The candlelight vigil for Gaza in San Francisco's Union Sqare on Sunday, Dec. 28th, 2009

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

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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! ”  

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.”   

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

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

 If you can support the work of the Rebuilding Alliance, please do: 

As the assault ended, we listened hard to our friends at the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative who said, “Start with soccer,” because soccer immediately draws neighborhoods together and helps to heal the trauma each person experienced.   So in August, despite the blockade, the Rebuilding Alliance successfully installed the first unit of a community center in time for the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament!  Then our small grant stretched to install lights out to the field, and to provide new sand, fully levelled!  And in September, Cindy and Craig Corrie and their delegation personally delivered soccer uniforms to youth league teams in the last week of the tournament.  Now we’ve received a small grant to get doors, wall cement, and windows to these communities in an innovative strategy to lift the blockade.  We have YOU, our committed supporters, to thank.

Ours is a holistic approach to peace-building, combining community-directed rebuilding with grassroots and diplomatic advocacy.   We stretch your every dollar to seed endeavors that make a difference and grow.  Trust builds with each rebuilding project and draws upon a grassroots network to keep the projects safe. 

Twice this past year, people at the State Department have told us we are amazingly effective.  The Secretary  of State sent her highest advisor to our kindergarten in Al Aqaba village.  Now we put them to the test as we work to lift new eviction orders and assure this village its right to issue building permits.  We’re using their case to raise concern about the steep rise in demolition orders overall in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Your financial support makes it possible for us to engage diplomatic assistance in this and all our projects, and shore up this assistance when you call your senators and representatives to ask them to use their influence on your behalf.

We ask for your help.  And yes, even in these challenging financial times, we ask you to stretch your budget to include the Rebuilding Alliance in your generosity.  We won’t take government funding; we proudly rely on grassroot donations.  Your support sustains us.  Truly, our accomplishments are the result of your gifts!
Thank you very much for your dedication to our work.
In Rebuilding Peace,

Donna Baranski-Walker        
Executive Director

P.S.  Here are the Dreams we will Make Real with your Support:

Forming a team to enter the Global Social Venture Competition
In 2003, our social venture plan to finance and build Palestinian neighborhoods was a semi-finalist.  We are now forming a team to develop a bold plan:  “Micro-Mortgaging: a World-Wide Investment Plan to Help War-Torn Neighborhoods Rebuild.”   Call me at 650 440-9667 if you would like to join our team.

Peace Builder Toolkit  –
The Rebuilding Alliance will present a hands-on workshop at M.I.T. to design and test a Peace Builder Toolkit for Congressional Districts using cloud computing (Salesforce.com), GovTrack, and Google maps.  We are inviting peace and justice organizations in Boston to join in a pilot project.

First Birthing Center in the Jordan River Valley -  
Al Aqaba dreams of converting its 2 room clinic into a birthing center to serve 50,000 Palestinians in the West Bank’s Area C. Our proposal won “Most Donors” on GlobalGiving in Great Britain.   The Rotary Clubs of Nazareth, Israel and Woodside / Portola Valley CA are offering a matching grant for phase 2.  The British Nasheed music group, Aashiq Al Rasul, is planning a charity concert at the Birmingham Town Center!   And we’ll need to press for diplomatic assistance to deliver the 1st ever ambulance with incubator.

Abir’s Garden:  A Safe Place to Grow
After a little girl was killed, Israeli and Palestinian Combatants for Peace asked our help to build playgrounds in her memory – we’ll start construction of the 2nd playground in January.  Let’s help them build 20 more — and make them safe using the Leahy Amendment and through recognition from Congress.

Soccer now, a Community Center soon, Open the Blockade and let’s build!
Next we design a Gym / Community Center using locally-available materials.   Of note: Our Rachel Corrie Rebuilding Campaign in Gaza has been halted by the siege for three years.  We’ve received a seed grant to work with an Israeli peace group in Sderot Israel to purchase doors, cement, and windows for Gaza and press forward with this new, local-benefit approach to ending the blockade.

Our Fair-trade Store
When people taste our organic olive oil, fair trade from Palestine the whole discourse changes.   Our store, with three delicious kinds of olive oil, za’atar, sun-dried couscous, and even olive oil soap, helps the Rebuilding Alliance pay our rent while providing a fair price to the farmers and a scholarship fund for their children.  Do you know a store near you who might like to carry Za’atar?   Call us!

Magic at our home office. 
We share a beautiful workspace and are delighted to fill our office with 5-10 volunteer interns each quarter.   They come from 5 countries + the US:  seasoned professionals, new graduates, and high school students working on rebuilding projects, legal research, contact congress initiatives, writing and social networking campaigns, and marketing our  organic olive oil and za’atar.  We dream of  hiring an operations manager and  renting more desk-space to grow.

Sincerely,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance 

Month Day, 2009
By Facsimile (their number here) or By Email (their email here)     

The Honorable Rep. or Senator (Your congressperson’s or senator’s title and name here)
House of Representatives or Senate of the United States
Washington, DC 20515

Al Aqaba is scrambling to file petitions in time. We need your help, in parallel to the village’s efforts to save homes and roadside.  During this Thanksgiving break, please plan to send an email both your Senators and Representative requesting they call the Israeli Embassy and the State Department on your behalf. Our State Department takes this very seriously and visits Al Aqaba often. Because of your calls to Congress through the years, many Senators and Congressmen care too. Just think about it for now — I’ll post a model letter soon for you to use. 

We take this very seriously. In the past 2 months there has been a significant escalation in the number of demolition orders.  According to Al Aqaba’s attorney Abduallah Hamad of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC).  Overloaded JLAC is filing petitions to save some 50 Palestinian neighborhoods of 7-50 homes each , in response to this huge number of demolition orders in Area C!

Please show you still believe in this peaceful village’s future by making a gift in the GG Challenge for Al Aqaba’s Birthing Center. Even a $10 contribution makes a big difference: http://www.globalgiving.com/projects/birthingcenter/

Every individual donation will help keep this village standing, so please share this message with your friends!
In Rebuilding Peace,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance
P.S.     Haj Sami Sadeq signed his urgent action letter yesterday as follows, “However, Al Aqaba Village still believes in peace and love for all peoples in the world. And invite them to stand beside them to protect their village from threat of demolition. In peace we believe, Haj Sami Sadeq”.  Please take heart, give now for Thanksgiving and for the children’s Eid al-Adha holiday, and then watch Al Aqaba’s “Peace Camp” video from this, their 3rd year participating in Pinwheels for Peace, spinning 1000 pinwheels on International Peace Day:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv4z99OEzX8

Please click on one, two, or all three of the Rebuilding Alliance projects on GlobalGiving, and make a donation.  The minimum amount is $10, but you can contribute more than that also.  Each unique donor counts, giving the Rebuilding Alliance another vote towards a $5000 grant!   And the more money you contribute, the more that GlobalGiving will match it!

How do you choose?   Each project has a ripple effect.   Small miracles happened this past summer through this competition.  Here’s what we did:

• Our Lights for Ramadan Soccer Tournament in Rafah won first place in GlobalGiving’s summer competition.  With that small grant and a match from a family fund, we stretched each dollar to make it count.  We installed the a community center office unit building at the Unity Club Soccer Field just in time for the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament!   We used the transformer in the office unit to install lights for the walkway out to the field,  and Cindy and Craig Corrie brought the soccer uniforms we collected.   With the funds remaining, our little grant also bought new sand, and paid to level the playing field.  Just three weeks ago, the UN Relief and Works Agency came through on their promise to clear the rubble around field to make room for a playground and someday a gym for girls and women, and a permanent community center.   With your new donation, we’ll finish installing lights for the field so whole community can come out at night to watch soccer.    The Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative believes this to be a critical way to help their Ybnah Camp community recover from trauma, tangibly and immediately, as we expand advocacy and diplomatic intervention to lift the blockade.  
• About Abir’s Garden, we are so close to reaching our goal and getting this project underway!  Does it matter?  Yes!  A Sabeel delegate from the U.S. told me she was surrounded by little girls when she visited the first Abir’s Garden playground in Anata!   Here at the Rebuilding Alliance a remarkable volunteer team of interns is working with human rights experts worldwide to make the Abir’s Garden playgrounds safe, by invoking the Leahy Amendment.  Please help us help Combatants for Peace build the next playground — and the next and the next.  Even Senator Kerry wants to get involved with this — C4P can get started as soon as we reach our funding goal!  Please support their important work and open this gentle, critical path to end the Occupation.
• Our newest project, the First Palestinian Birthing Center in the Jordan River Valley, will be a key accomplishment in Area C, serving 50,000 people in this north/central West Bank area and helping assure Palestinian moms safe childbirth without crossing checkpoints.   This project also will also provide one of the only ambulances in Area C and include a portable incubator.   The Rebuilding Alliance was recently complimented by staff at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem who said, “You are very effective!”  With this project we continue to press forward Al Aqaba Village’s right to plan its future on the land it owns — at a time when Israeli officials have threaten permanent take-over of the Jordan River Valley.

Our mission is to help war-torn communities rebuild — and also to make them safe.   Your aid makes a difference and so do your numbers in advocacy.  Please give what you can!

In Rebuilding Peace,

Donna Baranski-Walker
Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance

P.S. Right now, our projects are way at the bottom of the Global Giving Leaderboard so we really need your help – and your friends too.   To win the “Most Donors” award of $5000, we’ll need more than 200 unique donors.  To win another $5000 for the “Most Donated”, we must raise over $25,000 for any one project – we’ve never done anything like that before.  Please note that GG will match up to $500 of your donation.  Please Give Now and make this a groundswell.