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
April 29, 2009:Failures of Intelligence has reaped the
Militarization of Christianity Read more...
March 30, 2008: Orwell
meets Vanunu and The Industrial Military Media Security/Surveillance ComplexRead more...
The criminal investigation of New Profile and freedom of expression Rela Mazali
Talk at Tel Aviv University
Oshrat Shtangel,
Annelien Kisch, Rotem Kinberg, Danna Frank, Raanan Forschner, Nimrod
Evron, Sergeiy Sandler, Mirjam Hadar, Bilha Golan, Amir Givol, Ronnie
Barkan.
Here they are.
They're sitting right here among you; the people whom the police
"raided" – as they official press release had it – in their homes and
their rented apartments at seven a.m. on the eve of Memorial Day, in an
extravagant, highly irregular theatrical production. This
would-be-daring-operation instantaneously positioned these people as
well as myself and many others in the role of secret agents, as it
were, part of a dangerous clandestine network.
Here they are then –
the people who were interrogated under threat of indictments, the
people who today – on the restraining orders of the police – are banned
from meeting or speaking to each other, although they're allowed to
assemble here within the same public lecture hall.
They, I, we, the New
Profile movement, are suspected – according to the police and the
Attorney General – of the offense of "incitement". This criminal
offense has yet to be enforced in the state of Israel. It has never yet
led, to date, to indictments or trial in an Israeli court, for the law
that prohibits it is viewed as problematic and overly vague. The
authorities, however, have not stopped at pulling this questionable
offense out of the law books; for good measure we are also suspected of
counseling young men and women to lie to the military towards procuring
exemptions from service.
The powers that be
are spreading a broad and intentionally ill-defined dragnet; it's not
hard to imagine it snagging something – some word or sentence torn out
of its careful context, as already experienced by some of those
interrogated.
New Profile is an
open, feminist movement of resistance, very rich in words,
formulations, challenging viewpoints, unconventional civil-critical
thinking and strong public declarations. Of course we're being
criminalized for verbal offenses – what else? For alleged incitement.
For alleged lies. Verbal offenses nevertheless punishable by serious
sentences.
But the preposterous
suspicions we are being framed for are not the real motive for the
Attorney General's instructions or the army's concerted pressure or the
police's hyperbolic production. All of these were motivated not by lies
but rather by the truth we speak; the truth that we've been speaking
over every available channel for more than a decade, the truth that we
are a state trapped in militarized patterns of action, a society
addicted to militarized mindsets and the use of force.
We speak the truth
about an interest group of people who profit – hugely – from a
continuing state of low-intensity-war occasionally peaking in a
high-intensity campaign.
We point out that some of them are the very
same people who define what security is, what it means, for all the
rest of us; that they are the same people who identify security with
military prowess, with power and money for the military organization
and with power, including extensive political power, for military men.
In addition, we
report on a growing movement of eighteen-year-old women and men who do
not enlist, the vast majority of them without ever having heard of New
Profile. We relate this truth, describe this broad social movement, to
whoever is willing to listen and discuss it with respect. We denounce
attempts on the part of the establishment to erase this reality through
slander, representing those who create it as negligible people: a
lunatic fringe, extremists, emotionally disturbed, unstable or – mainly
– "shirkers".
Parts of this social
movement resist the draft openly and refuse to serve a violent policy
of repression, dispossession and occupation. New Profile upholds and
backs their right to do so with practical assistance. For instance, for
Yinnon Hiller, whose High Court struggle for an exemption from military
service (finally granted in 2003), was heard by, among others, the
Honorable Judge Dalia Dorner seated beside me at this panel. Or, for
instance, very recently, over the last few months, for a series of
young conscientious objectors who served sentences in military prisons
– yet another group of High School Seniors ("Shministim") determined
and steadfast despite years of army intimidation and imprisonment of
their predecessors.
I wish to reiterate:
Israel has no overt legal provision for recognizing freedom of
conscience. There are no express legal arrangements for the right to
conscientious objection. This is a huge exception among states that set
themselves up as democracies. Like many other severe injustices
committed by Israel, injustices addressed in some of New Profile's
oppositional action, this one too is enabled and allowed under the
embedded clauses or Israeli mantras: "We have no other choice",
"existential threat" and "security reasons".
Another section of
the social movement of draft resistance, a huge mass of young future
citizens, simply doesn't enlist; refrains from service. I won't claim,
superficially, that all of these young men and women are expressing
left-wing views in their act of refraining. Their deliberations,
difficulties and personal motives are many, complex and varied.
Nevertheless, it can be stated clearly that a large number of them
disbelieves the existence of a threat so huge, so immediate and so
pressing to the existence of their society that every young body must
stand up to block its way. Clearly, some of them also deeply mistrust
the people deploying the army and fail to believe that their lives and
health will be put on the line only and truly when there is no other
choice.
New Profile has been
acquainted with this movement for years and maintains ongoing personal
contacts with a small portion of those who constitute it, due among
other things to the fact that we create a space for thinking, for the
open, free and safe discussion of questions which are often difficult
for young people to raise at home or in their neighborhoods. Young
women and men find space for a personal decision process through New
Profile. Those who seek it are furthermore provided with fully legal
information about their rights and about the intricate processes they
face. At the same time, we collect and build knowledge about this broad
social phenomenon.
New Profile and now
– as it would seem – the heads of the Israeli army-state, view this
emergent youth-led movement as a force potentially destabilizing the
existing order. This is what has them worried. This is what has led
them to such distinctly politicized use of the police. This truth
rather than the alleged lies of which we are being accused.
The open, visible
activity of New Profile provides them with a scapegoat, a convenient
venue for staging their spectacle, designed to intimidate and face down
tens of thousands of young eighteen year olds. What a perfect
complement to the recent campaign that aggressively marketed the draft
like a fashionable brand of teenage footwear.
Draft resistance is
common throughout every social class today. It has gradually gained a
degree of legitimacy in public opinion. Before our eyes, it is in the
process of dismantling the false façade of "a people's army". It has
apparently also begun to undermine the army's exclusive, autonomous
control over screening, selecting and deciding who will serve, who
won't and where.
Perhaps more
important, though, wide-spread draft resistance is threatening to rob
those who deploy the army – the politicians – of their fear instilling
moves, their most dependable tactic for derailing any civil activity
that contests their failures, their corruption or their horrific
injustices.
They are charging us with lies in a bid to regain their own unobstructed lying.
In 1985, the
authorities in South Africa commenced persecution of the End
Conscription Campaign, it too a feminist, women-led movement. Its
activities were outlawed and it was forced underground. Five years
later, apartheid collapsed.
An escalating abuse of state power
New Profile is not an isolated case. Eleven New Profile activists were detained or summoned by police for interrogation on trumped up suspicions of incitement and assisting in the obtainment of fraudulent exemptions from the military. For a full month they remained under restrictions and four activists’ computers were held by the police. A court case, and even prison sentences, may be in the offing (Check our website soon for ongoing updates: http://www.newprofile.org/english/
All of this, however, is part and parcel of the sharply increased scapegoating, intimidation and harassment of Israeli citizens, and especially Palestinian citizens of Israel, who dare to voice opposing opinions. The Association of Civil Rights in Israel notes an escalation of harassment and violence against Left Wing activists by Israeli government authorities and the police since Israel’s military incursion into Gaza in December 2008, in an apparent, systematic attempt to silence dissent and stifle political discourse.
Jewish Peace News editors: Joel Beinin Racheli Gai Rela Mazali Sarah Anne Minkin Judith Norman Lincoln Z. Shlensky Rebecca Vilkomerson Alistair Welchman
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net Related:
April 29, 2009:Failures of Intelligence has reaped the
Militarization of Christianity Read more...
March 30, 2008: Orwell
meets Vanunu and The Industrial Military Media Security/Surveillance ComplexRead more...
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"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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