Faith-based groups send letter to Bush urging end to sanctions on Iraq

By KATHY KELLY

CHICAGO—Faith-based communities, sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the economic sanctions against Iraq, have delivered a letter to President Bush urging an immediate end to economic sanctions on Iraq. Ten major faith-based groups and thirty prominent leaders of religious and humanitarian communities have co-signed the letter. It emphasizes their opposition to fundamentals of US policy toward Iraq during a critical juncture in US negotiations at the UN. Signers include Pax Christi USA), Baptist Peace Fellowship, American Muslim Council, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Sisters of Charity, and nine Catholic Bishops.

Over the last ten years religious groups have consistently opposed the economic sanctions on moral grounds because they have failed to achieve peace in the region and have imposed death and suffering on innocent civilians. The letter represents the concerns of hundreds of thousands of people who have campaigned to end the economic sanctions.

The letter applauds President Bush’s willingness to work with faith-based communities. Yet it states “If the Iraqi people are to enjoy the fundamental human rights to education, housing, health care, employment, adequate food, and culture, we must look now toward a post-sanctions commitment to facilitate large-scale investments of public and private monies desperately needed to rehabilitate Iraq’s shattered economy.” The US supported UK proposal currently under negotiation in the UN Security Council forbids foreign investment in Iraq.

Speaking of the nearly eleven-year-old sanctions on Iraq last month, Pope John Paul II said, “As the embargo [on Iraq] continues to claim victims, I renew my appeal to the international community that innocent people should not be made to pay the consequences of a destructive war whose effects are still being felt by those who are weakest and most vulnerable.” An accompanying letter to White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Director, John Dilulio, urges him to seek an end to the economic sanctions and encourage fair relations with Iraqi people.

While the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office was created to focus on domestic concerns, the signers believe that U.S. policy toward Iraq does affect American people. Spending on the maintenance of sanctions and our massive troop presence in the region diverts funds that could be used to help relieve the suffering endured by poor people here in the U.S. The letter to Dilulio also expresses concern that the present policy erodes U.S. credibility as a nation that respects the core teachings of tolerance and love that are the center of so many faiths.

Rabbi Douglas Krantz, of Congregation B’nai Yisrael in Armonk, NY, recently witnessed first hand the devastation wrought on ordinary Iraqis by sanctions and bombardment when he visited Iraq as part of a delegation of religious leaders. Rabbi Krantz says he signed the letter to Bush because, “The sanctions are immoral and ineffective.” While there is a current proposal being debated by the Security Council that would allow an increased flow of commodities, it does not address the urgent and devastating humanitarian situation in Iraq. By only allowing commodities into the country, “smart” sanctions will fail to address Iraq’s massive unemployment, hyper-inflation, widespread poverty and failing infrastructure. Stressing the importance of faith-based initiatives, President Bush has urged the faithful to exercise compassion. The signers urge President George Bush to realize his moral responsibility to Iraqi people who have suffered under the US led sanctions and bombing. They invite President Bush to align himself with religious leaders and communities who advocate actions and policies rooted in love of neighbor and love of enemy.

A speech to Women in Black

By NURIT PELED-ELHANAN

This is an English translation of Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s speech to the mass rally of Women in Black on Friday, June 8, 2001. Nurit is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, who was 13 years old when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997.

Over the last week we have seen many photographs of dead children. These children were out to have a good time, unaware of the problems surrounding their existence in this land. And another child, who took his own life along with theirs, as though he was Samson declaring, let me die with the Philistines.

But neither they nor he were Philistines. The Philistines are those who - for more than 40 years - have been sending children to their deaths. Children in uniform and children without uniform, children with guns and children with Molotov cocktails, children of Israeli commandos, and children of Palestinian guerrillae. And all this to satisfy the murderous ambitions of the Philistines and their greed for land that is not theirs.

The Philistines are those who leave mothers like myself bereaved, in the useless wars that our children are forced to fight for them. Wars that are waged supposedly for the love of the country, the love of God, and the good of the nation. But the truth is that these wars are waged for no other reason than the insanity and megalomania of the so-called leaders and heads of state. For them children are no more than abstract notions: You kill one of mine, I will kill 300 of yours and the account is settled.

But I, who lost my only daughter, know that the death of any child means the death of the whole world. “Satan has not yet devised a Vengeance for the death of a young child” said the Jewish poet Bialik, and that is not because Satan has no means to do so, but because after the death of a child there is no more death for there is no more life. The child takes the war and the future of the war into his little grave to rest with his little bones.

When my little girl was killed, a reporter asked me how I was willing to accept condolences from the other side. I replied without hesitation that I refused it: When representatives of Netanyahu’s government came to offer their condolences I took my leave and would not sit with them. For me, the other side, the enemy, is not the Palestinian people. For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis, nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace. My sisters are the bereaved mothers, Israeli and Palestinian, who live in Israel and in Gaza and in the refugee camps. My brothers are the fathers who try to defend their children from the cruel occupation, and are, as I was, unsuccessful in doing so. Although we were born into a different history and speak different tongues there is more that unites us than that which divides us.

I wish to revive two slogans that were misused by the Israeli right wing and have not been heard since the present government came to power. The first is that “Brothers are not to be forsaken”. Our brothers and sisters in the refugee camps and under occupation, who are deprived of food and livelihood and of all their human rights, should not be forsaken now.

The other slogan is, “The uprooting of settlements tears the nation apart.” Uprooting of olive groves and vineyards, the demolition of houses and confiscation of land will tear apart our already endangered species of peace-seeking people and will bring it to extinction. And when this species no longer exists, there will be nothing left to write, nothing left to read, nothing left to say except for the muted story of slain youth.

Today, when there is almost no opposition to the atrocities of the Israeli government, when the Israeli peace camp has evaporated into thin air, a cry must rise, a cry that is as ancient as man and woman, a cry that is beyond all differences of race or religion or language, The cry of motherhood: Save our children.

Web site of the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace