Peace & Justice
Without belittling
the courage with which [people] have died, we should not forget those acts of
courage with which [people]... have lived. The stories of past courage... can
teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply
courage itself. For this each must look into his [or her] own soul.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Profiles in Courage
Personal courage is the theme of the 2005 Peace Essay Contest. Each of us is faced with taking unpopular or controversial stands. Practicing listening to one's conscience and acting on one's convictions are important skills for character building.
Sponsored by the Modesto Peace/Life Center, the 19th annual Peace Essay Contest is open to 5th - 12th grade students living or attending school in Stanislaus County.
For the 2005 Peace Essay Contest flyer, contact the Modesto
Peace/Life Center, 529-5750 or peaceessay@juno.com
By MARIANNE
VILLALOBOS
A cynical but little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires local education agencies receiving federal funding to provide military recruiters with directory information (names, addresses, telephone numbers) of their students. Apparently, what "No Child" is really being "Left Behind" from is military service.
Modesto City School District provides notification of this reporting requirement in the Parent Information Directory sent to families of all students before school begins. The information is found on page 24 ("Your Rights and Responsibilities"), under the subheading, "Privacy". The parents right to opt out (i.e. to prevent the release of directory information on their child to the military) is explained and parents are directed to complete a form on page 39 of the Directory. The form actually appears on the lower half of page 41 and is entitled Student Directory Privacy Form. The document must be sent to the address provided within 30 calendar days of receipt of the Parent Information Directory. Families in other school districts should contact their District's Pupil Services Office for information on its opt out policies.
Some districts around the country have adopted opt-in policies, whereby directory information is released to military recruiters only when parents give consent (as opposed to "opting out" or refusing consent). These Districts reason that an "opt in" policy is preferable for a variety of reasons including the aggressive strategies of military recruiters and the potential that the "opt out" notification might be lost or overlooked and parents consequently would never be informed. They also point out that parents of college-bound students are more likely to complete "opt out" forms, further increasing the tendency of recruiters to prey on the less advantaged students. Finally, it is ironic that while parents must "opt in" with written consent to allow their child to attend a school sponsored field trip, in most districts, no parental consent is required to permit the military to recruit students to an eight-year commitment of potentially dangerous outcome.
A separate provision of NCLB. requires that military recruiters have the same access to students as is afforded university and job recruiters. In this District, it appears that they have far more. Military recruiters have become a ubiquitous presence on some high school campuses, appearing wherever students congregate for lunch, preying on the most vulnerable (Fahrenheit 9/11 was no exaggeration). Whereas college and job recruiters are directed to the Career Center or Counseling Offices, military recruiters, seemingly, are allowed to go where they choose.
ACTION:
If you do not want the military to have access to directory information on your child, complete and submit an opt-out form to your school district.
Apprise other parents of this issue and their children's right to privacy.
Research the issue.
An excellent website is the Resource
Center for Nonviolence (Santa Cruz)
Contact Tracy Herbeck (522-7149) or Marianne Villalobos to get involved.
By PHYLLIS HARVEY
In March, as an alternative to war, a means of resolving differences is the subject of legislation introduced by Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, (D) California.
The SMART (Sensible, Multilateral American Response to Terrorism) Security Resolution articulates the need for a new U.S. Security policy based on preventing acts of terrorism, strengthening international cooperation and the rule of law, reducing weapons of proliferation, promoting disarmament, and addressing the root causes of terrorism and deadly conflict.
SMART security defends America by relying on the very best of America: namely, our commitment to peace and freedom, our compassion for the people of the world, and our capacity for multilateral leadership.
Representative Woolsey, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and Physicians for Social Responsibility hope this SMART Security bill will be an excellent educational tool to gain the largest number of co-sponsors possible. Let's build a better world!
ACTION: Contact your local Congressperson for support
From the Tuolumne County Citizens for Peace
On Thursday, September 16, at 7 p.m., at the Aronos Club (37 E. Elkin St.,
Sonora), Tuolumne County Citizens for Peace (TCCP) will present a free program
on U.S. and Iraq, a Year Later. As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political
science at California State University, Stanislaus, and a visiting professor at
the U.C. Berkeley, will speak followed by discussion and a question and answer
session. Beverages and homemade snacks will be available. Professor AbuKhalil, a
leading expert on Middle East politics, holds a BA and MA from the American
University of Beirut and a PhD from Georgetown University in comparative
politics. He has been a panelist on numerous television and radio news programs
including ABC and NBC News for whom he was Middle East consultant. He is the
author of two recent books: Bin Laden, Islam, and America's New War on
Terrorism, which examines the roots of the September 11 crisis, the causes for
antipathy toward the United States, and the historical relations between the US
and the Islamic world, and The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism
and Global Power. Born in Lebanon, As'ad AbuKhalil lives in Modesto and visits
the Middle East regularly where he is a frequent lecturer. TCCP is a grassroots,
all-volunteer organization of local people whose mission isto live, learn, and communicate peace and justice in
our community in order to create a world without war.
By DAN ONORATO
With this article,
the Modesto Peace/Life Center Board of Directors is initiating a series of
articles it hopes will promote understanding and dialogue about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Board hopes for a nonviolent resolution of the
conflict. The first step in a nonviolent approach is to find out the facts. But
facts according to whom?
From the start we
acknowledge the difficulty of discerning truth in history because historians and
writers have a point of view. Some facts are emphasized while others are omitted
or understated. Issues are framed in one way rather than another. Everyone who
attempts to explain controversial issues runs the risk of misrepresenting the
full picture. I, and those who will write subsequent articles on this highly
sensitive conflict, are no exception.
Our conclusions will
be based on our reading and personal analysis. If you disagree or want to add an
important idea, please write Connections and express your opinion. The writer
whose article you respond to will have the opportunity to address your view. We
encourage this interchange of ideas so that we all might understand better the
needs of both peoples and work more effectively for an enduring peace founded on
justice and security for all.
This first of a three-part article will lay out the problem and explore in general some causes. The second part will cover the conflict's history from the early 1900's to mid century. The third will bring that history up to date.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in what is today Israel-Palestine is one of the most contested issues dividing Palestinians and the Israeli government. During the 1948 war following the establishment of the State of Israel, over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced into exile. The central problem is that both the Palestinians and the Jews assert they have a legitimate claim to the land.
The Palestinian claim is based on the fact that in the early 1900's Palestinian Muslim Arabs were most of the population (93%), as they had been for centuries. Christian Arabs, Druze, and Jews made up the rest. Up until that time Jews and Palestinians lived peaceably as neighbors in the same land. It is not historically accurate to say the two peoples had always been hostile to each other, so they always will be. Tensions began, however, when increasing numbers of Jewish people, influenced by Zionism, migrated to Palestine, and bought land from absentee landlords, leaving Arab tenants dispossessed or homeless. Because Palestine at that time was considered part of the Arab lands under the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, the Arabs began to resist Jewish colonization. The reason for their fear was the Zionist ideology influencing Jewish migrations to Palestine.
Zionism has its roots in the Jewish experience of being persecuted in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia. Discrimination, prejudice, and pogroms led a number of influential Jews in the mid to late 1880's to conclude that full assimilation of Jews into mainstream European societies was not going to happen. The only way for the Jewish people to be safe and have the same rights as others would be to have their own land, recognized publicly as theirs, over which they would have control. In its origin Zionism was not a religious movement, though religious elements have helped shape it historically. It was a form of nationalism and was secular in its thrust, urging Jews to take their future into their own hands by returning to their homeland from which for centuries they had been living in exile. That idea, that the region of Palestine was their ancestral homeland from which they had been exiled, establishes, from the Zionist point of view, the legitimacy for the Israeli claim to the land.
The irony and, from the Palestinian point of view, the outrage are that while Europe and the United States supported the Jews' right of return, the Israeli government refuses that same right to the Palestinians. The seething anger that underlies continued hostility, from an Arab and Palestinian Arab point of view, is that Britain and other Western nations, through the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1947, sanctioned the Jews' claim to a homeland while disregarding the rights of the resident Palestinian Arabs. After World War II, faced with the prospect of the UN partitioning the land, the Palestinians asked: why should we lose our land in the West's effort to compensate for what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust? Why are our rights and needs not as valid and respected as those of the Jews? This sense of fundamental injustice, experienced directly by Palestinian Arabs but shared by the Arab world that cannot forget Western manipulation of its geography and resources, is at the heart of today's tensions in the Middle East. For the Palestinians and for the Arabs at large, a necessary step to a lasting peace is for Israel to acknowledge this injustice in allowing the right of return to be negotiated.
Important tenets of Zionism, however, make this almost impossible for Israel to do. The basic principle of Zionism is that the Jewish people, like other peoples, have a right to a homeland. In itself, this tenet does not necessarily cause a problem. Many people today, Jewish and gentile alike, may regard themselves as Zionist simply because they share this view. In Israel, had the Zionist leadership envisioned the Jews living as equals with the Palestinian Arabs in a genuine democracy in which all had equal rights and equal access to power, the current conflict might not have arisen. However, with years of hostility showing no end, Jewish distrust of the Arabs today makes this one-state option unlikely for the near future. Many Israelis fear that the Palestinians and Arab states will not stop their violence till they wipe Israel off the map. Many Israelis also fear that if genuine democracy for all were instituted, the Palestinians would soon outnumber the Israelis and would control the nation politically. This prospect would contradict the second major Zionist second principle, that the Jews maintain political control over the land.
This principle, from a Jewish point of view, is understandable given the many centuries of Christian anti-Semitism that culminated later in the Holocaust. Jewish political control would assure at least some degree of security for a people who had experienced persistent discrimination from governments in which they had little or no power. However, this tenet meant that no matter who the majority of the population in Palestine-Israel was, Jews would hold the highest power and Jewish interests would be regarded with first priority by a form of government in which Jewish representatives would remain the majority. Although Israel was established formally as a democracy, this Zionist tenet helps explain the contradictions of a political system in which Palestinians are at best second class citizens.
A third Zionist principle, that the homeland be open to all Jews in unrestricted numbers, exacerbates the tension between Jews and Palestinians. The land of Palestine has limited arable land and available water for irrigation and consumption. Despite all the marvelous advances made by Jewish and Israeli farmers and engineers to increase agricultural productivity and create the best in water-saving technologies, land where people can dwell is limited. If new immigrants are constantly allowed in, this limitation in inhabitable land means either that some people will be displaced, which is the historic experience of Palestinians, or new settlements on land beyond the boundaries need to be built, which has been happening since at least the 1967 war. That the Palestinians lose both ways helps explain their anger and desperation.
The fourth major principle of Zionism is that the Jewish people have a right to the entire ancient biblical land of the Hebrews. For many Jews this land included what is now Jordan and includes today the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Though this view is rejected as extreme by many Israelis, historically it has been a powerful and at times dominant force in Israeli politics. Many contend today that Ariel Sharon and much of the Likud Party are of this mind. This view, buttressed by some with religious conviction, justifies continued territorial expansion, despite its effect on, and the reaction of the Palestinians who lose their land. If one looks at Israel's pattern of territorial expansion beyond what was legally granted it by the United Nations in 1947 and after the 1967 war, and in various accords in the "peace process" up till recently, it's hard not to conclude that this long and deeply held version of Zionism is the ideological underpinning for that expansion. The current hostility, with all its resonant danger in the rest of the Arab world, is largely due to this expansionism and the violent Palestinian reaction to it.
For the Israelis to acknowledge the injustice inherent in dispossessing the Palestinians from their land would mean to let go or significantly change some of these Zionist tenets. This is not likely to happen, at least not at the official level. The prospect is further complicated for psychological reasons. Given the historic persecution that has plagued the Jewish people for nearly two millennia, part of the collective identity of Jewish people is that they are a victimized people. Sometimes victims of violence, through their suffering, grow in compassion and live generously for others. Sometimes, however, victims become victimizers themselves.
It seems to me that while the Israeli people, like most human beings, live at many different points along this victim-victimizer spectrum, the Israeli government in its policies regarding the Palestinian Arabs has often fit the latter characterization. This seems to be a case of cognitive dissonance at the official level. Much of the rest of the world asks out loud: How does a government of a people dispossessed and almost annihilated by the Nazis execute policies so inhumane to the Palestinians? The Israeli government seems unable to see itself and its policies as victimizing a less powerful people. Denial and rationalization block decency from the kind of introspection that could lead to deeper understanding and dialogue. That the Palestinian leadership, particularly under Arafat, has been self-serving and corrupt has only complicated the prospects for peace.
By
SISTER DIANNA ORTIZ, OSU
On November 2, 1989, I was abducted by Guatemalan security forces and taken to a clandestine prison, where I was burned with cigarettes more than 111 times, raped repeatedly, and subjected to other forms of torture. While there, I met the man my torturers referred to as their boss.
He was an American.
Later, when I first spoke of this man publicly, many of my fellow citizens here in the United States had difficulty believing that an American could be involved in torture, much less be boss of a squad of torturers. Even fewer would accept that he was undoubtedly acting on orders from superiors.
I hope this is easier to believe today.
News of U.S. military involvement in cruel prisoner abuse in Iraq and against our captives from Afghanistan should not surprise foreign policy experts or anyone familiar with the United States' involvement in many developing nations. Not only have U.S. presidents supported governments that systematically engaged in torture, they have presided over administrations that taught torture to foreign military personnel and practiced it as well. The abuses I experienced firsthand also occurred in prisons in El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Philippines while those countries received U.S. military aid.
Our leaders, who violated U.S. law by ordering torture or knowingly permitting it, have evaded responsibility for their actions largely by hiding incriminating documents by classifying them, turning into state secrets this information the public had a right to know. The usual justification is the protection of "sources and methods." As a result, U.S. torturers and torture instructors have long been protected.
Due to government secrecy, we do not know all the details, but anyone who wants to do so can learn enough to be convinced that our government has been involved in torture.
Naturally, most citizens don't want to know, don't want to believe. Knowing and believing that our government is guilty of torture makes us uncomfortable. The demands of torture survivors like me and others who have sought to declassify the facts have gone unheeded. The government we are accusing of torture is in charge of deciding whether to release the documents that would prove our accusations.
Today's situation is different. Those U.S. leaders responsible for torture in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq either did not know about the photographs or did not foresee their impact. Now our top leaders have taken "official notice" of torture. The issue has become so public that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush have apologized.
But their apologies do not go far enough for me or any other torture survivor who has suffered from U.S.-supported abuse. Our leaders have voiced regret that a "few bad apples" tarnished America's human rights record. In fact, there have been quite a few apologies - but not enough consequences. Rumsfeld, for example, apologized because it happened "on his watch." But does that mean he was responsible? Apparently not.
He seems to have suffered no consequences. For this administration, the buck stops with a few bad apples.
Thanks to leaked memos, we now know that the White House was fully aware of attempts to redefine torture as "not torture," under the impetus of some Justice Department lawyers and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Even if only the people around him were plotting to make torture acceptable under U.S. law, should Bush be exonerated? If he is so irrelevant or ignorant, should we not demand to know who is truly the chief executive?
I want to say, "Of course. We've known it all along this was going on," but until now, few would listen - perhaps because there were no photographs. But my second reaction is pure horror, or rather, a revisiting of horror. There it is again - this time all over the front pages. What was done to these detainees brings me and many others back to our own prison cells, to our own torturers. Again we live under their control. Again we experience indescribable pain and suffering. Doesn't our government know what it is permitting?
Dark as the deeds of our leaders, there is a ray of hope. The media is tearing down the walls of silence that have surrounded our torture policies. Now it is our responsibility. We all must express outrage at what has been done in our name. That outrage has power - the power to compel our leaders never to permit torture again.
Sister Dianna Ortiz, an Ursuline nun, is executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International in Washington, D.C. She was tortured in Guatemala in 1989 after spending two years there as a Catholic missionary teaching Mayan children. She is the author of The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth.
From: Sojomail; www.sojo.net/,
Sojourners
magazine
