Jews Raise Voice for Brutalized Gazans
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://tinyurl.com/y9ry4b5
Jews raise voices for brutalised Gaza
Israel's crimes against the people of the territory are prompting some
Jews to speak out
By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
January 5, 2010
Gulf News
Last week in Cairo, Hedy Epstein, a frail 85-year-old American woman,
embarked on a hunger strike for the first time in her life to protest
the ongoing blockade of Gaza. She has no idea how her body will hold up,
she says, but that isn't her priority. She is one of more than 1,300
international participants from 42 countries who flew to Cairo with the
aim of participating in the Gaza Freedom March, initially planned to
coincide with the first anniversary of Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
Many of these committed individuals of all hues and religions are
elderly; all have dug deep into their pockets to pay for their own
flights and hotels.
They had hoped to spend one day in the Egyptian capital before marching
into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing in solidarity with the
1.5 million besieged residents. It transpired that only 100 Americans
were given the green light after discussions with Egypt's First Lady
Suzanne Mubarak, but just 84 took up the offer. The rest � Epstein among
them felt that the group should not be split up and chose instead to
continue her protest in Cairo.
Holocaust survivor
Besides being a rare woman of substance willing to transcend the
restrictions imposed by her advanced age for a cause, Epstein is
remarkable. She is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who lost her entire
family to the horrors of Auschwitz. The last communication that she ever
received from her mother was a postcard dated September 4, 1942, that
read: "Travelling to the east � Sending you a final goodbye."
She has dedicated her life to civil and human-rights issues, which she
highlights through articles, books and public speaking. Her tragic
experience has given her an insight into the suffering of others,
irrespective of their beliefs. Since 2003, she has made five visits to
the occupied West Bank to demonstrate against Israel's crimes.
Cofounder of the march's organisers, Code Pink, author and recipient of
a collective Nobel Peace Prize, Medea Benjamin, who the Los Angeles
Times has called "one of the high profile leaders of the Peace
Movement," was also in Cairo championing an end to the Israeli-imposed
siege.
Medea has characterised herself as "a nice Jewish girl from Long
Island", but given her controversial views it's probable that many of
her compatriots and fellow Jews would take issue with "nice". She has
described America's �war on terror' as a form of terrorism launched in
"a spirit of revenge" and has urged her fellow Americans to examine the
reasons behind anti-Americanism in the Arab world. She has visited Gaza
to show support three times since Israel's onslaught last winter.
Yet another concerned Jew who has joined the Gaza Freedom March is
former South African politician Ronnie Kasrils, whose grandparents fled
Czarist pogroms. Kasrils courted controversy when he authored A
Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent in 2001
and later wrote an essay titled David and Goliath: Who's who in the
Middle East, which likened the Israeli government to "baby killers".
Also among the protesters were several rabbis, among them the founder of
the Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish nonviolence Lynne Gottlieb, who
said she made the visit "to bring more Jewish people into the circle of
resistance".
All those who stepped out of their comfort zones during the holidays to
support the people of Gaza should be commended. But Epstein, Benjamin,
Kasrils and Gottlieb, along with the other Jews who joined the march,
have exemplified humanity's best; people willing to prove the courage of
their convictions even if this means encountering hostility from their
own communities. Indeed, a Paris bookshop owned by the Jewish leader of
the 300-strong French delegation, Olivia Zemor, was attacked last summer
by thugs announcing that they were members of the Jewish Defence League.
Jewish intellectuals have been spearheading the peace movement for
decades; notably, the late Nobel Literature Prize recipient British
playwright Harold Pinter, the American political scientist Norman
Finkelstein, the British writer and professor Tony Judt, and the widely
respected linguist turned activist Noam Chomsky. In 2008, 100 prominent
British Jews wrote to The Guardian saying they could not celebrate the
birthday of an Israeli state founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
Conscience
A growing number of Israelis feel uncomfortable too. Columnist Larry
Derfner who writes for The Jerusalem Post says Israelis need to ask
themselves a hitherto taboo question: "If anybody treated us like we are
treating the people in Gaza, what would we do? We have to dare to put
ourselves in those people's place," he writes. "And we have to stop
doing to them what we would never allow anyone to do to us. Otherwise,
we Israelis have no conscience, and little by little we become capable
of anything."
Unless Israel changes its vicious tactics and genuinely engages in the
pursuit of peace, given enough rope it will hang itself. The
self-declared Jewish state cannot survive without the support of world
Jewry, which for a variety of reasons not least its brutality towards a
helpless people struggling to survive under occupation is fading fast.
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be
contacted at lhe...@gulfnews.com. Some of the comments may be considered
for publication.
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Dan Clore
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
James A. Donald
Jews. After they brutalized Gazans enough, the rockets
stopped coming.
Whereupon Jews stopped brutalizing Gazans.
After a while the rockets started coming again. Whereupon Jews once
again proceeded to "brutalize" gazans. From this, we should conclude
that they are not brutalizing them enough.
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We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.