Aref Nammari (goplayer)'s blog/

Yes another shameful day in the House of Representatives in Washington DC. A few days ago, they voted on a resolution to encourage the administration to reject any consideration of the "Goldstone Report" which found that both Israel and Hamas have comitted war crimes during the onslaught on Gaza last December-January.

One Representative with great integrity and compassion who is willing to take a stand for justice and fairness is Dennis Kucinich (Dem. Ohio). Here is what he had to say on he house floor:

“Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian.

“The resolution before us today, which would reject all attempts of the Goldstone Report to fix responsibility of all parties to war crimes, including both Hamas and Israel, may as well be called the “Down is Up, Night is Day, Wrong is Right” resolution.

“Because if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read, concerning events it has totally ignored, about violations of law of which it is unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution.

“How can we ever expect there to be peace in the Middle East if we tacitly approve of violations of international law and international human rights, if we look the other way, or if we close our eyes to the heartbreak of people on both sides by white-washing a legitimate investigation?

“How can we protect the people of Israel from existential threats if we hold no concern for the protection of the Palestinians, for their physical security, their right to land, their right to their own homes, their right to water, their right to sustenance, their right to freedom of movement, their right to the human security of jobs, education and health care?

“We will have peace only when the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is brought before this House and given equal consideration in recognition of that principle that all people on this planet have a right to survive and thrive, and it is our responsibility, our duty to see that no individual, no group, no people are barred from this humble human claim.”

Thank you Representative Kucinich I wish that more had your integrity rather than self-serving political expediency.

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Today former President Jimmy Carter reminded the readers of the New York Times that while Congress is grand standing in covering up war crimes, the people of Gaza are still under siege and their daily suffering is still the norm. Here is his Op Ed piece in the New York Times:

New York Times

November 6, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/opinion/06iht-edcarter.html?_r=1&ref=global

Goldstone and Gaza

By JIMMY CARTER

Judge Richard Goldstone and the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict have issued a report about Gaza that is strongly critical of both Israel and Hamas for their violations of human rights. On Wednesday, a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly began a debate on whether to refer the report to the Security Council.

In January 2009 rudimentary rockets had been launched from Gaza toward nearby Jewish communities, and Israel had wreaked havoc with bombs, missiles, and ground invading forces. Judge Goldstone’s claim is that they are both guilty of “crimes against humanity.” Predictably, both the accused parties have denounced the report as biased and inaccurate.

It is good to remember that Judge Goldstone, from South Africa, is one of the world’s most widely respected jurists, with an impeccable record of wisdom, honesty and integrity. He is a devout Jew and has long been known as a fervent defender of Israel’s right to peace and security.

In April 2008 I personally visited Sderot and Ashkelon, Israeli communities near enough to have been hit by rockets fired from within Gaza. While there, I condemned these indiscriminate attacks on civilians as acts of terrorism, and I consider their condemnation by Judge Goldstone to be justified.

A year later, after the Israeli attack on Gaza, I was able to examine the damage done to the small and heavily populated area, surrounded by an impenetrable wall, with its gates tightly controlled. Knowing of the ability of Israeli forces, often using U.S. weapons, to strike targets with pinpoint accuracy, it was difficult to understand or explain the destruction of hospitals, schools, prisons, United Nations facilities, small factories and repair shops, agricultural processing plants and almost 40,000 homes.

The Goldstone committee examined closely the cause of deaths of the 1,387 Palestinians who perished, and the degree of damage to the various areas. The conclusion was that the civilian areas were targeted and the devastation was deliberate. Again, the criticism of Israel in the Goldstone report is justified.

He has called on the United States, Israel and others who dispute the accuracy of the report to conduct an independent investigation of their own. Hamas leaders have announced that their investigation is under way, but Israel has rejected Judge Goldstone’s request.

Putting this dispute aside, it is important to examine present circumstances and the need to prevent further suffering. The rocket fire from Gaza is now being severely restrained, perhaps because of the certainty of Israeli retaliation, but the punishment of the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza continues. Now and for the past 10 months, Israel has not permitted cement, lumber, panes of glass, or other building materials to pass their entry points into Gaza. Several hundred thousand homeless people suffered through last winter in a few tents, under plastic sheets, or huddled in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. The weather was warmer when I was there several months later, but the description of suffering through the winter cold was heartbreaking.

Another winter is now approaching, and neither the Israelis nor the international community has taken steps to alleviate the Gazans’ plight. United Nations agencies and leaders in the European community have offered to provide an avenue of channeling funds and building materials directly to the people in need, completely bypassing the Hamas political leaders. These officials, both in Gaza and in Damascus, have assured me that they would accept this arrangement.

There would be no chance for the misuse of such assistance for weapons, military fortifications, or other non-humanitarian purposes.

I was informed recently by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that he has pledged $1 billion, and other Arab leaders have added an additional $300 million for this purpose. There is little doubt that other nations would also be generous.

Without ascribing blame to either of the disputing parties, it is imperative that the United States and the international community take steps to assure that the rebuilding of Gaza be commenced, and without delay. The cries of homeless and freezing people demand relief.


Jimmy Carter was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and is a member of the Elders.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin wall fell. Today, many celebrated this event. On the BBC, NPR and many other TV and radio stations the commemoration took the form of recalling this historic event with sound bites of politicians celebrating the triumph of "good" versus "evil" of freedom versus authoritarianism. I heard exerpts of speeches given at the time by politicians from the "civilized" west where they celebrated the human spirit and its triumph in its struggle to attain and realize the dream of liberty and freedom.

Yet at the same time that all the celebrating was going on not a word was mentioned about the walls being constructed right now along the US-Mexico border and on Palestinian land surrounding the West Bank. Not a word was said about the fence that encloses Gaza transforming it into an open air prison and its people into sitting ducks easy targets for the bullets of the oh so brave Israeli soldiers.

I wonder why not a word was mentioned of those racist walls?? Is it because they are built by so-called democracies or is it because they exclude brown skinned people: barbarians (to be direct and not beat about the bush)? Are walls OK if they are built by white western states? Would those walls be welcome if they were built by Mexico or the Palestinians to keep Americans or Israelis out?

Just something to think about when celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This is how the people of Nilin in the West Bank celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall with no fanfare and no politicians giving speeches about the human spirit and how its yearning for freedom will overcome the prison walls attempting to enclose it !!! Food for thought.

A speech given by Nurit Peled Elhannan whose 13 year old daughter was killed by a suicide bomber. The speech was given at the occasion of Women's Day earlier this year. This speech should become a must read in all the schools around the world. This is a woman who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize rather than the one who was awarded the prize this year and who is poised to increase and escalate the war in Afghanistan.

WOMEN
by Nurit Peled-Elhanan


Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a
pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian
woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in
my county are the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my
speech to Miriam R`aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the
Gaza strip, whose five small children were killed by Israeli soldiers
while picking strawberries at the family`s strawberry field. No one
will ever stand trial for this murder.

When I asked the people who invited me here why didn't they invite a
Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion
too localized.

I don't know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination
may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact
is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse,
torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars.

It is true, unfortunately, that the local violence inflicted on
Palestinian women by the government of Israel and the Israeli army,
has expanded around the globe, In fact, state violence and army
violence, individual and collective violence, are the lot of Muslim
women today, not only in Palestine but wherever the enlightened
western world is setting its big imperialistic foot. It is violence
which is hardly ever addressed and which is halfheartedly condoned by
most people in Europe and in the USA.

This is because the so-called free world is afraid of the Muslim womb.

Great France of "la liberte égalite et la fraternite" is scared of
little girls with head scarves. Great Jewish Israel is afraid of the
Muslim womb which its ministers call a demographic threat.

Almighty America and Great Britain are infecting their respective
citizens with blind fear of the Muslims, who are depicted as vile,
primitive and blood-thirsty, apart from their being non-democratic,
chauvinistic and mass producers of future terrorists. This in spite of
the fact that the people who are destroying the world today are not
Muslim. One of them is a devout Christian, one is Anglican and one is
a non-devout Jew.

I have never experienced the suffering Palestinian women undergo every
day, every hour, I don't know the kind of violence that turns a
woman's life into constant hell. This daily physical and mental
torture of women who are deprived of their basic human rights and
needs of privacy and dignity, women whose homes are broken into at any
moment of day and night, who are ordered at a gun-point to strip naked
in front of strangers and their own children, whose houses are
demolished , who are deprived of their livelihood and of any normal
family life. This is not part of my personal ordeal.

But I am a victim of violence against women insofar as violence
against children is actually violence against mothers. Palestinian,
Iraqi, Afghan women are my sisters because we are all at the grip of
the same unscrupulous criminals who call themselves leaders of the
free enlightened world and in the name of this freedom and
enlightenment rob us of our children.

Furthermore, Israeli, American, Italian and British mothers have been
for the most part violently blinded and brainwashed to such a degree
that they cannot realize their only sisters, their only allies in the
world are the Muslim Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghani mothers, whose
children are killed by our children or who blow themselves to pieces
with our sons and daughters. They are all mind-infected by the same
viruses engendered by politicians. And the viruses , though they may
have various illustrious names--such as Democracy, Patriotism, God,
Homeland--are all the same. They are all part of false and fake
ideologies that are meant to enrich the rich and to empower the powerful.

We are all the victims of mental, psychological and cultural violence
that turn us to one homogenic group of bereaved or potentially
bereaved mothers. Western mothers who are taught to believe their
uterus is a national asset just like they are taught to believe that
the Muslim uterus is an international threat. They are educated not to
cry out: `I gave him birth, I breast fed him, he is mine, and I will
not let him be the one whose life is cheaper than oil, whose future is
less worth than a piece of land.`

All of us are terrorized by mind-infecting education to believe all we
can do is either pray for our sons to come back home or be proud of
their dead bodies.

And all of us were brought up to bear all this silently, to contain
our fear and frustration, to take Prozac for anxiety, but never hail
Mama Courage in public. Never be real Jewish or Italian or Irish mothers.

I am a victim of state violence. My natural and civil rights as a
mother have been violated and are violated because I have to fear the
day my son would reach his 18th birthday and be taken away from me to
be the game tool of criminals such as Sharon, Bush, Blair and their
clan of blood-thirsty, oil-thirsty, land thirsty generals.

Living in the world I live in, in the state I live in, in the regime I
live in, I don't dare to offer Muslim women any ideas how to change
their lives. I don't want them to take off their scarves, or educate
their children differently, and I will not urge them to constitute
Democracies in the image of Western democracies that despise them and
their kind. I just want to ask them humbly to be my sisters, to
express my admiration for their perseverance and for their courage to
carry on, to have children and to maintain a dignified family life in
spite of the impossible conditions my world in putting them in. I want
to tell them we are all bonded by the same pain, we all the victims of
the same sort of violence even though they suffer much more, for they
are the ones who are mistreated by my government and its army,
sponsored by my taxes.

Islam in itself, like Judaism in itself and Christianity in itself, is
not a threat to me or to anyone. American imperialism is, European
indifference and co-operation is and Israeli racism and its cruel
regime of occupation is. It is racism, educational propaganda and
inculcated xenophobia that convince Israeli soldiers to order
Palestinian women at gun-point, to strip in front of their children
for security reasons, it is the deepest disrespect for the other that
allow American soldiers to rape Iraqi women, that give license to
Israeli jailers to keep young women in inhuman conditions, without
necessary hygienic aids, without electricity in the winter, without
clean water or clean mattresses and to separate them from their
breast-fed babies and toddlers. To bar their way to hospitals, to
block their way to education, to confiscate their lands, to uproot
their trees and prevent them from cultivating their fields.

I cannot completely understand Palestinian women or their suffering. I
don't know how I would have survived such humiliation, such disrespect
from the whole world. All I know is that the voice of mothers has been
suffocated for too long in this war-stricken planet. Mothers` cry is
not heard because mothers are not invited to international forums such
as this one. This I know and it is very little. But it is enough for
me to remember these women are my sisters, and that they deserve that
I should cry for them, and fight for them. And when they lose their
children in strawberry fields or on filthy roads by the checkpoints,
when their children are shot on their way to school by Israeli
children who were educated to believe that love and compassion are
race and religion dependent, the only thing I can do is stand by them
and their betrayed babies, and ask what Anna Akhmatova--another mother
who lived in a regime of violence against women and children--asked:

Why does that streak o blood, rip the petal of your cheek?

Today 62 years ago--Nov. 29, 1947--the United Nations General Assembly, through the machinations and arms twisting of the imperialist powers of the time, primarily the USA, voted to partition Palestine against the wishes of the indigenous population thus setting the stage conflict and war.

The following article commemorates this vote with a lucid analysis of elements of the present struggle. Partiton "is the elephant in the room". More importantly, is what is the alternative?

A beautiful song by Uri Gopher in Hebrew with English subtitles. I don't think that I need to add any more. Listen to the music and words.