A Bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
A good friend of ours, Tristan Anderson (US Citizen) was critically injured and is in intensive care. Eyewitnesses said the Israeli soldiers were not in any danger when they fired new kinds of projectiles and other weaponry. Tristan was actually to the side and was hit while standing and observing the attack by the Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian and International nonviolent and unarmed demonstrators. So far in the last 9 years over 6000 Palestinians and several Internationals were murdered by Israeli occupation forces (including a 23 year old American student Rachel Corrie). Of course none of the killers will be brought to justice because they are occupation soldiers “doing their duty” (to colonize, murder and oppress). This week an Israeli court acquitted an Israeli French settler after he repeatedly stabbed a Palestinian taxi driver (24 y.o. Tayseer Karaki) to death. The court claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity despite the fact that even Israeli psychiatry experts who examined him after the incident ruled him sane and fit for trial. None of the 12-13,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails could claim the insanity defense because after 60 years of colonial occupation, apartheid and slavery and massacres, we are all very sane!
Action: Let us test if the new US State Department is more open to human rights than the old fascist state Department. Email them your thoughts. This link will take you to the state Department comment page
http://tinyurl.com/c88y8d
Irony of the week:
Moshe Katsav, the Israeli ex-president who is now charged with rape once said:
"There is a huge gap between us and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."
(Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001)
He is not the first or last Zionist leader to make racist statements about Palestinians. We have thus seen claims ranging from Palestinians hate Jews ("more than they love their own children") to describing us as "nonexistant" or as "cockroaches" or "crocodiles" or "beasts". This is not unusual for colonial powers (native Americans for example were described in similar terms). It is also interesting in many cases for racist to project their actions and psychological ills (racism, bigotry, lack of moral fibers) on their victims. Hence AFTER Palestinians were literally pushed into the sea (ending up in refugee camps in Gaza and Lebanon etc), we sayw the devopment of the propaganda that we are the ones who wanted to "push Jews into the sea". And now, today we see calculated 101 ways of transferring Palestinians out of Jerusalem and make it a Jewish city. It is just another step in transforming a multiethnic multireligious society to a racist Zionist construct that contradicts all norms of humanity (including international law).
The prophetic voice of the Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind:
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.....And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart...." Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (November 1938)
Action is the best antidote to despair. Action is the best tool for a healthy living in unjust circumstances
Action reminder: Use the excellent series of articles which appeared in the Lancet (jurnal read by hundreds of thousands of physicians around the world) on health in the occupied Palestinian territories. Send articles to media, journalists, politicians, doctors, healthcare professionals and demand we treat Israel like we treated apartheid South Africa (with boycotts, divestments and sanctions)
http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-in-the-occupied- palestinian-territory
(you may need to register free to access the papers first time)
BTW, there was a conference Thursday at Birzeit University with many of the authors of this series of articles and some of the editors including the Lancet Editor. It was wonderful.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
http://qumsiyeh.org
Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer. Rabindranth Tagore
Join us in Palestine for the Palestine Summer Celebration
http://www.sirajcenter.org/
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