Israeli mother Addresses European Parliament.

[Nur]

Israeli mother Addresses European Parliament.

 

Dear Friends,

 

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old

when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997. Below

is Nurit's speech made on International Women's Day in Strasbourg

earlier this month. Please listen to the words of a bereaved mother,

whose daughter fell victim to a vicious, indiscriminating terrorist

attack. I wish her words will enter the hearts of all peace seekers in

our troubled and divided world.

 

For better days,

Professor Avraham Oz

Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature

University of Haifa

avitaloz @ research.haifa.ac.il

 

 

WOMEN

by Nurit Peled-Elhanan

 

 

Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a

pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

 

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian

woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in

my county are the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my

speech to Miriam R`aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the

Gaza strip, whose five small children were killed by Israeli soldiers

while picking strawberries at the family`s strawberry field. No one

will ever stand trial for this murder.

 

When I asked the people who invited me here why didn't they invite a

Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion

too localized.

 

I don't know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination

may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact

is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse,

torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars.

 

It is true, unfortunately, that the local violence inflicted on

Palestinian women by the government of Israel and the Israeli army,

has expanded around the globe, In fact, state violence and army

violence, individual and collective violence, are the lot of Muslim

women today, not only in Palestine but wherever the enlightened

western world is setting its big imperialistic foot. It is violence

which is hardly ever addressed and which is halfheartedly condoned by

most people in Europe and in the USA .

 

This is because the so-called free world is afraid of the Muslim womb.

 

Great France of "la liberte égalite et la fraternite" is scared of

little girls with head scarves. Great Jewish Israel is afraid of the

Muslim womb which its ministers call a demographic threat.

 

Almighty America and Great Britain are infecting their respective

citizens with blind fear of the Muslims, who are depicted as vile,

primitive and blood-thirsty, apart from their being non-democratic,

chauvinistic and mass producers of future terrorists. This in spite of

the fact that the people who are destroying the world today are not

Muslim. One of them is a devout Christian, one is Anglican and one is

a non-devout Jew.

 

I have never experienced the suffering Palestinian women undergo every

day, every hour, I don't know the kind of violence that turns a

woman's life into constant hell. This daily physical and mental

torture of women who are deprived of their basic human rights and

needs of privacy and dignity, women whose homes are broken into at any

moment of day and night, who are ordered at a gun-point to strip naked

in front of strangers and their own children, whose houses are

demolished , who are deprived of their livelihood and of any normal

family life. This is not part of my personal ordeal.

 

But I am a victim of violence against women insofar as violence

against children is actually violence against mothers. Palestinian,

Iraqi, Afghan women are my sisters because we are all at the grip of

the same unscrupulous criminals who call themselves leaders of the

free enlightened world and in the name of this freedom and

enlightenment rob us of our children.

 

Furthermore, Israeli, American, Italian and British mothers have been

for the most part violently blinded and brainwashed to such a degree

that they cannot realize their only sisters, their only allies in the

world are the Muslim Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghani mothers, whose

children are killed by our children or who blow themselves to pieces

with our sons and daughters. They are all mind-infected by the same

viruses engendered by politicians. And the viruses , though they may

have various illustrious names--such as Democracy, Patriotism, God,

Homeland--are all the same. They are all part of false and fake

ideologies that are meant to enrich the rich and to empower the powerful.

 

We are all the victims of mental, psychological and cultural violence

that turn us to one homogenic group of bereaved or potentially

bereaved mothers. Western mothers who are taught to believe their

uterus is a national asset just like they are taught to believe that

the Muslim uterus is an international threat. They are educated not to

cry out: `I gave him birth, I breast fed him, he is mine, and I will

not let him be the one whose life is cheaper than oil, whose future is

less worth than a piece of land.`

 

All of us are terrorized by mind-infecting education to believe all we

can do is either pray for our sons to come back home or be proud of

their dead bodies.

 

And all of us were brought up to bear all this silently, to contain

our fear and frustration, to take Prozac for anxiety, but never hail

Mama Courage in public. Never be real Jewish or Italian or Irish mothers.

 

I am a victim of state violence. My natural and civil rights as a

mother have been violated and are violated because I have to fear the

day my son would reach his 18th birthday and be taken away from me to

be the game tool of criminals such as Sharon, Bush, Blair and their

clan of blood-thirsty, oil-thirsty, land thirsty generals..

 

Living in the world I live in, in the state I live in, in the regime I

live in, I don't dare to offer Muslim women any ideas how to change

their lives. I don't want them to take off their scarves, or educate

their children differently, and I will not urge them to constitute

Democracies in the image of Western democracies that despise them and

their kind. I just want to ask them humbly to be my sisters, to

express my admiration for their perseverance and for their courage to

carry on, to have children and to maintain a dignified family life in

spite of the impossible conditions my world in putting them in. I want

to tell them we are all bonded by the same pain, we all the victims of

the same sort of violence even though they suffer much more, for they

are the ones who are mistreated by my government and its army,

sponsored by my taxes.

 

Islam in itself, like Judaism in itself and Christianity in itself, is

not a threat to me or to anyone. American imperialism is, European

indifference and co-operation is and Israeli racism and its cruel

regime of occupation is. It is racism, educational propaganda and

inculcated xenophobia that convince Israeli soldiers to order

Palestinian women at gun-point, to strip in front of their children

for security reasons, it is the deepest disrespect for the other that

allow American soldiers to rape Iraqi women, that give license to

Israeli jailers to keep young women in inhuman conditions, without

necessary hygienic aids, without electricity in the winter, without

clean water or clean mattresses and to separate them from their

breast-fed babies and toddlers. To bar their way to hospitals, to

block their way to education, to confiscate their lands, to uproot

their trees and prevent them from cultivating their fields.

 

I cannot completely understand Palestinian women or their suffering. I

don't know how I would have survived such humiliation, such disrespect

from the whole world. All I know is that the voice of mothers has been

suffocated for too long in this war-stricken planet. Mothers` cry is

not heard because mothers are not invited to international forums such

as this one. This I know and it is very little. But it is enough for

me to remember these women are my sisters, and that they deserve that

I should cry for them, and fight for them. And when they lose their

children in strawberry fields or on filthy roads by the checkpoints,

when their children are shot on their way to school by Israeli

children who were educated to believe that love and compassion are

race and religion dependent, the only thing I can do is stand by them

and their betrayed babies, and ask what Anna Akhmatova--another mother

who lived in a regime of violence against women and children--asked:

 

Why does that streak o blood, rip the petal of your cheek?

[Nur]

"Islam in itself, like Judaism in itself and Christianity in itself, is

not a threat to me or to anyone. American imperialism is, European

indifference and co-operation is and Israeli racism and its cruel

regime of occupation is"

 

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan

[Nur]

On The Israeli Right's New 'Peace' Agenda

 

By Gilad Atzmon

 

July 21, 2010 "ICH" -- As the Israelis are becoming conscious of their inevitable tragic circumstances, a final desperate attempt to rescue the Zionist project has come to life. Astonishingly enough it is the Israeli right that is now pushing for ‘one binational State.’ It is pretty staggering to find out that while the Israeli so-called ‘left’ is locked within the 1967 territorial paradigm that is fueled by Judeo centric racial ideology, it is actually the hawkish Zionist thinkers who are willing to move the discourse forward.

 

In a mind provoking piece Noam Sheizaf outlines in Haaretz the new revolutionary Israeli idea. However, I will maintain at this stage that the new Zionist call for ‘one binational state’ suggests that Zionist ideology is on its last leg. Israel has come to realise its inevitable end. And amidst its terminal conditions Israel tries to buy time.

 

Israel should apply its law to “Judea and Samaria and grant citizenship to 1.5 million Palestinians,” says Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister, a top leader in the Likud party and a political patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Arens is not put off by those who slander him for promoting the idea of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state. "We are already a binational state," he says.

 

This approach is now being advocated by leading figures in the Likud and amongst the settlers. A year ago, Uri Elitzur, former chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and Netanyahu's bureau chief in his first term as prime minister, published an article in the settlers' journal Nekuda calling for the onset of a process, at the conclusion of which the (West Bank) Palestinians will have "a blue ID card (like Israelis), yellow license plates (like Israelis), National Insurance and the right to vote for the Knesset." Emily Amrousi, a former spokesperson for the Yesha Council, also takes part in meetings between settlers and Palestinians and speaks explicitly of "one land in which the children of settlers and the children of Palestinians will be bused to school together."

 

This Zionist political novelty doesn’t take me by complete surprise. Unlike the Jewish left that is tribally orientated both in Israel and in the West, the right wing Zionist philosophy was grounded on a dream of an eternal bond between the Jew and the alleged ‘promised land’. In Zion the Jew was supposed to transcend oneself beyond the race and the tribe. Israel was there to demolish the ghetto wall. As it happened, in practice, Israel had become the biggest ghetto in Jewish history.

 

However, there is a clear trap here. As much as the peace loving Zionist hawks seem to champion Palestinian civil rights, the vision of a ‘one binational state’ is still totally Judeo centric. The Israeli advocates of the one binational state are not talking about a neutral "state of all its citizens", nor about "Israstine" with a flag showing a crescent and a Shield of David. One state still means a sovereign Jewish state, but in a more complex reality, and inspired by the vision of a “democratic Jewish state” without an occupation and without apartheid, without fences and separations.

 

One may wonder at this stage what the notion of “Jewish democratic state” stands for. It is obviously an empty signifier, there is no such a thing as Jewish democracy. As far as I remember Democracy was born in Athens rather than Jerusalem. And yet, the dream is compelling. In such a state, “Jews will be able to live in Hebron and pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and a Palestinian from Ramallah will be able to serve as an ambassador and live in Tel Aviv or simply enjoy ice cream on the city's seashore.”

 

It is clear beyond doubt that a coin has dropped. Some Israeli hawks have come to realise that the occupation cannot be maintained forever. They were also quick to grasp that, in the long run, the separation wall put an end to the Zionist expansionist program. They also gather that the negative exposure of Jewish lobbies in the West will eventually lead to the down scaling of Israeli political maneuvering.

 

However, the Zionist tribal orientation is never too difficult to trace. When Elitzur was asked “What do you say to the allegations that you have joined the radical left?” he was quick to reveal his political mantra.

 

"There's a clear separation between us. I am talking about a Jewish state, the state of the Jewish people, which will contain a large Arab minority. The left is talking about an Arab state containing a Jewish minority, even if they do not explicitly think that. The leftist demonstrators in (the West Bank village of) Bil'in have totally joined the Palestinian cause."

 

I guess that this what it is all about. The Israeli hawks want to counter the inevitable 'demographic disaster'. They would offer West Bank Palestinians Israeli ID cards, and offer them to “enjoy ice cream in Tel Aviv” as long as they are kept as a minority. The Israeli hawks ignore Gaza and the right of return. In practice they dismiss the Palestinian cause for they are certain that the Jewish one is superior. In short, this is not a solution or a resolution. It is just another Zionist spin that is planted in our discourse in order to disseminate confusion.

 

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). Atzmon's essays are widely published. His novels 'Guide to the perplexed' and 'My One And Only Love' have been translated into 24 languages.

[Nur]

As a Holocaust Survivor, AIPAC Does Not Speak For Me

 

By Hedy Epstein

 

April 30, 2011 "ICH" -- At the end of one of my first journeys to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2004, I endured a shocking experience at Ben-Gurion Airport. I never imagined that Israeli security forces would abuse a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor, but they held me for five hours, and strip-searched and cavity-searched every part of my naked body. The only shame these security officials expressed was to turn their badges around so that their names were invisible.

 

The only conceivable purpose for this gross violation of my bodily integrity was to humiliate and terrify me. But it had just the opposite effect. It made me more determined to speak out against abuses by the Israeli government and military.

 

Yet my own experience, unpleasant as it was, is nothing compared to the indignities and abuses heaped on Palestinians year after year. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is based not on equal rights and fair play, but on what Human Rights Watch has termed a “two-tier” legal system – in other words, apartheid, with one set of laws for Jews and a harsh, oppressive set of laws for Palestinians.

 

This, however, is the legal system and security state AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) will defend from May 22-24 at its annual conference. And, despite this grim reality, members of Congress will converge to hail AIPAC and Israel . The Palestinians’ lack of freedom is bound to be obscured at the AIPAC conference with its obsessive focus on security and shunting aside of anything to do with upholding fundamental Palestinian rights.

 

Several years ago near Der Beilut in the West Bank, I saw the Israeli police turn a water cannon on our nonviolent protest. As it happened, I recalled Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and wondered why an ostensibly democratic society responded to peaceable assembly by trying, literally, to drown out the voice of our protest.



 

In Mas'ha, also in the occupied West Bank , I joined a demonstration against the wall Israel has built, usually inside the West Bank and occasionally towering to 25 feet in height. I saw a red sign warning ominously of “mortal danger” to any who dared to cross in an area where it ran as a fence. I saw Israeli soldiers aiming at unarmed Israelis, Palestinians and international protesters. I also saw blood pouring out of Gil Na'amati, a young Israeli whose first public act after completing his mandatory military service was to protest against the wall. I saw shrapnel lodged in the leg of Anne Farina, one of my traveling companions from St. Louis . And I thought of Kent State and Jackson State, where National Guardsmen opened fire in 1970 on protesters against the Vietnam War.

 

So as AIPAC meets and members of Congress cheer, I hold these images of Israel in my mind and fear AIPAC’s ability to move US policy in dangerous directions. AIPAC does a disservice to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the American people. It helps to keep the Middle East in a perpetual state of war and this year will be no different from last year as it keeps up a steady drumbeat calling for war against Iran .

 

AIPAC pretends to speak for all Jews, but it certainly does not speak for me or other members of the Jewish community in this country who are committed to equal rights for all and are aware that American interventionism is likely to bring further disaster and chaos to the Middle East .

 

Israel, of course, would not be able to carry out its war crimes against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza without the United States – and our $3 billion in military aid – permitting it to do so. At 86 years old, I use every ounce of my energy to educate the American public about the need to stop supporting the abuses committed by the Israeli government and military against the Palestinian people. Sometimes there are people who try to shout me down and scream that I am a self-hating Jew, but most of the time the audience is receptive to hear from someone who survived the Holocaust and now works to free the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.

 

The vicious discrimination brought to bear against Palestinians in the occupied territories deserves no applause this week from members of Congress attending the AIPAC conference. Instead, they should raise basic questions with Israeli officials about decades of inferior rights endured by Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territories.

 

Hedy Epstein is a Holocaust survivor, who writes and travels extensively to speak about social justice causes and Middle Eastern affairs. Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org .