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Collective punishment a crime in Gaza, Lebanon, or Seattle
Posted by ceciliescott on 08/03/06, 8:11:58 PM Assaf Oron responded to the killing of Pamela Waechter and the shooting of 5 other women at Seattle's Jewish Federation. You can read Oron's article, Punishment rains down on proxies, in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for Thursday, August 3. The whole article is well worth reading, and I haven't seen a clearer summary of the argument against proxy killings: The federation employees are defenseless civilians. You cannot kill them as proxy targets to anyone. Moreover, it is wrong to reduce the federation's complex ties with Israel -- cultural, historical, religious -- to a single political act. The Seattle attack is a reprehensible crime. No one in his or her right mind would argue differently. So why is it that the Israeli mainstream, and many Americans, condone the collective punishment-by-proxy of Palestinian civilians? Since January, the Israeli government has punished Palestinians for voting Hamas into power, by denying them money that is theirs and increasingly isolating them from the world. But Palestinian votes for Hamas must not be reduced to political support for certain racist clauses in its charter. The vote has many other aspects -- not least of which is the oppression Palestinians have suffered under Israeli military rule. Since January, Palestinian suffering intensified, and Qassam rockets started flying into Israel again. IDF escalated its responses, kidnapping prisoners and causing dozens of Palestinian civilian deaths. This led to the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. The IDF immediately destroyed Gaza's only power plant, demolished major bridges and completely sealed Gaza off from the world, stranding thousands of Palestinians on the Egyptian border in the sweltering heat. Eight civilians died while waiting to return, including a dehydrated baby. In Lebanon, we see more of the same. After the Hezbollah raid that reignited the front, the IDF's chief of staff vowed to turn Lebanon "20 years back" -- in reference to the total destruction from civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. His words became reality, with the IDF bombing infrastructure across the land; for example, Beirut International Airport. According to Israel, the Lebanese deserve this for their leadership's failure to rein in Hezbollah. Morally speaking, there is no difference between the death of Gaza civilians due to direct or indirect Israeli actions, the killing of eight Israeli Railways employees by a Hezbollah rocket that hit their Haifa depot, the killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians by IDF airstrikes and Pamela Waechter's murder. All are murders of defenseless civilians, explained as political punishment-by-proxy.Assaf Oron is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington. The PI article is an edited translation of an article that originally appeared on the Israeli news portal www.walla.co.il.
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Israel Invades Lebanon
Posted by ceciliescott on 08/02/06, 12:21:56 PM I read the news on Democracy Now with dismay and a sense of helplessness. I sign the Jewish Voice for Peace petition with a couple of clicks of my mouse. It's sadly wishy-washy, but, to use the punch line from an old Jewish joke, "It wouldn't hurt." I find decent coverage of the indecent on the following sources: Common Dreams Democracy Now! Salon news coverage, particularly that by Mitch Prothero. See his The "hiding among civilians" myth. And of course, anything by Robert Fisk.
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To Beirut -- peace to Beirut with all my heart
Posted by ceciliescott on 07/26/06, 2:49:36 PM Robert Fisk, writes for The Independent of Britain and has lived in Beirut 30 years. He ended his must-read article Sunday, July 23, The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn, by quoting Fairouz, the most popular Lebanese singer: Fairouz was to perform at this year's Baalbek festival, cancelled like all Lebanon's festivals.To Beirut -- peace to Beirut with all my heart And kisses -- to the sea and clouds, To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor's face. From the soul of her people she makes wine, From their sweat, she makes bread and jasmine. So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?
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Lebanon Once More
Posted by ceciliescott on 07/25/06, 3:31:59 PM Between June and September of 1982, American and Canadian poets responded to the televised images of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Their poems were gathered into a book that should be only a collectors item by now, a historical footnote: And Not Surrender: American Poets on Lebanon. The book is out of print, the poems still rendingly timely. Here are the concluding stanzas from Canadian poet Dennis Lee's "After Sabra, After Shatila." (. . . I think of where death entered--
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Umbrella Against Iraq War
Posted by ceciliescott on 02/21/03, 1:00:06 PM
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Super Highway to War with Iraq
Posted by ceciliescott on 09/21/02, 9:48:18 AM Ever have that dream, where you're in a car and suddenly realize you have no brakes? Then you find the steering wheel doesn't respond. Problem is, it's not a dream. Stephen King horror pales before Bush & Company's race towards war with Iraq. We are being taken for a ride, and so far Congress shows no inclination to seize control. During the last presidential election Nader and the Green Party told us the Dems were no different from the Republicans. If Congress fails to stop the war against Iraq before it starts, the TweedleDum/TweedleDee claim will be all the more compelling. 
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The Return of Madame X
Posted by ceciliescott on 08/16/02, 10:06:23 AM Being Madame X is back on TurtleDreams. I'd taken it off in order to work on a print version for submittal. Mistake! It just plain didn't work without graphics and links. I hated the result. So I've revised it, adding more graphics, more links, and making better use of quotes that illustrate how this Sargent portrait, particularly its subject, has been pushing buttons ever since 1884.
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