al Nakba

Sixty-one years ago today, Israel declared its statehood, and celebrates it. The Palestinian people do not celebrate. They remember al Nakba, the catastrophe.

Watch this short video from the American Friends Service Committee, "Israel Palestine: A Land in Fragments." It's a little over two minutes long. The Quakers--the American Friends--have no interest other than peace and peaceful resolution of conflicts. Their little video sums up the terrible spatial irony of the present situation. It bends over backwards to keep itself as neutral as possible at the start, but by the end the depiction of the facts on the ground tell their tale. Sixty one years of control over territory originally allocated by the UN to the Palestinian people have diminished the land so significantly that a "contiguous" territory for the Palestinian people looks now to be an impossibility. See it for yourself in the short film. The last forty-one years have done the most damage. Israel continues its strategy and tactics of creating "facts on the ground" and eating further into the land which is not theirs to eat.

Follow the links on the page to Resources on Fragmentation of the West Bank. If you feel adventurous, read the words of Palestinians telling their own stories about 1948. These people are not terrorists, not "savages," not "cockroaches," not "people who only understand violence," as some of the more partisan defenders of the Israeli position would like to have Americans believe. These are people like you and I who have been victims of a catastrophe and its ongoing aftermath.

And yet, despite the maps and the visuals and the accumulation of voices that peacefully protest for peace, the blindness to injustice continues, a deafness, deep and tinny and implacable continues, and the Israeli government continues to demolish and expand and refine this matrix of control, oppresssion, and occupation.

"Now hear this, O foolish and senseless people, Who have eyes but do not see; Who have ears but do not hear." (Jeremiah, 5:21)

Burrowing in Middle East History and a Bright Spot

I have been thinking, reading, and researching a good deal about the Middle East for a project on the Israeli settlements. I am also preparing for a trip there in May with the specific purpose of meeting with Iraqi refugees. Plans will be final soon. Reading as much as I have been about the situation, especially regarding the Occupied Territories, is a roller coaster ride of facts and sadness and misery and anger.


It's a real test for an attitude I have been trying to practice recently. The attitude is based on reading and thinking about the philosophy of non-violence as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He has even worked with Palestinians and Israelis. It's a variation on the theme of seek first to understand then to be understood. Violence cannot be overcome unless there is communication. Communication begins with mindfulness of your own pain, and then mindfulness of the pain of others.


Today I worked my way through a set of thirteen historical maps showing the original and the current boundaries of the Occupied Territories. I found myself in such a state of fury when I finished that I had to hold my face in my hands, as Thich Nhat Hanh once said he did, in order to keep the anger from escaping out into the world, in order to hold it within to focus on it, to understand it. If I can get so furious over the "facts on the ground" (as the Israeli government calls them) what must go on in the soul of a Palestinian?


You cannot read the history of the region without having these upwellings of anger and frustration, not if you believe in justice and in recognizing injustice. Then comes a positive note when you think that despite all of this injustice, you can see quiet reconciliations and positive thought as in the statement of Ali Abu Awad, "Everyone wants to be right; no one wants to be honest." That's become a mantra for me.


And then randomly comes another positive note as I take a break from the study and thinking. A dull gleam at the end of a long tunnel. Robin Wright, one of the best of the Middle East journalists, has written a new book, Dreams and Shadows, which gives a cautiously optimistic thought about the Middle East. Here she is in an interview with Charlie Rose:

So I went back to the region to see if we're back at square one, and discovered, in fact, that there are openings in the region shaping -- people carving out new political space because of the young, because of the soccer moms, because of rebel clerics in places like Tehran, because of the young techies in Jordan. There is a budding culture of change. There is a beginning, and it is only a beginning. But I'm not sure it's the same old Middle East that you and I have covered for so long.

You'll find the quote and more information on the author's website. Wright is a good speaker and good interviewee, especially when someone superb like Terry McNally (not aggressive and egotistic, like Ch. Rose) is interviewing. McNally interviewed her on KPFK and you can scroll down on his web page to find the Play or Download podcast buttons for his two-part interview. You might also book mark the page for his interviews with Dahr Jamail and Joe Stieglitz.

All three writers, and McNally as well for that matter, don't care about being right so much as they care about being honest.

News in the Shadows

I started this blog after returning from Memphis in January 2007. I had attended the Third National Conference on Media Reform and was enthusiastic about the work that needed to be done on correcting the continuing failures of the mainstream media to cover essential issues of the day. Few friends were aware, when I spoke to them, of the many stories that go without coverage.

Over this past weekend, friends dropped by for a Saint Patty's Day party and lots of refreshments, food, and conversation. And over the course of the party, despite the political talk, no one seemed aware of one of the bigger uncovered stories, the Winter Soldier 2008 Conference held outside of Washington D.C. in Silver Spring Maryland.

"Winter soldier" is a term derived from Thomas Paine, who spoke of "summer soldiers and summer patriots" who did not want to fight in the Revolution when the cold weather came. It was the name used by Vietnam veterans testifying about the atrocities that they had committed and had witnessed during the Vietnam War. And the name has been recast for this year with veterans of the War in Iraq and Desert Storm testifying to the abuses and atrocities that have occurred during this misbegotten adventure in Iraq under the leadership of George W. Bush.

More on this later: but for now it is enough to suggest some additional stories that do not appear in the mainstream media or that have received only scant attention:

First, the efforts of the CIA and the Bush Administration to finance a coup in Gaza, the thwarting of which was the real story behind the violence of Hamas against Fatah;

Second, the story of the suppression of evidence and investigation on the part of the United States into the death of Rachel Corrie, killed as she was attempting to stop the demolition of a Palestinian house. She was crushed by a Caterpillar Corporation bulldozer driven by a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces;

Third, Winter Soldier 2008, which brought hundreds of veterans to the Washington, D.C. area but received so little coverage you would have thought it took place in the wilds of Indonesia;

Fourth, the failure of the United States government to uphold its International obligation in the case of Luis Posada Carilles, a known terrorist who has been given sanctuary in the United States;

Fifth, the story of the continuing settlement building by the Israeli government in the Occupied Territories and Israel's clear violation of International law and the Geneva Conventions, the collective punishment of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories.

Sixth and finally for now, the subject of my next post, the unjust treatment here in the United States of a Palestinian activist--and it should be noted, a Florida supporter of George W. Bush in the 2000 election--named Sami al-Arian. The Justice Department and Federal judges have kept him in incarceration despite his acquittal by a jury. This travesty of justice is our version of the Dreyfus Affair, and it should be shouted in all the atriums of every courthouse in the United States until justice prevails.

On this last matter, there is important news to be gotten in the morning, and when that news breaks I will be able to present the full story.