The Most Moral Army in the World

There is a sad joke that crosses the minds and lips of many in the Middle East, including some bloggers on the internet. If you want your house demolished or if you want to get rid of a troublesome human pest, no problem, the Israeli " Defense" Forces will gladly oblige. No need to ask. They have empathetic powers and will anticipate your problems, even during Christmastime. The Lebanese and Gazan people will attest to that. After all, the "most moral army" in the world has to live up to its name. Be it bulldozers, colonists who do the grunt work, "smart bombs," nerve gas, booby traps, airplanes, cluster bombs, fire to nourish your olive trees, all are provided free of charge to everyone who is not a Jewish Israeli and who exhibits any sign of discomfort, including protest against blockades, occupation, land grabbing, murder, and plain bullying.

No need to keep re-building. The average life-span of a house in Palestine and Southern Lebanon is about 10 years.

The "most moral army" is on a mission to discipline all you lowly Arabs out there. Their killings and economic blockades are to protect their people. It is a funny age when the only nuclear power in the Middle East needs to protect itself from those who do not even have one airplane. Blockades, separation walls, apartheid policies, wars, child murders, extrajudicial killings, occupations, torture, and violations of International Law and UN Security resolutions, have been going on for over 60 years. IDF biblical dictate states: A thousand eyes for an eye and a million teeth for one tooth." One has to acknowledge morality when one witnesses its outcome.

The children of Lebanon are thankful for the gifts left behind after the July 2006 War. Laos and Lebanon are the two countries most littered with cluster munitions that continue to kill and maim children every year. Let us all send flowers to Livni and thank her for caring about Arab children so much; after all isn't she one of the many "moral" demagogues who state that Arabs (and the kind of Arab changes based on the campaign of the day) do not care about their own children and all Arab children deaths are a result of Hizbollah and Hamas action?

Should we tell Ms. Livni the same about Jewish children who died during WWII or during the invasion of Lebanon and the occupation of Palestine? When an Israeli helicopter sprays a university, a school, or a hospital in Gaza, and Hamas (and by proxy, all of the Palestinian people) are blamed for those deaths, should we state a similar argument when a suicide bomber blows himself up in a market place in Israel? Could those deaths be the result of the actions of the Zionist state that forced the hand of Hamas to resort to such tactics to "protect" THEIR own people from annihilation?

But I doubt if Ms. Livni and her right arm of the "most moral army" have even given such an analogy any thought, not because she and her "most moral" band of killers do not possess adequate powers of reasoning, but because they really don't give a damn about any Arab life and, that is where the moral argument crumbles and that is where the basis of the ideological birth of a "just" nation lies in shambles.

The Zionist Israeli State has continuously proven that it will "protect" its citizens till the last man, woman, and child on Earth (Sharon did not mince any words when he stated that in other terms), including their own.

But hope glimmers in the conscience of the few within Israel who have looked within and who have explored the relationship between the history of their parents and grandparents under unbearable situations and the Palestinians under a brutal occupation. They are asking the right questions and addressing the moral argument. Sara Roy is one of those people. She wrote a detailed article about the situation in Gaza, entitled: If Gaza Falls

Got a House? We'll Take It

A group of Jewish colonists took over the home of a Palestinian with a fake deed of sale. The following transpired as a result.
Marilyn.

From AFP and the Daily Star
05 December 2008
Hebron Colonists Attack Palestinians after Eviction

HEBRON, Occupied West Bank: Mobs of colonists rampaged through the Occupied West Bank on Thursday after Israeli police enforced an eviction order of settlers squatting illegally in a Palestinian house. Rabid colonists set fire to Palestinian homes and fields, fired weapons, hurled rocks, clashed with security forces and carried out other forms of vandalism to Palestinian property following the eviction carried out by about 100 officers.

Relatives said three Palestinians suffered gunshot wounds and were evacuated by helicopter, while police said five civilians and two policemen were wounded during the eviction itself. Medics said there were further injuries during ensuing clashes.

A cloud of black smoke covered much of the neighborhood as militant supporters of the colonists set Palestinian olive fields alight and torched two homes and a dozen cars.

In several areas of the city, youths clashed with Israeli security forces, who responded with tear gas.

Witnesses said Israeli soldiers beat up a Palestinian photographer who was involved in an altercation with a settler. The photographer was taken to hospital.

Several people were arrested, according to police.

"It could have been worse," Danny Poleg, a spokesman for Israeli police in the Occupied West Bank, said after officers found objects that the colonists evidently intended to use as weapons, including potatoes studded with nails.

Police used blowtorches to seal the occupied house shut after using stun grenades and tear gas to force the settlers out of the four-storey building.

The eviction followed a November 16 Israeli High Court order for the settlers to leave the house they claim they bought from a Palestinian who denies selling it. The court also found that documents presented by the colonists purporting to prove ownership of the house were faked.

"Israel is a country where the rule of law prevails. It is not a country of vigilantes," government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Doaz Aetzni, a far right-wing leader expressed outrage at the police action.

"They are very aggressive with the Jews and very soft with the Arabs," he claimed. "This country has become crazy."

Human rights groups have long decried the double standard used by Israeli forces in dealing with the two sides. While violence by Israelis is usually met with tear gas and batons by police, Palestinian and international protestors - often demonstrating peacefully - face live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, armored bulldozers and stun grenades, among other means employed by Israeli authorities.

The police action came just hours after Defense Minister Ehud Barak and settler representatives failed to reach agreement in last-ditch talks.

Elsewhere in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, attackers hurled rocks at Palestinian drivers and scrawled graffiti on a mosque insulting the Muslim faith, according to witnesses.

Outside Occupied Jerusalem hundreds of youths blocked a major highway to protest the eviction, causing massive traffic jams and hurling insults at police, calling them "Nazis."

Israeli authorities declared the whole of the southern Occupied West Bank a closed military zone to prevent Israelis who don't already illegally live there from entering the area.

'Tis the Season to Give Thanks

Thanksgiving has to be the oxymoron of all holiday names. Jdimytai Damour must have thought so as he lay on the floor of Wal-Mart breathing his last while a herd of 2,000 human elephants stampeded over him and crushed the life out of his body during their 5:00 a.m. rush to show their thanks in this season of friendship and brotherhood and sisterhood.

What is it about holidays and "stuff" that makes people develop a deadly herd mentality? If a bunch of urban red necks from Queens can pulverize a 270 pound man for a cheap television set, or have the stamina and excitement to camp out for two nights in the freezing weather, imagine what these people can do for their country and their fellow human beings. They did something alright; they KILLED a man and all 2,000 of them are getting away with it, every single one, bloody boots and huffy attitude and all. Many were inconvenienced because the store workers needed to move the shoppers in an attempt to help their fellow employee.

This is literally the century of "shop till you drop," (or till someone else drops). The economy is sinking, no affordable health care, homelessness, war, poverty, no ethics, greed, gluttony: no problem, an hour at Best Buy will take care of the life blues, et voila, life is beautiful again, till that thing you bought no longer feeds that addiction.

Someone must know what they are doing during this "holy" season; and they are laughing all the way to the bank. Damour is an acceptable casualty. He gave his life for economic prosperity (not yours or his of course, y'all are just sheep, and if you're dumb enough to stampede a man for a television set, you're dumb enough to jump over a cliff for the right price) and the capitalist consumer lifestyle.

Maybe we should remember the Damours of this world who have given their lives so we can feed our apathetic greed. This is no longer the season of giving thanks but of taking till there is nothing left to take and then we are left alone with ourselves. What a frightening prospect THAT must be for many.

Cluster Bombs

Try Not to Cry

OUTLANDISH AND SAMI YUSUF FOR ALL OPPRESSED CHILDREN

Scientists Hope for Surprises in Big Bang Experiment

GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists involved in a historic "Big Bang" experiment to begin this week hope it will turn up many surprises about the universe and its origins -- but reject suggestions it will bring the end of the world.

And Robert Aymar, the French physicist who heads the CERN research centre, predicted that discoveries to emerge from his organization's 6.4 billion euro ($9.2 billion) project would spark major advances for human society.

"If some of what we expect to find does not turn up, and things we did not foresee do, that will be even more stimulating because it means that we understand less than we thought about nature," said British physicist Brian Cox.

"What I would like to see is the unexpected," said Gerardus t'Hooft of the University of Michigan. Perhaps, he suggested, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine at the heart of the experiment "will show us things we didn't know existed."

Once it starts up on Wednesday, scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.

Cosmologists say that that explosion of an object the size of a small coin occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets -- and eventually to life on earth.

A key aim of the CERN experiment is to find the "Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.

But other mysteries of physics and cosmology -- supersymmetry, dark matter and dark energy among them -- are at the focus of experiments in the 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel deep underneath the Swiss-French border.

FEARS OF DISASTER

CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, says its key researchers -- and many ordinary staff -- have been inundated by e-mails voicing fears about the experiment.

There have been claims that it will create "black holes" of intensive gravity sucking in CERN, Europe and perhaps the whole planet, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.

But a safety review by scientists at CERN and in the United States and Russia, issued at the weekend, rejected the prospect of such outcomes.

"The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us," Aymar, who has led CERN for five years, said in response to that review. "The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction."

Cox, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Britain's Manchester University, was even more trenchant. "I am immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around," he said.

When the experiment begins soon after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on September 10, disaster scenarists will have little to work on.

In the first tests, a particle beam will be shot all the way around the LHC channel in just one direction. If all goes well, collisions might be tried within the coming weeks, but at low intensity. Any bangs at this stage, said one CERN researcher, "will be little ones."

The Iraqification of Lebanon

AFP/Getty Images

A Shiite opposition gunman fires a rocket propelled grenade Thursday on a street in Beirut during clashes with pro-government supporters.
9 May 2008

The recent events in Lebanon point to the continued failure of this administration and its policies in the Middle East. The trend continues in favor of non-negotiation with the different factions in the region under the guise, We do not negotiate with terrorists. Such an approach in international politics marginalizes the other nations or groups involved and can only have one outcome: physical or violent intervention to push through a policy or sanction without input from all parties concerned. That constitutes bullying behavior and encourages further violence in retaliation.

The refusal of the United States to negotiate with Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah, labeling them all as terrorists, is a continuation of this bullying policy. Ultimatums are given in place of direct meetings, and forced interventions replace negotiation and compromise. The intent is on destroying people and groups versus working with them. Such drastic approaches have contributed to the current fighting in Lebanon between Hezbollah, Amal, and their supporters in the Opposition movement (opposed to the current ruling system) and supporters of the government (headed by the Future movement of Sa’d Hariri, the son of the Lebanese-Saudi ex-prime minister who was assassinated in 2005 in Lebanon).

Average Lebanese are openly expressing concern about what they see as U.S. efforts to implement in Lebanon what it is doing in Iraq to promote sectarian tension. In Lebanon, this is accomplished using the guise of security firms to train Sunni militias to counteract the Shi’ite tide with its most obvious prototype, Hezbollah. Arab monarchies (all Sunni), with the help of the United States, are scrambling to put a halt to the rise in Shi’ite political, social, and military awareness.

Historical Facts

• - The July 2006 War that was initiated by Israel against Hezbollah after a cross-border raid by Hezbollah to capture Israeli soldiers killed many civilians (Lebanese death toll: close to 1400, mostly civilian. Israeli death toll, about 142 mostly military) and destroyed a large portion of Lebanon. The rationale for the large-scale bombardment and military activity: the return of two abducted Israeli soldiers and the destruction of Hezbollah.
• - Two years later, Hezbollah is at least as strong as before. The two soldiers have not been returned, but many other people continue to die due to cluster bombs and land mines. The political crisis has deepened. The birth pangs of the new Middle East that this administration was counting on turned out to be no more than wishful thinking.
• - The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have encouraged sectarian conflict in an effort to eradicate Hezbollah and their Iranian support. Both remain a high target on the list of this axis.
• - The United States has openly intervened in internal Lebanese politics to prevent any compromise among the parties in conflict, to the indignation and open criticism of many Lebanese politicians.
• - For at least the past year, the United States has openly financed and helped train Sunni militias in an attempt to ready the situation for a confrontation with Hezbollah amidst calls for Hezbollah to disarm under foreign pressure.
• - Hezbollah continues to refuse disarmament, claiming that they are the only group capable at this time of preventing any threat from Israel. They claim that it is up to the Lebanese themselves to determine the time of such disarmament. They also cite the fact that other groups have been arming themselves and training in secret within and outside Lebanon.
• - Multiple assassinations and sectarian tensions in Lebanon are blamed on Syria by the United States and its allies. Others in Lebanon believe that Samir Ja'ja', a high profile war criminal and leader of the Lebanese Forces militia who was imprisoned for life for his war crimes during the Lebanese Civil War and who achieved early release, is behind some of the assassinations in Lebanon, including those of political figures. He is openly supported by the United States and Israel and continues to hold secret and open meetings with both inside Lebanon.
• - Syria and Iran also continue to intervene in Lebanese politics through their support of the Opposition and Hezbollah. The open international hostilities between the two blocks (the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia/Iran and Syria) is playing itself out inside Lebanon with Hezbollah the prize, especially for Israel. It is a well-accepted belief in the minds of most Lebanese and Arabs that Hezbollah is the only group in the Middle East that can prevent Israeli military transgressions inside Lebanon. The group is also very much respected by the citizens for its level of dedication and expertise, and its ability and willingness to accomplish what no other regular Arab army was able to do.
• - Since the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon in 2006 without accomplishing its stated objectives, that state has been intent on destroying Hezbollah by any other means—thusly, the creation of an internal situation in an attempt to erase popular support and force the group to disarm and disband.

On a more recent note, the following took place (Excerpts from the Times, May 12, 2008; the Telegraph, May 11, 2008; the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2008; and As-Safir Newspaper, May 19, 2008):

• - According to Lebanese officials, for a year the main Lebanese political faction backed by the United States built a Sunni Muslim militia under the guise of private security companies.
• - The fighters, aligned with Sa’d Hariri’s Future movement, were trained and armed to counter the heavily armed Shi’ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and protect their turf in a potential military confrontation.
• - Lebanon’s US-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition led by Hezbollah have been mired in a political stalemate for more than a year. The country has been without a president since November.
• - Amid the political crisis that has sharpened differences among various religious communities, Lebanon’s army and Internal Security Forces had played a peacekeeping role, preventing clashes without confronting any of the different armed groups. They feared any robust intervention would break the unity of the armed forces and plunge the country into civil war.
• - The crisis has created a power vacuum. Hariri’s deputies have denied his movement was building a militia, though ranking military officials, independent analysts and employees of the security firm called Secure Plus say it was doing just that. Private security firms are the latest arrivals in Lebanon to a hodgepodge of armed groups that include Islamic militants inspired by Al Qaeda, Palestinian militias based in the country’s dozen refugee camps and Hezbollah.
• - For months, Lebanese security officials in the army and the Internal Security Forces warily watched the growth of the Future-Secure Plus fighting force. Officials close to and inside Hezbollah said they were monitoring the growth of the potential threat.
• - Over the last year, Secure Plus went from a small security company to an organization with 3,000 employees and unofficial associates on the payroll, mostly poor Sunnis from the country’s north. Some were armed with pistols and assault rifles. We have… thousands of young people in plainclothes working with us all over the country, a company official said before the clashes started.
• - Even those who feared the development hoped the Future movement’s growing military capacity would create a balance of terror with the more heavily armed Shi’ite fighters, government officials and members of the group say. On the one side, Hezbollah has trained military groups allied with it, said a high-ranking official with the Internal Security Forces, which has received $60 million in training and equipment from the U.S. On the other side, the Future movement has created security firms to protect itself.
• - Things came to a head when, among other measures, the Lebanese government ordered the army to shut down the private telecommunications network of Hezbollah and remove the brigadier responsible for airport security. The army refused the order.
• - The plan provoked Hezbollah into sending fighters into the streets of Beirut, sparking 3 days of fighting with Sunni militias.
• - Fearing an outright civil war, the government reinstated the brigadier and announced it would be looking at the telecommunications network of Hezbollah.
• - Hezbollah defeated the US-backed and armed militias within a few hours and handed most of its captured positions to the Lebanese Army. More than 80 people were killed in 3 days of fighting.
• - President Bush, during his visit to Israel and Sharam Esheikh in Egypt, called on Arabs to isolate Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
• - Bush also stated that supporting the Lebanese people in their struggle to build a democracy was dependent upon confronting whom he called Hezbollah terrorists.
• - Bush described Hezbollah as the enemy of a free Lebanon.

Marilyn Farhat
24 May 2008
Information Press

One day after this article was written, on 25 May 2008, a new president was elected inside Lebanon, Commander of Lebanese Army Forces, Michel Sleiman.

Waltz with Bashir

One night in September 1982, Christian militia members invaded refugee camps in the heart of Beirut and massacred more than three thousand Palestinians while Israeli soldiers surrounded the area. Ari Folman was one of these soldiers. A fully animated documentary, WALTZ WITH BASHIR is Folman's attempt to decipher the horror of that night.

Co-production of Bridgit Folman Films Gang and ITVS International

The horrors of the massacres of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut remain in the memories of those who experienced them in one form or another. Some of the surviving victims continue to live with the emotional and psychological traumas years after the killings and rapes. On the other hand, conscious memories of those who were present at the time may have repressed themselves. There is a need to go back and relive the memories years after the fact.
Ari Folman, an Israeli soldier at the time, was able to do that with the help of others who were present.

The following is from AFP:

CANNES: Repressed memories, the horrors of war and Israel's ugly role in a notorious Beirut refugee camp massacre are the themes of the Cannes film festival's first ever fully animated documentary. Ari Folman's anti-war movie "Waltz With Bashir," which is competing for the Palme d'Or, premiered here as Israelis celebrate the state's 60th year of existence and its neighbors in Lebanon struggle through a sectarian-tinged political crisis - whose roots can be traced to Israel's 34-day air and sea assault on the country in 2006.

Opening with thumping rock music as snarling dogs hurtle through city streets, the highly personal tale recounts the director's quest to fill the holes in his memory of his stint as a 19-year-old Israeli Army conscript.

He was baffled by why he couldn't remember much of his role in Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and the 1982 massacre of civilians, mostly Palestinians, by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in the southern Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

So Folman, a long-time documentarian, tracks down nine people who were either with him at the time or were involved in the events, and then slowly pieces together his own actions. He then wrote a narrative script and got artists to transform the interviews into animation.

"There was no other way to do it," he said. "Otherwise it would have been pictures of middle-aged men going on about stories that happened 20 years ago." The result is a visually and emotionally gripping tale that brings to life harrowing and sometimes surreal memories of death, guilt and regret.

In the final 50 seconds, it ditches animation in favor of gruesome newsreel footage showing massacre victims' bodies piled up in courtyards and alleyways and wailing mourners wandering among the carnage.

When first shown after the massacre, these images caused outrage and protests across the world, including in Israel.

Folman said he decided to use the newsreel because he didn't want viewers coming out thinking they had seen a "cool, animated movie with cool drawings and music." "Thousands were killed," he said. "Sometimes you have to get it in the face. The massacre happened and you have to see it."

The wider context of Israel's 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon is not dealt with in the film. Nor does he discuss Israeli liability in the massacre, though a commission of inquiry found then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible, forcing him to resign. Folman said he wanted to keep the film personal.

"It's about memory," he said. "I didn't have the urge to make any inquiry regarding who in the Israeli leadership or the leadership in the army knew that there was a massacre going on for three days. There was a federal inquiry for this thing. They did their job, 25 years ago."

Folman's movie is still an indictment of Israel's military and political conduct.

When the Christian militia moved into the refugee camps, vowing to weed out "terrorists," Israeli forces - among them Ari Folman - were positioned on the edges of the camps, taking no action whatsoever to stop what was clearly a days-long massacre of civilians. Sharon did nothing to stop it.

"Waltz With Bashir" reveals no new information about the Sabra and Shatila massacres, but its anti-war sentiments are likely to go down well with the Cannes Palme d'Or jury led by Sean Penn, a fierce critic of the US war in Iraq. Another anti-war documentary, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," took the top prize here in 2004. - AFP

Spirituality of Activism: The Path of Morality, Justice, and Peace

In a world that begs of attention to injustice, affliction, and suffering, one has to wonder about the role of the humanity collective in alleviating those conditions. Aside from a limited number of natural disasters and certain health conditions, the history of the human species is rampant with manmade afflictions. Violence on different levels, spiritual hunger, emotional need, obsession with anger and vengeance, punitive approaches to non-conformity, disrespect for the environment and its inhabitants, and the need to emphasize our differences and, therefore, superiority, contribute directly to such afflictions.

Many engage in soul-searching exploration to answer the question. Along the way, some become disenchanted and resign themselves to the belief that nothing will change. They feel that their efforts will not impact the larger part of human suffering. Some will take the violent approach to avenge wrongdoing and to correct an injustice. Some will engage in charitable and community work to help those less fortunate. They will do it out of personal, religious, or spiritual conviction. Others yet will choose to remain completely passive and withdraw into the solitude of their inner selves to pray and contemplate believing that the best way to help humanity is by detaching from the negativity that plagues our political, social, and spiritual existence.

Is there really one true approach to help and is it worth the effort?

Everything anyone does is worth the effort, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. What may appear important to one person may not be important to another. Sometimes difficult choices need to be made. The usual moral questions come up: In a life and death situation where only a few can be helped, what criteria should be used to determine who is helped first? How is human worth measured? Is it based on gender, age, mental status, social status, criminal behavior, etc.? Some may remember the agonizing decision one Australian mother had to make during the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami. She could only hold on to one of her two boys because she knew that trying to hold on to both would mean losing both of them. She made a conscious decision to let go of the older one.

Whatever the outcome of that mother’s decision, her decision was made from a deeply visceral, existential, and spiritual perspective. Luckily, most of us do not have to engage in such agonizing choices, but many people around the world do on a regular basis. It is from this perspective that spirituality and activism will be addressed.

Activism is meaningless without the effort. Spirituality and activism are not “comfortable” acts to be exercised in our spare time and away from the concerns of the world. Western spirituality sometimes lacks a grasp of the human condition and its relationship to the divine. If humans are a reflection of that which is divine, it follows that whatever manifests in our reality is part of the divine, including violence and negativity. The divine is neither male nor female; it is neither good nor bad. It just is. At the same time, injustices can be committed due to inaction. Witnessing violence and abuse and not intervening to try stopping them is morally reprehensible. Most prophets and spiritual leaders encourage active participation to alleviate suffering and wrongdoing. Ghandi encouraged people to be the change they would like to see happen. Islam is specific about social justice and the role of the Muslim community: those who witness injustice should do everything within their power to stop it. If they cannot, they should speak out against it. If they are unable to speak out against it, they should abhor it in their hearts. Jesus preached and practiced compassion and charity, acts only accomplished with political and social activism in all spheres of life.

Spirituality and morality become empty in the absence of mindful physical, mental, and verbal efforts. Praying can be part of activism but, alone, it is not good enough and only satisfies the egos of those engaged in it and creates a class of “spiritual” seekers who set themselves apart from the rest of humanity to become elitists.

Spirituality is an ever-evolving way of being. It is a process designed to cause change for the better. It is most effective when practiced within the whole framework of our existence. It permeates every aspect of our lives, from the most mundane to the most sublime. It is practiced by pacifists and killers and by criminals and saints. It is evident in the way we talk to and treat our children, spouses, friends, and enemies. It is used consciously every minute of the day. Spirituality and activism are mutually inclusive. Both are a learning process in humanity’s effort to get close to balance and harmony, to the ideal. They are based in action intended for the benefit of all.

The best spiritual teachers and activists are those who set an example by their thoughts, words, and deeds, not just their faith, prayer, and meditation. Thinking and meditating about love are meaningless if that love is not expressed in action towards others. People “feel” love when love is expressed openly and honestly and when given respectfully.

God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty

Words uttered by the Prophet Muhammad: "God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty."

An Islamic Hadith also states: "God Likes that when you do anything, you do it excellently."

Islamic art certainly manifests such aspirations. The simplicity of its intricacy, the divine sensuality of its curves, its capacity to stretch the soul and mind towards that which is loving and perfect--all create a refuge in the struggles of life, for life is a melding of opposites: of the human and the divine, of the sacred and the profane.

Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion

March 19th marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since then, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis, 4,000 U.S. soldiers, hundreds of contractors and foreign workers, and many more civilians across the Middle East have died because of the "War on Terror."

War remembrances are usually occasions where we reflect on our decisions as individuals and as a nation and where we weigh the positive and negative consequences of those decisions. Whatever we come up with, it has to come from the perspective of the people affected by war.

Individual and collective acts of violence create their own life force and the cycle of violence and counter-violence continues across generations. In order to break the cycle, two things have to happen: (1) complete cessation of killing and occupation and (2) the public acknowledgment of injustices where the victims openly confront the victimizers. But it is also a process which involves the public declaration of the victimizer of their crime and their promise to make amends to the victims and their families. Such approaches have helped in the healing of fractured societies in Rwanda and other areas of Africa.

War is a military and male dominated violent act. Victims are civilians and include children and women. 90% of all victims of modern warfare are civilian. They usually have little say in the decisions that impact their well-being. By continuing to advocate on their behalf, we are sending a clear message that war is never an option because war is an assault on innocent people. It is not a strategy to eradicate terrorism or to capture a handful of warlords.

Thousands of American soldiers are returning home with physical and psychological imbalances due to their war experiences. Their ailments are exacerbated when they come home because of the disconnect between their war experiences and the environment at home. They lack an appropriate framework of reference from which to make American civilians understand the real issues facing them. In addition to their physical and psychological difficulties, they face economic hardship, a country and a veteran administration system bogged down by a bureaucracy that demands constant vigilance on the part of veterans who neither have the will nor the energy to wade through the countless rules and regulations that grant them their benefits. They have to battle disinterested or frustrated employees who are anxious to get the day over with as long as the paperwork is in order. National guardsmen and women have to battle unsympathetic employers and sometimes travel two or three hours just to get to a VA physician. That is a very disrespectful way to treat those who were on the verge of paying the ultimate sacrifice while the rest of us continued to carry on with our lives.

Health statistics have shown a sharp rise in survivable spinal cord injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder cases. Due to advances in medicine and the availability of hospitals close to the combat areas, soldiers and civilians are surviving wounds that traditionally have taken the lives of their predecessors. While that is a good thing on the outset, the numbers of individuals with severe and permanent disabilities are rising. When you walk around any town or city in the United States, look closely and see how many limbless or wheelchair-bound veterans you can pick out. That is not including those who are in comas, bed-bound, in mental institutions, and in prison.

Studies conducted by the VA have shown that those affected by PTSD the most are those who have killed in battle. Believe it or not, that is a good sign. It shows that those who have had to kill do have a conscience. It is the struggle between the part of the soldier that committed the act and the moral side of the individual that creates this fractured personality and pushes a soldier into dissociation. It is not normal to kill another human being. Killing once is bad enough. Doing it over and over is blasphemy and destroys the soul. People who have no conscience (psychopaths) usually do not engage in that internal struggle because their capacity for empathy is minimal or non-existent. They do not "feel" for their victims. The "James Bond" type psychopath we so much admire in the movies is very detrimental to society.

Hopedance magazine, in its current issue, hopedance.org, has a couple of good articles about veterans and some of the positive gains made in trying to heal the fractured bodies and souls. Collective healing needs to take place since the agonies of the returning soldiers are seeping into the society through their families, friends, and communities. The lessons of the Vietnam veterans should keep us focused on the importance of those who are struggling, in a humane manner. They should never be discarded because they have outlived their purpose.

The military model is counter-human. It can destroy and win territory. It can defeat strong and weak alike. It can never win the minds or the bodies of people.

Squatters on their Own Lands: The Bedouin of the Negev

As the "peace talks" Theater of the Absurd was taking place in Annapolis, aggression and land grabbing continued in the colonized areas of Israel. The Jewish National Fund is in the process of planning to remove thousands of Bedouin Arabs, who also happen to hold Israeli citizenship, from their ancestral homelands in the Negev Desert to settle Jewish colonists.


Israel’s quiet war
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3490720,00.html
YNet News.

Bedouin lands in south confiscated to make room for more Jewish communities

Fred Schlomka

Published:

01.06.08, 09:06 / Israel Opinion

While Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas were wheeling and dealing at Annapolis, several Israeli government ministries and security agencies were deploying their combined resources in a massive operation aimed at Israel’s southern Negev Desert. While the eyes of the world are on the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is in the middle of a campaign to complete the displacement of Palestinian Arabs who are also Israeli citizens.

The indigenous Bedouin are the target, and their lands are required by the state in order to complete the implementation a master plan for the Negev. The plan relegates the Bedouin to ghetto enclaves while allocating huge swathes of territory for Jewish suburban development and agricultural communities. The Negev is the final frontier inside Israel, the last tract of largely undeveloped land in the state. Israel has virtually completed the dismemberment of Palestinian lands in the center and north of the country, and now is consolidating the “Jewish redemption” of the southern desert.

These Bedouin lands are coveted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which has published plans to move large numbers of Jews to the Negev. To make way for new JNF communities, the “unrecognized” villages of A-Tir, Um Al-Hiran, and Twail Abu Jarwal were destroyed during 2007 in military-style operations involving large forces of police and soldiers, displacing hundreds of families. The Interior ministry has also sent airborne crop dusters to poison the Bedouin fields with broad-spectrum herbicides. The feared Green Patrol, a paramilitary unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, conducts these operations.

There are over 150,000 Bedouin in the Negev desert, with well-established territorial rights dating back to the Ottoman Era. However, immediately after the founding of the state in 1948, the government began to confiscate land and move the Bedouin to ever decreasing areas, while allocating state resources for the development of new Jewish-only towns and agricultural settlements. Although the Bedouin were eventually granted citizenship of Israel, they were under military rule until 1966.

The cost might be high

Through legislation and various legal mechanisms the state has decreed the Bedouin to be squatters on their own land and thus the courts support the demolition of homes and expulsion of the inhabitants. The JNF, through its “Blueprint Negev” plan, intends to create 25 new towns in the Negev over the coming years, bringing 250,000 new Jewish residents to the region according to its website. The JNF is also planting forests on Bedouin land, such as the Ambassador Forest on the lands of the Elokbi Tribe north of Be’er Sheva.

Such measures would never be taken against Jewish citizens of Israel, who enjoy the right to live almost anywhere in the country in relative luxury, while the Bedouin are relegated to a pitiful remnant of their patrimony. This institutional racism is supported by tax-deductible donations from the USA.

The Bedouin have a long and proud tradition as a people. During the first decades of the state, they gave allegiance to Israel, sent their sons to the army and expected the respect they deserve. They received none. Instead the state as continued its mission to serve only the interests of Jewish citizens, and as a result few Bedouin serve in the IDF today. The cost might be high. Bedouin leaders have warned that the anger simmering under the surface may erupt, and Israel may face a Bedouin uprising, an Intifada within the state. Perhaps it’s time for the State of Israel to become a democracy for the benefit of all its citizens, before it’s too late.

Fred Schlomka is an Israeli businessman and a board member of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He is a 2003 Fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation and the founder of Mosaic Communities in Israel.

Americans are NOT Stupid - Someone Went to Find Out

HAPPY HOLIDAYS