Dove's Eye View

Prayers, not Blogs

I keep saying that following politics on the internet is bad for my liver. I keep saying I'm going to swear off the internet, blog less, and focus on healing.

The events of the last two days in Lebanon convince me that now is the time for the Dove to shut up. I am going to pray, for myself, my relatives, my father's compatriots, my own compatriots, the salmon run in California, the people of Palestine, Iraq and Egypt, Myanmar and Darfur. I pray for the rainforest and the oceans, the polar ice caps and the polar bears, the honey bees, the mountain snows, the wheat crop, CO2 levels and the restoration of harmony on the planet.

I have nothing more to say for the moment on the subject of Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, America, Iraq, Iran or anywhere else. May God help us all.

Today was a good day in chemotherapy. I laughed and talked with another young woman who has metastatic breast cancer, as I do. Her son is three, my two are six and eight. We have everything to live for and we intend to survive. Afterward I ate at my favorite Middle East deli, King of Falafil on Divisadero Street; the proprietress is from Ramallah and gave me some green almonds to taste; I promised her I'd get her fresh grape leaves from my secret Oakland source. Then I came home and saw the news.

Only God can heal me of what I have got, and only God or Ultimate Life Force or Universal Intelligence can heal the people of the eastern Mediterranean; only God could knock some sense into George Bush/Dick Cheney/Condi Rice. So I'm signing off and giving it all up to God. (The Great Mystery/Ultimate Unknown/The Tao/Your Favorite Big Prime Mover Term here)

Pray for me. Pray for all of us.

And don't forget to plant a food garden, use your bicycle, turn off the lights and conserve water.

Alternative to Siege and Bloodshed

Medical supplies convoy to Gaza - the alternative to siege and bloodshed - Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Bloc. Via my husband's cousin, Art Lipow.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday, May 4) there will be transferred to the Gaza Strip, after many delays due to bureaucratic problems in the granting of military permits, a consignment of medicines and medical equipment which was purchased through the sum of about 60,000 Dollars collected all over the world at the call of Gush Shalom and the other groups involved in the Israeli Coalition Against the Gaza Siege.

The medical supplies were purchased from Palestinian suppliers in Nablus, with the help of the Tel-Aviv based Physicians for Human Rights (which also undertook the obtaining of permits from the IDF military bureaucracy). The consignment will be passed on the morning hours of Wednesday, through the Bitunia Checkpoint near Ramallah and to the Gaza Strip border. There, it will be received by representatives of the Palestinian-International Coalition Against the Gaza Siege, in which the psychiatrist and human rights activist Dr. Eyad Sarraj is involved.

Members of Gush Shalom will accompany the consignment all the way to the Gaza border, with the truck decorated by huge signs reading “Stop the siege of Gaza, stop the bloodshed, cease-fire now!”.

Israeli says: Our Defense Forces, our war crimes, our terrorism

An Israeli journalist and IDF veteran writes: Our Defense Forces, our war crimes, our terrorism - Haaretz - Israel News.

I want to apologize for the unforgivable.

It is time for us to stop "understanding" why we kill so many Palestinian civilians. It is time for us to stop explaining away the deaths we excuse as the unfortunate and incidental by-product of a terrible war.

If it had been only an isolated incident, a tragic aberration, I would have kept my peace, said nothing, just moved on.

But the same crime, the same - let's call it by its real name - atrocity, has been committed time and again, under the same circumstances, for the same reasons, with the same indefensible result.

Someone in an IDF uniform, in a position of responsibility, gave an order. We will probably never know who. Nor will we know who loaded the shell into the tank gun, if that was, indeed what happened, or who armed the air-to-surface missile, if that was what happened, who sighted the target, who gave the order to fire, who carried it out.

What we do know is that a mother in Beit Hanoun, a devastated area of northern Gaza from which Qassams and mortars are fired at Israel, was seeing to the breakfast of her four small children Monday morning when their world exploded.

We know that they are all dead. -- Bradley Burston in Ha'aretz

Israel has been making excuses for such murders since I was a child 35 years ago. But no American government has ever held her to account. Only her citizens and her supporters in the West can force Israel to change.

Cease the murder. This will lead to peace. Violence has not curtailed violence in this war. Only negotiation will. Hamas has offered a ceasefire. talk it out. Now.

Hat tip to Philip Weiss for the above.

May Day: Oakland On Strike

Why didn't my local paper cover May Day in my hometown? Oakland Teach-In Looks at Budget Cuts and the War - New York Times.

a daylong act of educational disobedience undertaken on Thursday by about two dozen teachers across Oakland, who set aside their normal lesson plans in favor of topics like the war in Iraq, racial inequality and a recent 10 percent cut in the state schools budget.

Craig Gordon, a social studies teacher at Robeson and the author of the day’s curriculum, said the goal was to raise awareness among students who may not have a firm grasp of the relationship between what happens at home and what happens “out there.”

Also - unions up and down the West Coast struck in protest of the war. Why no local coverage? Sheesh!

Not celebrating

Regarding Israel's 60th anniversary and the Palestinian Nakba, British Jews and others write: Letters: We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary | The Guardian.

Hat tip to Philip Weiss, who is running a Nakba watch at his blog. He celebrates Lila Abu-Lughod and her book, Nakba, published last year.

As'ad Abu-Khalil alerts us to this letter to Nadine Gordimer from a professor in Gaza whose students are literally starving while reading her books.

My cold and hungry students have divided themselves into two groups, with one group adamant that you, like many of your courageous characters, will reconsider your participation in an Israeli festival that aims to celebrate the annihilation of Palestine and Palestinians. The other group believes that you have already crossed over to the side of the oppressor, negating every word you have ever written. We all wait for your next action.

Who is the real menace to America?

Regarding the alleged perfidies of Reverend Wright, Obama's former pastor, Balloon Juice says:

If you have a memo from Jeremiah Wright to John Yoo showing how we should become a rogue nation, let me know. If you have pictures of Jeremiah Wright voting against the GI Bill, send it to me. If you have evidence of Jeremiah Wright training junior soldiers on the finer aspects of stacking and torturing naked Iraqi captives, pass them on.

Until then, I just can’t seem to get all worked up about the crazy scary black preacher that Obama has to “throw under the bus.”

Yes indeed. Remember that Wright served in the Marines in Vietnam for six years and has been feeding the hungry in Chicago ever since. Meanwhile, Bush, who served at a desk in Texas during Vietnam, guts the Constitution, sells the government to his cronies, and kills hundreds of thousands of Arabs with his war.

Tell me who is really a menace to the Republic? Tell me who has done more for this country? Tell me who is the real patriot?

Hat tip to Kevin Drum for spotting this link.

Turkey sending envoy to Israel for Syria talks

Colonel Patrick Lang alerts us to this development: Turkey plans to send envoy to Israel for Syria talks.

Turkey is planning to send an emissary to Jerusalem in an attempt to find a compromise that would pave the way of peace talks between Syria and Israel, as it played down the high expectations saying there is a long way to go.

Israel's Haaretz said on Monday Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan plans to send an emissary to Jerusalem to brief Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on his recent talks with Assad in Damascus. Erdogan will apparently send his foreign policy advisor Ahmet Davutoglu, who is also in charge of talks with Syria and has in the past met with Olmert adviser, Yoram Turbowicz, in Ankara, it reported.

Israeli officials believe Turkey's involvement in the issue will increase. "Erdogan has decided to go all the way on the issue of Israel and Syria," the Israeli government source told Haaretz.

The source added that Israel has not yet received an update on Erdogan's talks in Damascus. "Talks are being conducted to chart out the issue," the source said. "The goal of Turkey's activity is to allow talks to start. That's how we view it. So far, no real negotiations are taking place."

Turkey has been mediating between Syria and Israel to restart peace talks. Israel and Syria's last round of direct talks broke down in 2000 over the details of Israel's proposed withdrawal from the Golan.

Syria has said it received word from Turkey that Israel would be willing to give back the Golan in return for peace with the Arab state.

Peace can arise from any direction.

Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor

There it is: Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor - Yahoo! News.

Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace."

But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria.

The Democratic former president relayed the message in a speech in Jerusalem after meeting last week with top Hamas leaders in Syria. It capped a nine-day visit to the Mideast aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.

"They (Hamas) said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, if approved by Palestinians and that they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace," Carter said.

The buzz on the internet and from my cousins with Lebanese army connections: war, war, war.

Carter's visit shows that peace is always possible. No war could solve any real problem this summer. We need sane leaders to pull the bloodthirsty back from the brink.

Update: The New York Times elaborates.

Also, regarding war, war and more war, see Joshua Landis at Syria Comment. He reprints a long analysis of the prospects for war, but Josh himself states at the outset that he thinks it won't come to that. Too costly, too little benefit to anybody. My hopeful self believes that cooler heads will prevail.

Hold John Yoo To Account For His Crime

I was at a party on Wednesday night for an author whose latest novel deals with torture during Guatemala's civil war. My friend the Human Rights Lawyer had been in the Yucatan since before John Yoo's torture memo of 2003 was released, and I was filling her in on the latest as we sat on a plush sofa and ate dolmas and hummus; we were in the north Berkeley hills in a prosperous neighborhood.

"He lives around here," I said. Our other friend who writes about Argentina's torturers and their victims, listened in on the conversation. "He is part of our community. What are we going to do about him? If we just keep on worrying about torture in Guatemala or Argentina, and we don't address the man who enables torture by our government, who lives among us, then aren't we being hypocrites?"

John Yoo shops where we shop, he drives the streets we drive, we heard a rumor that he lives in this very neighborhood, close to Human Rights Lawyer and Guatemala Novelist. And he wrote the memo enabling Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo torture. But we do nothing. We don't know what to do, so we keep on chauffeuring our children to school, and attending nice parties. Are we turning into good Germans, just going along with creeping fascism because it would be impolite or out of bounds to make a stink?

Well, maybe yes.

I believe I saw Mr. Yoo yesterday in the waiting room of a doctor I consult in Berkeley. I'm not positive. I have trouble lining up photos of people with the real person. But what if I did meet him in my doctor's waiting room? He looks like a frightened, dewy, pleading boy-man. I don't know how to be cold or cruel to such a person. And I wouldn't compromise doctor-patient confidentiality by asking about him or discussing where exactly we were. (not a shrink's office BTW)

I want to see Yoo held to account. I don't want him - or anyone - to believe that because I accept his right to decent treatment as a human being in his daily round, that means I accept what he has done.

John Yoo, in writing the torture memo, has undermined everything that matters about this Republic of which I am a citizen. And I am not certain that any institution of this Republic is going to call him to account. (or prosecute "the deciders", either). We're all too polite, too concerned with following the rules.

John Yoo must account for his actions, in public. It's not enough for him to be shunned or harassed or insulted around town, around campus, as some have suggested. He undermined the principles upon which this country was founded, and he must pay a public price for this. The nature of his mistake must be explained in public, so that the many other Americans who don't understand why torture is bad for the country may learn something.

I don't believe in mobs with pitchforks or public insult as the only action. Such methods do not promote justice or respect for the rule of law. I do believe in due process.

At the very least, can Berkeley lawyers and other faculty hold a teach-in? Invite Yoo to attend and defend himself; give plenty of time to those lawyers who have analyzed exactly what's wrong with his memo, his actions, and US torture policy under Bush.

This Republic's citizens hunger for justice; our constitutional law students need moral direction. The fabric of our democracy is torn. Mend it!

Who's playing?

A dust-up in the press: corporations and a few leading Jewish groups are SHOCKED over Mr. Mosley's possibly Nazi-scented S&M sex play. Toyota, Daimler Benz, various Jewish groups are all issuing condemnations and asking that he resign his job in racing.

You see, Mosley used a German accent during consensual, paid role-play in which he whipped a woman; then let some more women dressed in black and white stripes whip him. Therefore hinting of Auschwitz. Everybody is so horrified that he might have play-acted the Holocaust in what he thought was a private sexual act. (one of the women had a hidden camera in her bra). The black-and-white miniskirt outfits might imply prison camp...and his father was a British Fascist and notorious friend of Hitler.

Meanwhile the Israelis have put up a giant walled ghetto and are starving the inhabitants; rounding people up and expelling them; celebrating the sixty-year anniversary of a mass expulsion with massacres; etc. (draw your favorite Nazi tactic here) and is Toyota complaining? The World Jewish Congress? Anybody? I guess play-acting a Nazi is horrible, but really doing what Nazis did is okay - if you're Israeli.

Yes, yes, I know that Israelis have not sent anybody to gas chambers, and when they committed mass expulsions they did not put people on cattle cars or build work camps for them; nor have the Israelis killed six million Arabs. (Not quite a hundred fifty thousand dead Arabs by now, if you include Israel's wars on Lebanon. And of course a hundred fifty thousand dead Arabs don't matter to anybody but their relatives and countrymen).

If you don't see the similarity between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto, then you are trying not to look. I think the Israelis are acting out their own trauma unconsciously upon the Other, stimulating all kinds of murderous response, which they use as an excuse to continue killing and oppressing the people under their control.

Hotheaded replies will tend to one of several positions: 1) it's not so bad what the Israelis are doing; 2) Arabs deserve it anyway; 3) Israel is justified because she's under so much stress/threat or 4) you are anti-Semitic for talking about this.

What's the highest spiritual truth about this? We all need to forgive each other and quit hurting each other. Pretty simple.