Rebuilding Alliance

“You are a beacon to us all” – that is what Roger Waters of Pink Floyd said in his message of solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March.   He made me think about the many colleagues in Gaza and in Israel who are my beacons — so I picked-up the phone to ask their thoughts about the march, the New Year, and how they hold on to hope. 

Here are comments from just a few of my “beacons”:  Dr. Eyad El Sarraj in Gaza City, Eric Yellin in S’derot, Dr. Samir Nasrallah in Rafah, Shmuel Groag in Jerusalem, Adnan in Rafah, Khaled Nasrallah in Rafah, and Roni Segoly in hmm, West Jerusalem and Bassam Aramin in East Jerusalem.   I enclose the English translation of a speech given by Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard to Combatants for Peace last week, entitled, Truth Cast in Lead, and close the newsletter with  Bassam Aramin’s short holiday message.

As thousands take to the streets in solidarity marches around the world today, may their words warm your heart, provide insight, and give you encouragement.  

In rebuilding peace,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance

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 Dr. Eyad El Saraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Programme, in Gaza City, Gaza:

Very good and noble idea to have people to come to Gaza to express their feelings and demonstrate.  I am not very happy with Egyptian authorities in not allowing them to come.  I hope that people especially in America will consider action against the siege because it is essentially an American policy.

But this is not about hope or hopelessness – it is a question of duty.  Since no one can come here, we should send a delegation of Gazans representing the people of Gaza to the US to meet with President Obama and Congress.    I hope this can happen in February – let’s make it happen.

Happy New Year to you and thank you to all of our friends.

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Eric Yellin, co-founder of Other Voice – Sderot,  in S’derot, Israel:

“The importance of the Gaza Freedom March is in the power of people from all around the world to unite for the purpose of bringing world attention to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza trapped in the largest prison in the world stripped of their rights and freedom.

The importance of the march is in breaking the walls of indifference in the world and in Israel.

The importance of the march is in its call to all those responsible, to end the senseless collective punishment caused by the ongoing siege on Gaza, rebuild its ruins, and promise a better and more humane future to its citizens.

For Other Voice – People from Sderot and nearby communities around Gaza, the march signifies all the above and yet more:

• It signifies a march towards our neighbors whom we wish to meet some day soon as equals without fear and prejudice.
• It signifies our understanding that we, maybe more than anyone else, must understand the traumatizing effect that the war and fear have created. We who only now start to feel safe and in a process of recovery, look across the border at our neighbors in Gaza who cannot recover, rebuild their homes and live the normal life they deserve.
• The march for us is not only a gesture of empathy, but a recognition of our own responsibility as humans and neighbors. 

Other Voice works daily to plant seeds of human hope by tearing down the walls of mutual hate and fear.  Now is time for leaders on both sides and throughout the world to do the same.”

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Dr. Samir Nasrallah, in Rafah, Gaza.  He is the pharmacist whose family Rachel Corrie sought to safeguard when she stood before the bulldozer that threatened their duplex home in Rafah, Gaza in 2003:

“Happy New Year to you and to friends around the world. 

Insh’Allah –  Of course we are under siege now three years.  We hope to open the border, to visit our family, to visit my father and my mother.  We hope for the peace – it is the main important thing, the peace between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people, no war.  No war next year, no war in the future. Mostly now we want to open the border, we want to be free.”

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 Shmuel Groag, in Jerusalem.  He is the co-founder of the Israeli human rights group, BIMKOM: Planners for Planning Rights.

“I am trying to be optimistic.  I really hope we will see a change – even though it is hard to believe.  I am always optimistic because we really don’t know anything about how things are run, and therefore change can come even though we cannot predict the way it occurs nor exact time to expect it. 

I often give the example of Haj Sami Sadek, as a person making a big change in his own region, really able to move people to help — and governments to help, and policy-makers too.   I hope we will have more such examples everywhere.

People around the world are paying attention now.  BIMKOM is seeing more and more interest in our work.   More attention – yes, even while there is more destruction with the demolitions of Palestinian homes and the settlement expansion.   As more and more people gain a deeper understanding of what is happening and why this is unacceptable, I hope it will impact policy.
The Israeli public, overall, is quiet about the one year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead.   As for me personally, I will be part of the march on Saturday in Tel Aviv.  I wish you and your family a Happy New Year.”

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 Adnan in Rafah, Gaza.  He is the cofounder of the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative who helped clear rubble to make the “Unity Club Soccer Field” The Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative organizes the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament to bring everyone together to play:

“In general, just think of the people of Gaza in their daily life… free movement, the ability to contact with people…. Dbw note:  phone line cut off.   It took another hour and many tries to re-establish a connection

“First, people need to travel, to visit their families, to go to hospital, movement to the West Bank, or Israel, or Egypt for trade.  It is all very important.

Second, there’s a lack of cement.  Israel is not allowing cement to come into Gaza, to rebuild – and people really need a way to repair and rebuild their homes.

We are hopeful that the international community will make this next year the last year of the siege…  It is not fair for innocent people to suffer this.  There is no use imposing this siege on civilians to extract something from the current regime.  It is not fair, it should not happen.

At our Unity Club Soccer Field, young people are playing soccer on a daily basis.  Next we will install a playground, and hope to build a gym someday for women’s sports.   We invite the Gaza Freedom Marchers, here and around the world, to visit us! ”  

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Khaled Nasrallah, accountant and social worker for UNRWA, in Rafah, Gaza.  Khaled and his wife Samah along with their baby Sama, came to the U.S. to join Cindy and Craig Corrie on a nationwide speaking tour organized by the Rebuilding Alliance.   Khaled is Dr. Samir’s brother and he and his family were in their upstairs flat of their duplex home when Rachel Corrie stood before the bulldozer that threatened it.

DBW Note:  when I called, little Sama picked up the phone. 
“Khaled:   Sama just came from school – she received a new schoolbag and pencils at the kindergarten, donated by someone in the world, and she is delighted!  I am on vacation today and tomorrow.  

I hear about the Gaza Freedom March in Egypt and the Galloway convoy. 

May I cheer you with another idea?  On January 10^th our Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative committee will make a gallery of art about ending the siege, a gallery of drawings made by artists throughout the Gaza Strip.   We’ll hold our exhibition in Rafah, Gaza and we hope one of the British Ministers of Parliament will be here to open the show.  One location in Rafah,  many artists.    Our “Break the Siege” exhibition will use art and human feelings to reflect the situation here.  Maybe someone will want to print their work into a calendar to sell throughout the world.  Maybe in this way, art will break the siege in a peaceful way.

Please say hello to your family and all the people we visited and stayed with during our trip to the U.S.”   

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Roni Segoli in Jerusalem.  He is the Israeli Coordinator for Combatants for Peace
“I can’t talk right now but I need to tell you that last Sunday, on the memory day for the one year anniversary, Israeli Combantants for Peace gathered together in Tel Aviv for a special commemoration. Because we held this in Tel Aviv, this gathering was mostly the Israeli group.   The space was filled, it was an important time for us – it meant a lot to have this moment of reflection. For those of you who speak Hebrew, please take a look at this short video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5pej9MEKN4

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Michael Sfard, Senior Attorney for the Israeli group, Yesh Din: Volunteers for Human Rights
DBW Note:  When I called, Michael Sfard explained that in two minutes he would be starting his presentation before a conference of the Israeli Bar and asked me to call him tomorrow.    So instead of Michael Sfard’s comments for the New Year, here is the English translation of his presentation at the Combatants for Peace gathering last week Sunday:

Truth Cast in Lead
by Michael Sfard, esq., translated by Sol Salbe

Cast Lead was our second war of independence. In the first, we liberated ourselves from two thousand years of living under the control of others. In the second, we liberated ourselves from the ropes of Jewish heritage and morality that have been binding us for years.

A year has passed, just a year, but we can already tell that this one was different. This was not another “Rainbow”, “Summer Rain” or “Days of Penitence” – the Israeli Defence Force’s operations in recent years in Gaza. Perhaps the officer in charge of the code names has been replaced, or maybe we ran out of pastoral names. But at any rate, our last ferocious attack on Gaza was given a label that carried a violent connotation: “Cast Lead”. In retrospect, that operation marks a crucial turning point in the Israeli society’s value system.

There, in that besieged strip of land, we revealed the crystal-clear truth to ourselves, unadorned and free of shame. We once escaped the truth by sweeping it under the carpet. We employed self-deception which got more sophisticated from war to war and from military operation to military operation. But, like the man who has dropped political correctness and furiously sends his wife to the kitchen, we too have come out of the closet. This is what we are – and we are proud of it!

During Cast Lead we rained bombs for three weeks on one of the most densely populated civilian regions in the world. We pointed our weapons at clear-cut civilian targets, we made use of phosphorus, we deliberately and systematically destroyed thousands of homes and public buildings. We did it all while maintaining a tight siege that prevented civilians from escaping from the combat zone.

We did not set up temporary refugee camps for civilians. We did not arrange for a humanitarian evacuation corridor. We did not spare the hospitals, the food storage warehouses or even the UN welfare organisations. We did not express any sham regret. We did not claim that these were tragic mistakes and we even avoided taking the wounded children to hospitals in Israel.

The outcome is frightening: about 1400 killed, more than half of whom did not take part in the fighting and among whom there were 320 children and 120 women (B’Tselem figures) In three weeks we killed more Palestinians than in the whole of the first Intifada and all the violent incidents in the Occupied Territories till the beginning of the second Intifada combined, that is from 1987 to 2000.

The denizens of Gaza, whom we imprisoned earlier in a corral set up for them, discovered that the wardens had set fire to the jail and thrown the key out of the window. We did not pretend to hold ourselves up to the standards we believe in; nor did we pay lip service to them.

Government offices? No problem. They are officially legitimate targets for attack. So what if the people working there are civilians? What difference does it make that they are used to run civil life: transport, agriculture and welfare for 1.5 million human beings?

A collective liquidation of over a hundred police cadets in the middle of their graduation ceremony? Absolutely – they are Palestinians in uniform; that will do.

The firing of white phosphorus, which keeps on burning for days after it is discharged, on alleys where kids are playing? We have cast-iron stomachs; we can digest any poison easily. Our hearts are made of cold steel. We don’t take pity on anyone.

Cast Lead was our second war of independence. In the first, we liberated ourselves from two thousand years of living under the control of others. In the second, we liberated ourselves from the ropes of Jewish heritage and morality that have been binding us for years. We no longer have to comply with the prohibition of killing the righteous with the wicked. We are exempted from remembering the lessons of being an occupied people without rights. The unavoidable insights of those who have been silenced have been erased and substituted with attitudes reserved for sub-humans.

In the past, we have transgressed some of the moral imperatives, but then we made sure not to reveal that to ourselves. On this occasion, we decided that the time for pretence was over. We have told enough lies to the world and ourselves. From now on we tell the truth: the Jewish state is of the opinion that the laws of war need amending in a way that reduces the risk to combatants, even if this means an increased risk to civilians. The Jewish state believes that in this new kind of war it is permitted, indeed necessary, to bombard power stations that provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of civilians. It is permitted to destroy the food-supply infrastructure and obliterate schools and mosques. And the Jewish state will not tolerate any criticism, either from within or from without.

The new freedom to act was also applied against Israeli oppositional voices. In an unprecedented move, the Israeli Police arrested hundreds of demonstrators against the war. The IDF spokesperson, an officer in uniform, orchestrated a campaign of vilification and delegitimisation against organisations that dared criticise the military’s activities. The Foreign Minster laboured to dry up such organisations’ sources of finance. Moral decay devoured everyone: the commanders who ordered, the fighters who carried out the orders, the lawyers who certified it legal, the academics who kept mum and the press that fanned the flames of war and was so devoted to the IDF spokesperson that it became a unit in a brigade under his command.

These processes have a price. They lead to a loss of faith in Israeli society’s ability to find strength within itself to return to the values upon which it was created. They generate external pressure, international investigations, prosecutions abroad, boycotts and sanctions. All these now have a legal moral basis upon which to blossom. And we, who are so addicted the freedom of having a light finger on the trigger, do not even consider quitting the habit.

Translated by Sol Salbe. Hebrew original: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3824763,00.html

 

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From Bassam Aramin in East Jerusalem.  He is the Palestinian co-founder of Combatants for Peace and also the
executive director of the Al Quds Center for Democracy and Diplomacy.   His family lost their daughter, Abir, when she was killed by a soldier’s rubber-coated steel bullet in 2007.

“wish you happy new year, happy 2010, happy christmas.  live your day, hope for tomorrow, dont stop hoping for better life.”
– Bassam Aramin

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