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Subject: [bangla-vision] In Honor of Four Outstanding Contemporary Women
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CALL TO ACTION
MARCH 16 - DAY OF CONSCIENCE - RACHEL CORRIE DAY OF ACTION
This month, a civil lawsuit in Israel in the case of our daughter Rachel Corrie will converge with the seven-year anniversary of her killing in Gaza. A human rights observer and activist, Rachel, 23, was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar D9R bulldozer as she tried nonviolently to offer protection for a Palestinian family whose home was threatened with demolition. This lawsuit is one piece of our family's seven-year effort to pursue accountability for Rachel while, also, challenging the Occupation that claimed her life.
International Day of Conscience - Rachel Corrie Day of Action - Be Visible
In what some will mark as an "International Day of Conscience," on March 16 (or in days before and after) please help us bring attention to the trial in Israel in Rachel's case and the larger, but connected, issues. Try to be visible - in events, vigils, and actions that call for truth, accountability and justice, in Rachel's case and link to the following:
- Lack of accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by occupation-in a besieged and beleaguered Gaza and throughout Palestine/Israel.
- The Israeli Government and Military assault on nonviolent human rights activists (Palestinian, Israeli, and international).
- Lack of access for Palestinians to Israeli courts.
Help us make your effort visible.
Post your event/activity at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation website: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/form.php?id=131
List it as a March 16-Rachel Corrie Day of Action event.
Send word of your event to info@rachelcorriefoundation.org
Break the Gaza Blockade - Contact the White House
Comment line: 202-456-1111 FAX: 202-456-2461
E-mail at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
On March 16th please contact the White House and tell President Obama that if Israel will not break the siege of Gaza, then the United States must do so. Call for the United States to break the Gaza blockade, provide immediate humanitarian aid, and urge Special Envoy Mitchell to visit Gaza. See Congressman Brian Baird's call (after his recent visit to Gaza) for the U.S. to end the blockade. http://www.baird.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1054&Itemid=99
TRIAL INFO
For information about the trial in Rachel Corrie's case in Haifa District Court in Israel, beginning Wednesday, March 10, and to sign up for trial alerts, please visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation website at http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org.
Please pass the word along to others!
We expect this to be a challenging time, but the friendship we have felt from so many of you over the years will help us navigate the weeks ahead. Though the course and outcome of the trial are unknown, we welcome the opportunity to raise and highlight many of the critical issues to which Rachel's case is linked. Thank you for your continuing support.
In solidarity and with much appreciation,
Cindy & Craig Corrie
------------------------
What follows is an Israeli-Zionist professor's callous response to the Corries' quest for justice.
WELCOME TO HAIFA, MR. AND MRS. CORRIE
Prof. Steven Plaut
Posted Mar 03 2010
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie,
You are coming to our lovely town to sue Israel, claiming that your daughter was "killed by an Israeli bulldozer." But you neglect to mention the circumstances under which she was so killed (nor the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care).
You have stated, "She had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent resistance organization, the International Solidarity Movement, trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and wells."
Homes and wells, huh?
Well, she was not. Rachel was trying to prevent the demolition of tunnels used to smuggle weapons for Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder Jewish civilians. ISM openly endorses Palestinian "armed struggle" against Jewish children and civilians and openly collaborates with terrorists. It has hidden wanted terrorists and their weapons in its offices. It is an accomplice in murder. Lying is not the best way to drum up sympathy for your daughter.
You say your daughter died trying to protect an "innocent house." Again, this is not the truth. That "innocent house" was camouflage for a not-so-innocent terrorist smuggling tunnel, and the residents of that innocent house knew all about the tunnel.
Your daughter was in a war zone as a belligerent, on behalf of a movement of Arab fascists seeking to destroy Israel and murder as many Jews as possible. Your daughter died while interfering with an anti-terror operation carried out by soldiers in a land in which she had no business being at all.
You demand that we feel your pain at the loss of your daughter, yet your daughter conscripted herself as an accomplice for those seeking to murder my children. You feel no pain for the scores of martyrs in my own city of Haifa murdered by those same terrorists.
Your daughter put herself in harm's way by challenging a large bulldozer and positioning herself where the operator could not see her. You know quite well that the bulldozer operator was not seeking to harm her.
You have written, "We had not understood the devastating nature of the Palestinians' situation." Of course, youhave never expressed any interest in the devastating nature of the Jews' situation. The Jews have been battling Arab fascism and genocidal terrorism for a hundred years, before, during, and after the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews. Your daughter was helping those who perpetrate Nazi-like atrocities against randomly selected Jews.
You smugly praise the propaganda play about your daughter, which ignored all the other Rachels - the Jewish victims of terror in Israel who were murdered by genocidal terrorists.
Your daughter, and apparently you as well, never had any understanding of the Middle East conflict. The Middle East conflict is not about the right to self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather about the right to self-determination of Israeli Jews.
For a century the Arabs have attempted to block any expression of Jewish self-determination, using violence, armed aggression, and terrorism. The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States. They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with Jews, even in a territory smaller than New Jersey.
The Arab countries invented the Palestinian people and their "plight" as a propaganda ploy in imitation of the German campaign on behalf of Sudeten self-determination in the 1930s. Just as the struggle for "Sudeten liberation" was nothing more than a fig leaf for the German aggression aimed at annihilating Czechoslovakia, so the struggle for "Palestinian liberation" is nothing more than cover for a jihad to destroy Israel and its population.
Your write, "Clearly, our daughter has become a positive symbol for people."
I am afraid you are mistaken. Your daughter has become a symbol for dangerous foolhardiness. She essentially committed suicide as an empty gesture to assist murderers and terrorists.
You want the world to mourn for your daughter, who died while working with monsters out to murder ourchildren. On the pages of anti-Semitic propaganda web magazines you denounce Israel, but you do not have a single word of sympathy for the families of the thousands of innocent Israeli victims of the terrorists with whom your daughter chose to ally herself.
On behalf of the citizens of Haifa, all of whom your daughter's Hamas friends are trying to murder, I remain,
Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.
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In her thought-provoking commentary, published by CounterPunch, Alison Weir details little-known information on how early Zionists very effectively targeted Christians, academics, politicians and others - resulting in a virtual lock on the western mind to this day.
My "Relationship" with Tom Campbell
A Wrench in the Israeli Gears
By ALISON WEIR
It's interesting to find myself a small factor in the California race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. But before I get to that, it's necessary to take a look at the campaigns themselves, and the system in which they're running.
An outside observer might be forgiven for being confused about which nation these candidates are seeking to serve. Rather than competing over who is the most loyal Californian and patriotic American, these would-be Senators seem often to be competing over who is the most supportive of a foreign regime.
Odder still, the regime being fervently endorsed has a record of taking actions that are deeply contrary to principles most Americans hold dear, and on top of that, has a track record of undertaking activities that are extremely damaging to the US, including:
· Spying on our government and industry and stealing American technology;
· Passing on American secrets to others, including to nations perceived as our most dangerous political and economic competitors;
· Killing American servicemen and citizens; even while receiving more US tax money than any other nation on earth; and
· Ignoring demands and pleas by virtually every U.S. president over the past few decades to end diverse illegal actions that have caused incalculable tragedy, destabilized the region and world, demonstrated ruthless cruelty against entire victim populations, and created escalating enmity toward the United States, whose lobby-promulgated assistance (at least $7 million per day) enables its actions.
Normally, one would expect candidates to denounce such a nation; at minimum, one would expect them to distance themselves from it. But not this one. This one is Israel, which, despite being one of the world's smallest nations, can claim the most powerful and pervasive foreign lobby in the United States.
Even while the United States, and particularly California, is facing a financial crisis, no candidate dares, in all the cuts being proposed in American programs, to reduce the enormous aid we give annually to Israel. Furthermore, this money is given at the beginning of each year, which means, since we are operating at a deficit, that our government pays interest on money we no longer have, while Israel makes interest on it.
Such power, which is exerted within virtually every major institution in the US, and yet is invisible to a great many people, was not built overnight.
It largely began in the early 1900s with its precursor, political Zionism, an international movement to create a Jewish state in what was then known as Palestine. Begun in Europe, this movement managed fairly early on to enlist such eminent Americans as future Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter.
Brandeis, who officially resigned his leadership of the Provisional Executive for General Zionist Affairs in 1916 when his close friend Woodrow Wilson named him a Supreme Court Justice, in reality continued his work for the Zionist movement, directing activities from his Supreme Court chambers. In 1918 he was listed as "honorary president" of the Zionist Organization of America.
The Zionist lobby grew over the coming decades, tragically bolstered by Hitler's rise to power. As various authors have documented, the lobby made full use of this situation, sabotaging refugee efforts that would have created safe havens for Europe's Jews, which would have interfered with Zionists' claims that only a Jewish state in Palestine could fill such a need.
David Ben Gurion, who later became Israel's first prime minister, infamously stated: "If I knew that it was possible to save all the [Jewish] children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter..."
By 1943 the lobby had begun to accrue the kind of power we see today. Its major arm, the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), under the direction of Abba Hillel Silver, possessed a budget of half a million dollars - this in the days when a nickel bought a loaf of bread.
Wooing Christians and Candidates
Drawing on its massive financial resources, AZEC then embarked on what one of its leaders called "a political and public relations offensive to capture the support of Congressmen, clergy, editors, professors, business and labor."
Others were targeted, also: "Union members, wives and parents of servicemen, Jewish war veterans," as detailed by a top authority on the history of US-Israel relations, Donald Neff. AZEC provided form letters for recruits to send and disseminated schedules of anti-Zionist lecture tours so the events could be picketed or otherwise opposed.
Zionist action groups were organized at the grassroots level, with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. Books, articles and academic studies were funded by AZEC. University professors and presidents were targeted.
The lobby especially enlisted Christian support. Silver's headquarters ordered: "In every community an American Christian Palestine Committee must be immediately organized."
Secret Zionist funds were used to revive an elite Protestant group, the American Palestine Committee. Another group, the Christian Council on Palestine, was formed among clergymen, growing to 3,000 members by the end of World War II. An internal Zionist memo stated that the aim of both groups was to "crystallize the sympathy of Christian America for our cause."
Activists were told to go after elected representatives, who, in a democratic republic, hold the levers of governmental power. In the words of AZEC leadership: "The first task is to make direct contact with your local Congressman or Senator."
While some recent authors maintain that Israel lobby activities are within permissible American norms, this is overly generous. In reality, there is considerable evidence that the lobby has consistently violated US laws. In other cases it has merely violated the spirit.
The Justice Department has periodically tried to enforce US laws requiring lobbyists for a foreign government to register as foreign agents, but these attempts to reign in the Israel lobby have been consistently quashed by higher-ups, a situation most recently documented by author Grant Smith.
In the early 1960s Senator William Fulbright discovered in his Congressional hearings on lobbies that pro-Israel groups were lobbying for American aid to Israel and then Israel was illegally funneling a portion of the received money back to U.S. groups, which would then use it in lobbying for still more aid to Israel, in an ever-growing, illicit cycle.
After decades of such concentrated activities, the Israel lobby became far more powerful than those who originally tried to oppose it: the State Department, the Pentagon, the oil lobby, a number of Jewish groups and individuals, diverse mainstream Christian organizations, etc.
In 1989 Fulbright wrote: "AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and its allied organizations have effective working control of the electoral process. They can elect or defeat nearly any congressman or senator that they wish, with their money and coordinated organizations."
Media coverage, as I have written elsewhere, is deeply Israel-centric; it rarely reports on the lobby. Fulbright is one example, as Neff writes of his death in 1995:
"Anyone doubting his claims about the influence of Israel's lobby had only to read the obituaries written about Fulbright following his death... [In] The lengthy obituaries...no mention was made in either The New York Times or The Washington Post about his views toward the Middle East. It was as though his critical positions on Israel had been sucked into a black hole, totally forgotten. Yet here was an issue on which Fulbright had provided a major voice, and which directly contributed to the end of his political career. Clearly the Middle East constituted an important part of his life. Indeed, his career and his loss of office could not be understood without mention of it."
Today there are dozens, at least, of political action groups for Israel, most hidden under deceptive names such as Northern Californians for Good Government. They raise massive amounts of money for candidates who pass the Israel test, and massive amounts of money for the opponents of those who don't.
The degree to which the Israel lobby has succeeded in dominating American politics is encapsulated in an apocryphal story about Menachem Begin, a member of a notorious Zionist terrorist gang in pre-Israel Palestine who went on to be elected Prime Minister of Israel. When an American supporter is said to have suggested that Israel become the 51st state, Begin is described as evincing shock: "What?! Then we would only have two senators!"
California Campaigning, Israel, and me
Which brings me to my sudden and unexpected appearance in a major Senatorial campaign. As today's California Republicans compete over who is Israel's best friend, I am a small wrench in the works that one candidate has just thrown at another.
The frontrunner in the race is Tom Campbell, formerly a five-term Congressman, Stanford law dean, dean of UC Berkeley's prestigious Haas School of Business, and Director of Finance for the State of California. Highly intelligent, Campbell is described as a moderate Republican, the kind of candidate who often appeals to voters from both parties.
My contact with Campbell dates to spring 2001. I had just returned from traveling as a freelance reporter throughout Gaza and the West Bank. I had seen and photographed destroyed homes, devastated neighborhoods, razed agricultural lands, children who had been shot by invading Israeli forces (all before a single Palestinian rocket had been fired).
Upon my return I had been invited by a student group at UC Berkeley to give a talk about my trip, the first speech I've ever given in my life. I spoke and showed my photos for close to an hour and a half in a packed lecture hall.
Afterwards, numerous attendees came up to speak with me; some had been crying. The regional director for the Council for American Islamic Relations asked me if I would be willing to give my talk at a public event scheduled a month later in the San Jose area. I said yes.
Diverse governmental officials, media people, and others attended this event. There were two other speakers: former Illinois Republican Congressman Paul Findley and Tom Campbell.
During his speech, Campbell described a telling incident during his Congressional career. The lobby had pushed Congress to give additional money to Israel on top of its uniquely immense annual allotment. Campbell proposed that this extra money be used instead to avert the de-funding of a program that worked to prevent blindness in Africa.
Campbell said that many of his fellow Representatives privately told him they thought this was a wonderful plan, complimented him on his courage in proposing it, and said they didn't' dare vote for it. In the end, just 12 others cast affirmative votes. (Israel may wish to thank the lobby and 88 American Senators for its increased wealth; an untold number of blind people may have less reason for gratitude.)
When it was my turn to speak, I described what I had seen in the Palestinian Territories, showed my photographs, and read a sort of letter I had written to the American people. To my surprise, I received a standing ovation from, it appeared to me, everyone in the room. One of the first on his feet was Tom Campbell. Afterwards, a friend asked him if he would write an endorsement of my presentation, which he graciously did. Later, when I founded If Americans Knew and we created a website, we placed his comment in the "About Us" section.
Now, nine years later, this endorsement is being used to attack Campbell.
Articles discussing it have appeared on numerous blogs and websites, including those of Commentary and National Interest; a Sacramento radio host and the Weekly Standard have interviewed me about my "relationship with Tom Campbell." Some fanatically pro-Israel bloggers seem exceedingly focused on it, and on me.
The reality is that I haven't seen or spoken with Tom Campbell since the 2001 event.
In the years since, I've been saddened but not surprised, given the reality and power of the pro-Israel machine in our society and media, to see him backpedaling on what seemed to be genuine efforts toward practical and principled positions. While he has not denied his endorsement of my talk, he responds to queries, "I never stated agreement with any statement made by Alison Weir."
Like virtually anyone who wishes to attain major office, Campbell emphasizes his bonafides on Israel, stating:
· He has never voted against military aid to Israel;
· He would support an Israeli military attack on Iran (even though it is Israel that possesses nuclear weapons, refuses to sign the non-proliferation pact, is in violation of a multitude of UN resolutions, and regularly attacks its neighbors);
· He supports recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the US embassy there; even though Jerusalem was to have been a shared city for the Muslims, Christians, and Jews who long inhabited it and for whom it is sacred, and even though a large portion of Jerusalem is, according to international law, Palestinian land illegally annexed by Israel. All previous US presidents have refused to do this.
· He is even more pro-Israel than Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, (which, if it is true, is a notable accomplishment.)
In his comment on my talk, Campbell wrote: "Ms. Weir...is intelligent, careful, and critical. American policy makers would benefit greatly from hearing her first-hand observations and attempting to answer the questions she poses."
Should Mr. Campbell succeed in becoming an American policy maker, I would be happy to share with him my expanded first-hand observations. Over the past nine years I have taken additional, extensive and intense trips to the region, discovering a continuation, and in some cases an escalation, of the violence, cruelty, and intolerable tragedy I had witnessed previously.
In the meantime, and until more Americans across the political spectrum wake up and make their desires known, the Israel lobby and its dedicated bloggers may ease their collective mind. Indications are that both parties are, once again, sewn up.
CounterPunch, March 5-7, 2010
------------------------------
Assalaamu Alaikum: A note of brotherly nasiha (not condemnation). When one looks at the photographs in this promotional announcement, the first impression that jumps out at you is that few of the young Muslim women appear to be practicing Muslims. And this raises the following question: How can a person (male or female) be an effective "Muslim leader" if she (or he) lacks the confidence to be an effective Muslim?Just a little food for thought as you plan your "national young leaders summit." Please do what you can to work on building the self-esteem of young Muslims as Muslims. Because if we don't, we will simply be providing the opposition with more recruits (in the name of Islam).
"I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures and now I look at them as multi-skilled, multi-talented, resilient women whose brand of sisterhood makes Western feminism pale into insignificance."
Politicians and Journalists just love to write about the oppression of women in Islam ... without even talking to the females beneath the veil.
They simply have no idea how Muslim women are protected and respected within the Islamic framework which was built more than 1400 years ago.
Yet, by writing about cultural issues like child brides, female circumcision, honor killings and forced marriages they wrongly believe they are coming from a point of knowledge.
And I am sick of Saudi Arabia being cited as an example of how women are subjigated in a country where they are banned from driving.
The issues above have simply nothing to do with Islam yet they still write and talk about them with an arrogant air of authority while wrongly blaming Islam. Please do not confuse cultural behavior with Islam.
I was asked to write about how Islam allows men to beat their wives. Sorry, not true. Yes, I'm sure critics of Islam will quote random Qur'anic verses or ahadith but all are usually taken out of context. If a man does raise a finger to his wife, he is not allowed to leave a mark on her body ... this is another way of the Qur'an saying; "Don't beat your wife, stupid".
Now let's take a glance at some really interesting statistics, hmm. I can almost hear the words pot, kettle, black. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, four million American women experience a serious assault by a partner during an average 12-month period.
On the average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends every day . . . that is nearly 5,500 women battered to death since 9/11.
Some might say that is a shocking indictment on such a civilized society, but before I sound too smug, I would say that violence against women is a global issue. Violent men do not come in any particular religious or cultural category. The reality is that one out of three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Violence against women transcends religion, wealth, class, skin color and culture.
However, until Islam came on the scene women were treated as inferior beings. In fact we women still have a problem in the West where men think they are superior. This is reflected in our promotion and wages structure right across the spectrum from cleaners to career women who make it into the boardroom.
Western women are still treated as commodities, where sexual slavery is on the rise, disguised under marketing euphemisms, where womens' bodies are traded throughout the advertising world. As mentioned before, this is a society where rape, sexual assault, and violence on women is commonplace, a society where the equality between men and women is an illusion, a society where a womens' power or influence is usually only related to the size of her breasts.
I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures and now I look at them as multi-skilled, multi-talented, resilient women whose brand of sisterhood makes Western feminism pale into insignificance. My views changed after the truly terrifying experience of being arrested by the Taleban for sneaking into Afghanistan in September 2001 wearing the bhurka.
During my 10-day captivity I struck a deal that if they let me go I would read the Quran and study Islam. Against all the odds, it worked and I was released. In return I kept my word but as a journalist covering the Middle East I realized I needed to expand my knowledge of a religion which was clearly a way of life.
And no. I'm not a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. To be a victim you have to bond with your captors. During my imprisonment I spat, swore, cursed and abused my jailers as well as refusing their food and going on hunger strike. I don't know who was happier when I was released - them or me!
Reading the Quran was, I thought, going to be a very simple academic exercise. I was stunned to discover that ut clearly stated women are equal in spirituality, education and worth. A woman's gift for child birth and child-rearing is very much recognised as a quality and attribute. Muslim women say with pride they are homemakers and housewives.
Furthermore The Prophet (pbuh) said that the most important person in the home was The Mother, The Mother, The Mother. In fact he also said that heaven lies at the feet of the mother. How many women make it into the top 100 power lists for simply being a "great mother"?
With Islam choosing to remain at home and raise children takes on a new dignity and respect in my eyes, similar to those sisters among us who choose to go out to work and have careers and professions.
I then began looking at inheritance, tax, property and divorce laws. This is where Hollywood divorce lawyers probably get their inspiration from. For instance the woman gets to keep what she earns and owns while the man has to stump up half his worth.
Isn't it funny the way the tabloid media gets very excited over the prospect of some pop or film stars pre-nuptial wedding agreement? Muslim women have had wedding contracts from day one. They can choose if they want to work or not and anything they earn is theirs to spend while the husband has to pay for all the household bills and the upkeep of his family.
Just about everything that feminists strived for in the 70s was already available to Muslim women 1400 years ago.
As I said, Islam dignifies and brings respect to motherhood and being a wife. If you want to stay at home, stay at home. It is a great honor to be a home maker and the first educater of your children.
But equally, the Quran states if you want to work, then work. Be a career woman, learn a profession become a politician. Be what you want to be and excel in what you do as a Muslim because everything you do is in praise of Allah (swt).
There is an excessive, almost irritating concentration or focus on the issue of Muslim womens' dress particularly by men (both Muslim and non-Muslim).
Yes, it is an obligation for Muslim women to dress modestly but, in addition, there are many other important issues which concern Muslim women today.
And yet everyone obsesses over the hijab. Look, it is part of my business suit. This tells you I am a Muslim and therefore I expect to be treated with respect.
Can you imagine if someone told a Wall Street executive or Washington banker to put on a t-shirt and jeans? He would tell you his business suit defines him during work hours, marks him out to be treated seriously.
And yet in Britain we have had the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describing the nikab - the face veil revealing only the eyes - as an unwelcome barrier. When, oh when, will men learn to keep their mouths shut over a woman's wardrobe?
We also had Government Ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid express disparaging remarks about the nikab - both these men come from over the Scottish Borders where men wear skirts!!
Then we had a series of other parliamentarians enter the fray describing the nikab as a barrier for communication. What a load of nonsense. If this was the case can anyone explain to me why cell phones, landlines, emails, text messaging and fax machines are in daily use? Who listens to the radio? No one switches off the wireless because they can not see the face of the presenter.
The majority of sisters I know who choose to wear the nikab are actually white, Western reverts who no longer want the unwelcome attention of those few leering men who will try and confront females and launch into inappropriate behavior. Mind you, there are a couple of London sisters I know who say they wear the nikab at anti-war marches because they can't stand the smell of spliffs.
I am afraid Islamophobia has become the last refuge of the racist scoundrel. But the cowardly, chauvinistic attacks launched - largely by men - is unacceptable to Muslimahs as well as their secular, female sisters from the left.
I was a feminist for many years and now, as an Islamic feminist, I still promote womens' rights. The only difference is Muslim feminists are more radical than their secular counterparts. We all hate those ghastly beauty pageants, and tried to stop laughing when the emergence of Miss Afghanistan in bikini was hailed as a giant leap for women's liberation in Afghanistan.
I've been back to Afghanistan many times and I can tell you there are no career women emerging from the rubble in Kabul. My Afghan sisters say they wish the West would drop its obsession with the bhurka. "Don't try turning me into a career woman, get my husband a job first. Show me how I can send my children to school without fear of them being kidnapped. Give me security and bread on the table," one sister told me.
Young feminist Muslimahs see the hijab and the nikab as political symbols as well as a religious requirement. Some say it is their way of showing the world they reject the excesses of Western lifestyles such as binge drinking, casual sex, drug-taking etc.
Superiority in Islam is accomplished through piety, not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.
Now you tell me what is more liberating. Being judged on the length of your skirt and the size of your cosmetically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your character, mind and intelligence?
Glossy magazines tell us as women that unless we are tall, slim and beautiful we will be unloved and unwanted. The pressure on teenage magazine readers to have a boyfriend is almost obscene.
Islam tells me that I have a right to an education and it is my duty to go out and seek knowledge whether I am single or married.
No where in the framework of Islam are we told as women that we must do washing, cleaning or cooking for men - but it is not just Muslim men who need to re-evaluate women in their home. Check out this 1992 exert from a Pat Robertson speech revealing his views on empowered women. And then you tell me who is civilized and who is not.
He said: "FEMINISM ENCOURAGES WOMEN TO LEAVE THEIR HUSBANDS, KILL THEIR CHILDREN, PRACTICE WITCHCRAFT, DESTROY CAPITALISM AND BECOME LESBIANS".
Here is an American man living in a pre-Islamic age who needs to modernize and civilize. People like him are wearing a veil and we need to tear that veil of bigotry away so people can see Islam for what it is.
We are all born and someday we'll all die…to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?
On February 7 2003, Rachel wrote:
No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality…Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown…When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting…at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done…I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees - many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, 'Go! Go!' because a tank was coming. And then waving and [asking] 'What's your name?'
Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity.
It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously - occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving - many forced to be here, many just aggressive - shooting into the houses as we wander away…There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza". Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start….
Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine—now Israel. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt.
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count—along the horizon, at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden, just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners.
Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo.
But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to Apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time.
…According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah's water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.
Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds.
People here watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and "problems for the government" in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete Polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the United States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are learning from global examples how to resist.
February 20 2003:
Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won't make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.
The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the "reoccupation of Gaza", but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar incursions and possibly the oft-hinted "population transfer".
…A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon's assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me…
February 27 2003:
…I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house…Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.
This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.
I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border……about non-violent resistance.
When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it.
It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be…you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I'm doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things - constitutes a somewhat gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive - removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context.
The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave…they can't even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won't let them in (both our country and Arab countries).
…when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can't get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law…
When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.
February 28 2003:
…I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven't seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.
February 28 2003:
I think I could see a Palestinian state or a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state within my lifetime. I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports.
I look forward to increasing numbers of middle-class privileged people like you and me becoming aware of the structures that support our privilege and beginning to support the work of those who aren't privileged to dismantle those structures.
I look forward to more moments like February 15 when civil society wakes up en masse and issues massive and resonant evidence of it's conscience, it's unwillingness to be repressed, and it's compassion for the suffering of others.
I look forward to more teachers emerging like Matt Grant and Barbara Weaver and Dale Knuth who teach critical thinking to kids in the United States.
I look forward to the international resistance that's occurring now fertilizing analysis on all kinds of issues, with dialogue between diverse groups of people.
I look forward to all of us who are new at this developing better skills for working in democratic structures and healing our own racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism and ableism and becoming more effective.
In fifth grade, at the age of ten, Rachel Corrie wrote her heart out and stated it at a Press Conference on World Hunger in 1990:
I'm here for other children.
I'm here because I care.
I'm here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.
I'm here because those people are mostly children.
We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.
We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.
We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us.
We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.
We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.
My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.
My dream is to give the poor a chance.
My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.
My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.
If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.
If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/site/about-rachel-corrie/rachels-emails-from-palestine
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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