The Virtual Peace Garden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, Feb. 14, 2-5 PM 

Fellowship of Reconciliation

521 No. Broadway, Nyack

845-358-4601 ext. 32

contact: Alan Levin, alevin@SacredRiverHealing.org 

 

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

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

 

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this message. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where does the answer lie?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Please forward widely and continue to spread the word.

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

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

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

Register for the free webinar now.

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

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

A few days ago I attended the screening of No More Smoke Signals, a film by the Swiss filmmaker, Fanny Brauning, and the discussion that followed with Native American musician and activist, Tiokasin Ghosthorse. Shown at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack, NY, the documentary of life on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota focused on the high energy of KILI Radio, the information hub connecting American Indian people across hundreds of miles. KILI radio, (Kili means “awesome” to the Lakota), broadcasts traditional and contemporary music and the personal, social, and political tragedies and celebrations of the people. The title derives from an almost toothless Indian gazing at the radio tower and commenting that we need radio because there’s “no more smoke signals”.

The film flashes back and forth, with clips of the lives of the people on the reservation and documentary footage of Native American activism, especially focusing on the shootout between the FBI and American Indian Movement (AIM) activists in 1975 at Pine Ridge which led to the imprisonment of Leonard Peltier, who continues to be held over 30 years in Leavenworth. The anger and mistrust many on the reservation feel towards white America was clear in the documentary. Tiokasin Ghosthorse, in leading the discussion following the film, made clear that the many generations of prejudice and mistreatment American Indians have endured continues to this day. As an activist and host of Pacifica Radio’s First Voices Indigenous Radio, Tiokasin could site the long history and continuing process of the breaking of treaties whenever financial interests make those treaties inconvenient to corporate or government desires for gold, uranium, coal or dumping sites.

The low-budget documentary has won numerous awards in Europe, where apparently the plight of Native American people is more widely appreciated than here in the U.S. Here, the romantic idealization of mythic Indians combines with racist stereotypes of actual Indian people to keep the reality of poverty on reservations at a safe distance. Tiokasin spoke of this confused notion of the Indian in the white American psyche and how destructive it is as even Indian people internalize it.

The experience and discussion triggered some thoughts about another film with some related themes, the 300-million-dollar blockbuster Avatar. I came away from this incredibly awesome 3-D IMAX screening happy with not only the visual feast, but the fact that Hollywood has given us such a beautiful and powerful mythic portrayal of the contemporary struggle to save the natural world and honor indigenous, shamanic wisdom under threat of being destroyed by corporate/military/technological forces. My take is that Avatar offers an evolution of the Star Wars saga myth that infused an earlier generation with a way of understanding the hero's journey. Avatar brings in a greater sense of our contemporary struggle regarding the life of the planet and the movement towards more earth and nature focused spirituality.

But I did have a nagging feeling which was deepened by the “Smoke Signals” film and discussion. In Avatar, the alien race, Na’avi, are giant beings who appear as collages of various native people of our planet Earth. They are attuned to the natural world of the magical plants and animals and have the ability to merge with their consciousness. They are aware of the living intelligence of the planet on which they live. Fine. Unfortunately, even their most intuitive shaman seem incapable of seeing through the lies and duplicity of the human agent sent to spy on them for corporate and military groups seeking the minerals in their land. Fortunately, our hero falls in love with one of them, crosses over to their ways and leads them into battle to save them and their planet.

The beauty and relevance of the eco-sensitive myth of the story is unfortunately undermined by reinforcing the myth of “dominant-race superiority”. Like Tarzan, the privileged European who upon being dropped into Africa, quickly becomes the King of the Jungle, the hero in Avatar, after a short training period in the ways of the Na’avi, becomes better at their ways than any of them! Is it really true that people just won’t go to these movies unless that is the way the story unfolds?

I do think Avatar is a great film and worth seeing. But, I want to make a screenplay suggestion to the next great filmmaker who wants to demonstrate the beauty and wisdom of native cultures and wants to support them in their efforts to not be destroyed by “us”. Yes, have the hero/heroine fall in love with a member of the mythic “other”; have him or her learn their ways and the magic of their wisdom teachings. But NO, don’t have him become their Master of their own teachings. Let him get blessed and go back and teach his own people. Or, have her join with the tribe and be part of their efforts, in struggling against the aggression.

Maybe it’s too much to ask to have a film challenge all the destructive myths in modern Western Civilization, but this one idea (of the great white savior) has been hanging on too long. This is not about political correctness.  It is a distorted prejudice about human intelligence that keeps us from each other. The indigenous peoples of the Earth are reaching out to us, calling on us to stop destroying not only them, but the life support systems on which we all depend. Let us learn humbly, with them, how to integrate our knowledge and theirs for a better world.

In peace,

Alan Levin

Check out First Voices Indigenous Radio for more information about Tiokasin Ghosthorse and his work as musician, activist and teacher.

Changing Winds was directed by Christine Rose, who also spoke at the FOR film screening. Christine has devoted her time and energies to projects that bring supplies to and aid to the children of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Find out how you can help through the Changing Winds web site.

For a deeper look into the significance and meanings of Avatar, see the blog of Ralph Metzner, visionary explorer, writer, and teacher, who has learned respectfully from the shamans and brings it to his people, us.

Last week in Cairo, dozens of international peace activists concluded a several-day hunger strike for the people of Gaza. Today in Washington, more than 100 peacemakers begin an 11-day hunger strike for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This "Fast for Justice" calls on President Obama to live up to his pledge to close the prison within one year of his installation as the 44th U.S. president -- in other words, within the next two weeks! Support their action by fasting for one meal or one day -- and by contacting the White House to urge the president to close Guantanamo and release those prisoners who have not been charged with a crime.

Operation Cast Lead was a massacre filled with thousands of heartbreaking stories. Each of the 1,400 persons killed represents an entire world. Yes, it is also a war crime to fire kassam rockets into Israel with the intention to kill civilians. Over 2,000 rockets and 1,600 mortar shells were fired into Israel in 2008 alone. Some among the Palestinian population use armed force to resist Israeli's military occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. According to international law, armed resistance against illegal occupation can be considered a just cause, as long as the rules of war are observed. However, as a person committed to nonviolence, I view the use of militarism by states or non-state actors to ensure security or resist occupation as a self-defeating strategy that promotes more violence and suffering and does not, in the end, result in well-being or peace for beleaguered populations. However, for those who believe in the use of military force as a viable option, Israel's response to kassam attacks went far beyond legal and ethical boundaries. The much maligned Goldstone Report proved beyond reasonable doubt that Israel intentionally targeted civilians and civilian institutions with deadly weapons. This is nothing new.

Operation Cast Lead made clear that the 60-year Israeli military siege of the people of Palestine has increased in brutality and ferocity. Sixty years of evidence that includes eye-witness reports, analysis of video, satellite and photographic images, medical reports, forensic analysis of weapons and ammunition remnants, and the written observations and testimony of thousands of witnesses from Palestine, Israel, and the international community, reveal a continual pattern of continuous assault that has very little to do with Israel's claim of "security." Rather, the end game is creating "facts on the ground" that establish a Jewish state from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea which limits Palestinians to 20% of the national population.

Israel employs forced displacement, blockade, air strike, land mines, rubber bullets, white phosphorous, dime bombs, torture, beating and sexual humiliation, arbitrary arrest and administrative detention of minors and adults, water and land theft, Jewish-only roads, hundreds of military checkpoints, security fences, nightly incursions, human shields, collaborators, deportation, permit systems, denial of access to economic opportunity, health care, culture and education, targeting of sewage and electricity plants and water installations, uprooting of thousands of trees and the destruction of thousands of homes to force the remaining Palestinian population into small enclosed areas that can only be described as open-air prisons. Ariel Sharon described these enclaves designated as the future Palestinian state as "bantustans."

In short, all these tactics amount to what is considered the crime of apartheid for the sake of creating a state that awards national and civil privileges based on Jewish identity while confining the excess non-Jewish population to their own "homeland." This is the ugly truth that is so hard for Jewish people and millions of so-called Christian Zionists to face. Anyone who spends a day in Palestinian territories sees this truth immediately. The so-called two-state solution which is based on this vision of reality is hardly viable or legal. People will not and cannot endure oppression forever. Our own history should teach us this lesson. The question is, how does an oppressed people change the situation on the ground and open history to new possibilities.

Those who both decry Palestinian armed resistance and the option of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) can't have it both ways. If one describes the  the behavior of Israel as falling into the category of the crime of apartheid, BDS is the logical and ethical nonviolent response. Forty years of dialogue and negotiation with Israelis and Jews clearly has not worked to advance the cause of self-determination for Palestinians. The situation on the ground is far worse than ever before. The two-state solution and all the peace plans and road maps have been undermined by the systematic effort to enclose Palestinians in bantustans and deny them civil and national rights. In this context, further efforts at dialogue only benefit those with privilege, unless they are accompanied by strategies of resistance to the systematic inequality Palestinians face on a daily basis.

While J Street and associated partners are a much appreciated alternative voice within the Jewish community to the AIPAC machine, they have thus far failed to address the concerns nor partner with Palestinians in their own struggle for human and equal rights. As Jews, we have to recognize that we are not going to be the ones who determine the direction of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle for freedom. What we can and should do is find ways of acting in solidarity with that struggle by joining the Palestinian-initiated international effort to use boycott, divestment, and sanctions to force Israel to comply with international law and end the siege of Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine. We can also support those within Israel who are resisting the oppressive actions of their own state.

We cannot truly work on this issue without understanding the meaning of resistance in our lives. For Jews, I believe resistance requires serious study and practice of the Torah of Nonviolence. Nonviolence is the only way forward. Violence will destroy our beautiful tradition. By struggling in solidarity with those who oppose militarism and support boycott, divestment, and sanctions we are also renewing the most sacred elements of our tradition that require us to protest in the street, pursue justice and peace, and avoid violence. It is not an easy road.

Boycott is a strategy capable of being used for good and for bad. In this case, I believe that BDS is the only viable nonviolent method that can impact "facts on the ground." All of us who love freedom, justice, and peace -- all of us who love the people of Israel and the people of Palestine -- have a profound responsibility to act in alignment with the people who are the actual victims in this situation. That is why I went to Cairo and created the Interfaith Gaza Satyagraha as an affinity group within the Gaza Freedom March. The call to break the siege has been joined with the call for boycott.

As the only liberal rabbi present, I was honored to stand with hundreds of other activists who spoke to me of their commitment to oppose anti-Semitism wherever it emerged. I spent ten days planning actions, protesting in the streets, talking about next steps, networking and envisioning. At one point, American Jews organized a protest in front of the Israeli embassy, which is fifteen stories above the street and visible only by the familiar blue and white flag. I was asked to lead a Sabbath service. Jews, Muslims, Christians; Egyptians and internationals of all persuasions stood round a simple kiddish cup, Egyptian flat bread, and candles. I invited participants to envision a world where everyone could find a seat at the table and eat, unafraid. We sang and prayed in Hebrew in public and I saw tears flow. Standing among the crowd was a man with a Palestinian father and a Sephardic Israeli mother. He wept in joy because, for one instant, the worlds of conflict stretching across the borders of his soul could dissolve in a single vision of unification and peace. So may it be for all of us, Palestinian and Jew, living together on the same land in recognition of our common love for place and each other.

Only a "solution" which ensures "the right to exist" and universal human rights of all people living on the historic land of Israel/Palestine will suffice. The children of the future will see the world very differently than those of us living now. They will face new challenges and inherit a new sense of globalism which hopefully strengthens the religious, cultural, and national heritage of both Palestinians and Israelis in a renewed culture of peace. It is up to us to prepare the way.

When I traveled to Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, I hoped to enter Gaza to contribute toward ending the siege and preventing future air assaults and invasions, such as the 22-day Operation Cast Lead that Israel launched against Gaza at the close of 2008.

I was also keenly looking forward to meeting a young Gazan who had greatly assisted my co-workers on a Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation to Gaza during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. At considerable risk to himself, this young man met members of Voices at the border, arranged housing, translated, and assisted in bearing witness to the devastation caused by the Israeli military assault. Due to the callousness of the Egyptian authorities, I was not able to meet this man or deliver much needed material aid to his community. Early this morning, my co-workers and I received an email from our friend in Gaza, saying that the Israeli military is once again bombing near the Rafah border. One Palestinian was killed and others were injured.

Given Israel’s continuing siege and bombardment of Gaza, I am eager to learn lessons from our experience in the Gaza Freedom March, regroup, and continue in the struggle to end the siege and occupation. Here are several of the lessons which I think are most important to communicate to the wider U.S. public.

The first is that the United States and Egyptian governments have been actively colluding with the Israeli government to maintain the siege of Gaza. All three are working together and they do not plan to stop imposing collective punishment on Gazans any time soon. This punishment is carried out through forbidding Gazans to exchange goods or travel outside of Gaza. What’s more, all three governments are complicit in promulgating Israel’s greater program of apartheid and displacement of the Palestinians. The second lesson is that the worldwide movement in solidarity with Palestine is alive and growing. The movement is at a critical point where we must apply pressure on all three governments through a variety of nonviolent tactics.

In reference to the complicity of the U.S., Israeli, and Egyptian governments, I do not use the word apartheid lightly. I think this word sometimes polarizes people and causes them to self-censor information about the issue being discussed. That being said, I think that the broader international community nevertheless bears responsibility to recognize the plight of the Palestinian people and work to end Israel’s oppression. Throughout the Gaza Freedom March presence in Cairo, our sisters and brothers from the South African delegation dynamically articulated the connections between injuries that indigenous Africans suffered under the white supremacist regime in Pretoria and the inequalities that Palestinians now face at the hands of the Israeli government.

The delegation informed us that just as blacks in South Africa were forced to live in Bantustans and provide cheap labor for industry controlled by whites, so the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are caged in smaller and smaller areas controlled by Israeli military checkpoints. The economic livelihood of the Palestinians is reliant upon free movement through these checkpoints and Israel often only grants access for Palestinians when it is financially useful for Israel. Similar to the situation in South Africa, Israel controls all the beneficial natural resources and siphons the productivity and profit of the resources away from the people of Palestine.

The state of Israel has not only exploited Palestinian labor, it has often attempted to forcibly relocate Palestinians in its quest to annex Palestinian lands. Palestinian resistance and international public opinion have thwarted Israel from successfully achieving its goal to appropriate all of Palestine. But given Israel’s persistent thrusts for expansion and defense of illegal settlements, most Palestinians doubt Israel’s commitment to an actual “peace process.”

When analyzing the history of the conflict, The Israeli government’s practice of apartheid and displacement of Palestinians seems almost too sinister to be true. But to further understand the situation, U.S. citizens might look to an analogy from our own history. The indigenous people of North America were first considered by colonizers to have great potential as slaves, but when the Europeans realized that the Native American tribes were not easily subjugated, they moved swiftly into a national policy of relocation and, at times, annihilation. Our supposed national heroes like Andrew Jackson practiced ethnic cleansing with a belief that they acted in the name of God and country. When seen in this light, the ideologies of Manifest Destiny and Zionism look like two sides of the same coin. For the United States, the endless “peace process” of double-crossing treaties was not considered complete until the indigenous peoples were either banished to a reservation, safely out of sight and out of mind, or killed outright.

Many people who study and discuss issues related to Palestine are aware of the South African and North American analogies, but the general public in the United States doesn’t seem to notice that we are subsidizing these bloody policies with 3.5 billion dollars of military aid per year. Just last year, the Israeli government killed approximately 1,400 Palestinians in one campaign waged against Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, using weapons supplied by the United States. And according to the U.N. Humanitarian Monitor, food insecurity in Gaza this year has spiked to over 60 percent. So it’s likely that more Gazans have died as a result of the heightened blockade that has been imposed by Israel and Egypt since the attack. Now Egypt and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers are building a massive underground metal wall to prevent Palestinian access to tunnels under the Rafah border with Egypt, a last resort for importing much needed aid and commodities.

The complicity of these major world powers became very clear to those of us who participated in the Gaza Freedom March. The Egyptian government, most certainly with an arm twisted by the Israeli and U.S. governments, did not welcome us into their country as they initially indicated they would. (Next to Israel, Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid. So maybe this factored into their decision.) Within one week of the march’s scheduled start date, Egyptian authorities notified us not to come. When we arrived anyway, we were frequently detained. Our meetings were spied on and infiltrated. The vast majority of us were denied entry to Gaza. When we sought support at the U.S. Embassy, Egyptian police forcibly corralled us into a penned area outside the Embassy. U.S. officials in the embassy reiterated that we should not have come to march in solidarity with the Palestinians. When we decided to march in spite of this, we were met with riot cops, barricades, and scores of secret police. Many of us were assaulted and a few suffered serious injuries.

This treatment was only a small taste of the Palestinian experience. The daily suffering caused by the separation of Palestinian families was highlighted by the drama of having persons from the Palestinian Diaspora with us on the march. Because of the siege, many of these Palestinian marchers, now relocated to other countries, had been separated from their families for great lengths of time and others had not even been able to meet their relatives living in Palestine. It was heart-wrenching to see.

Additionally, Palestinian activists in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem risk indefinite incarceration for organizing nonviolent demonstrations and resistance activities. Many are arrested on trumped charges, like Abdallah Abu Rahmah, an organizer for the “Stop the Wall” campaign.  Abdallah has been incarcerated and charged with weapons possession for collecting used tear gas canisters shot at him by the Israeli Defense Forces during a peaceful protest. Many others like Mohammad Othman have been held for months without charges being brought at all. Mohammad was arrested while returning from addressing the Norwegian national pension fund about divestment from Elbit Systems, a major Israeli military contractor. Beyond detentions, Palestinians regularly face extra-judicial killings from air strikes, similar to last night’s attacks near the Rafah border, carried out by the Israeli Air Force.

The Gaza Freedom March also gave us a sense of the Egyptian political experience. It’s quite farcical for the United States and Israel to talk of advancing human rights in the region when they are allied with Hosni Mubarack’s regime in Egypt. We witnessed first-hand how the Egyptian government treats freedom of speech and assembly, especially when it comes to Egyptian citizens. Many Egyptian activists joined us in our demonstrations and they were singled out by plain-clothes police officers and forcefully made to leave. Often times they were followed home.

On one occasion, a young Egyptian-Palestinian woman was pulled out of our meeting by a senior officer who sent an undercover policeman after her. We formed a group to accompany her and made sure she made it home safely and without harassment. Every Egyptian activist I spoke with assured us if that had it not been for the international presence and attention around the Gaza Freedom March, they would have immediately been arrested, taken to a secured center, and likely tortured for publicly demonstrating in support of Palestine. Still, Egyptians were eager to organize and wanted to hold meetings about how to further the movement. Much of the content of these clandestine meetings centered around forming a campaign of direct action to stop the underground wall being built between Egypt and Gaza. As a first step, international members of the march signed on as plaintiffs in a lawsuit with our Egyptian counterparts to challenge the legality of the underground wall.

With all the difficult decisions and unexpected frustrations surrounding the march, I was still very encouraged by the project. I found strength in Cairo among the marchers and the international movement they represented. The worldwide movement in solidarity with Palestinians is obviously alive and growing. Roughly 1,300 delegates from 43 countries participated in the march, and those whom I met were some of the finest and most dedicated people I’ve come across. Not only that, I know the participants were only a fraction of the people from their communities concerned about Gaza who were not able to make it to the march. Each delegation brought its strengths. It was exciting to see the different organizing tactics employed, such as the French contingent’s decision to hold an encampment for nearly one week in front of their embassy.  

The Cairo declaration was formed and the South African group gave us insight to further focus the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement (BDS) through “campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries.” They suggested very specifically targeting companies in our areas that both enable and profit from the occupation. For instance, Boeing, based in Chicago, exports Apache helicopters and F16 Eagle fighter planes to Israel that are regularly used in Israeli military operations in the Occupied Territories. Tactically, it makes a lot more senses to focus a campaign on Boeing than to randomly avoid an Israeli product at a supermarket, though you may want to do that too.

This siege may not have been broken on December 31st, but this year started much differently for the people of Gaza when contrasted with the devastation of last year’s Operation Cast Lead. Organizers, activists, and people in Gaza expressed their gratitude for the efforts of the Gaza Freedom March. International attention was focused on Gaza and there were solidarity marches all around the world.

With this attention, the international community has reached a critical point to put pressure on the U.S, Egyptian, and Israeli governments to stop the siege. Despite being embarrassed by the bad press, Egypt and the United States are going ahead with construction of the underground wall. Furthermore, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is threatening to launch more operations like Cast Lead. The attacks launched this morning lend ominous credibility to these threats. Our friend in Gaza has said in the past that he longs for a chance to live a normal life, unencumbered by siege and constant fear of bombings. He understandably believes that there is very little chance that his voice will be heard in the halls of powerful governing bodies. But we can and must join our voices with his. Our urgent task is to widely announce the Cairo Declaration’s call for BDS and to steadily build a stronger worldwide movement of nonviolent direct action, inclusive of civil disobedience, to end the siege and occupation.

Joshua Brollier co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, based in Chicago, Illinois.

Progressive activists have made comprehensive immigration reform a top legislative priority in the 2010 Congress. A key reason is the rapidly increasing harassment of immigrants. Different cultural communities are being targeted by governmental officials as well as nativist activists. Arab and Muslim peoples have experienced such discrimination since 2001, of course, but it is expected to increase in the wake of recent terrorism threats to the U.S.

Last week in Washington, new strict screening regulations against travelers from 14 so-called "terrorism prone nations" were enacted. To be carried out by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Obama administration's decision was condemned by Muslim Public Affairs Council as "religious and ethnic profiling at its worst."

Next week, the Winter 2010 issue of Fellowship magazine will be published and mailed to subscribers. This upcoming issue, "Crossing Borders," addresses themes of the movement of human populations by choice or force, including recent immigration to North America from across the world. An An article by Jacki Esposito of the Detention Watch Network looks at immigrant detention and deportation. This week, that topic has taken on greater immediacy with the news of the arrest and threatened deportation of immigrant rights activist Jean Montrevil in New York City.

The New Sanctuary Coalition, which is an interfaith group of people and houses of worship determined to provide shelter and asylum to immigrants threatened with imprisonment and deportation, is helping mobilize support for Montrevil. See below for a press release issued about his urgent situation. Please join me in signing onto a web-based petition and do whatever else you can to press for his immediate release:

UN-HAPPY NEW YEARS FOR FAMILY OF DETAINED IMMIGRANT LEADER:

On heels of immigration reform Homeland Security Detains Poster child for change

Contact:

• Juan Carlos Ruiz, 347-563-3483 (English and Spanish)
• Angad Bhalla, 646-637-5609 (English, Hindi and French)

New York, NY – In the words of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, “the system worked” again on Wednesday, December 30, 2009, when her agency arrested community leader Jean Montrevil.  How well it worked, and what justice was served, is the question. Montrevil, a legal permanent resident originally from Haiti and the father of four American-born children, is a leading national spokesperson for immigration reform. Members of Congress, local political leaders throughout New York, and faith leaders have demanded that Homeland Security terminate his deportation.

Unlike the millions of immigrants hoping for legalization, Montrevil entered the U.S. as a legal permanent resident in 1986. Homeland Security is trying to de-legalize him for a 1989 drug conviction.

“Jean has been a tireless activist, educating my parishioners and thousands more about the broken immigration system,” says Reverend Bob Coleman, minister of Manhattan’s Riverside Church (where former president Bill Clinton worships).  “Immigration tearing Jean away from his family is not only unjust. It’s immoral.”

Montrevil is married to an African-American schoolteacher and has 4 American-born children. “Jean made mistakes as a kid,” says his wife Janay Montrevil, “but that was a decade before we started building our family. Our youngest woke up this morning, looking all over for daddy. How do you tell a 2-year-old, ‘daddy’s gone forever?’”

Montrevil helped found New York’s New Sanctuary Movement, a faith-based coalition for immigration reform, of which Rev. Coleman and other ministers are a part.  Montrevil is a leading national spokesperson for the Child Citizen Protection Act (HR 182), a proposal pending in the House of Representatives that would enable judges to consider the best interests of American children before deporting their parents.  The proposal is also part of Representative Luis Gutierrez’ immigration reform proposal.

Since December 2008, Montrevil’s supporters have requested a meeting with ICE Field Office Director Chris Shanahan to discuss his case. “More than a year has elapsed since I first urged the granting of deferred action to Mr. Montrevil,” said Congressman Jerrold Nadler in a letter to Shanahan. “At this time, I hope that the request will be given favorable consideration.” Montrevil’s political supporters include: U.S. Rep. Nydia Velasquez, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, NY State Senator Thomas K. Duane, NY State Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, NYC Councilwoman Rosie Mendez.

But the letter and petitions of hundreds of US citizens was given no consideration. “No matter how hard we tried, Shanahan would not talk to us. We hope his supervisors in Washington D.C. can correct this problem and release Jean immediately,” says Montrevil’s lawyer Joshua Bhardavid.

“Jean has been nothing less than an inspiration, his work on behalf of immigrants being torn from their families across the country has been prophetic.  As people of faith, we will fight this disastrous action with every ounce of our being and not rest until true justice is served,” added Rev. Donna Schaper of Judson Memorial Church where Montrevil worships.

The French brought two distinct delegations totalling well over 300 people to Cairo for the Gaza Freedom March. As the summary report below illustrates they were both well prepared from the beginning and still flexible and determined in their response to a repressive reaction by Egypt and an embarrasingly conciliatory response by the French Government to their appeals for support. They drew the admiration of all involved and maintained a delightfully positive perspective to the very end. I particularly enjoyed their dabke routine for the policemen on the afternoon of the Friday demonstration in front of the Israeli Embassy. See below and also http://www.europalestine.com.

The Gaza Freedom March : The Story of a Memorable Adventure

We've returned to Cairo.  The Egyptian government prohibited the 1360 people from around the world to enter Gaza to demonstrate their support for the population and to say NO to the blockade.  But by doing that, they drove us to create in the Egyptian capital, a situation which allowed us to support the Palestinian people in an even more spectacular manner.

It was our Gaza Strip friends who quickly drew this conclusion with their messages thanking and congratulating us for our actions, felt around the world, concerning the siege which has been imposed on them and those who carry the heavy responsible for it.    The organizers of the Gaza Freedom March affirmed that "The spectacular actions, widely covered by the media, which you are now carrying our in Cairo are much more effective for us than your originally planned visit to the Gaza Strip,"

The Story:

On our arrival in Cairo, our group of 300 French participants learned that Egyptian officials had forbidden the US organizers of the march to hold a meeting the next day at the College of the Jesuits of the Holly Family, in order to bring together the 800 people from various countries and inform them of the situation.  The same day it was announced that the buses which were to be used on the morning of the 28th, would not be there.  We also learned that all those who had arrived earlier, and who tried to get to Gaza on their own (alone or in small groups) had been arrested on the way by Egyptian forces, and were blocked in their hotels or bus stations.

And on Sunday, 27 December, one year to the day after the Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip  the Egyptian government went so far as to forbid a peaceful commemoration, consisting of the deposition of candles (biodegradable) on the Nile in memory of the Gaza martyrs..

That same evening at 19h00 the 300 French participants met in the front of the French embassy, situated on a main street in the center of Cairo, according to a long-established plan with the AstralEgypt bus company.  Earlier, the French ambassador, Jean Felix-Pagnon, met with us in his office along with the director of the bus company, who had already received from us $4100 or 50% of the cost of transporting us to and from Rafah.

At that point the ambassador confirmed, in front of several witnesses that he had Egyptian government assurance that we could take the road to El Arish, 40 km from Rafah, and that our busses would be indeed meet us at 19h00 in front of the embassy, even if they could not guarantee that we could enter into Gaza..

With the old contract in hand along with a new engagement on the part of the bus company director (who clamored for the immediate payment of the remaining 50%), written in the presence of the ambassador, a few of us left to find the busses, while the rest of the group waited in front of the embassy.

After 3 hours of standing and waiting, we learned, at 22h00 that the buses would not be coming to get us, so we occupied Charles de Gaulle Ave. by sitting in the middle of that nerve center of the intense Cairo traffic, and so blocked circulation traffic throughout the capitol.  This was a rapid and surprise action corresponding to the ideas which we had decided well in advance of our depart from Paris: react in a determined manner, and in the most spectacular way possible, if we are prevented from arriving at our goal, and this regardless of where we might find ourselves.

We estimated that the most likely place for a blockade by the Egyptian government against us would be along the route in the middle of the desert.  But the government, undoubtedly counting on the disorientation and isolation of people from around the world separated in dozens of hotels around Cairo, decided otherwise.  A fatal error: the 300 French participants, solidly bound together by meetings and discussions organized by the CAPJPO-Europalestine, ahead of our leaving, found themselves grouped together without a hotel, because they had counted on driving through the night.

Demanding the return of our busses and the possibility of going to Gaza, we decided to camp out in front of the French embassy, declining the ambassador's offer to bring us to the French lycée of Cairo, and to keep us there until our return to France (counseling us to do this if we did not wish to spend the rest of the week as tourists).

The French Embassy, connected with the French foreign office, exerted reprisals, limiting access to the toilet, refusing to let us put in charge a few mobile phones inside the embassy, and not allowing to let the most fragile to  sleep on its extensive and unused lawns, paid by our taxes.

The French Senator Alima Boumediene-Thiery, who was there by our side, did not hesitate to tell the ambassador what she thought about such a behaviour from the French government.

We take the opportunity to salute the courage of Monseigneur Gaillot who stood fast, sleeping on the pavement and going about with a smile on his face, in spite of his health problems. Let's lift our hats also to our senior delegate, Michel Sergent, 82, who slept during the whole week in a sitting position with his back to a tree and led a group of marathon runners, wearing the T-shirts " Palestine will live, boycott Israel" on the streets of Cairo, applauded by passersby!

Hedy Epstein, 85, a survivor of the Nazi genocide, who was attempting for the third time to go to Gaza, came to congratulate him inside our mini blockade of the French embassy on New Year's eve.

Counting on exhaustion and the disastrous sanitary conditions ( washing made impossible, whereas pollution was maximum, a two-hour wait to access the only toilet available for hundreds of persons) , the French governement lying down in front of the Egyptian government, which obeyed the Israeli injonctions (Netanyahu was welcomed by Mubarak on December 29).

Wrong calculation, for this hardening instead of undermining our determination, strengthened it .

Finally the French Embassy had to step back on several fronts, allowing people to go out to use the facilities of the cafés in the neighbourhood, installing 4 portable toilets, giving up on the demand to see the French passports of those who wanted to use the toilets, and letting in delegations of internationals of any country who came to visit and support us.

This last point allowed us to establish an efficient coordination with representatives of other countries and organize with them various spectacular and unitarian actions.

A protest, on December 31, gathered between 500 and 600 internationals across the street from the most frequented place in Cairo, (by Egyptians and tourists), the Egyptian museum and the Liberation square, and made the front page of all the Egyptian papers.

The next day, a protest in front of the Israeli Embassy gathered again more than 600 persons.

Inspired by our action in front of the French Embassy, which had gained full media coverage, the delegations of other countries organized protests in front of their own embassies before being pushed away.

During a week, we managed, with our banners and signs visible fom far away,  to attract the interest of the media, which had been up to then most discreet about the siege of Gaza and about the shameful collaboration to this siege of our governments

Even the young drafted soldiers, massed by hundreds to prevent us from leaving, befriended us and were constantly called to order by their officers.

Despite the behaviour of Egyptian police, constantly, stopping, harassing, lifting and intimidating the journalists trying to interview us, even giving tickets to motorists who sounded their horns in solidarity, the impact was up to the the task of such unseen before protests under a dictatorship which forbids any gathering of more than 6 persons.

At the end of the day the American organizers, though tempted for a while by Mubarak's offer to choose 80 persons who would have been allowed to enter Gaza, finally declined this attempt to divide, which would have enabled the Egyptien government to gain back some credit at little cost.

Consulted, our friends in Gaza, organizers of the Gaza Freedom March, strongly advised all the internationals against falling into this trap. They coldly received those who had accepted to board Mubarak's buses, and quickly led them out out of the Gaza strip.

Two videos made by marchers are already on line on our website http://www.europalestine.com. A third one will be on line soon.

We came back from this trip more determined than ever to carry on with th the struggle against the inhumanity of the siege, the emprisonment and spoliation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation. Crimes against humanity which could not be perpetrated without the approval of our leaders, and among them the Egyptian government, showing its true face of collaborator in building a wall meant to smother and starve even more the population of Gaza.

Strong relationships between delegates from all countries were born during this March to Gaza stopped in Cairo. Let's make of 2010 the year of unity which will make all those tyrants shake in their boots!

This past week, during the holiday period after Christmas and over the new year, a group of young Iraqis gathered at the headquarters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Upper Nyack, New York. They were all university students attending U.S. colleges, whose schooling was organized by the Iraqi Student Project -- an initiative modeled on FOR's Bosnian Student Project from the 1990s. An article in today's Journal News, the newspaper of New York's Rockland & Westchester Counties, profiles the hope of these young people as they seek a better future than that seen amidst the war they left behind.

Sadly, one wonders if the spiraling violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the U.S.'s central role in those conflicts, means that a few years from now another, similar initiative may be necessary -- when young people trying to emerge from war and to complete their college educations come into our collective consciousness. We shall see.

One of the acts of conscience which impressed the Egyptian public, inspired the Gaza Freedom March delegation, and echoed compassionately through exchanges with Palestinians in Gaza, was the act of thirty delegates to initiate a fast at the beginning of the gather in Cairo. Especially impressive was that these individuals were always at the front of actions over the five days we were in Cairo, and always warm and interactive with the Egyptian Police, the public, press, and international delegation. This is the statement they issued as we prepared to disband in Cairo.

Press Statement of the Gaza Freedom March Hunger Strikers - January 1, 2010

We are thirty activists from around the world, inspired by Hedy Epstein, the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, who initiated a hunger strike in Cairo for the opening of the boards of Gaza to the outside world.

We recognize that the Palestinians of Gaza continue to hunger for food, shelter, and most of all for freedom. We continue to hunger for justice for Gaza and for all of Palestinian. At this time we announce that we will feast when Gaza feasts.

Until that time, each of us will choose the time to end her/his fast and again take food.

Our pleasure in that food will always be mixed with the pain of Palestinians.

We call on all people of conscience from around the world to renew their resolve for peace and justice in Palestine.

As we gathered with candles under a full moon, directly overhead, at the edge of Tahrir (Freedom) Square, in Cairo, Egypt, the few hundred here welcomed the New Year with increased hope that a week together might offer the momentum to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East and the release of Gazan Palestinians in particular from the state of siege they have suffered most intensely throughout the year just ended.

Gaza Freedom March sit-in on Murad Street, Cairo (Image: Flickr user Mashahed)

Meanwhile across the Nile a group of another few hundred French delegates entered their fifth day of “vigil” in front of the French Embassy where they had been encamped and surrounded by 150 helmeted policemen for five days. The French staged the first demonstration to demand that their government work to open the Raffah Gate into Gaza for the 1362 delegates from 42 countries who had come to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza. Absent progress on their call they refused to be moved. Tonight, conceding a certain kind of defeat and another kind of victory, they disbanded their camp to head home to France.

In Gaza, another 100 delegates were able to join with a Palestinian community of a reported 500 and walk to the Erez crossing as originally planned. By special arrangement through First Lady Susan Mubarak, a representative delegation was permitted to leave on the 31st with a truck of humanitarian supplies for Gaza.

There, the international delegation, after a twenty hour trip to cover six hours of highway, walked to within 500 feet of the northern gate and sat in protest of the lock-down that gate represents. Within that delegation were at least two dozen who had spent a week under virtual house arrest in Al Arish where they had arrived ahead of the planned transfer of all 1300+ delegates the day after arriving in Cairo.

The larger Cairo based delegation staged actions in front of the United Nations Development Offices with responsibility for Gaza, the U.S. Embassy and Israeli Embassy (spearheaded by the dozens of Jewish delegates from around the world) and, for six hours on New Year’s Eve, on a sidewalk opposite the Egyptian Museum in Downtown Cairo.

Gaza Freedom Marchers demonstrate at UN building in Cairo (Image: Middle East Children's Alliance)

After encounters, including brutality at the hands of Egyptian police (carried on the front page of a number of Egyptian papers on New Year’s Day), the New Year’s evening gathering gave evidence that the Egyptians were beginning to appreciate active nonviolence and passive resistance. Skilled in moving crowds out of streets and into carefully barricaded pens (Cairo corrals is what some Lakota delegates called them), they finally allowed the New Year’s eve vigil to proceed in peace., despite Egyptian law prohibiting the gathering of more than five people in a public space.

The evening concluded with a live telephone call to the party being held in Gaza City for all of us. Even in Gaza perhaps they will begin the New Year, at least, with some leftovers from a party we all wanted to be at but weren’t permitted to attend.

The Interfaith Delegation, created under the shared leadership of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and myself, attracted more than forty participants, many of them familiar to FOR including former Executive Director John Dear, David and Jan Hartsough, Martha Hennessy (Dorothy Day’s granddaughter), Father Louie Vitale, and Iran Program Director Leila Zand.

The week demonstrated that the forces of the powers that be are formidable but the witness of those committed to truth, love and social justice is powerful too.

I leave Cairo disappointed not to have been able to stand side by side with Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza, and knowing that there is enormous work that needs to be done if we are to effectively bring to bear the lessons of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, to the world today. But I also leave confident that the witness of the past week will require still more of the world to consider more carefully the desperate and inhumane conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza, and the urgency for the Israelis and Palestinians to construct a future of peaceful co-existence and mutual respect or human rights. The weight of public opinion and the burden of international law are shifting; the issues need to be addressed and resolved. This would be a good resolution and goal for the year ahead.

This morning following our Gaza Freedom March planning meeting, we headed to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

We waited for the sign of a flag waving to let us know that it was time to get together on the right side of the square. A big crowd was already there. Mark Johnson [executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation] and I joined the crowd. I took my sign of “Free Gaza” out and started to chant “Free, Free, Gaza.” Then suddenly I noticed that the Egyptian police were attacking us. This was my experience:

I am in the back row. An Italian woman, standing next to me, starts to talk to me in Italian. I can’t understand her, but from the motion of her hands I understand she is asking us to sit down. We sit down, but the police are agitated and begin pushing us off the street. The police pull people by their legs and their hair. I see my new Iranian friend, Reza, being pulled by his legs on the ground, and a woman being pulled by her hair. I take videos of some of these disturbing moments. Watching these scenes makes me shout louder.

It is my turn to be pushed and pulled by the police. They get to me and pull me toward the sidewalk. I start to shout, and suddenly I realize that I am shouting in Persian, “Marg bar dictator” (death to dictator). For a moment I forget I am in Egypt and fighting for Gaza freedom. I feel I am in Iran with my brothers and sisters, fighting for justice there.

I guess no matter where and when, fighting for justice provokes the same feelings. A dictator is a dictator, whether in Cairo or in Tehran.

As they are pulling me off, I also receive a heavy blow on my back. I am still shouting “marg bar dictator” as if all I had felt about the events in Iran during the past 6 months was coming out of my heart. I shout for my country, for Gaza, and for Freedom.

As I am being pulled by police, I see Father Louie Vitale in the middle of the crowd. The police are pushing him as well. I suddenly remember he has been on a hunger strike for 4 days now, and I get worried for him as an older man (he is almost 80). I shout to the police “stop pushing him, stop pushing him,” and then I receive another blow on my back.

The police trapp us on the corner of the street, where we had placed a small tent and named it Gaza Embassy, and called the sidewalk “Gaza Freedom Square.”

We keep up with chanting, dancing, and singing for hours. We hold signs and do all we can do to get attention. Police surround us.

I just came out to write this note, and am going back to the “Gaza Freedom Square” to spend the New Year Eve with my passionate brothers and sisters there. 

Happy New Year.