10 неща, които трябва да знаем за Исляма

by Deborah Birkett

1. Аллах е Богът
По-голямата част от немюсюлманите, които съм срещала смятат, че Аллах е лично име на вид божество, нещо като Юпитер или Вулкан (божества от римския партеон). Дори съм чувала хора да отнасят презрително към Бог от Исляма названието „пустинен бог”, като чели Юдаизмът и Християнството произхождат от американските стадиони или другаде. Истината е, че думата „Аллах” е съставна дума: ал(определителен член -ът) и илаах (бог): Богът.
Монотеизмът – вярата в един върховен създател – е основната и най-важначаст на Исляма. Даже в повечето преводи на Корана на английски, които съм виждала, не се превевежда думата. Смятам, че това наистина е проблематично и заблуждаващо да не се превежда такава една ключова дума, за която има точен английски еквивалент. Освен това съм срещала доста мюсюламни, които задължават да се използват арабскияизказ за Бога, когато говорят на английски: всичко това обърква тези, за които няма да бъде никога ясно, че Аллах е същият Бог, почитан от евреите и християните. Мюсюлманите се различават по много точки от юдеите и християните, но ИМЕННО ТОВА (че почитат същия Бог) не е от тези различия.
Мисля, че не се разбира от начина, по който изразяват това, че в същност става дума за същата вяра в Бога на Авраам, Мойсей и Исус (за мюсюлманите и християните), на Мухаммад. (Мюсюлманите приемат всички тези пророци до Мухаммад, включително и Исус. Повече за Исус – след малко).

2. Най-големият грях в Исляма е ширка: съдружаването, признаването на помощници (съдружници)на Бог.
Ширкът може основно да се определи като политеизъм, но включва такива неща като идеята в християнството за Божествената троица или прекланяне пред друг освен пред Бога, независимо от това дали е човек/същество или природно/човешко творение или феномен. Това цели да създаде ясна граница между мюслманите и политеистите, но също така християните и другите религиозни групи. От това представяне можете да си представите как изрази, като „Свещената Божия майка” носи тежко теологическо бреме на внимателните мюсюлмани.

3. Мюсюлманите не вярват, че Исус е син на Бог. Както споменахме в т.1, мюсюлманите приемат Исус (на арабски Иса) като пророк и то като един от най-важните пророци (един от петимата с най-висок статус – бел.пр.). Следвайки т.2, те не приемат християнските вярвания, че Исус е син на Бог (литературно или метафорично), вярват, че той е син на Мария (Мериам, ар.). Вярват, че по времето на разпването друг мъж, изглеждащ по същия начин, е бил на мястото на Исус. Исус се е възнесъл, тялом и духом към Бог в небесата. Това е може би най-важната точка в различието между християните и мюсюлманите. Някои християнски теолози и духовници вярват, че християните се вкарват в заблуда, отдавайки такова голямо внимание на Исус и го въздигат до нивото на Бог, но това са други аргументи – за друго време и място.

4. Мюсюлманите не се прекланят пред пророк Мухаммед -
това следва от # 2, но искам да наблегна на това поради голямото ударение върху Исус в практиката на християните, които допускат,че при Исляма положението с Мухаммед е същото.Пророк Мохаммед се възприема от мюсюлманите като човека с най-добрия характер, но те се отнасят към него като към човек, макар и като изключителен. Той се приема като последния, но НЕ ЕДИНСТВЕНИЯ пророк на Бог. Няма божествен статус, въпреки че мюсюлманите изпитват уважение към него и полагат усилия да подражават на неговия характер и навици, които са с доста висок статус.

Дълги години мюсюлманите неправилно са наричани „мохамедани”. Това е голяма отживелица, но се среща и днес, както преди. Всъщност тя е доста обидна, тъй като предполага ширк. (бел.пр. Тук авторката поправя английското произношение на думите „муслим”, не „мослем” и „куран”, не „коран”, но на български има общоприети официални названия, които използуваме. Преводача на статията не ги счита за правилни, но ги спазва).

5. Превода на Корана не е Коран.
Добре се знае, че много неща се губят при превода. За английско говорящите, от които не се очаква да четат Библията на еврейски, арамейски или каквито и да било други езици, на които текстовете са оригинално записвани, и може да се приеме, че тези преводи на Библията са повече или по-малко валидни, въпреки че може да има предпочитан превод. Но единствено Коранът на оригиналния арабски се приема като Коран:преводите се ползуват с голямо уважение, но просто но не са валидни.

Мюсюлманите вярват, че Коранът е низпослан на Мохаммед (който е бил неграмотен) от Бог с посредничеството на ангела Джибрил(Гавраил). Мухаммед запаметява тези цитати, когато се низпослават и ги рецитира и споделя със семейството и сподвижниците си. Предислямската арабска култура е предимно устна и хората безусловно учили и запаметили целия Коран; той не е записван напълно до смъртта на Пророка.

Има много преводи от първото му записване преди повече от 1400 години. Много от тях са лоши – част от тях съзнателно изопачени за унижаване на Исляма. Много от лошите преводи показват невежеството и пристрастията на преводача. Но е много важно да се знае, че всеки превод в най-добрия случай, е приближение и може да бъде много опасно да се разпространяват осъдителни забележки въз основата на превод, особено, когато са отделени от общия текст, от контекста.

6. Не всички мюсюлмани са араби; не всички араби са мюсюлмани – изглежда съществува разпространена неяснота по този въпрос. Предполагам че това донякъде е разбираемо: Коранът е низпослан на арабско говорящи, а също така две от свещените ислямски местности (Свещената джамия в Мекка и джамията на Пророка в Медина) се намират в Саудитска Арабия. Но хората с арабски призход живеят в много страни, не само в Саудитска Арабия, изповядвт други религии, не само Ислям: сред тях християнство, юдаизъм и друзианство. Страната с най-многобройно мюсюлманско население дори не е арабска – това е Индонезия. Само около 12% от мюсюлманите по света са араби! Мюсюлманите живеят в много страни – от Индия до Швеция и до Австралия. Всеки, който желае може да приема Исляма, но само малка част от тях са с арабски призход. Всеки, който желае може да приема Исляма, малка част от мюсюлманите са от арабски произход. Също така не всички арабски обичаи могат да се нарекат мюсюлмански. Не всички мюсюлмани говорят арабски, въпреки че молитвите трябва да се отправят на арабски и мюсюлманите се насърчават да научат да четат на арабски, за да могат да четат и разберат Корана (оригиналния текст – бел.пр.).

Бих искала да вярвам, че дори няма нужа да кажа това, но обстоятелствата ме провокират: не всеки с тъмна кожа или с тюрбан е мюсюлманин или арабин.

7. Културата не е религия – насилията и мизогонията (неграмотността сред жените, убийствата на честта, обрязването при жените, насилствените женитби, физическото малтретиране), за които ние чуваме в квази-и псевдо-ислямските страни като Пакситан, Саудитска Арабия и Иран, произхождат от патриархалните културни обичаи, но не и от исляма, въпреки че обикновено се „оправдава” по шейсет начина до неделя с очакваните религиозно диктаторски и собствени интерпретации на текстовете.

Ако всяка една от тези страни старателно приложи Исляма и почете законите, тогава жените например, не само биха имали далеч повече права и свободи, отколкото тези понастоящем, но поведението на мъжете и действията на правителствата биха се променили толкова радикално, че нямаше да ги разпознаем изобщо. Ислямската концепция и изисквания са много различни от това, което се прави в момента в тези страни.

8. Исляма не е монолитен – той е обширна, богата и сложна религия,с тайствено писание, приблизително 1.2 милиарда псоледователи по света. В ислямски свят има поразитело разнообразие, като например основните ислямски клонове: мюсюлмани сунити (наброяващи около 85-90% от мюсюлманите по света), мюслмани-шиити, суфити, исмаилити и други малки групи. В рамките на тези групи има правни школи (мад-хаб или мезхаби); към сунитите има основни четири такива. Част от мюсюлманите са такива по рождение, а други приемат Исляма и това увеличава разнообразяването. Много е важно да не се приема всеки един мюсюлманин, искрен или не, като обобщениена всички мюсюлмани.
Голямото разнообразие на мюсюлманите по света е една от причините годишното поклонение (хадж) в Мекка, рожденото място на Исляма, да бъде толкова завладяващо: всяка година в продължение на повече от 14 века, милиони мюсюлмани се обединяват за няколко дни, отхвърляйки различията помежду си – на раса, етническа принадлежност, класа, пол и език, участват и изпулняват установените ритуали от пророк Мухаммед.

9. Джихад не означава „свещена война”. Това сигурно е най-вредния и непроменен мит за Исляма, Западните медии доста помогнаха за затвърждаването на това, но съществуват и много невежи мюсюлмани, които настойчиво в невежеството си, тълкуват погрешно и използуват некоректно този термин. Джихад – означава „трудя се, старая се, полагам усилие стремя се към по-добър живот”, превежда се коректно „правя усилие, старая се” или „усилие, старание” и може да се употреби и за такива неща, като студент, който учи старателно, за да получи медицинска диплома или за хора, които събират пари да построят джамия. (Термина е правилен при употреба за жена, която носи Ислямски дрехи и покрива главата си с хиджаб – бел.пр.).
Думата се използува относно полагане на усилие за самоконтрол или обучение. Част от джихада на моя съпруг като мюсюлманин са усилията му да стане навреме за първата си молитва за деня, която е преди зазоряване.
Джихад обхваща идеята за полагане на усилия и борба за добро или срещу злото, но в никакъв случай не означава насилие и със сигурност не означава някакви чудати ексцентрици да твърдят, че са мюсюлмани и да размахват Корана наоколом решавайки кое е добро и кое е лошо, да започнат да убиват хора.
Съществуват определни крайни обстоятелства, при които понятието джихад може да означава и въоражен конфликт, но това е крайна мярка, когато всички юридически, политчески, икономически, дипломатически опити за защита на мюсюлманите и тяхното право да изповядват религията си или да себорятсрещу потисничество (не само срещу мюсюлмаите), се пропаднали. Всеки вид военно действие, в най-добрия случай, е подгрупа на джихада.Всъщност има добре познати Ислямски текстове показващи, че всякакъв тип военен конфликт е „малък джихад”; „големия джихад” е борбата да контролираш и усъвършенстваш себе си.
Някои цитати в свещения Коран, отнасящи се до военни действия (противниците често тълкуват цитатите извън контекста, за да подкрепят своите намерения) описват действителни исторически събития, без да ги дават като съвет за начин на действие или религиозно задължение. Те се компенсират от много други цитати,призоваващи към мир, милост, добрина, толерантност, търпение, прошка, състрадание, ограничаване на военните действия и пр.
Изглежа сякаш бин Ладен и „мюсюлманските” войници в светда все още не са прочели тези части на Корана.

10. Исляма не пропагандира, подкрепя, защитава или насърчава тероризма. Клеветническата кампания срещу Исляма е доста задълбочена и успешна.

"Кратка история на Близкия Изток. От Аврам до Арафат" Кристофър Кетъруд

На книжния пазар вече може да бъде намерена книгата на Кристофър Кетъруд (С., 2009 г., ИК „Унискорп”, 355 стр., 16 лв.).
Авторът е един от добрите специалисти по близкоизточна история. Роден е през 1955 г. и е сред най-уважаваните английски историци в днешно време. Завършил е модерна история в престижните университети Кембридж и Оксфорд.
Преподавател в известни британски (Кембридж) и американски (Ричмънд, Вирджиния; „Тюлейн”, „Уейк форест”) университети и автор на редица научни и научно-популярни трудове. Сферата на научните му интереси обхваща съвременна история, история на църквата и междурелигиозните отношения.
Интересни факти от биографията му са, че е бил съветник на британското правителство, както и през 2002 г. е бил консултант на тогавашния министър-председател на Обединеното кралство Тони Блейър. Кристофър Кетъруд е член на Кралското географско дружество и Кралското азиатско общество.
Първото издание на текста е през есента на 2006 г. и предизвиква интерес както в западни, така и в мюсюлмански страни.
В рамките на 355 страници са намерили място предговор, две кратки бележки по отношение транскрипцията на имената от арабски език и на използвания стил на изписване на датите, въведение, 11 глави и научен апарат.
Четивото е достъпно и за читател-неспециалист, но и съдържа анализи от културна, религиозна и геополитическа гледна точка, прегледи на задълбочени дискусии по политологични, социологически и културологични горещи проблеми, които го превръщат в полезен текст и за академичната аудитория.
В предговора са уточнени географските рамки на Близкия изток – кои страни авторът ще разглежда в съчинението си. За разлика от европейските полуострови например, получили имената си от от планините, които доминират в тях или ги ограничават от европейския материк, Близкият изток не може да бъде описан с политически коректно географско име. Както изтъква и Жорж Корм в книгата си „История на Близкия Изток от древността до наши дни" (представяне на текста виж тук: http://orientalia.bg/bg/node/91) Близкият Изток съдържа няколко големи планински вериги, отворен е към множество морета... Самите термини „Близък изток” и „Среден изток” (Middle East, предпочитан в англоезичната литература, като идеята е, че бившите владения на Османската империя на Балканите са Близкият, а арабските страни – Средният изток) са европоцентрични по същността си, защото позиционират района спрямо Европа.
Но Европа не може да бъде отправна точка за всички. Така например китайците наричали своята държава „Царство в средата на земята” (стр. 7). В този ред на мисли е неизбежно да се досетим за озаглавяването на книгата на проф. Иван Илчев за Япония. За разлика от традиционната представа, поставяща Страната на изгряващото слънце на изток от нас, заглавието е „По на Запад, най на Запад. Япония”.
Във връзка с този теминус техникус „Близък изток” накратко са посочени справедливите критики на проф. Едуард Саид, палестински християнин-протестант и преподавател по литература в САЩ от книгата му „Ориентализмът”, довели до отпадането на масовото използване на термина „Ориент” или „Левант”.
Кетъруд посочва, че в книгата си ще наблегне основно на триме авраамични религии (юдаизъм, християнство и ислям), зародили се в региона на Близкия изток и съществено повлияли на модерната западна цивилизация, тъй като „все пак днес никой не почита Амон Ра или бог Митра” (стр. 11).
Това е само едно от многобройните доказателства за лекия стил на автора, изпъстрен с английска ирония и приятен за четене.
Във въведението е посочено на кои велики открития на Близкия Изток - като се започне от математиката, алгебрата, алгоритмите, астрономията и се завърши с християнството – европейците сме културни и интелектуални потомци.
Основната теза на автора е, че историята на Западният свят се корени в Близкия Изток - място, където евреи, мюсюлмани и християни са живели хиляди години в хармония и разбирателство.
Авторът ни убеждава, че, след като западният свят е близкоизточен по своя произход, познанието за тази люлка на цивилизацията ни дава не само повече знания за другите, но и познание за самите нас (стр. 29).
Повече от хиляда години ислямският свят превъзхожда Западна Европа в областта на науката, технологиите и медицината, както и във военната си сила и мощ. На Запада му отнема цели три столетия, за да достигне постиженията на Близкия Изток.
Въпросите, които пронизват целия текст, са „Защо обаче сега всичко е различно? Какво се е променило?”, като стремежът на английския учен не е да дава готови рецепти, а да помогне на читателя в неговия размисъл за причините и корените на сегашните конфликти, но и да позволи на всеки да достигне до свои собствени отговори.
Въпреки постиженията на Едуард Саид и неговите последователи, т. нар. „постколониални” и/или „изследвания от страна на потърпевшите”/„подчинени” (с тези термини на български се превежда терминът на английски език „subaltern studies”), разисквани по-нататък в книгата (стр. 186 – 191), британският изследовател изтъква още в началото на труда си, че „продължаваме да смятаме водещата религия в регона (на Близкия изток) – исляма – за агресивна в същността си”, като е заявена амбицията този „мит” да бъде развенчан на следващите страници (стр. 10).
Както пише авторът: "Надявам се задълбоченото запознаване с историята на Близкия Изток да донесе повече мир, отколкото страдания."
В първата глава, посветена на древните империи, са представени почти непознатите на средния човек постижения на шумерите (изобретяването на колелото, клинописното писмо и керамиката, строежите на зикурати и градът Ур), на хетите, използвали за пръв път желязо, на смелите финикийски търговци, завещали ни фонетичното писмо, кодексите със закони на Хамурапи... Чрез езикови и лингвистични изследвания нагледно е показана приемствеността в културите.
Историята на Древния Египет може да отнеме целия обем на съчинението, затова на вниманието на читателя само е предложена хронологията, въведена от престижния изследовател Кенет Китчън. На места се направени обзори на научните дискусии по някои проблеми.
Историята на древните юдеи е погледната и през призмата на съвременното влияние на юдаизма, най-вече в САЩ, напр. в някои схващания за Новия свят и на някои християнски групи, по отношение американският ексепшънализъм и пр.
Втората глава е озаглавена „Зората на монотеизма”. В нея е изказано предположението, че обожествяването на фараона Ехнатон/Аменхотеп и зороастризмът са били благодатната почва, върху която са се развили последващите монотеистични схващания. Логично третата глава е посветена на появата и развитието на християнството. Обяснени са социалните и историческите предпоставки за бързото му разпространение. Макар че пише „светска история”, Кетъруд еднакво ловко борави с оптиката и на вярващия, и на съвремения западен атеист, като умело редува двете гледни точки.
Четвъртата глава – „Раждането на исляма” – представя основните моменти в зараждането на последната от големите единобожни традиции. Изброени са петте стълба на исляма (свидетелството на вярата, че Аллах е Бог и Мухаммад е неговият пророк; 5-те дневни молитви; говеенето през свещения месец Рамазан; даването на милостиня и посещението на Мека), разликите между сунити и шиити и е обяснен малкият (война срещу неверниците) и големият (вътрешната борба със себе си) джихад. И тук Кристофър Кетъруд не прави изключение, като излага различните позиции и дава на читателя възможност за избор измежду тях.
В петият поред дял на книгата е разгледан Златният век на исляма, териториалните му завоевания, разцветът на медицината, астрономията и математиката, свързан с такива значими имена като Авероес (Ибн Рушд), Авицена (Ибн Сина), Ар-Рази, Ибн Зур, откривателите на алгоритъма и дробите Ал-Хорезм и Ал-Уклидиси, медикът, установил още в ХІІІ в. наличието на малкия кръг на кръвообращението – сириецът Ан-Нафис.
Глава шест е фокусирана върху три основни въпроса. Първият от тях е почти неизвестната на средния запазен читател битка при Манцикерт, тежко поражение на византийските войски, нанесено им от селджуките, която принуждава владетелите на Византия да поискат помощ от папството. По този начин това сражение става една от причините за кръстоносните походи. Друга последица е трайното установяване на тюрксите племена в Анатолия (днешният Анадол), което по-късно улеснява нашествието на османските турци.
Разгледани са и резултатите от монголските нашествия и кръстоносните походи.
Абсолютно оправдано цяла глава е отделена за „ислямската свръхсила” (стр. 155 – 156) – Османската империя. Тъй като фактите, свързани с държавата на династията на Осман са по-познати на българските читатели, ще си позволим да не правим обстоен анализ на тези страници. Важно е да се отбележи възникването на уахабизма, който има пряка връзка със съвремения ислямски тероризъм (стр. 170-176) и запознаването на държащия в ръцете си книгата с „културните войни” между левицата и десницата в САЩ по отношение на близкоизточните изследвания (стр. 189).
Много по-голям интерес предизвиква синтезът на процесите, свързани с разпадането на Империята (гл. VІІІ).
Не без основание се твърди, че случилият се разпад на Османската империя, включващ премахване на титлата халиф и попадане от властта на мюсюлманите-турци под пряката власт на европейските колониални сили довежда до много от травмите в арабското масово съзнание. Изтъкната е пагубната роля на европейския империализъм и колониализъм, образувал за защите на своите интереси изкуствени държави като Ирак, поставил марионетни монарси (напр. случаите с Хашимитската династия) и подкрепил средновековния теократичен режим в Саудитска Арабия. Именно стремежът км обективност е това, което кара автора да се разграничи и да критикува редица европейски действия в Близкия изток.
Следващата глава е под номер девет – „Създаването на Израел и след това...”, като още в началото й ясно е заявено, че макар заемането „на позиция относно събития, станали преди повече от осем десетилетия, в никакъв случай да не означава заемане на позиция по съвременни събития, то се възприема като такова, защото същността на дебата по тези въпроси е от крайно противоречиво естество” (стр. 234). Фактите са разгледани в по-широката перспектива на конфликта, в който чрез палестинските бежанци са въвлечение и съседните страни, накратко са представени процеси в Египет (особено ок. израело-египетските споразумения) и гражданската война в Ливан.
Предпоследната (гл. Х) се концентрира върху събитията в Иран от времето на Ислямската революция 1979 г., задали задълго жалоните на развитие на страната. Безспорно е, че Ислямската революция, както и Ирано-иракската война, са две от структуроопределящите събития за широкото пространство на Близкия изток.
Последната глава е теоретична – „Сблъсък на цивилизациите?”. В нея са представени идеолози на ислямския джихад срещу Запада като Сайид Кутб.
Изложени са противоречащите си мнения по отношение идеята за сблъсък на цивилизациите на различни експерти като Майкъл Шуър, Роджър Скрутън, Томас Фридман. И тук надделяват умереността и трезвият анализ пред изкушението да се поддадем на лесните пропагандни клишета.
При такъв широк ареал и период на изследване, разбира се, е невъзможно да се избегнат и някои дребни грешки.
За съжаление, повечето неточности са допуснати по отношение на Палестина. Така например се говори за търканията между Фатах и Хамас „в рамките на ООП (Организацията за освобождение на Палестина)” (стр. 288). Противоречия между двете фракции наистина съществуват, но ХАМАС никога не е била част от ООП. Също така Народният фронт за освобождение на Палестина (НФОП) е описан като въоръжено крило на ООП (стр. 253). Всъщност ООП е организация-шапка, обединяваща редица палестински революционни организации, една от които е НФОП, който фронт, както всяка от организациите-членки на ООП, разполага и с политическо, и с въоръжено крило.
Израелските медийни настоявания дават резултат и по повод преговорите в Кемп Дейвид от 2000 г. Кетъруд говори за големите отстъпки, направени от израелския премиер Ехуд Барак, като изцяло пренебрегва анализи, хвърлящи вината за провала на разговорите върху израелската страна. Част от тези анализи например са публикувани в либералния телавивски вестник „Аарец” или пък са дело на независимият учен и изследовател Норман Финкелщайн.
Можем да посочим и някои грешки, свързани с превода и редакцията. Проблем представлява синхронизирането на термините при различните преводи от чужди езици. Все пак, в научната литература е възприето наименованието „Плодородният полумесец”, а не предложеният в настоящото издание „Благодатният” (английското Fertile Crescent); по-разпространена версия на името на старозаветния пророк е Осия, а не Озия; мирът между Османската империя и Хабсбургска Австрия от 1718 г. е познат под две имена – Пожаревацки или Пасаровицки. В книгата е предпочетено второто, което не е грешно, но в българската историография предпочитано е първото. Също така, възприетото име на младотурската партия в Османската империя е „Единение и прогрес”, а не „Единство и напредък”; тъй като е французин, името на известния учен е Жил Кепел, а не Джил Кепъл; цитираното на стр. 271 като „Измислените общества” класическо произведение на Бенедикт Андерсън беше преведено у нас под заглавие „Въобразените общности”; на стр. 276 се говори за „израелски сили за защита”, докато възприетият на български превод на английското наименование Israel Defense Forces (IDF) е израелски отбранителни сили (ИОС) или съкращението от иврит ЦАХАЛ; „Западният”, а не „Десният бряг на р. Йордан” (стр. 283); известният изследовател на тероризма се транскрибира като Лакьор, а не Лакър (вж. Брус Хофман, „Тероримът днес”, С., ИК „Плеяда”, 1999 г., „История на тероризма от Античността до Ал Кайда. Под редакцията на Жерар Шалиан и Арно Блен”, С., ИК „Леге Артис”, 2005 г.).
Към научния апарат на книгата се числят няколко карти, подбрана хронология, ползваната от автора литература на английски език, както и бележка на редактора на българското издание, включваща библиография с избрани публикации на български, които облекчават родния читател. След благодарностите следва още една изненада, с която книгата свършва – подробен и добре изработен показалец на имената.
Можем да добавим, че голямо улеснение са цитираните в самия текст в скоби заглавия на английски език, което позволява по-лесното им последващо търсене.
Можем да заключим, че това е отлично написан текст, с много високи качества, демонстриращ добро познаване на съвременната историопис и научни постижения в съответната област. Ерудицията на автора е завидна, което прави книгата четивна и съдържаща много информация.

On the Right of Resistance

By Ramzi Kysia

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
- Desmond Tutu

We live in an era defined by its brutality. Our challenge is whether to accept this - or to take the risks necessary to transform our world commons in beloved community.

A year ago this August, forty-four ordinary people from seventeen different countries sailed to Gaza in two, small wooden boats. We did what the world would not do - we broke through the siege of Gaza. Over the last year the Free Gaza Movement has organized seven more voyages, successfully arriving to Gaza on five separate occasions. Ours remain the only international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over forty-two years.

In the Middle-East, the struggle for justice is an uncertain endeavour in the best of times. On all sides human rights workers are beset with difficulties and distress. The Arab states are tyrannies, their peoples subject to secret police, arbitrary arrest, torture, and oppression. Within their societies, the Arab world is equally fractured by ethnic and class tensions, poverty, and political stagnation. From the outside, from the West, the Middle-East faces both open and covert acts of intimidation, intervention, economic destabilization, and even war, invasion, and mass killings.

Standing astride all these troubles, blocking near every attempt at progress in the region are the twin colossi of big oil and Israel. Seldom have a people been cursed with burdens more bitter, more devastating, and seemingly more intransigent than have the Arabs with oil and Israel.

Nowhere is this truer today than in Gaza. In 1999, British Gas discovered huge natural gas fields, worth billions of dollars, in Palestinian territorial waters off the coast of Gaza. Israel has already built a horizontal pipeline to siphon off gas from at least one of these fields. If there is an unspoken reason for the siege of Gaza - this is it.

Israel maintains effective control of all points of entry and exit to Gaza, as well as de facto control of Gaza’s revenues and economy. As such, and despite the closure of settlements in Gaza in 2005, Israel remains an occupying power in Gaza as in the rest of Palestine. As an occupying power, Israel is responsible for the well-being of the people it occupies and cannot legally impose a blockade, particularly one the collectively punishes the entire population of Gaza. These are clear crimes and the Israeli government and military should be prosecuted for them.

For the last three and a half years the Israeli siege has become increasingly ruthless. Less than twenty percent of normal trade is allowed into Gaza today. The siege has caused the local economy to collapse, leading to steep increases in unemployment, poverty and childhood malnutrition rates.

Because of Israel’s siege there is little fuel to run Gaza’s power plant - so electricity is scarce and intermittent. Without electricity, water and sanitation systems do not function. On March 27, 2008 two elderly women in their 70s, a teenage girl, and two babies were killed by a flood of sewage in Umm Naser. Last year alone, well over 16 billion litres of raw sewage had to be dumped in the sea, turning the Mediterranean into a toilet and creating a public health disaster.

Gaza is a tiny coastal plain, barely twenty-five miles long by four to seven miles wide. It does not have the ability to independently support the one and a half million human beings who live in one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Two-thirds of Gaza’s people are refugees, driven out of historical Palestine during Israel’s founding war in 1948. Over half the population are children.

Israel has a long history of violence against Palestinian children. A few examples: In December 2004, the IDF shot and killed seven-year old Rana Siyam. Earlier that year, nine-year old Raghda Alassar was shot and killed in her school while she was taking an English test. Thirteen-year old Iman al-Hams was shot seventeen times by the IDF as she was walking home after class in Gaza. An Israeli captain went up to her corpse and shot her again in the head – "dead-checking" the schoolgirl. The IDF prosecuted him, but not for murder. He was charged with "illegal use of his weapon," and - despite admitting that he emptied his entire magazine into a little girl - he was found "not guilty."

Over the summer of 2006, the IDF killed three-year old Bara Habib, three-year old Rajaa Abu Shaban, six-year old Rawan Hajjah, nine-year old Aya Salmeya, and over thirty-five other children just in Gaza alone. On January 16th, 2007, the IDF killed ten-year old Abir Aramin, the daughter of a Palestinian peace activist, as she was walking home from school. These are only a handful of cases. The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem estimates that over 900 Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli military between 2000 and 2008.

Israel has already recreated the worst aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto in Gaza - transforming this small strip of land into the world’s largest open-air prison, and the humanitarian condition of the one and a half million men, women, and children illegally incarcerated in Gaza is now at its worst point in the last forty-two years of Israeli occupation.

But there are darker histories waiting to be reborn. The simple and terrifying truth is that Israel is pushing the world on a path towards genocide. We are all en route to the slow-drip destruction of the Palestinian people. This reality must be forcefully confronted and fully overcome before it’s too late.

It's now been more than six months since the end of Israel's latest assault on the Gaza Strip, which led to the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians, and the people of Gaza are still living in rubble. Israel's hermetic closure has created a man-made and deliberately-sustained humanitarian catastrophe. The continuing failure of the international community to enforce its own laws and protect the people of Gaza demands that we as private citizens directly intervene to take action commensurate with the crisis. We must act because our governments refuse to do so.

Regardless of Israeli threats or intimidation, Free Gaza volunteers intend to continue sailing unarmed boats to Gaza. Now more than ever – we need the people of the world to join with us.

The siege of Gaza only serves to strengthen authoritarian structures on all sides of this conflict, entrenching centralized control, rallying people against a common enemy. The isolation of Gaza reinforces a belief that the world has forgotten Palestine, and little cares how Palestinians are forced to live or even whether they live or die.

In contrast, civil resistance and citizens’ action movements are not only aimed against the injustices that we face - they are also strategies for social change. Nonviolent resistance empowers everyone with the knowledge that any among us can reach out, organize, and act to change the entire world. Time and again, history demonstrates that even the greatest of tyrannies can crumble to the ground when confronted with an organized and determined resistance.

Join us, whether in whole or in part. Join the Free Gaza Movement, the International Solidarity Movement, and the BDS Movement. Join us and other campaigns in the struggle for justice for Palestine. We need volunteers to do research and writing, web updates, translation, graphic design, local organizing in their communities, and much more.

Become part of the resistance.

We are often told that resistance is either unwarranted or impossible. Liberal apologists for Israel, such as Thomas Friedman, are constantly demanding that Palestinians lay down their arms, all the while exhorting Israelis to pick them up in ever increasing acts of violence and degradation.

When faced with violence in our world, our elites tell us that we have two - and only two - choices: capitulate to the violence, or go to war. Of course, which of these two choices is the right and proper course of action depends on who you are. Faced with Palestinian violence, Israelis must, rightly and properly, go to war. Faced with Israeli violence, Palestinians must, rightly and properly, capitulate. In Tel Aviv and Washington D.C. this is called “moral clarity:” the supposed necessity of pursuing Israeli security through deliberately creating massive insecurity among Palestinians. This is lunacy.

But even mainstream “peace” movements in the West try to delegitimize resistance by calling on both Palestinians and Israelis to renounce overt acts of violence, equating Palestinians who commit suicide bombings with Israelis who send F-16s, D9 military bulldozers, and Apache attack helicopters to level entire neighborhoods.

The problem is that the usually random and individual acts of violence by Palestinians against Israelis are not equal to the myriad structural oppressions and cruelties imposed on Palestinians through Israeli government policies. No Palestinian fighter jets bomb Israeli cities - because Palestine has no fighter jets. No Palestinian bulldozers demolish Israeli homes - because Palestine has no military bulldozers. No Palestinian soldiers invade Israeli neighbourhoods, terrorizing the populace - because there is no Palestinian army. The conflict in Palestine is a war of Israeli state terror against a largely unarmed and defenceless civilian population.

Even immoral and self-defeating acts of violence against Israeli civilians (such as some suicide bombings are) cannot be equated with the daily humiliations, terror, and death that Israel inflicts on Palestinians by deliberate policy. Contrary to its presentation in the mainstream media, this conflict is neither a righteous war against evil Arab terrorists, nor a religious or ethnic dispute between two opposing and equally self-justified groups of people. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the struggle of two irreconcilable and unequal causes: the struggle of an oppressed people for freedom, justice, and self-determination against their oppressors’ struggle to maintain (and even expand) their domination. Under these circumstances resistance is not only a right - it's a moral imperative.

This is not to say that any and all acts of resistance are acceptable. Clearly they are not. But it grows tedious to continually hear well-meaning, but otherwise clueless, Westerners try to equate the two sides of this conflict. I am past tired of hearing white people passively whine, or shrilly demand, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”

With respect, just because some people have chosen to remain ignorant of the long and deep history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance - from the 1936 Boycott to Bil’in today - does not mean that it does not exist. The Free Gaza Movement struggles in solidarity with an already vibrant Palestinian civil resistance.

Similarly, the other criticism of resistance - that it is futile - is equally mistaken. There is a widespread delusion among many that Israel and the Israeli lobby are simply too powerful to be challenged, let alone defeated. This is not the case.

On June 30th 2009 Israeli Occupation Forces forcibly boarded one of our boats, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, and kidnapped 21 human rights workers and journalists who were on their way to deliver much needed humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to besieged Gaza, including Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. They were held in jail for a week before being deported.

Though we were stopped on this particular voyage, it was not a “failure.” In the month after our boat was hijacked, over 100,000 news stories, essays, blog entries, action alerts, and radio and television segments were made on Israel’s violent response to our mission. It’s true that the ordeal of our 21 volunteers pales in comparison to the 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The seizure of our small cargo of 3 tons of medical aid and reconstruction kits is insignificant in light of the $4 billion (USD) of aid promised to Gaza - aid that has not and will not be delivered because of the Israeli blockade.

But that too misses the point. By choosing to violently confront and kidnap unarmed human rights workers on a mission of mercy, Israel publicly demonstrated both the illegality and the absurdity of the Gaza siege. The siege is abjectly not about “security.” No one could possibly have believed that our small boat was a physical threat to Israel,

This public demonstration of the siege’s illegality resulted in record action at the governmental level as well. Both the Irish and Greek governments formally intervened to protect their citizens and property. Despite having no diplomatic relationship and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel's government - the King of Bahrain personally & successfully intervened to force Israel to immediately release the five Bahraini human rights workers kidnapped from the SPIRIT. The British parliament held a formal debate on the issue, and even the U.S. State Department was forced to hold a national conference call on for family and friends of the kidnap victims, as well as for Arab-American civil rights groups.

This was unprecedented, but it’s not enough.

The Free Gaza Movement started our small part in this struggle in 2006. We began on hope alone. Many thought it couldn’t be done, yet we did it. We broke through the Israeli blockade. We will sail again, and we are absolutely determined to reach the Gaza Strip on our next voyage. We intend to non-violently escalate our response. By sending a cargo ship, we will escalate the challenge to the blockade by bringing in significant amounts of banned reconstruction materials. By sending more boats on our next mission, we will significantly escalate the logistical difficulties Israel faces should they decide to violently attack us again. By sending even more parliamentarians, dignitaries, journalists, and human rights workers to accompany the boats, we will significantly escalate the political difficulties Israel faces should they decide to violently attack us again.

The journey to Gaza is dangerous. The Israeli navy rammed our flagship, the Dignity, when we attempted to deliver medical supplies to Gaza during their vicious assault in December/January. In June, they hijacked our small boat and kidnapped everyone on board. Israel has even threatened to open fire on our unarmed ships, rather than allow us to deliver humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to the people of Gaza.

But the risks we take on our voyages are insignificant compared to the risks imposed every day upon the people of Gaza.

The purpose of nonviolent direct action and civil resistance is to take risks - to put ourselves “in the way” of injustice. We take these risks well aware of what the possible consequences may be. We do so because the consequences of doing nothing are so much worse. Any time we allow ourselves to be bullied, every time we pass by an evil and ignore it - we lower our standards and allow our world to be made that much harsher and unjust for us all.

Israel can threaten our boats and passengers - we will keep coming. Israel can illegally disrupt our communications and navigation systems - we will keep coming. Israel can open fire around our boats, or attempt to ram and sink them. Israel can choose to forcibly board and highjack our boats, and abduct our volunteers.

It doesn’t matter. We will keep coming. Armed only with the love of justice, and in the rite of resistance - we will go to Gaza again and again and again, until this siege is forever shattered and the people of Gaza have free access to the rest of the world.

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Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American essayist and an organizer with the Free Gaza Movement. If you would like to support these efforts, please visit www.FreeGaza.org, or email donations[at]freegaza.org. If you would like to volunteer with Free Gaza, please send an email to volunteer[at]freegaza.org

6 месеца по-късно в Газа - положението е без промяна

Превод на статията: http://palestinianworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-months-later-no-reconstruction-in.html

Умм Найим седи с две от децата си в палатката, в която живеят, откакто техният дом е разрушен през януари. (Rami Almeghari)
Махмуд Абу ал-Анзаин и съпругата му Умм Найим, заедно с трите си деца живеели в двустайна циментова къщa. Не бил дворец, но бил къща. Къщата е напълно разрушена по време на нападенията на Израел над Ивицата Газа през изминалия януари.
От този ден ал-Анзаин (на 32) и неговото семейство живеят в палатка в бежанския лагер al-Rayan в северната част на ивицата Газа. „Както виждате, под горещините на юлското слънце, със страх от комари и змии, ние живеем в тази палатка от 6 месеца без някой да се погрижи за нас” казва ал-Анзаин, облягайки се на дюшека на земята.
Семейстовото Ал-Анзаин е едно от семейства, изселените от северната част на Ивицата Газа, живеещи в бежанския лагер al-Rayan, изграден скоро от местни неправителствеиа организации с общо 93 палатки. Другите семейства спят тук през нощта, други идват за през деня, всеки според полжението, причинено от израелските нападения. В бежанския лагер al-Rayan намират подслон (семейства) от 3 области на северна Газа – тези от бежанския лагер Джабалия, Бейт Лахйа и Шейх Зайед.
„Аз живеех в Block 1 на бежанския лагер Джабалия, преди къщата ми да бъде разрушена от израелски гранати ”, разказва ал-Анзаин. „Безработен съм и получавам само обезщетение на стойност 750 израелски шекела [190 долара]”. Тази сума, осигорена от Palestinian society (Палестинската общност), е недостатъчна за наемане на къща и покриване на другите нужди. „Принуден съм да остана в тази палатка, независимо от трудното положение”, казва ал-Анзаин, предлагайки чаши с Пепси, тъй като той смята, че могат да осигурят повече гостоприемство на гостите си...
И да е по-труден въпроса, Умм Найим е бременна, а един от близнаците трябваше да бъде хопитализиран заради инфекция, последвала предишно заболяване. „Какви грижи мога да полагам за детето, което очакваме?”, казва ал-Анзаин. „Дори кучето не може да понесе подобен живот”.
Палатката на семейство ал-Анзаин включва две части: „всекидневна” , където семейството седи и спи и „спалня”, къето си слагат дюшеците, одеалата и дрехите. До всекидневната има малък ъгъл, който се използва за кухня, с газова печка, един тиган и тенджера. Насреща има „баня” с леген.
Умм Найим, седейки в спалнята в търсене на успокоение от обедната горещина, разказа колко е трудно да отглежда децата си в една палатка. „Мястото не е чисто, навсякъде вън и вътре има много прах”, оплака се тя. „Често не мога намирам достатъчно вода, даже да измия кухненските съдове”. Обясни за постоянния страх, който изпитват децата и съпруга й от змиите. „Животът в тази палатка е непоносим”, каза тя.
С дълбока въздишка, Умм Найим изрича стара палестинска пословица: „Кое те кара да търпиш горчивото? Само това, което е по-горчиво.”
Умм Абдаллах Абу Аита седи в палатката си в лагера al-Rayan, където живее откакто израелската армия разбила къщата й в Block 3 в бежанския лагер Джабалия. Тя е достъчно възрастна, за да преживее първоначалното изселване от Палестина в бежнаските лагери в ивицата Газа и другаде. Наистина, изграждането на 6 нови бежански лагери, всеки с по около 100 палатки, припомня 1948 Nakba, когато стотици хиляди палестинци били принудени да напуснат домовете си и да търсят подслон във „временни” лагери такива като тези. 80% от палестинците в Газа са бежанци от Nаkba или са техни потомци.
Всяка сутрин Умм Абдаллах идва в лагера и прекарва време си с прителката си Умм Хамис, чиято палатка е до нейната, в готвене или раздумка. След залез слънце напускат палатките си и отиват у къщите на роднините си, където нощуват.
---
Абу Нимер Хасан, на 53, покани репортера в своята палатка, където прекарва нощта заедно с 4-те си деца. „Моята къща беше ударена от израелси снаряд на 17 януари в 3 часа през нощта, в околността на Бейт Лахйа”, каза Hаsan. „Двуетажния ми дом беше напълно изгорен.”
Хасан и децата му остават в тази палатка, защото просто нямат друго място: „ Имам женен син, който живее със съпругата си, а моята съпруга спи в къщата на родителите си.”
„Тоа е най-друдното време в живота ми”, каза Хасан. „Може ли да си представите? Уикендите ние всички се събираме от различни краища, където сме пръснати, просто за да се видим един друг и да поприказваме. ”
12 души живеели в къщата на Хасан. „Ние имахме много неща, включително и мебели, но всичко е изгорено”, каза той. Сега цялата им покъщнина е това, което е в палатката им, а именно: няколко мебели, осигурени от местните благотворци, няколко чинии и кухненски съдове.
Изчерви се, добавяйки: „Може ли да си представите, за последните 6 месеца съм лишен от основното си човешко право да живея със съпругата и децата си под един покрив”.
Халед Абу Али, който като член на един местен комитет за услуги в лагера
al-Rayan казва, че все по-трудно е да се грижиш за местните жители, които имат много малко място и собственост: „ Финансовата помощ намаля значително, но изселените хора нямат друг избор освен да изтраят.”
В съответсвие с оценките на местните и междинародните организации, хиляди палестинци в Газа продължават да живеят като изселници след атаките на Израел. Болкадата, продължаваща повече от 2 години, пречи на доставката на строителни материали на цялата територия, а кампаниите за реконструкция, обещани от другите държави, все още не са започнали.
Миналата седмица, международният комитет на Червен кръст публикува дълъг доклад за ситуацията в Газа. Докладът описва влошаващото се състояние 6 месеца след израелските нападения по крайбрежната територия.
„Целта на този доклад е да увеличи предствата за положението и да призове Израел и другите държави да вземат всички възможни мерки да се отворят отново пропусклателните пунктове, така че населението в Газа да спре да плаща цената на този конфликт” - Antoine Grad – завеждащ Червени кръст за Газа. „Това, което аз мога да кажа е - ако ситуацията продължи, то жителите на Газа ще обеднеят повече и все повече хора ще попаднат в бедност и мизерия. ”

Оригинална статия

Israeli officer promotes war crimes at Harvard

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi and Dr. Anat Matar, The Electronic Intifada, 22 July 2009

On 9 July Harvard University's Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) invited Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, former Israeli military legal adviser, to their online Humanitarian Law and Policy Forum. The stated aim was to bring "objective" discussion to the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law, or what the forum organizers called "combat in civilian population centers and the failure of fighters to distinguish themselves from the civilian population."

Although billed as a lecturer in the Law Faculty at Tel Aviv University -- and therefore as a detached humanitarian law analyst -- Colonel Sharvit-Baruch was in fact deeply involved in Israel's three-week onslaught in Gaza in December and January, that counted its 1,505th victim found under rubble earlier this month. With the devastating operation condemned and mourned worldwide, many asked why a ranking member of an occupying army that flouts its legal obligations should herself receive safe havens at two major universities.

What troubled many of the 200 or so participants who "attended" the talk via a virtual chatroom was that Sharvit-Baruch was cut off from public or legal scrutiny as she relayed her PowerPoint presentation. Questions were posed by the moderators, sanitized of any critical content. Yet the indisputable fact is that the army for which Sharvit-Baruch worked has been accused by all major human rights organizations of committing war crimes in Gaza. Some wondered why Sharvit-Baruch was being given the opportunity to offer a carefully prepared presentation unchallenged in an academic setting, rather than giving testimony to a tribunal or inquiry such as that being conducted Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist heading an independent fact-finding mission into human rights violations during Israel's attack at the request of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Since the event organizers did not ask pointed questions about Colonel Sharvit-Baruch's actual role in Gaza, it is worth doing so here. As head of the International Law department (ILD) at the Israeli Military Advocate General's office, Sharvit-Baruch is known for green-lighting the bombing of a police graduation ceremony in Gaza that killed dozens of civil policemen. This was no ordinary airstrike. It was premised on a legal sleight-of-hand: that even traffic cops in Gaza could be considered "legitimate targets" under international law. In a conversation with conscripts at a military prep academy in Israel, school director Danny Zamir noted, "I was terribly surprised by the enthusiasm surrounding the killing of the Gaza traffic police on the first day of the operation. They took out 180 traffic cops. As a pilot, I would have questioned that."

Further, the Israeli army used heavy artillery and white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of Gaza, against the UNRWA's headquarters and a UN school in Beit Lahiya. As reported by Judge Goldstone, Gazans trying to relay their civilian status were also hit. Even though the Israeli military tried several times to deny its use, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on white phosphorous use in Gaza quotes an unnamed Israeli official: "at least one month before [white phosphorus] was used a legal team had been consulted on the implications." HRW found that "in violation of the laws of war, the [Israeli army] generally failed to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm" and "used white phosphorus in an indiscriminate manner causing civilian death and injury."

Such reckless disregard for the lives of civilians and pathological cover-ups of military operations are recognized by many Israelis within the system itself. According to one Israeli jurist speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the ILD is considered "more militant than any other legal agency in Israel, and willing to adopt the most flexible interpretations of the law in order to justify the [Israel army's] actions." Although the ILD personnel "are now very proud of their influence upon the combat" in Gaza, human rights groups have stated that "residents weren't advised then as to which places were safe, and the roads by which they fled were bombed and turned into death traps."

One of the most indelible perspectives about Israel's legal gymnastics to justify its actions comes from Colonel Sharvit-Baruch's predecessor, Daniel Reisner. "What is being done today is a revision of international law," Reisner has said, "and if you do something long enough, the world will accept it. All of international law is built on that an act which is forbidden today can become permissible, if enough states do it." In expressing how the ILD moves forward by turning back the pages of legal jurisdiction, Reisner says, "We invented the doctrine of the preemptive pinpoint strike, we had to promote it, and in the beginning there were protrusions which made it difficult to fit it easily into the mold of legality. Eight years later, it's in the middle of the realm of legitimacy."

Sharvit-Baruch herself explained her vision of international law at a presentation for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: "International law is developed according to practices. It changes based on what is happening in the field. These laws must be based on precedents, what already exists. There is flexibility in every law." By this law of flexibility, the more aberrations of international law a state can legitimize, the more hoary actions it can continue to execute and justify.

Since the attack on Gaza, numerous testimonies of Israeli soldiers published in Israel, have corroborated the accounts of Palestinian witnesses and human rights organizations that serious war crimes were endemic.

Despite the blunt admissions of Israeli soldiers widely published in the Israeli press, it was clear from her calm presentation that Sharvit-Baruch and her cohort live in their own rhetorical universe where even language is assaulted. In the Colonel's own terminology, non-existent vocabulary in international law such as "capacity builders" and "revolving doors" is coined to pass over accepted terms such as "civilians" and "non-combatants." Like the US government's "torture memo" authors -- who in contrast to Israel's were not uniformed ranking members of the army -- the Israeli military attempted to reclassify a "civilian" in a manner making it easier to strip them of protections provided by international humanitarian law. "Architecture of words," said one participant

Despite all this, by her own standards, Sharvit-Baruch and her team could not be faulted for their efficiency: in Gaza, banning all media from entering; assaulting the population with air missiles, sniper ground troops, and white phosphorus; condemning all criticism of military actions as contrary to state security; keeping a chin above the law; attaining a teaching position at Tel Aviv University and finally a prestigious opportunity to address Harvard students and faculty.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature with a Secondary Field in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. Her three-part film Inessential (2008) about the siege of Gaza screened at the Townhouse Gallery of Art in Cairo, Boston Palestine Film Festival, and Providence Palestine Film Festival.

Dr. Anat Matar is a senior lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University and head of the Israeli Association for the Palestinian Prisoners.

Families celebrate academic excellence amidst the siege

Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 24 July 2009


Abeer Shawish receives congratulations from her mother Umm Abed, at their family home in the Gaza Strip. (Rami Almeghari)

The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education announced the results of the annual tawjihi -- the general secondary school examination -- on 21 July. Graduating high school students take exams either in the science stream or humanities stream, with those getting the highest grades best able to compete for university places.

It was the first time since Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007 that the Ministry announced result for both the West Bank and Gaza. In spite of Israel's 25-month siege and brutal winter invasion of Gaza, students in the tiny coastal territory must find time to study for the exam.

Abeer Abu Shawish, 18, achieved the highest score on the humanities exam in all of Gaza. Abeer lives with her family in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Her father and three brothers are all unemployed. Abeer and her five sisters assist her mother, who is a homemaker, with the household chores.

Sitting cheerfully at home, Abeer explained that "I cannot describe my feelings today. I feel like I am flying. I am excited. I am overwhelmed!" She added, "I used to study 10 hours a day, since the beginning of the school year last September. And now I am harvesting the fruits."

Surrounded by her family, Abeer greeted the many visitors who came to offer their congratulations on Tuesday. She explained that, "We are an ordinary Palestinian family. We were raised by our now ailing father, who taught us how to succeed in school." She added that her sister Nour received the highest score in Gaza in 2006, and her sister Amal the fifth highest score in 1999.

During Israel's invasion, Abeer like other Gaza residents lived in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Yet, she found time to study and prepare for the exam. She explained that, "Prior to the war in late December 2008, I had a plan for studying for the tawjihi. One day, in the middle of the war, I heard shelling nearby at 11:00pm. However, I took a long deep breath and continued my studies. Although I was extremely upset by the Israeli attacks from air, sea and land, I told myself that I must succeed in order to fight the Israeli occupation with my own way, education!"

Abeer's mother, Umm Abed, expressed her extreme joy at Abeer's results. She said, "Thank God for this great success, Abeer is my fourth daughter and her other sisters, Nour and Amal, got similar results in previous years." Umm Abed added, "God willing, my daughter will pursue her education under better conditions."

Mousa Nashwan, a close friend of the family, voiced his appreciation for Abeer's success amidst their "dire conditions." He explained, "I am really very happy for them. My dear friend Abu al-Abed -- Abeer's father -- who is now ailing, has nothing to live on. He has one daughter who is a teacher, she is the only one who helps them."

Another Palestinian home in the Maghazi refugee camp was celebrating on Tuesday. Amna Mousa received the second highest grade in Gaza on the humanities section of the tawjihi. Amna explained that, "Despite the circumstances, including frequent Israeli attacks, the Israeli siege as well as the political rift here, I was determined to achieve success." She added that, "After the recent Israeli war, I had to reschedule my study time and now I am so happy for the outcome. I dedicate this to the victims of the last war, to Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails, and to prime minister Ismail Haniyeh."

While embracing his daughter, Amna's father explained that, "I am proud of Amna, thank God. I have been expecting this success for Amna even more than she was. Sometimes, I used to have pity on her, telling her to get some more sleep."

Abeer and Amna's success provides hope for everyone in Gaza that amidst the siege and deprivation, excellence and even joy can be found.

Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

"The best place one could be on Earth"

Alice Walker, The Electronic Intifada, 24 July 2009


Alice Walker in Gaza with Palestinian member of parliament and mother of five, Huda Naim.

Last March, poet, novelist and feminist Alice Walker joined a delegation organized by Code Pink, to travel to the Gaza Strip just weeks after the 22-day Israeli bombardment and invasion. Walker, globally acclaimed for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, had also traveled to Rwanda, Eastern Congo and other places where she witnessed cruel and barbaric behavior that left her speechless. In an essay on her blog entitled "Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters "the horror" in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel," Walker recounts the stories of the people she met, and offers a lyrical analysis that ties their oppression and struggles to what she and her community experienced growing up in the violence and fear of the segregated American South. The excerpt below begins with her arrival in Gaza after a long overland journey through Egypt.

Coming "home" to Gaza

Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the "rez." To the "colored section." In some ways it is surprisingly comforting. Because consciousness is comforting. Everyone you see has an awareness of struggle, of resistance, just as you do. The man driving the donkey cart. The woman selling vegetables. The young person arranging rugs on the sidewalk or flowers in a vase. When I lived in segregated Eatonton, Georgia I used to breathe normally only in my own neighborhood, only in the black section of town. Everywhere else was too dangerous. A friend was beaten and thrown in prison for helping a white girl, in broad daylight, fix her bicycle chain.

But even this sliver of a neighborhood, so rightly named the Gaza Strip, was not safe. It had been bombed for 22 days. I thought of how, in the US perhaps the first use of aerial attacks on US soil, prior to 9/11, was the bombing and shooting from biplanes during the destruction by white mobs of the black neighborhoods in Tulsa, Olklahoma in 1921. The black people who created these neighborhoods were considered, by white racists, too prosperous and therefore "uppity." Everything they created was destroyed. This was followed by the charge already rampant in white American culture, that black people never tried to "better" themselves.

There is ample evidence in Gaza that the Palestinians never stop trying to "better" themselves. What started as a refugee camp with tents, has evolved into a city with buildings rivaling those in almost any other city in the "developing" world. There are houses, apartment buildings, schools, mosques, churches, libraries, hospitals. Driving along the streets, we could see right away that many of these were in ruins. I realized I had never understood the true meaning of "rubble." Such and such was "reduced to rubble" is a phrase we hear. It is different seeing what demolished buildings actually look like. Buildings in which people were living. Buildings from which hundreds of broken bodies have been removed; so thorough a job have the Palestinians done in removing the dead from squashed dwellings that no scent of death remains. What this task must have been like, both physically and psychologically, staggers the mind.

We pass police stations that were simply flattened, and all the young (most Palestinians are young) officers in them killed, hundreds of them. We pass ministries, bombed into fragments. We pass a hospital, bombed and gutted by fire. If one is not safe in a hospital, when one is already sick and afraid, where is one safe? If children are not safe playing in their schoolyards, where are they safe? Where are The World Parents of All Children? The World Caretakers of All the Sick?

My companion and I are assigned to the home of two sisters who share their space with friends and relatives who come and go. One morning I get up early to find an aunt sleeping on the floor in the living room. Another time, a cousin. In the middle of the night I hear one of the sisters consoling her aged father, who sounds disoriented, and helping him back to bed. There is such respect, such tenderness in her voice. This is the same place that, just weeks earlier, was surrounded by rocket fire, a missile landing every 27 seconds for 22 days. I can only imagine what the elderly residents must feel, as, even in their old age they are subjected to so much fear. Each morning we are sent off to learn what we can in our four days in Gaza, well fed on falafel, hummus, olives and dates, sometimes eggs, tomatoes, salad and cheese. All of it simple, all of it delicious.

More delicious because we realize how difficult it is to find such food here; the blockade keeps out most of it. Delicious also because it is shared with such generosity and graciousness. Always the culinary student, I try to learn to make the especially tasty dish that consists mainly of tomatoes and eggs. I learn the tea I like so much is made out of sage!

Dance in the face of disaster

On International Women's Day we leave for the celebration for which we have come, a gathering with the women of Gaza. Gael Murphy, Medea Benjamin, Susan Griffin and I, along with 20 or so other women had been arrested for protesting the war on Iraq on International Women's Day, 2003. If the world had paid attention we could have saved a lot of money, countless sons' and daughters' lives, as well as prevented a lot of war-generated pollution that hastens globe-threatening climate change. How doofus humans are going to look -- we thought as we marched, sang, accepted our handcuffs -- still firing rockets into apartment buildings full of families, and dropping bombs on school children and their pets, when the ice melts completely in the Arctic and puts an end to our regressive, greed sourced rage forever. That had been a wonderful day; this International Women's Day, of 2009, was also. It was the kind of day that makes life, already accepted as a gift, a prize. Early in the morning of 8 March, we were shuttled to a women's center in the north of Gaza City, to meet women who, like their compatriots, had survived the recent bombardment and, so far, the siege.

This center for women was opened under the auspices of the United Nations, which has been administering to the Palestinian people since 1948, when thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes under Israeli attack, became refugees. It is a modest building with a small library whose shelves hold few books. It isn't clear whether most of the women read. The idea, as it is explained to us, is to offer the women a place to gather outside the home, since, in Palestinian culture the mobility of most women is limited by their work in the home as mothers and caretakers of their families. Many women rarely leave their compounds.

However, today, International Women's Day, is different. Many women are out and about, and women who frequent this particular center are on hand to welcome us. After arranging ourselves around a table in the library, we, about 30 of us, sit in council. I learn something I'd heard but never experienced: Arabs introduce themselves by telling you they are the mother or father of one of their children, perhaps their eldest. Then they tell you how many children they have. They do this with a pride and joy I have never seen before. Only one woman had one child. Everyone else had at least five. There is a feeling of festivity as the women, beautifully dressed and wearing elegant headscarves, laugh and joke among themselves. They are eager to talk.

Only the woman with one child has trouble speaking. When I turn to her, I notice she is the only woman wearing black, and that her eyes are tearing. Unable to speak, she hands me instead a photograph that she has been holding in her lap. She is a brown-skinned woman, of African descent, as some Palestinians (to my surprise) are; the photograph is of her daughter, who looks European. The child looks about six years old. A student of ballet, she is dressed in a white tutu and is dancing. Her mother tries to speak, but still cannot, as I sit, holding her arm. It is another woman who explains: during the bombardment, the child was hit in the arm and the leg and the chest and bled to death in her mother's arms. The mother and I embrace, and throughout our meeting I hold the photograph of the child, while the mother draws her chair closer to mine.

What do we talk about?

We talk about hatred.

But before we talk about hatred I want to know about headscarves. What's the deal about wearing the scarf? Why do so many women wear it? I am told something I'd never considered: in desert countries most of one's hydration is lost at the back of the neck, which can quickly lead to heat stroke, so a headscarf that wraps around the neck is essential to block this loss. The top of the head is covered because if a woman is living a traditional life and is outside a lot, the sun beats down on it. This causes headache, dizziness, nausea, stroke, and other health problems. In Gaza, one of the women pointed out, there were many women who did not wear scarves, primarily because they worked in offices. This was true of the women in whose home we were sheltered. They seemed to own a lot of scarves that they draped about themselves casually, just as my friends and I might do in the United States.

Because I had shaved my head a week or so before going to Gaza, I understood exactly the importance of the headscarf. Without a covering on my head I could not bear the sun for more than a few minutes. And, indeed, one of the first gifts I received from an anonymous Palestinian woman was a thick black and red embroidered scarf, which I wore everywhere, gratefully.

Our host told us a story about the uglier side of the headscarf business: On the first day of bombing she was working downstairs in the basement and wasn't aware that her apartment building was next to one that was being shelled. When the policemen came to clear her building, and she stepped out of the elevator, one of them, a political and religious conservative, was taken aback at the sight of her bare head. So much so that instead of instantly helping her to a shelter, he called a colleague to come and witness her attire. Or lack thereof. He was angry with her, for not wearing a headscarf, though Israeli rockets were tearing into buildings all around them. And what could we do but sigh along with her, as she related this experience with appropriate shrugs and grimaces of exasperation. Backwardness is backwardness, wherever it occurs, and explains lack of progressive movement in afflicted societies, whether under siege or not.

One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the American South today you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate. This is the legacy of people brought up in the Christian tradition, true believers of every word Jesus had to say on the issue of justice, loving kindness, and peace. This dovetailed nicely with what we learned of Gandhian nonviolence, brought into the movement by Bayard Rustin, a gay strategist for the Civil Rights Movement.

A lot of thought went into how to create "the beloved community," so that our country would not be stuck with violent hatred between black and white, and the continuous spectacle, and suffering, of communities going up in flames. It is astonishing, the progress, and I will always love Southerners, black and white, for the way we have all grown. Ironically, though there was so much suffering and despair as the struggle for justice tested us, it is in this very "backward" part of our country today that one is most likely to find simple human helpfulness, thoughtfulness and impersonal courtesy.

I speak a little about this American history, but it isn't history that these women know. They're too young. They've never been taught it. It feels irrelevant. Following their example of speaking of their families, I talk about my Southern parents' teachings during our experience of America's apartheid years. When white people owned and controlled all the resources and the land, in addition to the political, legal and military apparatus, and used their power to intimidate black people in the most barbaric and merciless ways. These whites who tormented us daily were like Israelis who have cut down millions of trees planted by Arab Palestinians; stolen Palestinian water, even topsoil. They have bulldozed innumerable villages, houses, mosques, and in their place built settlements for strangers who have no connection whatsoever with Palestine; settlers who have been the most rabid anti-Palestinian of all, attacking the children, the women, everyone, old and young alike, viciously, and forcing Palestinians to use separate roads from themselves.

It feels very familiar, I tell them, what is happening here. When something similar was happening to us, in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, I say, our parents taught us to think of the racists as we thought of any other disaster. To deal with that disaster as best we could, but not to attach to it by allowing ourselves to hate. This was a tall order, and as I'm talking, I begin to understand, as if for the first time, why some of our parents' prayers were so long and fervent as they stayed there, long minutes, on their knees in church.

And why people often wept, and fainted, and why there was so much tenderness as people deliberately silenced themselves, or camouflaged atrocities done to or witnessed by them, using representative figures from the Bible. At the end of the table across from me is a woman who looks like Oprah's twin. In fact, earlier she had said to me: Alice, tell Oprah to come see us. We will take good care of her." I promised I would email Oprah, and, on returning home, did so.

She laughs, this handsome woman; then speaks earnestly. We don't hate Israelis, Alice, she says, quietly, what we hate is being bombed, watching our little ones live in fear, burying them, being starved to death, and being driven from our land. We hate this eternal crying out to the world to open its eyes and ears to the truth of what is happening, and being ignored. Israelis, no. If they stopped humiliating and torturing us, if they stopped taking everything we have, including our lives, we would hardly think about them at all. Why would we?

There is, finally, a sense of overwhelm, trying to bring comfort to someone whose sleeping child has been killed and buried, a few weeks ago, up to her neck in rubble; or a mother who has lost fifteen members of her family, all her children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, her husband. What does one say to people whose families came out of their shelled houses waving white flags of surrender only to be shot down anyway? To mothers whose children were, at this moment, playing in the white phosphorous laden rubble that, after 22 days of bombing, is everywhere in Gaza? White phosphorus, once on the skin, never stops burning. There is really nothing to say. Nothing to say to those who, back home in America, don't want to hear the news. Nothing to do, finally, but dance.

The women and I and everyone with us from Code Pink went across the hall to a big common room where music was turned up full volume. At first I sat exchanging smiles and murmurs with an ancient grandmother who was knitting booties, and who gave me two pairs, for my own grandchildren. Sitting didn't last. Without preamble I was pulled to my feet by several women at once, and the dance was on. Sorrow, loss, pain, suffering, all pounded into the floor for over an hour. Sweat flowing, wails and tears around the room. And then, the rising that always comes from such dancing; the sense of joy, of unity, of solidarity and gratitude to be in the best place one could be on Earth; with sisters who have experienced the full measure of disaster and have the heart to rise above it. The feeling of love is immense. The ecstasy, sublime. I was conscious of exchanging and receiving Spirit in the dance. I also knew that this Spirit, which I have encountered in Mississippi, Georgia, the Congo, Cuba, Rwanda and Burma, among other places, this Spirit that knows how to dance in the face of disaster, will never be crushed. It is as timeless as the wind. We think it is only inside our bodies, but we also inhabit it. Even when we are unaware of its presence internally, it wears us like a cloak.

Our silence will not protect us

I could have gone home then. I had learned what I came to know: that humans are an amazing lot. That to willfully harm any one of us is to damage us all. That hatred of ourselves is the root cause of any harm done to others, others so like us! And that we are lucky to live at a time when all lies will be exposed, along with the relief of not having to serve them any longer. But I did not go home. I went instead to visit the homeless.

Coming out of a small grouping of tents, with absolutely nothing inside them, no bedding, no food, no water, were middle-aged and elderly people who looked as if their sky had fallen. It had. An old, old man, leaning on a stick, met me as I trudged up a hill so I might see the extent of the devastation. Vast. Look, look! He said to me in English, come look at my house! He was wearing dusty cotton trousers and an old army great coat. I felt dragged along by the look in his eyes. He led me to what had been his house. It had obviously, from the remains, been a large and spacious dwelling; now he and his wife lived between two of the fallen walls that made a haphazard upside down "V." She looked as stunned and as lost as he. There was not a single usable item visible. Near what must have been the front entrance, the old man placed me directly in front of the remains of bulldozed trees: They broke my house, he said, by bombing it, and then they came with bulldozers and they broke my lemon and olives trees. The Israeli military has destroyed over two and a half million olive and fruit trees alone since 1948. Having planted many trees myself, I shared his sorrow about the fate of these. I imagined them alive and sparkling with life, offering olives and lemons, the old man and his wife able to sit in the shade of the trees in the afternoons, and have a cup of tea there, in the evenings.

You speak English, I observed. Yes, he said, I was once in the British army. I supposed this was during the time Britain controlled Palestine, before 1948. We walked along in silence, as I did what I had come to do: witness. Code Pink members and my companion and I walked through the rubble of demolished homes, schools, medical centers, factories, for half an hour. After the bombing the Israelis had indeed bulldozed everything so that I was able to find just one piece of evidence that beauty had flourished on this hillside; a shard from a piece of colorful tile, about the size of my hand. Someone in our group wanted it, and I gave it to her. They had taken pains to pulverize what they had destroyed.

Coming upon another grouping of tents, I encountered an old woman sitting on the ground in what would have been, perhaps, the doorway of her demolished, pulverized home. She was clean and impeccably dressed, the kind of old woman who is known and loved and respected by everyone in the community, as my own mother had been. Her eyes were dark and full of life. She talked to us freely. I gave her a gift I had brought, and she thanked me. Looking into my eyes she said: May God Protect You From the Jews. When the young Palestinian interpreter told me what she'd said, I responded: It's too late, I already married one. I said this partly because, like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians.

Our very different positions on what is happening now in Palestine/Israel and what has been happening for over fifty years, has been perhaps our most severe disagreement. It is a subject we have never been able to rationally discuss. He does not see the racist treatment of Palestinians as the same racist treatment of blacks and some Jews that he fought against so nobly in Mississippi. And that he objected to in his own Brooklyn-based family. When his younger brother knew he was seeing me, a black person, he bought and nailed over an entire side of his bedroom the largest Confederate flag either of us had ever seen. His brother, a young Jewish man who had never traveled South, and had perhaps learned most of what he knew about black history from Gone With the Wind, expressed his contempt for black people in this way. His mother, when told of our marriage, sat shiva, which declared my husband dead. These were people who knew how to hate, and how to severely punish others, even those beloved, as he was, of their own. This is one reason I understand the courage it takes for some Jews to speak out against Israeli brutality and against what they know are crimes against humanity. Most Jews who know their own history see how relentlessly the Israeli government is attempting to turn Palestinians into the "new Jews," patterned on Jews of the Holocaust era, as if someone must hold that place, in order for Jews to avoid it.

Lucky for me, my husband's family were not the only Jews I knew, having met Howard Zinn, my history teacher at Spelman College in 1961, as my very first (secular) Jew, and later poet Muriel Rukeyser, at Sarah Lawrence College, who like Grace Paley, the short story writer, raised her voice against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the horrible mistreatment of the Palestinian people. There are my Jewish friends of the planet: Amy Goodman, Jack Kornfield, Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, and Barbara Lubin, who are as piercing in their assessments of Israeli behavior as they have been of African or African American, or Indian, or Chinese, or Burmese behavior. I place my faith in them, and others like us, who see how greed and brutality are not limited to any segment of humanity but will grow wherever they are unchecked, in any society whatsoever.

The people of Israel have not been helped by America's blind loyalty to their survival as a Jewish State, by any means necessary. The very settlers -- they've used American taxpayer money to install on Palestinian land -- turn out to be a scary lot, fighting not only against Palestinians, but against Israelis, when they do not get their way. Israelis stand now exposed, the warmongers and peacemakers alike, as people who are ruled by leaders that the world considers irrational, vengeful, scornful of international law, and utterly frightening.

There are differing opinions about this, of course, but my belief is that when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet. There is no hiding what Israel has done or what it does on a daily basis to protect and extend its power. It uses weapons that cut off limbs without bleeding; it drops bombs into people's homes that never stop detonating in the bodies of anyone who is hit; it causes pollution so severe it is probable that Gaza may be uninhabitable for years to come, though Palestinians, having nowhere else to go, will have to live there. This is a chilling use of power, supported by the United States of America, no small foe, if one stands up to it. No wonder that most people prefer to look the other way during this genocide, hoping their disagreement with Israeli policies will not be noted. Good Germans, Good Americans, Good Jews. But, as our sister Audre Lorde liked to warn us: Our silence will not protect us. In the ongoing global climate devastation that is worsened by war activities, we will all suffer, and we will also be afraid.

Finding our voices

The world knows it is too late for a two-state solution. This old idea, bandied about since at least the Eighties, denounced by Israel for decades, isn't likely to become reality with the massive buildup of settlements all over what remains of Palestinian land. Ariel Sharon is having the last word: Jewish settlements exactly like a Pastrami sandwich; Palestinian life erased, as if it never existed, or crushed under the weight of a superior Israeli military presence and a teaching of Jewish supremacy sure to stunt Palestinian identity among Arabs living in Israel.

What is to be done? Our revered Tolstoy asked this question generations ago, speaking also of War and Peace. I believe there must be a one-state solution. That Palestinians and Jews, who have lived together in peace in the past, must work together to make this a reality once again. That this land (so soaked in Jewish and Palestinian blood, and with America's taxpayer dollars wasted on violence the majority of us would never, if we knew, support) must become, like South Africa, the secure and peaceful home of everyone who lives there. This will require that Palestinians, like Jews, have the right of return to their homes and their lands. Which will mean what Israelis most fear: Jews will be outnumbered and, instead of a Jewish state, there will be a Jewish, Muslim, Christian country, which is how Palestine functioned before the Europeans arrived. What is so awful about that?

The tribunals, the generals will no doubt say. But both South Africa and Rwanda present a model of restorative justice in their Truth and Reconciliation Councils. Some crimes against humanity are so heinous nothing will ever rectify them. All we can do is attempt to understand their causes and do everything in our power to prevent them happening, to anyone, ever again. Human beings are intelligent and very often, compassionate. We can learn to heal ourselves without inflicting fresh wounds.

Watching a video recently about Cuba's role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa, I was moved by the testimony of Pik Botha, once a high ranking official of white South Africa. He talked about how liberating it had been when South Africa was forced to attend talks prior to negotiating Nelson Mandela's release from prison and a change from a fascist, white supremacist regime to a democratic society. He said the feeling of not being hated and feared and treated like a leper everywhere he went was wonderful. The talks were held in Egypt and for the first time he felt welcomed by the Egyptians and took the opportunity to visit the pyramids and the Sphinx and to ride on a camel!

As a white supremacist representative of a repressive, much hated government, he'd never felt relaxed enough to do that. His words demonstrate what we all know in our hearts to be true: allowing freedom to others, brings freedom to ourselves. It is true that what one reads in the papers sometimes about the birthing pains of the New South Africa can bring sadness, alarm, and near despair. But I doubt that anyone in South Africa wishes to return to the old days of injustice and violence that scarred whites and blacks and coloreds so badly. Not just citizens of South Africa were demoralized, oppressed and discouraged by white South Africa's behavior, but citizens of the world. Israel helped keep the racist regime in power in South Africa, giving it arms and expertise, and still the people of the world, in our outrage at the damage done to defenseless people, rose to the challenge of setting them free. That is what is happening today in Palestine.

The world has found its voice and though the horror of what we are witnessing in places like Rwanda and Congo and Burma and Israel/Palestine threatens our very ability to speak, we will speak. And we will be heard.

Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, feminist and activist whose award-winning works have sold over ten million copies. These excerpts, reproduced with the author's permission, first appeared on her blog (www.alicewalker.info) as part of the essay "Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters "the horror" in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel."

Photo by Kim Kim.

Internet users paid to spread Israeli propaganda

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 22 July 2009

The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback and comment sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook may not be all that it seems.

Israel's foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel.

Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilized soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government's line on the Middle East conflict.

"To all intents and purposes the internet is a theater in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose," said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project.

The existence of an "internet warfare team" came to light when it was included in this year's foreign ministry budget. About $150,000 has been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year.

The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term "hasbara," officially translated as "public explanation" but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organizations and initiatives that promote Israel's image in print, on TV and online.

In an interview this month with the Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry's hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.

"Our people will not say: 'Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.' Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis," he said. "They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed."

Rona Kuperboim, a columnist for Ynet, Israel's most popular news website, denounced the initiative, saying it indicated that Israel had become a "thought-police state."

She added that "good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved."

Her column was greeted by several talkbackers asking how they could apply for a job with the foreign ministry's team.

The project is a formalization of public relations practices the ministry developed specifically for Israel's assault on Gaza in December and January.

"During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers," Shturman said.

"We gave them background material and hasbara material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the internet."

The Israeli army also had one of the most popular sites on the video-sharing site YouTube and regularly uploaded clips, although it was criticized by human rights groups for misleading viewers about what was shown in its footage.

Shturman said that during the war the ministry had concentrated its activities on European websites where audiences were more hostile to Israeli policy. High on its list of target sites for the new project would be BBC Online and Arabic websites, he added.

Elon Gilad, who heads the internet team, told Calcalist that many people had contacted the ministry offering their services during the Gaza attack. "People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the internet."

He suggested that there had been widespread government cooperation, with the ministry of absorption handing over contact details for hundreds of recent immigrants to Israel, who wrote pro-Israel material for websites in their native languages.

The new team is expected to increase the ministry's close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a program called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel.

Nasser Rego of Ilam, a group based in Nazareth that monitors the Israeli media, said Arab organizations in Israel were among those regularly targeted by hasbara groups for "character assassination." He was concerned the new team would try to make such work appear more professional and convincing.

"If these people are misrepresenting who they are, we can guess they won't worry too much about misrepresenting the groups and individuals they write about. Their aim, it's clear, will be to discredit those who stand for human rights and justice for the Palestinians."

When this reporter called the foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman, denied the existence of the internet team, though he admitted officials were stepping up exploitation of new media.

He declined to say which comments by Shturman or Gilad had been misrepresented by the Hebrew-language media, and said the ministry would not be taking any action over the reports.

Israel has developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to new media since it launched a "Brand Israel" campaign in 2005.

Market research persuaded officials that Israel should play up good news about business success, and scientific and medical breakthroughs involving Israelis.

Shturman said his staff would seek to use websites to improve "Israel's image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity."

David Saranga, head of public relations at Israel's consulate-general in New York, which has been leading the push for more upbeat messages about Israel, argued last week that Israel was at a disadvantage against pro-Palestinian advocacy.

"Unlike the Muslim world, which has hundreds of millions of supporters who have adopted the Palestinian narrative in order to slam Israel, the Jewish world numbers only 13 million," he wrote in Ynet.

Israel has become particularly concerned that support is ebbing among the younger generations in Europe and the United States.

In 2007 it emerged that the foreign ministry was behind a photo-shoot published in Maxim, a popular US men's magazine, in which female Israeli soldiers posed in swimsuits.

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books)
His website: www.jkcook.net.

European Court rules boycott of Israel illegal

Boycott is 'discriminatory and punishable' - EU Court judges
'interference with...freedom of expression needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' - Jerusalem Post
'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win' - Gandhi

European Court rules boycott of Israel illegal

Boycott is 'discriminatory and punishable' - EU Court judges

'interference with...freedom of expression needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' - Jerusalem Post

'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win' - Gandhi


The European Court of Human Rights has moved to criminalise support for Palestinian human rights. The EU has consistently rewarded an Israel sinking ever deeper into crime, with open ethnic cleansers as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. Now the judiciary joins the executive in aligning with Israel and criminalising those who support the call from Palestine for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions)against the bloody violence of the Israeli state. Hardly suprising when the British Government is involved in an equally bloody military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.Birds of a blood-stained feather flock together.


This ruling is a response to the growing support for BDS following Israel's most recent massacres in Gaza in January. It criminalises the entire Scottish, Irish and South African trade union movements.


It might soon become illegal to stand up to the violence of Israel with the non-violent weapon of boycott. The courts, then, will leave supporters of Palestine with no choice but to challenge these laws in every way possible, including civil disobedience and non-violent direct action. This ruling is designed to protect those carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine: according to the Jerusalem Post (see below), the European court of Human Rights 'ruled that interference with...freedom of expression was needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.'Producing goods on ethnically cleansed land while working to destroy Palestinian producers.


The growing BDS movement will not be deterred by this latest ruling. After all, the British Government defied the ICJ (International Court of Justice) 2004 ruling that Israel's apartheid Wall is illegal and must come down. The people of Gaza are being crushed by an open alliance of Israel, the US, the EU and the Arab regimes. They have no allies but a slowly awakening world civil society. They have paid many times over in mountains of corpses for their refusal to accept Israeli/Western plans for them to disappear. Compared to their heroism and suffering, the cost of standing up for human rights against the European Court of Human Rights remains very modest. Here in Scotland, we do not face Israeli death squads, the murder of our children, bulldozed homes, burning farms, prison walls, the kidnapping of our finest sons and daughters into dungeons, routine torture, expulsion or daily humiliation by a murderous soldiery.


Five Scottish PSC members will appear in court on Friday August 7 charged with 'racially aggravated' crime for disrupting a musical performance by official 'Cultural Ambassadors' of Israel when they came to Scotland last year. The charges are no more absurd than the defence of 'Israeli producers' by the European Court of Human Rights while Gaza lives with Israeli-induced hunger and misery. The five are privileged to stand alongside so many others fighting for justice, and with the people of Palestine whose resistance to Zionist crime has inspired the world, but has long been criminalised by Israel's Western allies.


We invite you to come to the Court on Chambers St, Edinburgh at 9.15am on Friday 7 August to show your:

- solidarity with Palestine

- support for the boycott of Israel

- opposition to 'interference with freedom of expression to protect Israeli producers'