Black Looks

What makes Aung San Suu Kyi so very special – and Buddhists will yawn – is that she is a meditator. This means her mind is well trained to grasp the implications of actions, especially violent ones, too many of our world leaders seem clueless about. They talk about annihilating, obliterating, beggaring, starving, impoverishing, raping and pillaging other human beings as if this behavior has no consequences to themselves or to those they represent. This is an incredibly antique way of looking at our problems: that we can bomb them away. War is a dead end, literally. And, what is more, we simply can’t afford it. Not morally, and not financially. How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed? We see, if we care to look, that everything really is connected, and, not only connected, it is the same thing.

Today is Nakba – The anniversary of the creation of Israel. A day of mourning for Palestinians. A day to remember loss of land and destruction of property, displacement, wars, separation of families, refugees, statelessness, poverty, death, in short a Catastrophe.

Death comes easy where their is no respect for life – Basem’s life exemplifies the thousands of Palestinians who have died under occupation by the guns of Israel

Basem woke Hamis and gave him his medicine, then off he went to visit another friend in the village who is ill with cancer. Then a little girl from the village wanted a pineapple but couldn’t find any in the local stores. So Basem went to Ramallah to get a pineapple and was back before noon for the Friday prayers and the weekly demonstration against the theft of our land by the apartheid wall. Pheel never missed a demonstration; he participated in all the activities and creative actions in Bilin. He would always talk to the soldiers as human beings. Before he was hit he was calling for the soldiers to stop shooting because there were goats near the fence and he was worried for them. Then a woman in front of him was hit. He yelled to the commander to stop shooting because someone was wounded. He expected the soldiers to understand and stop shooting. Instead, they shot him too. Continue Reading Basem’s Life

Links:
Nakba
Sabbah
Electronic Intifada

For many of us the hourly news reports showing the horrific slaughter and devastation of the Israeli attack on Gaza is still very much fresh in our minds. Daily coverage on TV, radio and news media with endless analysis, pundits as well as live reports. At some point in the war I remember thinking how fickle is the news media as by the end of the 3rd week, reports had dwindled to a few hours a day, a few articles a day from a height of almost continuous cover in the early days. I began to think about the amount of time devoted to these and other Middle Eastern wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the coverage of wars in Africa such as the DRC, Somalia and Darfur. I came across a site called “Stealth Conflicts” which is based on the book of the same name by Virgil Hawkins. Stealth conflicts are those conflicts which remain marginal in relation to the overall agenda of the various industrial complexes that constitute global capital – the media, academia, NGOs, policy makers and so on.

Perception defines our reality. Where access to information that may enhance our perception is limited, the reality we see becomes distorted and warped. Our view of the state of armed conflict in the world today is one of the most unfortunate victims of such distortion. In spite of supposedly unprecedented access to information, the information presented to us on conflicts occurring throughout the world is so skewed that the reality is almost unrecognisable..

This is particularly true of the most conflict-torn region of the world – Africa, which has produced more than 90 percent of the conflict-related deaths since the end of the Cold War. Despite the scale of the human suffering, it seems that Western-centric consciousness (and outrage) ends at the Suez Canal.

Read more…

Jacques Depelchin, peace activist and Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity based in the DRC, has written a poem “From Africa to Haiti to Gaza: Fidelity to humanity”. The poem makes the connection between historical and contemporary struggles for liberation and justice from Africa to the Americas, to the Caribbean and to Palestine.

the consequences of
of Relentlessly violating humanity
Now Palestinians, then Africans centuries ago
Today displaced, refugees, best fodder
For humanitarian missions
The modernized version of abolitionists
On a mission which has not changed:
Violate humanity,
Eradicate it if too vocal
But Sabra, Shatila can still be heard

He concludes with a challenge to give name to the truth of what has and what is now taking place.

Palestinians, Africans, in the same boat
When the unending story of negating humanity started
Like Africans they are being processed and branded
Fit to be fodder for humanitarian crisis because what is being done
Must not be called
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

No one dares to call the slaughter of civilians
In Gaza by its proper name
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

From the times of the Arawaks
Violating, torturing, liquidating
Humanity with impunity
Has led to greater and greater
Crimes against humanity
Franchised differently
Preparing the biggest holocaust
Humanity has ever known and,
When that unfolds, as before,
We shall hear the usual
Shameful lame lie
‘We did not know’.

Read this exceptional poem in full here.

Amidst all the post racial nonsense floating around the world it is not surprising the Martin Luther King’s birthday got a bit lost in the hooray hoorar. And hear this in a show of cowardly ignorance and an “Abandonment of Kings Legacy” the Congressional Black Caucus votes to absolve Israel “for its crimes against humanity in Gaza” and lay the blame solely on Hamas.

It’s hard to believe that a generation ago, the Congressional Black Caucus was known as “the conscience of the congress, a political and moral high ground long deserted by the current CBC, which has utterly collapsed under Israel-lobby pressure for the second time in three years.

All but two Black lawmakers voted either “Yes” or “Present” on a Resolution that absolved Israel for its crimes against humanity in Gaza – placing all blame on Hamas. In 2006, only two Black Caucus members opposed a Resolution supporting Israel’s savage destruction if Lebanon’s infrastructure and the killing of 1,000 people. Hypocritically turning their backs both on Black public opinion and on the work of Dr. King, whose name they invoke at every public opportunity, the CBC has put itself “out of the anti-war business,” and well outside the mainstream of Black opinion on the Israel-Palestine question Continued

Via A Fragment of the Emperors New Rags

Pambazuka News has a list of protests across African against the War on Gaza though I have to say it is somewhat sickening to see Sudanese people amongst the protesters given the “crimes against humanity”committed by their own leaders – would have been far more meaningful if they had also protested against the genocide in Darfur. We cannot be selective about injustices. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem develops this idea in his article “Saying no to the Israeli massacre” referring to the global protests taking place since the beginning of the war and in particular the one in London last Saturday which I also took part in.

This is a massacre perpetrated by the mighty, merciless Israeli army, a force armed and actively supported by the US and NATO with the supine collaboration of Arab leaders, including the so-called moderate Palestinian leadership under the main Fatah organisation from its Bantustan enclaves in the West Bank.

There were initial fears that the cold would deter many from turning up for the march, but so deep is the outrage of many that they poured out in their thousands in all the major cities of Britain to call for an immediate ceasefire and end to the blockade.

Tajudeen goes on to explain the importance of these and other demonstrations against injustices are not necessarily that they will bring immediate change or end the war. Rather they need to be seen in their cumulative impact – for example protests against the South African apartheid regime AND as an expression of solidarity at the injustice taking place.

It is not enough for us to just look on and say to ourselves that what is going on is bad and simply change the channel. You can join the protest or organise one wherever you may be, write letters to newspapers and make use of feedback sessions in the media. You can also boycott Israeli goods in the shops like Jaffa oranges. Even if our governments, much like their Arab counterparts, are too compromised and cowardly to stand up to Israel, what about you and me?

There are many Africans who are confused about the Israel–Palestine conflict, believing it to be purely a case of Islam vs Judaism or Arab vs Jew. As a people who have known slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, how can we be so complacent about the right of others to a life of dignity and sovereignty over their own affairs?

Links:
Avi Shlaim – For some historical and recent context that is clearly forgotten or missing in most of the analysis on this war.

[There will be another protest march this Saturday 10th [starting in Hyde Park] Last week, there were between 20,000 and 30,000 drawn from a cross section of people from across the country. Also nightly protests outside the Israeli embassy which have included Jewish anti-Zionist groups and Rabbis from Neturei Karta

Please sign the Petition

The other day I was reminded of this post on “Walls around the world” I wrote 18 months ago by a friend and I promised to post it again. Now there are even more walls. The whole of Gaza has always been a walled enclave in the midst of stolen lands. Now it is surrounded by walls of tanks and naval guns. Ironic that the siege of Gaza reminds me of the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto. I wonder if the Israeli IDF spokeswoman makes the connection – doubtful with such self-righteous supremacist arrogance.

Another new wall is the one between Zimbabwe and South Africa where refugees escaping hunger, political oppression and disease are chased by white vigilantes with automatic weapons and dragged back across the wired borders. If they make it to the city they face xenophobic hysteria from their brothers in the post apartheid wasteland’s.

And then there are the invisible borders – where people are divided between the included and excluded. Legal and illegal. welcome and unwelcome. Those in the clique and those standing on the periphery trying to enter till eventually they tire and go create their own set of invisible walled enclaves excluding and including according to some set of arbitrary criteria which is what makes cliques so horribly oppressive.

ORIGINAL POST

Iran is the latest country to sign up to “wall building” borders – in this case along the Iranian Pakistan border in the Baluchistan region. Iran’s justification for the wall is a familiar one. To prevent smuggling of drugs and guns and movement of illegal immigrants.

Whilst the Apartheid wall being built by the Israelis is probably the most well known there are other walls that have been built, are being built and will be built in the future.

Morocco built one in the 1980s during the war of independence with the Polisario Front. To maintain their occupation of Western Sahara the Moroccan government built a wall of 2700 kilometres with mines, across the desert with the help of their good friends the Israelis. The wall prevents the Saharawi from crossing back into their lands from the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria.

Then there are the new fences recently built between the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. Here Morocco acts as a proxy police force for Europe to prevent migrants from West Africa and Morocco from entering Spain. The fences are barbed wire with razor edges. Recently Spanish PM, Zapartero announced a third parameter fence as the present two are proving insufficient to stop people climbing over despite the dangers.
Read more…

Ushahidi was developed a year ago to map the violence last January following Kenyan elections. It has since been used in the DRC and now Al-Jazeera is using it to map and document the Israel’s attack war on Gaza.

Gaza massacre slideshow

BubbleShare: Share photos – Find great Clip Art Images.

Via Sabbah

Links: Call for action and what you can do

Check site for Action in London and other European cities

1. Join or organize emergency protests and direct actions in partnership with Palestine solidarity and social justice organizations in your area. Click here for a list of local actions.
Please send announcements of actions you are joining or organizing (with date, time and location) to ijan@ijsn.net so they can be announced on our web site. Also send reports of actions you participate in so this information can be shared with people around the world.

2. Donate money through the Middle East Children’s Alliance to pay for desperately needed medical supplies and their delivery. The current conditions in Gaza medical facilities are dire. The Middle East Children’s Alliance is working with health organizations in Gaza to procure the most-needed medicines and send them direct to Gaza with the help of the Free Gaza Movement.
3. Flood Israeli embassies and consulates with letters and calls decrying the attacks. Find contact info for Israeli embassies around the world.

4. Contact government officials and call on them to act by denouncing the attacks and demanding an immediate cease-fire.
5. Shift the framing of Israel’s actions in the media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor.
6. Sign the petition in support of UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann who has spoken out to condemn Israeli “Apartheid” and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.