Today I am beyond any attempt at eloquence. I am beyond passion. I read OPOL's diaries and I marvel at the flame that burns brightly still, in his old heart. For I too am old. Yes, OPOL, I too marched and protested, and wrote, and joined, even joined the Black Panther Defense Committee in New Haven, and later, much later, joined in the struggle of First Nations in my own country for recognition and dignity. I too believed in the Revoltion. But now, my rage only burns as embers, and those embers are buried under a ton of ashes that are slowly turning cold.
Please follow me after the fold
Today I am beyond anger at the slaughter going on in the Middle East. I am beyond outrage at watching John Bolton last night single-handedly strong-arm the UN Security Council into signing onto a meaningless, mealy-mouthed "expression of emotion" at the loss of life in Qana, Lebanon, instead of doing what the Lebanese Prime Minister, Kofi Annan and every other member country urged and call for an immediate unconditional cease-fire. I am beyond disgust at hearing over and over again, all of yesterday, from Tom Friedman on Meet the Press, from Shimon Perez on ABC World News Tonight, and from Israeli spokesmen on the BBC, CNN, and everywhere else I turned for information, that
"there can be no peace in the Middle-East until THEY learn to love their children more than they hate us."
And when I hear words like "Until they love their children..." I am reminded that I have to say no, I have to refuse, I have to speak up, even if it is all that I can do. Because those words, "Until they learn to love their children...", are those of the Conqueror, who tells his slaves that if they want him to stop torturing and killing their children, then they have no option other than to submit completely and forever. Those are the words that deny all humanity to the Other. Those are the words that telegraph the zealot's blind belief in the Other's sub-human status, the belief that "these people are worthless, and their lives have even less worth than the lives of animals, for even animals value their own young and try to protect them from harn." And those words are absurdly self-serving, since the Other can throw them right back and claim the same.
But today I am at a loss for passion and words. So I will share only the words of others whom I respect and try to read faithfully, every day, because their words, like yours, dear OPOL, keep the embers of my hope alive a little longer.
From Uri Avnery, the moral conscience of Israel:
Mobilize to avenge the blood of Qana
By Uri Avnery
George Bush and his vassal, Tony Blair, are no statesmen. They are war criminals. (...)
If there is anyone out there who is still wondering why Arabs and Muslims view Britain and the United States as their implacable enemies, then look no further. To the analysts, experts and commentators, whether in the media or in academia, who are still befuddled as to why Arabs and Muslims are turning to "extremism" and terrorism, we say this: replay the images of murder in Qana, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Gaza, then listen again to the war criminal Bush and his poodle Blair resisting calls for a ceasefire, and you have the answer.
Bush and Blair have blood on their hands, oceans of Arab and Muslim blood! The innocents in Lebanon and occupied Palestine are paying a heavy price for the crimes of these two maverick Christian Zionists.(...)
We urge our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters not to let murder inspire you to commit murder in revenge, from which only Israel and its allies will gain.
Instead, think strategically. Let the blood of the innocents in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq inspire you to mobilize to isolate Israel and its patrons, politically by seizing the moment and highlighting the reality of Zionism to Western publics, and economically by accelerating the campaign to boycott Israeli goods. It is this, not an eye for an eye, that will ultimately defeat Israel and its imperialist masters, as happened with apartheid South Africa before it. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...
And from Robert Fisk:
'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'
By Robert Fisk
They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. (...) When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.
You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. (...)Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening "western civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.
And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. (...) It is as if Qana - whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine - has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.
And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". (...)
Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.
No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire - a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. (...)
Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid agencies.
Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. (...)
Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.
Read it and... no, don't even weep.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...