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
From September 15 email from Mid East analyst, Phyllis Bennis [emphasis mine]
The Middle East in Turmoil Once Again: And It's Not All About Us
September 20, 2012
Dear friends,
When are we going to learn that it's not all about us?
Certainly a lot of the current turmoil in the Middle East has something
to do with the consequences of U.S. policy there. But still. The front
page article in Sunday’s New York Times
led with concern that the current turmoil will test “President
Obama’s ability to shape the forces of change in the Middle East.”
Yikes. This is a disaster in the making.
Trying to renew U.S. control of a region finally claiming its 21st
century independence from mainly U.S.-backed governments, is completely
wrong-headed. After two or three generations of U.S. support for brutal
military dictatorships and absolute monarchies
because they were willing to toe the line on Israel, oil, and military
bases, do we really want to put Washington back in charge of "shaping"
the change that people across the region are fighting for?
Phyllis - with Women for Women International's Zainab Salbi - on MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes."
The whole range of changes in the Middle East, who's "shaping" those
changes, what's the fight over Iran red lines between the United States
and Israel and between Obama and Romney, what about U.S. military aid to
Israel, were all on the agenda of
Saturday's "Up With Chris Hayes" show on MSNBC. I was part of the panel, with a mostly interesting and diverse set of progressive voices. (Take a look
here — the link lists all the separate segments of the two-hour show on the left side.)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking of the killings of the U.S.
officials in Benghazi, asked "how could this happen in a country we
helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" The answer
that will probably never occur to her is that
not everyone in Libya, not even everyone in Benghazi, saw the U.S./NATO
air war as liberation — even some of those who celebrated the overthrow
of the Qaddafi regime didn't want it to come via foreign air forces.
Let's all take a deep breath and remember that it's not always about us.
The U.S./NATO air war against Libya did overthrow a dictatorship — but
it led to rising sectarianism and division, a country awash in weapons,
uncontrolled militias arresting and torturing
dark-skinned Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans, imposing their will on
terrified people without any accountability to the elected government,
and so on. And all those consequences were happening way
before the tragic killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, the
death of the other U.S. diplomat and two U.S. security contractors in
Benghazi.
Somehow it took the deaths of U.S. officials to get people in this
country to pay attention again to Libya. I was part of a panel
discussing exactly that on National Public Radio's
KQED "Forum" program in San Francisco.
The protests that have spread across the Middle East and the broader
Muslim world (which includes places like London these days) were sparked
by the offensive Islamophobic film clip produced by a shadowy group in
California and endorsed and promoted by Quran-burning
preacher Terry Jones in Florida.
But as Bob Wright wrote in The Atlantic, "as the
Muslim protests subside, more and more people have come to realize that
what seems to have sparked them – one of the worst YouTube videos ever,
which is saying something – isn't what they
were mainly about. But what were they about?
Part of the
answer is that the video itself did offend people. But, as when a single
offensive remark from someone you've long disliked can make you go
ballistic, the explanation for this explosion goes
deeper than the precipitating event. What are the sources of simmering
hostility toward America that helped fuel these protests?"
The mainstream media tried to answer the question. NBC's Richard Engel had it all sorted out for us:
the problem is "this consistent mindset driven into people that the West
is against Islam, and everything is a U.S.-Israeli conspiracy to bring
down the Middle East."
That makes everything
easy, of course. There's no real Israeli occupation of the
West Bank or Israeli siege of Gaza that might make a few people in the
Middle East angry. The U.S. isn't
really sending Israel $4.1 billion in military aid this year. Nuclear-armed Israel isn't
really threatening an attack on Iran that could set the entire region ablaze with war. It's all just a silly conspiracy theory.
Engel reminds us that "maybe moderates will win over time," though he
admits that "they're not winning now. And that could not have been the
hope when the Arab Spring began."
He doesn't want to acknowledge that
just maybe the victory of pro-U.S., Western-defined
"moderates" wasn't exactly the goal of all the Egyptians, Tunisians,
Yemenis, Bahrainis, Syrians, Libyans, and others who actually fought the
battles of the Arab Spring.
SYRIA
Perhaps the most optimistic result of the current U.S. examination of
the region is that the consequences of militarizing non-violent
struggles and of outside military intervention are suddenly meriting
greater consideration.
Like, perhaps, in Syria. Conditions
inside the country continue to deteriorate for ordinary Syrians, and
some opposition forces continue to call for outside governments — the
U.S., Saudi Arabia, Turkey, NATO — to establish a "no-fly zone" in
Syria.
But as we learned in Libya, a "no-fly zone"
begins with the bombing of the country — and can quickly morph into
full-scale air war. The example of Libya should give serious pause to
those still hoping a "no-fly zone" would help supporters of the
democratic non-violent uprising in Syria. You can watch
a debate I participated in, on why we shouldn’t be sending arms to
Syria, on Huffington Post’s new
"HuffPost Live" video debates.
I went on Al-Jazeera yesterday to discuss the latest peace plans in Syria. Click on the photo for the link.
We still don't know what the actual circumstances were in which Amb.
Stevens and the others were killed in Benghazi. We don't know if they
were killed in a pre-planned action by RPG-armed teams, perhaps avenging
the drone killing in of the Libyan who was second
in command of al Qaeda. Or whether they were killed by the fire that
was set in the consulate.
What we do know is that some of the conditions endemic in post-Qaddafi
Libya are now on the rise in Syria as well.
In response to brutal regime
crackdowns, militias emerge that are powerfully armed but not
accountable to any central authority. The presence
of foreign Salafis, adherents of the most extremist forms of Islamist
practice, is increasing in Syria, much as they emerged in Libya during
the anti-Qaddafi fighting.
It still is clear to me that more outside
military support to the anti-Assad forces in Syria,
let alone direct military intervention by the United States, NATO,
Saudi Arabia or others will be disastrous.It will result in far more
people dying, far more damage to the country, and a much greater threat
of long-term national and regional division, sectarianism,
and instability.
The dangers of that kind of outside military
intervention, though in Syria, was very much the theme of an
interview I did for the National Catholic Reporter
a couple of weeks ago. The United States is reportedly planning to send
surveillance drones to Libya to search for "jihadi camps." That kind of
escalation is certain to ratchet up internal
tensions even further.
The immediate necessity is a ceasefire in Syria, an end to the provision
of new and repaired weapons to all sides. To have real impact it would
have to specifically include a cut-off of Iranian arms shipments and
Russian "repair and replace" assistance to the
regime, and an end to all U.S., Turkish, Saudi, Qatari, and other
military support to the rebels. While this would not leave the two sides
militarily "equal," it would prevent the greater increase in civilian
deaths that would result from increasing the military
capacity of either or both sides.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and UN special envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi called for new four-party talks involving Egypt, Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Photo by AFP.
Some version of that may be the goal of the latest diplomatic
initiative, the call by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi for new
four-party talks on Syria involving Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and
Turkey, the key supporters of both sides in the civil war. By bringing
in Middle East regional powers, hopefully with the support of new
UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, this group could bring new
possibilities for diplomatic solutions, particularly if bolstered by
participation of the economic powerhouses of the global
South, the IBSA countries — India, Brazil, and South Africa. The
initiative was weakened a few days ago by Saudi Arabia’s refusal to
participate in the first meeting, but the trajectory remains on track,
and still provides the most hopeful possibility for
a ceasefire and the potential for negotiations. You can watch my analysis of the most recent developments on this front on al Jazeera yesterday.
AND ON THE "IRANIAN RED LINE" FRONT…
On Democracy Now! last month,
I spoke with Amy Goodman and Nermeen
Shaikh, along with NIAC president Trita Parsi, about the escalating
dangers of an Israeli military strike on Iran. The rhetoric seemed to
cool slightly in the last couple of weeks of August.
But by early
September it was sky-high again, shaped by Bibi Netanyahu’s
attack on the White House, whose officials, he said, "don't have the
moral right to place a red light before Israel." He was responding to a
significant hardening of the Obama administration's rejection of
Netanyahu's demand for Washington to set a war deadline
against Iran.
That rejection included Hillary Clinton's rebuff of the "deadline" idea,
and continued with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin
Dempsey's statement that he "did not want to be complicit" in an
Israeli attack on Iran. It finished up with the
White House rejecting Netanyahu's request for a face-to-face meeting
with President Obama during the UN General Assembly session next week.
(Or, Netanyahu begged, he would come to Washington to see the president
there… anywhere, anytime, just let me get the
face time). No dice, the White House said, the president doesn't have
time.
Netanyahu is feeling the heat more than ever, not least because his one
ally in the Israeli cabinet, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, finally ended
his we-want-war-with-Iran partnership with Netanyahu. Now isolated both
domestically and internationally, the prime
minister is lashing out with a dangerous desperation. The stakes for
Netanyahu are sky-high, given his investment of political capital in the
notion that only a military strike can protect Israel. But Barak's
defection from the pro-war camp, combined with
the new U.S. firmness against an attack, will make it far more
difficult for Netanyahu to win sufficient support for a unilateral
military strike from his security cabinet, let alone from the Knesset as
a whole.
So as of this week the threat of an Israeli military strike on Iran,
with all the consequences for the people of Iran, for the country and
the environment, for the likely victims in the surrounding neighborhood,
for the world oil markets, and so on, has been
somewhat reduced.
A strike is very unlikely — though still not
impossible. After all, it isn't only about the immediate crisis. This
has been going on a long time. A quote in Trita Parsi's great book
Treacherous Alliance, from the director of the Begin-Sadat Center in Israel, sums it up:
"There was a feeling in Israel that because of the end of the Cold
War, relations with the U.S. were cooling and we needed some new glue
for the alliance," Efraim Inbar said, "and the new glue... was radical
Islam. And Iran was radical Islam."
The threat of war isn't over. Congress is still trying to prevent the
administration from engaging in any real negotiations, just in case it
wanted to move in that direction.
With sanctions ratcheted up higher
than ever, the latest effort is a House vote (H.R.
3783) this week requiring the Secretary of State to create
"a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran's growing presence and
hostile activity in the Western Hemisphere" — essentially demanding a
report created to scare Americans into believing
that Iranian commandos are invading their backyards. (Anyone remember
the Cold War-era "Red Dawn" action movie about a Cuban invasion of
Denver?)
In case anyone wonders, what Iran is actually accused of doing
in the Western Hemisphere is "pursuing cooperation
with Latin American countries by signing economic and security
agreements in order to create a network of diplomatic and economic
relationships to lessen the blow of international sanctions."
What we
need is real diplomacy, not more threats.
AFGHANISTAN
Meanwhile, the war continues. And the failure of the U.S. strategy
(currently defined as helping the Afghan Army "stand up" to opposing
militias) is becoming more apparent every day.
The latest official
acknowledgement of that failure is in the form of the
September 18 announcement that the U.S.-led coalition forces are
cancelling almost all joint operations with Afghan troops. Too many U.S.
and other NATO troops being killed by their Afghan "partners."
And
while the U.S. admits only about 25% of those are killed
by "Taliban infiltrators," they claim they have no idea why the other
Afghan soldiers and police turn on their U.S./NATO trainers.
Apparently
they still can't wrap their collective heads around the notion that
Afghans — even those who join the military or
police for the same reason young Americans do, because they need a job —
might actually hate the foreign occupation of their country and might
seek a chance to undermine it. (If you missed it last month, check outmy "Inside Story" debate on al Jazeera, with General Gunter Katz, spokesman for NATO in Afghanistan on exactly this question).
What's getting far less attention than these "green on blue" attacks
killing young U.S./NATO soldiers, is what we might call "blue on blue"
attacks — suicide. Far more U.S. troops are dying at their own hands
than are killed in green-on-blue attacks. And even
less attention is paid to the Afghan civilians who continue to be
killed in huge numbers. In one of Sunday's NATO airstrikes eight women
and girls were killed before dawn as they searched for wood to cook
breakfast.
Afghan President Karzai condemned the airstrikes, and also condemned the
U.S. refusal to turn over to Afghan responsibility the more than 600
prisoners still held at the U.S.-controlled Bagram prison.
Washington
agreed to turn prison authority over to the Afghan
government by September 9th, but so far has refused because Kabul won’t
agree to keep the prisoners in custody indefinitely. Karzai said Afghan
law doesn't provide for indefinite detention. Funny, U.S. law didn’t
use to either. Funny how things change…
PALESTINE – 30 YEARS AFTER SABRA-SHATILA
A Palestinian refugee holds pictures of lost loved ones during a
rally commemorating the 30th anniversary of Sabra and Shatilla massacre
in Beirut on Tuesday (AFP photo)
And finally, while the eyes of so much of the world are on the Middle
East as a whole, on protests in Cairo and Benghazi, on the deaths of
ambassadors, and anger over an offensive film, few are paying attention
to Palestine.
Conditions on the occupied West
Bank and East Jerusalem continue to deteriorate, with settlement
construction escalating and economic conditions continuing to decline.
The siege of Gaza continues unabated, with economic life stifled and
people still trapped, imprisoned within the confines
of the Israeli-controlled Strip. Moves to fully open the crossing from
Gaza to Egypt have been reported, but so far it remains difficult for
Palestinians to get out.
Romney's statement about Israeli-Palestinian peace being impossible is,
ironically, pretty much true — if one accepts the U.S. position that
only Washington’s version of "peace talks" can work.
That version —
U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian talks based on the
pretense that the two sides were equal — has failed for 21 years now.
On the other hand, giving up on any possibility of new diplomatic
efforts, "kicking the ball down the field" as Romney recommended, means a
whole new level of endorsing the current status
quo of Israeli apartheid.
Early next month
the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will be meeting in New
York, across the street from the United Nations, to investigate "U.S.
Complicity and UN failings in Dealing with Israel's Violations of
International Law Towards the Palestinian People."
Based on the Russell Tribunal on Viet Nam, the tribunal brings legal
scholars, academics, activists, and Middle East experts together to
examine different aspects of Israeli violations. The jury will include
the poet Alice Walker, scholar Angela Davis, French
Holocaust survivor and Palestinian rights activist Stephane Hessel,
former South African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, former UN
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories John
Dugard, and more:
I will be speaking on the second day, on the ways forward for global civil society collaboration with the United Nations in support of Palestinian rights.
And finally, this week marks the 30th anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila
massacre.
After months of bombing and occupation of Beirut in the summer
of 1982, the Israeli military turned loose the fascist militia of the
Lebanese Phalange to attack the two refugee
camps. More than 2,000 people, the vast majority women, children, old
men, were slaughtered.
Thirty years ago I was a commentator on
Pacifica's KPFK in Los Angeles. Two days after the massacre I wrote of
"these two days, of a thousand krystallnachts, days
of darkness and madness and barbarism."
Some things I wrote about
haven't changed, even with the Israeli government’s long delayed finding
that indeed Israel bore responsibility for enabling the massacre.
But
one thing was sadly different.
Immediately after
the 1982 massacre, more than 400,000 Israelis, most of them Jewish,
filled the streets of Tel Aviv to protest the slaughter. It was the
beginning of a whole new peace movement inside Israel.
When Israeli
aircraft and bombs attacked Gaza in 2008 and 2009, there
were a few brave voices mobilizing in protest, but the most popular
Israeli response was to flock to nearby hillsides overlooking the border
to watch the shelling of the densely populated Gaza Strip.
"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