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
REVIEW of Beyond
Nuclear: Mordechai Vanunu’s Freedom of
Speech Trial and My Life as a Muckraker
By Mark John Maguire
Eileen Fleming’s book Beyond Nuclear: Mordechai
Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech Trial and My
Life as a Muckraker is a fascinating insight into the life and mind of an
activist pursuing a moral crusade against the might of a nation - in this case
Israel.
It also provides a
journal of such an individual’s experiences in
the complex and protracted struggle of the Middle East. Her journey of faith
and belief in support of the Palestinian cause - and in particular that of
Vanunu Mordechai, the Israeli dissident who served 18 years in prison for
revealing Israel’s illegal nuclear
programme - has been a remarkable one: she clearly believes she has a purpose
and that she is guided by a higher will and perhaps this is the secret to the
huge radical energy she exudes.
Her book is an
expression of that energy and of the uncompromising commitment she shares with
Vanunu in attempting to right the injustices she sees in the daily lives of
Palestinians.
Her conflict,
which is charted in the book - and to a lesser extent Vanunu’s - has been the wider Palestinian
problem and the human rights abuses of the Israeli State.
Her visits to Israel
and her meetings with Vanunu and others in her efforts to publicize the story
the mainstream media largely ignore - especially in the US - is inspiring.
There are few who
would doubt the hardships and injustices suffered by the Palestinian people in
Israel and its adjacent lands, nor the inadequacy of the international
community’s efforts to lessen their plight,
but Beyond Nuclear brings this sharply into focus.
It also puts the Vanunu
Mordechai case in the spotlight - the story of his abduction, his incarceration
and the subsequent restrictions placed upon him are all recorded here.
But it
is the humdrum indignities that are suffered by Vanunu, the petty restrictions,
the heavy handed reactions of the authorities that are most striking: the sense
of isolation which Vanunu endures daily, an outcast from his own people - a man
on the outside - which has become a metaphor for the Palestinian situation: the
Middle East has always been a cauldron of tension and conflict - it is the
story of the Old Testament - but it has never been more complex than it is now;
a web of related issues: nuclear, racial, religious and geo-political are
stirred into an explosive mix. Vanunu’s plight seems to epitomize this concoction: he is a Jew who converted to Christianity, a
stranger amongst Palestinians, a man with whom the international community is
ill at ease.
Nor are the
problems of the Middle East likely to be resolved soon - the international
resolve, as well as that of the immediate combatants is simply not there: in
August 2009 - in the wake of a long catalogue of such wrongs - Fleming recounts
how the eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem drew
international censure from the European Union, the UN, Britain and the USA: yet
nothing has been done to this day to address such breaches of international
law.
Indeed, one of the recurring themes in Eileen Fleming’s book and in Mordechai’s many interviews given since his
release from prison in 2004 has been the fact that although the international
community tacitly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear
capability, it has never subjected Israel to a single Atomic Weapons Authority
Inspection. It is the white bear in the corner no-one will speak of.
There is much to
exercise activists like Eileen Fleming. In some ways Beyond Nuclear is a
dispiriting tale of episodic and endemic complaisance by the international
community to serious abuses of international law, an unending cycle of
oppression, resistance and terrorism; but it is also an affirmation of the
ability of human beings to speak out, their willingness to take enormous risks
with their own personal safety and to refuse to be cowed by the might of the
State.
And there are the occasional brighter moments - for instance, the
Israeli soldier playing with Palestinian children and Fleming’s making contact with him from a
Palestinian position and exchanging gestures of goodwill. It is a reminder that
human beings populate such stories, committing kindnesses and atrocities with
seeming equal randomness.
But a state is not the sum of its people, it has its
own personality. Israel, as a State, is determined to defend itself and
believes its prime objective is to protect its security by whatever means it
deems necessary.
Fleming quotes
Archbishop Desmond Tutu saying that after a visit to Israel in 2006: “Israel will never get true security
and safety through oppressing another people.”
Such wisdom and perceptiveness
seems to fall on deaf ears, however - even when it is spoken by respected people
like Tutu and it is hard not to escape the conclusion that until people of good
will on both sides control the argument, progress will not be made.
Eileen Fleming’s book reveals the frustrations of
the truly committed in dealing with the half-committed - and the merely
good-willed.
There is no doubting the strength of her own convictions and sense
of mission - she will always, one suspects, have difficulty in finding people
who can match her relentless energy and conviction.
In the end, Beyond
Nuclear: Mordechai Vanunu’s Freedom of
Speech Trial and My Life as a Muckraker is an extraordinary tale of courage and
conviction and the struggle of the individual’s right to tell the truth and the
State’s determination to obscure it or
subvert it for a perceived greater good:
The truth, as Oscar Wilde observed, is rarely simple and never pure.
And by the same token, the lesson Eileen
Fleming would have us draw would be that the perceived good is seldom so good
as to be worth it.
"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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