often as possible, though things have been confusing at times, so there’s been some delay. There is contact with lawyers, human rights NGOs, consulates/embassies/representatives offices, media NGOs, and the international press.

If possible, if people could do any/all of the following it would help:

-Continue to contact Congressional representatives/the State Department and express concern that Israel continues to deny Jared entry because of his activities as a journalist and his political views, that he is being held incommunicado and that he was denied access to his lawyer today. Ask them to remain apprised of Jared’s case and express their concerns to the Israeli authorities. For those not in the US, contact your MPs/representatives and the foreign ministry.

-Continue to contact the Israeli embassy in Washington DC and Israeli consulates by phone, e-mail, and fax. For contact info see http://www.israelemb.org/contact_us.html (embassy), and http://www.israelemb.org/israeli-consulate-in-usa.htm (consulates). For those not in the US, contact the Israeli embassy in your country.

-Please forward widely and continue to spread the word.

Free webinar Tuesday: Dr. King's life and legacy, with Richard Deats

Ivan Boothe — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:41:15 +0000

Richard Deats, the biographer of Martin Luther King, is our guest for a discussion about Dr. King's life and his teaching. This online seminar will touch on Dr. King's work and the legacy he leaves us. Richards Deats was a member of the National Commission to establish Martin Luther King's birthday as a federal holiday in the United States.

Martin Luther King, Jr. -- His Life & Legacy
FREE WEBINAR: Space is limited, please RSVP
Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2:00 PM Eastern/11:00 AM Pacific

Although this webinar is free, space is limited and RSVPs are required.

Register for the free webinar now.

This webinar is open to all, so we encourage you to forward this to friends and family who may also be interested in marking Martin Luther King Day by hearing from his friend and biographer.

Webinar computer requirements: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista; Mac 10.4 (Tiger) or greater