WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
Photo of George shown here and in web site banner courtesy of Debbie Hill, 2000.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
I`ve been thinking about truth. About what the word means, and how we
know what
it means. This comes in the wake of yesterday`s demonstration, with its
by now
habitual rituals unfolding in their remorseless, bitter order: the
hopeful
beginning, the drumming and slogans, the dispossessed Palestinians
standing
beside us as we chant, the rapid, volatile crescendo, the eventual
police
attack, and the arrests. Sarah, a young woman of astonishing courage and
clarity, was among the first to be arrested.
On the one hand, Sheikh Jarrah is a touchstone. As my son Misha said to
me on
the way back: Some things are amazingly simple. In Sheikh Jarrah you can
see
pure theft in all its starkness. The Bible says `Thou shalt not steal,`
and
itן¿½God, that is-- was referring to Sheikh Jarrah. Any one can see it.
The
shocking thing, of course, is that the whole apparatus of the modern
state - the
municipality, its committees and master plans and grey bureaucrats, the
mayor,
the government, the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the courts, the police,
the
secret services - all these have colluded in actively perpetrating the
theft. There`s
really not much room for argument. Either you stand by and let them
throw
innocent people out of their homes, or you come each week to demonstrate
and
resist. It`s particularly terrible because the wave of expulsions is
continuing, in fact intensifying. Two weeks ago we shifted the
demonstration to
the new set of houses that have been targeted. As so many times before,
we
heard an aged, wrinkled Palestinian grandmother say: `Why are they doing
this
to us? I prefer to die than to leave my home.`
It`s clear that the government wants to destroy the whole of Palestinian
Sheikh
Jarrah, to rid the neighborhood of its many dozens of extended families,
and to
replace them with Jewish settlers. It`s quite possible that in a few
years`
time, if the process continues to accelerate, there will be nothing left
of
Sheikh Jarrah. The mosque will be replaced by a yeshiva - plans for its
location already exist--the homes of the Palestinian refugees from 1948
will be
occupied by fanatical settlers, new (ugly) apartment buildings will go
up, the
Arabic street signs will disappear; in short, a whole piece of reality,
with
its language, its memories, its dreams, its human dramas, large and
small, will
be liquidated. That`s the plan. That`s what they want. Why should they
want it?
Hate exists. Truth can be simple.
On the other hand, I think this simple truth is itself enveloped by
another,
deeper one, more inchoate and lonely, perhaps resistant to formulation.
I`ll
try to say something about it and about the way it becomes manifest.
THE EARLY PART of the demonstration is somehow satisfying. No sooner do
we
arrive than Ezra Nawi spots me and recruits me to his infiltration
squads:
`Come with me.` I should describe the situation. The stolen houses, now
inhabited by Israeli settlers, are about 100 meters down one of the main
streets leading into the neighborhood. In recent months, the protestors
have
been strictly barred from approaching the houses, or even from setting
foot in
the upper part of the road. Settlers and right-wing activists have free
run of
the entire neighborhood, as do ultra-orthodox Jews who come to pray at
the
nearby tomb of Simeon the Just. Our quarrel is not with the latter. The
houses
themselves are now draped in Israeli flags, and on the roof of the
al-Ghawi
house there is also a large, crude candelabra, probably there since
Chanukah.
Something changed slightly in the course of this last week. Some of our
people
prepared an appeal to the Legal Adviser to the government, Yehuda
Weinstein;
the letter sets out, in precise, understated language, the tortuous
story of
police violence and illegal actions in Sheikh Jarrah over the last few
months,
and also offers the fairly obvious explanation that senior officers in
the
Jerusalem police are driven by a blatant right-wing bias. The letter was
signed
by many well-known public figures in Israel and received much media
attention.
So today, riding on the crest of a wave, however small, we are no longer
playing
by their rules. The police barricades are up, and both the blue-grey
Jerusalem
police and the sinister, black-clothed riot police are there, but a good
200 to
300 activists, maybe more, are already milling around in the upper part
of the
street. I follow Ezra and a few others by a roundabout route, over walls
and
fences and through an olive grove, to end up in front of the stolen
houses
themselves. The drummers are drumming, and there are shouts: `Free
Sheikh Jarrah!`
`One Two Three Four, Fascism Will March No More!` And so on. I hug
Nasir, one
of the evictees. About fifty of us have gotten through, and there is a
steady
stream of new faces, including, to my delight, my son Misha and his
bride-to-be
Erika (they announced their engagement to us just half an hour before).
It is good to be here, close to the families (a really good place to
celebrate
an engagement). On the outer wall of the al-Kurd house, someone has
etched a
Palestinian flag with the caption: `History Is With Us.` A small
contingent of
police is there to hold us back, and at first they are relaxed, almost
nonchalant. Occasionally, we hear shouts and cries from the upper
street; later
we discover that the police had already moved to suppress the protest
there
with violence, and the first arrests were under way. Eventually they get
to us,
too. Reinforcements arrive, and soon they attack, pushing and poking us,
lashing out, bending arms, kicking a little, roughing us up, and
occasionally
picking someone out and carrying him or her off to the detention vans.
I`ve
seen much worse, but it isn`t pleasant, and it is, needless to say, both
illegal and gratuitous. A non-violent demonstration of this sort has
repeatedly
been pronounced legal by the judges who, week after week, released the
arrested
activists (after a weekend in jail) and reprimanded the police for
making the
arrests in the first place.
Herded uphill, amidst the yelling and the scuffles, we are singing the
famous
Hasidic song of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: `The whole world is but a
very
narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to be afraid.` Speaking of
truth, it
rings true on this sorrowful street, like a memory of what it once meant
to be
Jewish. I wonder what Rabbi Nachman, one of the deepest minds in Jewish
history, would have said about what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah.
Actually, I
think I know. A policeman strikes Erika, and Misha instinctively moves
to
protect her, pushes him back. A friend asks me why we are refusing to
obey the
police commands, why we are moving so slowly, holding our ground, so
that they
have to push and drag us physically up the hill, and some people get
hurt and
get arrested. I explain. It is important to resist. It is basic to who
we are
and what we stand for. Even if no one is watching, even if no one knows,
if we
are to remain human, we must continue to bear witness and to resist.
EVEN AS I say the words, I realize they`re not much of an argument. So
what if
we resist? Look at the forces arrayed against us, look at our failure to
make
change happen. Where are the hundreds of thousands who should be
standing here
with us? What good is truth, anyway, when the liars and the thieves and
the
demented politicians have the guns, and when the ordinary Israeli
person,
whoever he is, just living his life, won`t break through the shell of
his
lethal indifference? But I`m not groping toward a philosopher`s truth,
and the
moral equation is not, after all, in question. We`ve already defined the
situation. `Thou shalt not steal.` What does this have to do with being
poked
and prodded up the hill?
I think the point is that there is no ordinary person. For every one
there`s
the same precarious balance, and the same struggle. The easy way is
always to
go along with the cruelty; most do. Some don`t. You can see it here on
the
street. Something has galvanized the people around me to do the decent
thing. I
don`t think they had to think about it. It is something one knows the
way we
know that someday we will die, though we mostly deny this in our hearts;
or the
way we know how to fall in love, and how to stay in love, and how to
hold a
baby and how to rest when we are tired and other things like that. Such
knowledge isn`t simple in the way the other kind of truth might be.
It is something we carry in our bodies, and it`s often a rather delicate
and
complicated business, where it`s easy to make the wrong choice out of
fear or
laziness or confusion. Hence the struggle. When you make the right
choice, there`s
truly no mistaking it. No syllogisms or proof-texts are needed. Your
skin tells
you, or your muscles and bones, even before your mind looks for words.
You feel
wholeן¿½a whole human being, capable of action. I look around me at the
stalwarts of the Sheikh Jarrah protests. The moral calculus of action,
easily
put into words, is not the only reason they are here. Actually, nothing
instrumental can fully explain it, any more than the instrumental or the
reasonable can explain why we are alive. Let them poke me and push me
and
arrest me and curse me, I don`t care. I care that they have driven Nasir
and
his family from their home. In that sense, I`m here for truth, a Greek
truth,
perhaps, the peeling away of a veil. I will stand my ground.
There was another good example of it last week. Yonatan Shapira, a
captain in
the Air Force who has refused to serve, who helped organize the letter
of the
pilots refusing to perform missions in the Palestinian territories,
sprayed two
graffiti on the last remnant of the wall surrounding the Warsaw ghetto:
`Liberate all ghettos` (in Hebrew) and `Free Gaza and Palestine` (in
English).
He did it openly, in the full light of day, and he also explained it:
`The Holocaust has been appropriated for years now by the Israeli
government
and the Israeli education system. The Israeli establishment would rather
have
Jews and Israelis in a state of frightened victims who worship
militarism.....In our act we tried to separate between the actions of
the
Israeli Government and Jews. The lesson that should be learned from the
Holocaust is resistance to any form of racism. Resistance to ethnic
cleansing
and forced expulsion of people. Resistance to the starvation of human
beings
and their confinement into ghettos. These are issues that the Israeli
policy
makers would like us to ignore and forget.`
At the top of the hill I find my colleague Tamar. `How`s the revolution
going
up here?` I ask her, a little sadly. `Just look at these people,` she
says. `They`ve
planted some strong seeds. Some day they will bear fruit.`
The
Many Layers of NaHalat
Shimon beg the question: Where's the money coming from?
On August 8,
2009, I wrote:
[Occupied
East Jerusalem] Last Sunday morning just before sunrise, Israeli forces
evicted seventy more Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem
neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which is being taken over by the Nahalat
Shimon settlers.
"The
events in Sheikh Jarrah garnered international censure from the
European Union, the United Nations (UN) and from Britain, which said it
was 'appalled' at the move. US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday night called the Israeli
evictions "deeply regrettable" and she urged "the government of Israel
and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions." [1]
Israeli
forces also demolished the Al-Kurd family protest tent for the sixth
time. The Al-Kurd family was evicted from their home in the Sheikh
Jarrah neighborhood last November, just prior to my first visit and I
returned again on June 10, 2009.
Less
than a five minute walk from my room at the Ambassador Hotel and less
than ten from the Old City of Jerusalem is the neighborhood of Sheikh
Jarrah. Around the corner
from my hotel and up the hill from the Al-Kurd Tent is a newly erected
community center with a plaque "Dedicated to the Children of Shimon
Hazadik Neighborhood"
from a Dr. Rubin Brecher and family of Lawrence, New York.
According
to Jewish tradition, Shimon Hazadik (which means 'The righteous') was
the High Priest at the time of Alexander the Great. He reminded the
people of what's important in the world and he used to say: "On three things the world
stands: the Torah, on Service [prayer] and on acts of kindness."[2]
Mrs.
Al-Kurd, known as Um Kamal [mother of Kamal] and her now deceased
husband Mohammed had lived in the neighborhood from 1956 until the
morning of November 9, 2008 when the Israeli police enforced a court order that
evicted them.
When
I returned to the tent on June 10, 2009 and asked Um Kamal where her
calm strength and perpetual smile came from, she gestured to the sky
and responded, "Allah:
God gives me."
Maher
Hannoun interjected, "Um Kamal is a strong woman because she has a
strong connection to this land where we both were born! Even for
millions of dollars we would
never sell our land, our hopes, our dreams! We are here legally and we
have a contract that was signed between the government and UNWRRA, but
what gives us the
real
power to fight is seeing all the people who come to be with us
here believing in human rights. We need every one to carry our message
around the world that this is our home and we will never leave here.
"In
Gaza they attacked with F16 tanks. In Jerusalem they attack with
evictions and transferring property. More than 500 homes in this
neighborhood have already received
eviction notices. They are building 200 settler units and an American
Israeli company named Nahalat Shimon Builders is behind it."
Nahalat Shimon is also the name of a settler
group and a real estate company.
On
August 2, 2009, "Israeli riot police wielding clubs kicked out two
Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem on
Sunday, defying international protests
over Jewish settlement activity in the area. Clashes erupted after
police moved in at dawn around the homes in the upmarket Arab district
of Sheikh Jarrah following an Israeli court decision ordering the eviction of the 53
Palestinians, including 19 minors.
“I
was born in this house and so were my children,” said Maher Hanoun,
whose family was evicted along with the neighboring Ghawi household.
“Now we are on the streets. We have become refugees.”
"The
Supreme Court ordered the evictions following an appeal by the Nahalat
Shimon International settler group which claimed Jewish settlers have
title deeds for the properties,
despite UN and Palestinian denials. Jerusalem authorities have also
given permission for the construction of about 20 housing units in
Sheikh Jarrah, in defiance of global calls for a halt to all settlement activity in
occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank." [3]
On
November 9, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Reverend Richard Toll was awakened in his
hotel room in the Ambassador while the Israeli Occupying Forces/IOF
broke down the door of
the home of the Al Khurd family. Rev. Toll informed me that he was
jarred awake by a woman’s pain filled scream that was indescribable.
The
Al Khurd family had lived in their home in the Sheikh Jarrah
neighborhood since the days when east Jerusalem was under Jordanian
control. The United Nations upon contract
with Jordan allotted them the land after they became refugees when they
were expelled from their home in west Jerusalem by Zionists during the
1948 war.
Hasib
Nashashibi, of the Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights [an NGO
coalition of Palestinian Muslim and Christians] explained to me, “When
Jordan controlled
this
land and the UN granted privileges to the Palestinian refugees
including those from west Jerusalem, such as education, health care,
and relief and development;
they
also allowed the refugees to give up some privileges and receive a
home and land deed instead. Jordan never fulfilled their obligation to
send the written
documentation
that these west Jerusalem refugees are land owners and
not tenants. Now the Israeli’s are trying to make them refugees for the
second time!”
Since
East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967, the Oriental Jews
Associations and the Knesseth Yisrael Association have been waging a
brutal take over of the Khurds’ home, claiming that the land originally
belonged to Jews.
In
1972, they succeeded to register the land in their name with the
Israeli Land registrar. In 1999, settlers burst into the home and set
up an occupation in a wing of the house
that belonged to the couple’s son, Raed. The Khurd family hired lawyers
and have spent a fortune in court battles and in 2006, the Israeli
court finally revoked the claim
of ownership by the settlers. However, on February 25, 2007 the Israeli
Supreme Court issued an order to evict the settlers but it was never
enforced!
In
Israeli law, all of Jerusalem, including the eastern half of the city,
is considered to be the “indivisible” capital of the Jewish state and
religiously fundamentalist settlers have been claiming land all over
occupied East Jerusalem based on title deeds that pre-existed 1948.
Since
Israel became a state 531 Palestinian villages have been destroyed and
750,000 Palestinians were made refugees in 1948, and Israel continues
to make more!
President
George W. Bush became a willing collaborator in this on going injustice
in his infamous 2004 exchange of letters with Ariel Sharon. Bush agreed
that Israel would
not
be expected to return to the armistice lines of 1949 and declared
that Israel would be able to hold on to its “population centers” in the
West Bank. This is nothing
more than Orwellian spin that attempts to justify the established
settlement blocs for every one of them are illegal under international
law.
"Michshol Hafrada" is Hebrew for
"The Separation Wall" and separation translates to Apartheid in
Afrikaan.
Before
I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out And
to whom I was likely to give offence. Something there is that does not
love a wall, That wants it down.-Robert
Frost
The
Wall has divided Palestinians from Palestinians and has stolen their
aquifers, denies them access to their land, jobs, families and holy
sites and for every mile it consumes over $1.25 Million USA Tax dollars.
The
Wall was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice but no
president has yet demanded Israel to tear down this wall!
The
so called Holy Land is a Swiss cheese of land locked enclaves; known as
Bantustans in Afrikaan. Jewish only colonies have been implanted to
divide the Palestinian neighborhoods
throughout occupied territory. Over 100,000 Palestinians are trapped
and then daily humiliated and tortured at the over 600 checkpoints that
deny them access
to their families, land, jobs, resources and holy sites.
Since
1967, over 22,000 dwellings -averaging eleven people per unit- have
been bulldozed by Israeli forces usually because they interfere with
settlement expansion.
Israel attempts to justify
their immoral actions with three distinct categories:
1.
Collective Punishment: Homes of suspected terrorists-in reality that is
anyone who opposes the occupation- as well as the families of
suicide/homicide bombers.
These punitive
actions amount to 15% of the over 22,000 homes destroyed since 1967.
2.
Administrative demolitions for lack of building permits: Israel refuses
to issue any and this accounts for 25%. In occupied east Jerusalem one
out of four Palestinian homes have a demolition order.
3. Security: The blanket reason given for all of Israel’s
injustices and illegal actions.
On
December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace
Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South
Africa's Apartheid regime was quoted in The Guardian:
"I've been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen
the humiliation at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when
young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will
never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A
true peace can ultimately
be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it
can come to the Holy Land."
I
imagine Shimon Hazadik might remind "the children" who are taking over
the neighborhood that,"From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets
taught...that the Jewish
claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and
spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as
the Torah tells us, 'vomit you
out' if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of
Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently
stated mitzvah [command]:
"When
you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one
who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only
'you shall love your neighbor as yourself' but also 'you shall love
the other.'" [4]
I
also imagine Shimon Hazadik might be interested- as we all should- in
knowing from whom and where the money comes from that equips the
Nahalat Shimon settlers.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
Establishment of Israel
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel
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