Archive for August, 2005

The Memory of the Holocaust

Published by
August 30, 2005 Uncategorizedin . 4 Comments

Quick game of word (well, news report) association. How do you respond when I tell you that the Simon Weisenthal Center condemned the outrageous exploitation of the Holocaust by some of the Gaza settlers during the disengagement process (or how did you respond if you read the news yourself)? Glad to see the Simon Weisenthal Center standing up to the extreme Jewish right, even when Elie Wiesel and so many others didn’t? Vindicated that the extreme Jewish right can also get criticized once in awhile by a mainstream Jewish organization? Upset because such intra-Jewish criticisms should not be done in public? Depressed that the Holocaust is, for some, on all sides of the conflict, just another propaganda tool? Does your response change the longer you think about it? (It seems the Simon Weisenthal Center’s did, as you will see no reference to disengagement at all on its website.) So what does all of this mean – your reaction, my reaction and the Simon Weisenthal Center’s initial reaction/apparent change of heart – for debate of the occupation going forward, specifically when anyone tries to bring the Holocaust into the discussion?

For Jews in the 21st century, the Holocaust defines, or at least pervades deeply, much of our existence as Jews. We hear and learn about it constantly in our synagogues and Jewish community centers. Many of our homes are filled with it – either with the memory of family members who were killed, or with commemorations for all of the 6 million Jews and close to 5 million others who were systematically executed. We experience it through the media in so many ways – whether news reports of a world leader paying respects at a concentration camp site or the Pope’s service in the Hitler youth, or in myriad films and plays and novels.

So it should not be surprising that I remember, painfully, each and every time I have been compared to one of the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust when speaking out, or standing in a protest, against the occupation (let me be clear — I was never comparing the occupation to the Holocaust, but rather advocating that Israel end the occupation and withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza). How can I forget them — can there be any accusation or allegation as harsh or damning? And I know full well that for each of the handful of times this has happened to me, it has happened innumerable times to others, particularly the more public figures, in the anti-occupation movement. After all, now it even happens to Ariel Sharon.

But it should not be surprising to anyone to hear that I and many others who have worked against the occupation have been the target of such accusations. Nor should it, in a theoretical sense, be surprising that the Simon Weisenthal Center would condemn the improper use of Holocaust imagery or outrageous accusations that IDF soldiers were akin to the SS. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124850020755) But I would say, also sadly, that it is, in fact, somewhat surprising that they did so at all, anywhere, in the case of the settlers during disengagement. Maybe officials at the Center did, too, as despite my searching the website high and low, I can find no mention of it anywhere on their website. (If anyone else can find something on the website, http://www.wiesenthal.com, please let me know and I will update this post).

Regardless, the bottom line question we must ask is whether the Holocaust can/should be “used” at all in a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by any side of the issue. And I ask this question not because I have an answer, but because I have been rethinking what I thought my answer was.

What has happened to our community when it is surprising, in any way, that the institution considered by many to be the authoritative source for “preserving the memory of the Holocaust” would say anything negative in a public forum about the Gaza settlers? Is the Holocaust now just like any other symbol or issue that has, at least within the mainstream discourse, become one that tends to support a center/right viewpoint on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I mentioned in a previous post that I sometimes find myself shrinking from requests to donate to Israeli victims of terrorism because of the frequent couching of such requests in such anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab ways. Is the Holocaust now becoming the same type of thing – an issue that should, and does, mean so much to me as an individual Jew, but that in a communal sense, has somehow been lost to politics?

(Or am I being completely paranoid and self-defeating for thinking any of this?)

Maybe the answer lies in looking to the lessons of the Holocaust. What are the lessons? Well, the rote, automatic response is “Never Again.” But is that really all? And what does “never again” even mean? Never again to the Jews? Never again should the Jewish people be without a home, and we must defend that home to every possible end? Never again should killing, or even the preparations for killing, go on for years on end without intervention? Never again should the world witness the organized and systematic attempt to exterminate (a) people? Never again should we see anything even resembling such horror, or only something at that level? Worst of all, what will we do if/when it does happen again?

For me, the lesson has been that a people who have suffered such great tragedy and oppression should never participate in, let alone be responsible for, policies and actions that result in the oppression of others. No exceptions.

But is that a/the correct lesson anymore? Even if correct, which I believe it still is, is it enough? Is it somehow too simplistic? It has always been my feeling that this lesson is one of the keys to the entire anti-occupation framework. Not that the occupation of Palestine = Holocaust, but that the occupation leads to oppression, and the Jewish community should not abide that in any way. And to get through to the Jewish community, I have always believed that connecting back to this Holocaust lesson needs to be a part of the argument, as simply presenting the “facts” about occupation just is not enough. In order to change people’s minds and move them to a place (opposing the Israeli government) that may, in its own right, be unbearably painful, the “facts” of the occupation must play into each person’s sense of Judaism, of humanity. This almost inevitably connects back, even if only in the subconscious, to the Holocaust.

It is too much to try to unpack all of the different aspects to the connection between the Holocaust, Israel and the occupation in this, or any other, post. But I would love to hear from readers of this about your own experiences, your own lessons, your own ways for dealing with the Holocaust when it comes to discussing Israel and the occupation. How do you interact with the communal institutions and markers we have for remembering the Holocaust and its lessons? If you are a non-Jewish reader, what has been your experience of trying to engage with members of the Jewish community around the Holocaust and Israeli policies?

In the end, the Holocaust is too painful and tragic a memory in and of itself to be used as a virtual weapon in the debate about Israel and Palestine. Let us all work to a day when the use of the Holocaust’s memory as a weapon is reserved only for its perpetrators.

New Israel Fund’s “Stories from the Field”

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August 29, 2005 Uncategorizedin . 0 Comments

This is just a quick post to alert everyone to an interesting new development on the New Israel Fund’s website. NIF has introduced a new feature, a quasi-blog of sorts, called "Stories from the Field."  For those who do not know or contribute to NIF, you should do both. NIF funds hundreds of the most important and cutting-edge NGOs in Israel. NIF grantees work on everything from civil rights to religious pluralism to Israeli Arab rights to Ethiopian and other new immigrant issues to a range of women’s issues organizations. NIF’s "Law Fellows" program has developed and trained the cream of the crop of the Israeli human and civil rights bar. (It’s also through NIF volunteering that I met my wife.) On the "Stories from the Field" page (found in the "Features" category on the site), NIF Board and staff will post a commentary once every 2 weeks. Visitors to the site will have an opportunity to post comments to, and engage in discussion with, the posts by the NIF Board and staff. In sum, NIF grantees have helped shape Israel’s democracy over the past 25 years — through this site, perhaps we too can have a hand in that process. Although I personally wish NIF would take a more aggressive approach in the United States, and challenge the American Jewish community in the very real way that its grantees challenge Israel, NIF nevertheless deserves all of our support. Perhaps, if this quasi-blog is a success (which means you should send in comments), NIF will see that the community needs it now more than ever to take a stand and help define a new, deeper meaning of the too-often-rote mantra of "support for Israel." And who knows, maybe if you keep checking the site and posting comments, you too will find your true love.

Here We Go Again

Published by
August 26, 2005 in Israeli Politics. 2 Comments

Here we go again. What do I mean by that? Qassam rockets from Gaza? Israeli commando raids into the West Bank? Pundits everywhere trying to assess the impact of an event that just took place? Sadly, not any of those. What I mean by “here we go again” is the Marion Barry-esque refusal to fade away by one of the most hateful characters in all of politics, Benjamin Netanyahu. A mere one day after the last settler was evacuated from the 4 West Bank settlements, Bibi began his grandstanding to try to unseat Ariel Sharon. The question now is: will Israelis really put up with it? And will the center and left in Israel be put in the most unthinkable of positions — having to rescue Ariel Sharon?

Articles in both the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz yesterday marked Day 1 of the campaign for both the Likud leadership and, ultimately, leadership of Israel. (The Post article noted that one of the other most hateful characters in politics, Ehud Barak, was about to hold his 5th press conference in 2 months, but the fact that that note even made it in the article owes probably more to editorial staff sympathy than an attempt to report “news”). And front and center stands, somehow, again, like a bad dream that keeps coming back no matter how much therapy you try, Bibi Netanyahu.

With most of the world’s attention still focused on disengagement and its aftermath, which I am sure we will be writing a lot about on this site, it is worth taking a step to the side for a moment to make sure people watch carefully what is really the most important story on the future of disengagement — who will lead Israel.

Never mind the multiple corruption scandals during his last stint as Prime Minister. Never mind his public confession to adultery (brought out during a campaign by yet another of Israel’s most unbelievable politicians, David Levy). Never mind his gutting of the Israeli social welfare system as Finance Minister at a time of increasing poverty throughout the country. Most importantly, never mind his utter failure to bring Israel either “peace” or “security” that he so glibly promised during the 1996 campaign. No, forget all that, and simply look at Benjamin Netanyahu as the current favorite, buoyed by the religious right, to lead Israel next year.

I will admit to non-neutrality here. In April 1996, I cashed in my savings from 3 jobs to go spend a month volunteering on the Shimon Peres campaign. No doubt, Netanyahu ran a brilliant political campaign against one of the worst campaigners of all time. But his manipulation of the facts and the fear Israelis felt after a terrible rash of suicide bombings early in 1996 is really what led him to victory. I stood at many an intersection throughout Israel, often being spit upon, listening to his supporters talk about “peace with security.” It was obvious that few of his ardent supporters were interested in the “peace” part of that phrase, but paying lip-service to peace was clearly the way to get to the center of the electorate, still reeling from the death of Yitzhak Rabin.

But Netanyahu went further. Rather than shy away from, he courted the extremists who compared Rabin to Hitler. Rather than build on Oslo, which already needed a lot of help, he brought us to Wye, just that much further away from peace.

So now again, we see Bibi sidling up beside the most extremist of settlers. Does anyone really believe for a second that Bibi cares about the settlers? Was he there for them as they were evacuated? Hardly. He apparently hated the idea of disengagement so much that he waited months and months after its announcement, staying in the government — until all of the world’s cameras had turned to Israel to begin covering it. That’s when he decided he couldn’t take it any longer and announced his resignation — which meant he went straight to the cameras (Bob Dole is credited with saying that the most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a camera; I would like to see Schumer just try to get in front of Bibi to get to a camera).

Now Bibi wants early Likud primaries, to be able to capitalize and exploit any minor misstep following disengagement. Sharon will fight that call with everything he has. But if Bibi is successful, Sharon is telling everyone he will run independent from the Likud, on his own.

Now, don’t get me wrong. As Haaretz also reported yesterday, Sharon has already given a lengthy interview to the ultra-Orthodox press, bashing the “sushi eaters” of the left for their absence from disengagement. This election, at least the Likud primary, will be a run to the far right. The campaign will likely be entirely one of each man promising in as many ways as possible that the West Bank will never be given up.

But until Labor or any other party on the left can produce a viable candidate (and I do not count either Peres or Barak viable), Sharon is all there is. In the end, Bibi is right about one thing when he bashes Sharon: Sharon did precisely what the last Labor candidate for PM, Amram Mitzna, promised to do. Perhaps not in the way Mitzna or others on the left would have, perhaps not with the eye to ultimate peace we would like to see. But Sharon did something, and he may well surprise us all and do something again.

If Netanyahu wins, Israel and the Palestinians will get a future of nothing.

Breaking the Miracle of the Circle

Published by
August 23, 2005 in Personal Reflections and Peace Process. 0 Comments

When you visit Israel and Palestine, you can see the site of many a miracle. Depending on your faith, you can visit the location where Jacob wrestled with an angel, where Jesus walked on water, or where Mohammed ascended to heaven. Although the time of biblical/historical miracles has ended, Israel and Palestine have nevertheless been home to a modern miracle, a miracle that we should all pray has ended. The miracle? The transformation of any fact or argument or issue into a circle…

So, the hardest part of disengagement is over. Or, when transformed by the Miracle of the Circle, it will never be over. The Miracle of the Circle, in case you do not know it by name (you are familiar with it if you have ever tried to take a side on any issue involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), is the power to transform a fact or an argument on one issue into another fact or argument, whether tangential or totally different, and place it in such a way as to ensure that the now-two existing facts or arguments will never be resolved. For example, when I give you a fact or argument about Palestinian suffering under occupation, the Miracle of the Circle introduces the issue of suicide bombers or “Palestinian textbooks” and, voila, a never-ending circular discussion. Want to affirm Israel’s right to self-defense in response to terrorism? Once the Miracle of the Circle takes over, you will find yourself discussing 1967. Or Lebanon. Try to resolve that one.

The best example of all may be refugees. Mention the right of return for Palestinians, and you will be taken by the Miracle of the Circle to late 1940s/early 1950s Iraq or Egypt and asked to discuss the plight of the Jews who were forced to leave those countries. On the flip side, the hard fact that Palestinian refugees really won’t have much of a place to go if they do return to Israel will take you to a fine-toothed comb reading of decades-old U.N. resolutions. In either case, we have a Miracle where real people in a real place with real problems have their real lives transformed into unreal discussions that seem to need no end. The Miracle of the Circle is not interested in final resolution based on present reality, only academic and/or emotional arguments standing on selected history or excerpted legal texts that insure that no one wins – just that everyone loses.

In his column in Sunday’s New York Times, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel displayed for everyone how the Miracle of the Circle worked its magic on disengagement. In his column, Wiesel used his moment, his chance to speak to the world, to do one thing: criticize the Palestinians for rejoicing during disengagement.

Now, to me, the failure of Elie Wiesel to use his moral authority, his own experience of suffering and his exalted place in the Jewish world to become a broker of peace has always been truly astonishing and depressing. Wiesel is one of the few people in the world who can command and inspire nearly any audience – Jewish or not — he speaks to, and demand that they listen to him speak about the principles of human rights and human dignity. But, as far as I know, he has never used that power to ask Israel and the Jewish people to look inward when considering the conflict in the Middle East, and specifically the human consequences of occupation. Rather, in what I have seen, heard and read, he has always defended the occupation and attacked its critics as haters of Israel or outright anti-Semites.

So it should not have been a huge surprise that his discussion of disengagement would focus on, even exalt, the pain of the settlers. Rather than at least reflect on the needs of the settlers upon their arrival in Israel, or consideration of the present-day need for an end to the settlements in order to achieve peace, he sympathizes with the settlers for being forced to move from the place of “their dreams” to a “future among strangers.” Strangers? They were moved into Israel, their country of citizenship, the home of the Jewish people. Weren’t they “among strangers” when they lived in Gaza? If Wiesel were to think about this statement a bit more, he would realize it is quite a condemnation of all non-disengaged-settler Israelis.

He then lightly taps some of the settlers on the wrist, specifically those who attacked soldiers. But was he, of all people, not offended by the settlers who exploited the memory of the Holocaust by using vivid and painful symbols to compare their disengagement to the extermination of 6 million Jews? Did Wiesel, who believes that no tragedy anywhere can or should be compared to the Holocaust, not notice this? How can he not have lashed out at the settlers who compared Jewish soldiers to the Nazis who condemned his own family to death? The answer is the Miracle of Blindness, another commonplace miracle in Israel and Palestine, one I began to describe in a previous post.

Regardless of his blindness or other shortcomings when writing about the settlers, Wiesel then displays for everyone a perfect example of the Miracle of the Circle. It’s a bit different from the above examples, but still a common occurrence in this Miracle’s work. Here, the Miracle does not introduce a new or tangential fact or argument, just an irrelevant one. For, after discussing the trauma inflicted on the settlers, Wiesel does not discuss why it happened or, even more importantly, what comes next. Instead, he says he wants to “take a step back” and spend 2 columns talking about Palestinians rejoicing while the settlers were being evacuated.

Now, can anyone, including Elie Wiesel, really believe that whether and how Palestinians in Gaza danced or paraded at the sight of their occupiers leaving is an issue that we should think about for a second? Should we really stop thinking about and debating all of the myriad issues facing the real people, Israeli and Palestinian, and the real solutions to their real lives that need to be worked out — and worked out soon — in order to consider some barely-seen symbolic gestures that will naturally mean something very different to anyone involved or observing them?

I began to criticize the specific details of Wiesel’s discussion when I stopped myself. I realized the Miracle of the Circle was taking over, and I am determined to see it broken. Because my response to Wiesel consisted of a whole range of arguments based on selected history, filtered through my own contextual assumptions. Elie Wiesel is free to believe whatever he wants to about disengagement and how the Palestinians did or did not respond, just like I am free to write in my last posts about how the Israeli and Jewish left lost some opportunities along the way, as well.

But the Miracle of the Circle would have us continue to focus on those issues, now almost entirely irrelevant, using irreconcilable facts or arguments about what happened, according to the sources we believe. And the Miracle would demand that we focus on them, not ad nauseam, but ad mortem – until more people die.

So let’s break the Miracle. Because this Miracle, unlike all others, is within human control. And after such a disappointing article, Wiesel ends with one appropriate sentence, one that offers us a chance to focus on breaking the Miracle. Wiesel tells us “Gaza, after all, is but one chapter in a book that must ultimately be about peace.”

A book about peace. That is exactly what we must all write. Together. So I ask everyone, including myself, to break the Miracle of the Circle. When asked to speak about disengagement and its effects, let us all focus on the future, on the book of peace. When the first Palestinian suicide bomber enters Israel from Gaza (which we know will happen at some point), we on the left should not let the Miracle of the Circle take us to a discussion about why the Israelis have not constructed a safe passage to the West Bank, or why they occupied Gaza for 38 years. When looked at without the Miracle of the Circle, we can see and say together that suicide bombings must end. Period. And we can focus on the reality that everyone must work together, not only to fight and end the circumstances that encourage such terrorism, but also to acknowledge its evil and the suffering of its victims.

When the Palestinians decry the fact that Israel has still not relinquished control of the border, or is not making sufficient progress on ending the occupation in the West Bank (which we can also be reasonably sure Israel will be accused of), we must resist the Miracle of the Circle. Let us not speak of Yasser Arafat or the incident of the Karine-A, but the real needs of the Palestinians to live in a viable state with contiguous territory that can sustain its people through economic opportunity. Along side a safe and secure Israel whose citizens do not fear attack more than anyone else in this world does.

The Miracle of the Circle has plagued Israel and Palestine, and those viewing the region from the United States who support one side or the other, for decades. The result has been tragedy and death and, worst of all, the seemingly casual acceptance of both as the fate of the region. Disengagement provides us all with the opportunity to refuse to accept more tragedy and death and to refuse to give into the Miracle of the Circle and say it’s only the other side’s fault or responsibility. Disengagement demands a new Miracle, one with no name or shape yet, a Miracle based on drawing all arguments and facts toward a book of peace.

The Left’s Absence from Disengagement

Published by
August 22, 2005 in Activism and The Settlements. 0 Comments

In general, I am not a fan of Ari Shavit. My opinion of him, for what it’s worth, is that he is one of the classic examples of those who claim to support peace, write headlines about how much they support peace, but when you read between the lines, it’s a lot less clear. He often likes to sound strident and urgent about the big picture, but then just can’t go all the way when it comes to the details. I suppose, though, that not everyone can be Gideon Levy or Amira Hass. Regardless, his piece in Thursday’s Haaretz, “Israel Must Sit Shiva,” is extremely powerful and worth a careful read because, well, it hurts. It hurt me, anyway, because it says so clearly what I have been trying to say in my last few posts…

Shavit’s piece begins with a description of disengagement that evokes the feeling of war that the settlers were, in some way, hoping to bring out with their actions.

The settlers have been defeated. Their greenhouses are withering. Their synagogues are empty. Their rooms are wide open. Their villages are ghost towns.

Shavit then does not, as he sometimes does, backtrack and attempt to evoke sympathy for the settlers because of the “withering greenhouses.” He does not wonder whether there may have been another way, whether disengagement was the wrong way to go:

Should they have been here? No. Was it necessary to remove them? Yes. The 30 years of pointless settlement on the Gaza coast had to come to an end. The great injustice done to the Palestinians had to be ended. Israel’s great historic mistake had to be corrected.

For many on the left, this is the beginning, middle and end of the story. And for most of my years of working against the occupation, this was all I focused on. Settlements are wrong, and by extension, the settlers were all wrong for being there. The only solution was to eradicate settlements and move the settlers. Nothing else needed to be said or considered.

And this is how so many on the left approached disengagement: it needed to be done. After all, not only was the settlement project wrong, but many of the settlers are extremists, Jewish fundamentalists, who have acted inhumanely not only toward Palestinians, but to many Israelis and other Jews as well.

So with the settlers so opprobrious, why should any of us who have opposed them bother to care about how they are evacuated? We’re right, they’re wrong. And when they were “winning” and living a life of virtual impunity behind settlement walls, did they care about the humanity of those who were “losing?” Of course not. When the government that they helped elect made the decision to remove them, did they respond with understanding and acceptance? Perhaps they did not respond with mass violence, but the Holocaust imagery they invoked, the accusations hurled at young soldiers that they were akin to Gestapo, will not soon be forgotten by anyone. Their playing of the Holocaust made everyone a loser.

But that’s precisely the point. The left is not supposed to be different from the right only in ideology or preferred media outlets, but in practice. In humanity. And the shock to the system disengagement caused to the settlers, and will cause to Israel and the entire Jewish community for some time to come, required that level of humanity.

But that humanity did not materialize in any real way, and although the focus of the world’s attention and media has been on the settlers, on the soldiers and the logistics of disengagement, Shavit gets it exactly right by focusing things back on the absence of those who have been far away from the process:

Dovish intellectuals were not here this week. Perhaps they are busy. Perhaps they have more important things to do. But the fact that the chief rabbis of Israeli secular morality did not see fit to make a genuine human gesture toward 8,000 fellow citizens who were forcibly uprooted from their homes is a fact laden with significance. It reorganizes Israel’s normative framework. Soon they will discover that those who do not stand emotionally with their fellow citizens when their lives are being destroyed have lost the right to preach morality to them regarding the destruction of the lives of others.

This is where Shavit hits closest to home, at least for me. When I first read this, I wondered why, as I said above, these standards and expectations should only apply to the left? Did any of the settlers, extremist or not, “stand emotionally with their fellow citizens” who lost their family and friends in military units sent to protect the settlements? With the families of their fellow citizens whose relatives were killed by Eden Natan Zada? With their fellow citizens who opposed the separation wall, or any number of incursions into Gaza? In the end, there are many Israelis whose lives have been destroyed, in one way or another, by the occupation, so why is it only the left who should show up to “stand emotionally with,” and ease the pain of, those on the other side?

Because that is what the left is about. The left seeks an end to the destruction of lives, as Shavit rightly captures it. What is often so distasteful to the left about the occupation, and those on the right who support it, is that it divides and separates people. Literally and figuratively.

There is a criticism often hurled at Israel, by me on occasion, that by being an occupier, we are repeating, in some way, sins of the past. Only the sins now are committed by us, rather than upon us. Although simplistic, it bears some truth. But the same logic is true for those fighting occupation as well. By not responding differently than those we oppose, we respond the same. We repeat their sins. We divide between them and us. And there is no peace or justice in that.

The Israeli human rights group “B’tselem” takes its name from the passage in Genesis in which we are told that God created all human beings “B’tselem Elohim,” in God’s own image. We who have asked that this commandment be respected by our opponents vis-à-vis the Palestinians must now adjust our thinking to include those same opponents as well. I will admit that I am not even sure what this means, but it is up to all of us, working together, as the left always seeks to do, to figure it out.

Part of the reason, of course, that many on the left, including me, did not respond to or embrace disengagement is skepticism about Ariel Sharon and whether this process is really “Gaza first, Gaza last.” We must continue to fight to make sure that this is not what happens. But along the way, we must remember to fight in a different way, in a way that will bring the completeness to the “day after occupation” that the Jewish mourning process of shiva, which Ari Shavit asked us to observe, is meant to bring.

The Lasting Impact of the Occupation in Gaza

Published by
August 22, 2005 in Conditions of the Occupation and Activism. 0 Comments

My friend Alice Rothchild, who is the co-chair of a Boston-based anti-occupation group called Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, published this op ed piece last week in the Baltimore Sun. Alice was one of the organizers of the Jewish American Medical Project trip to the occupied territories this past February. She stayed an extra week with some other members of the Delegation, to visit Gaza and document medical conditions there…

In a recent trip to Gaza with a Jewish-American medical delegation, we witnessed the devastating consequences for the civilian population of years of Israeli military operations. The checkpoints, closures and the severe restriction on movement and economic activity have contributed to rising unemployment, poverty accompanied by unusually high rates of infant mortality, acute and chronic malnutrition and inadequate outpatient and hospital care.

The academic and medical institutions in Gaza are also severely stressed. Yet we were impressed by the resilience of those institutions. We also were impressed with the decency, moderation and endurance of the vast majority of Palestinians…

At the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Dr. Eyad el Sarraj spoke of an entire population suffering from the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, a consequence of high unemployment, extreme poverty and massive exposure to violence.

"The chronic disease of Palestinian life is settlers and settlements," remarked Dyaa Saymah, a mental health worker at the program.

We visited a family in southern Gaza where a child was suffering from PTSD after losing his father to Israeli army bullets and his home to a bulldozer. In the ghost town of Rafah, we stood in a sea of devastation - 1,500 demolished homes, crumpled concrete and twisted wire.

A recent study by the program of 10- to 19-year-olds in Gaza found that two-thirds have seen a friend or neighbor killed or wounded, more than one-third have been tear-gassed and 82 percent suffer from moderate to severe PTSD. We know that the more trauma and violence occur in a child’s youth, the more risk-taking and violence happen in later life.

Where is the talk of the psychological needs, human rights or financial compensation for these people? Are they any less human, any less entitled to a safe and healthy life than Jewish settlers?

 A good reminder of the impact of the occupation on average children and families; and also of the work remaining to be done to heal the scars already left by the conflict.

 Incidentaly, I’ve put together a partial list of U.S.-based organizations opposed to the occupation here, in case any readers are looking for ways to get involved.

 

 

 

 

 

Karl Popper on Acid

Published by
August 19, 2005 in Religion. 3 Comments

This is a religion blog. We cover religious issues, right? So , here it is: a brand new religion, courtesy of BoingBoing. It’s Pastafarianism. Here’s the scoop. You’ve heard about the Kansas School Board’s decision to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution in the public schools, right?…

Last week, the Kansas Board of Education gave preliminary approval to science standards that allow ID-style alternatives to be discussed alongside Darwinism. In Pennsylvania, a forthcoming federal trial will test the legality of disputed ID instruction in Dover’s schools.

The ID movement says Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting upon gradual biological changes cannot address how life originated. ID also argues that Darwinism fails to fully explain how extremely varied and complex life forms emerged during the past 600 million years.

Therefore, it concludes, guidance and information from some external intelligence must be involved. That intelligence is usually left unidentified, but it sounds like God _ and critics say ID is religion masquerading as science.

The basic argument is that evolution cannot be proved - so why shouldn’t divine intervention be taught as an equally legitimate hypothesis? Never mind that creationism requires suspending all the established principles of physics, chemistry and biology. Theories are theories. One is as good as another, especially when it comes to getting elected.

So the good folks at Boing Boing are advancing the theory that Jesus was the son of the Pastafarian deity, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You can read all about Pastafariamsim here.

The FSM cult now has a Wikipedia entry, with details that indicate that followers of His Noodliness — Pastafarians — are growing in number, like so many meatballs accumulating on a plate of linguini. A few of the facts I learned:

  • Codes of conduct:
    • Prayers are ended with the word RAmen rather than Amen.
      • Benefits of conversion:
        • Like the great noodles they worship, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists have flimsy moral standards.
        • Promise of a stripper factory and a beer volcano in Heaven.

        A rival faction, based on SPAM (Spaghetti & Pulsar Activating Meatballs), has formed and is calling for a Holy War against FSM. SPAMation claims to have the One True Letter to the Kansas School Board.

Furthermore, BoingBoing is offering a challenge to amateur empiricists:

We are willing to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

If it can’t be disproved, I suppose Pastafarianism has as much claim to a piece of the curriculum as Darwinism and Creationism.

Boy, High School biology has sure gotten interesting since I took it. No time at all for categorizing trees, I’ll bet. Or that troublesome double helix thing.

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