Mariposa Rhythms -- Creative Dissent

Someone once told me that when she was living in Israel, she used to go up on the roof of her home and watch nearby explosions as though they were fireworks. Last night, I was on a bridge in San Francisco, watching fireworks, unable to stop the association with the explosions of shock and awe – how many such displays will the new year bring? As people embrace and wish one another a happy new year, I wonder, what do we mean by “happy”? Who is included in this wish, this vision, and how are we going to bring that happiness about?

I was taught to approach new year’s as a powerful threshold moment in which to take some time to reflect on the past and make plans for an improved future. A moment to push on the boundaries of what seems possible, to dream alternatives and to commit to those dreams. My dream is one in which the existence of people that is built on others’ subordination and exploitation is so unjustifiable that it becomes undoable, perhaps even unthinkable. This is my vision of a happy new year. How to bring that about?

Today I have just a little something to contribute, an attempt to formulate a new beginning, a new origin story. I offer this because our origin narratives are powerful forces in shaping our understandings of our proper places in the world, of who we are allied with, who we are accountable to and responsible for. Many of the origin narratives I know claim to be universal truths that explain where we all come from. And yet many are left outside of the “all” of those stories, condemned to a state of nonbeing or sub-human status vis-à-vis these truths. So how might we imagine a common origin that is inclusive of all of humanity yet does not necessitate a homogenous religion, science, physiology or culture? A universal “we” that allows for infinite particulars? Here is one idea, a story for a happy new year:

Descendents of Exile

Before, during, after and around the human there is exile. For some the exile from God’s or Gods’ imagination/s. For some the exile of gasses into the universe. Exiles from Eden. Exiles from Africa. Exiles from all the places humans linger in exile, exiled many times over, whether by choice or by force. For some persons, the home of death is the home of birth. For all people, home is transient, home is exile. Do not despair! This is not a story of being cursed to homelessness. Do not gloat! This is not a story that justifies sending others into another exile. This is a story of universal kinship. Embrace your kin who, like you, are descendents of exile; who, like you, share the name of exile, even when we do not share your faith, your science, your anatomy, your history, your customs or your color. Our bodies, minds and souls will live and rest more soundly when we embrace our existence as exiles, when we live knowing that we do not have rights to particular places, that land and resources must be shared -- rather than seized through purchase, ancestral claims or occupation. When we make space rather than take space.

Love to you, to all.

With the exception of a couple years here and there, I grew up in Germany and attended German schools until I was 19 years old. History teachers at the time were obsessed with helping our younger generation grapple with the questions: how could the Germans have let it happen? How did so many get roped in by the Nazis? Where was the German resistance? We were taught over and over again about the "salami-tactic" (different metaphor, same moral as the soon-to-be-boiled-to-death frog that won’t jump out of the water as long as that water is heated bit by bit): you keep cutting off really thin slices of the salami until suddenly it is all gone and everyone's looking around wondering when the hell the salami disappeared.

The U.S. has been engaging in a “salami-tactic” for a long time now, and we are all being roped into the project. Someday soon we are going to wake up and wonder where the hell the salami went and how we could have all been complicit in so many ways and with so many good intentions: through joining the military, through directly and indirectly working for the military/industrial/congressional complex, through paying our taxes without insisting on the ways they should be spent, through where we spend the money we have left after taxes, through leaving the policy-making and breaking up to the politicians and those that can afford to court them, through inaction, through silence.

It might take us a little longer than the Germans to wake up since many of our most dramatic crimes (wars, massacres, torture) now take place in other countries rather than on “our own” soil. The obscene number of people caged up in our massive prisons are kept relatively invisible, and on most days those of us with full bellies and living wages are not faced with the inconceivable number of people at home and abroad dying the slow deaths of our policies of exploitation, poverty and pollution.

We who reside safely (now) in the U.S. can sit and debate whether or not we support the armed resistances in the Middle East and what that does or doesn’t have to do with our (lack of) understanding and opinions of Islam. But while we sit and debate and sit and wait for the perfect revolution with the perfect ideology and the perfect methodology that we can fully get behind, the U.S. government (in collaboration with multinational corporations and other corrupt leaders around the world) is slicing away at that salami. The intricacies of what we think about Hizbullah, Hamas, the FMLN, Chavez, Morales, Castro, Mao, etc.—the aspects we want to support and those we want to critique—all that may help us formulate the details of our utopian visions (and I do think it is important to have these) but it should not get in the way of our taking immediate action against our criminal government (and I am not just referring to the current administration) and its local and global policies which have necessitated the emergence of these and other resistance movements.

There has been some activism happening on Israeli divestment projects. We need to also start strategizing a “Boycott USA” plan. We need to stop being complicit in the fast and slow genocides of this nation. I say “we need to stop” because we already are complicit. The question is only how much farther we will go. How much longer until we are forced to come to terms with our own inability to rise up? How many more crimes will it take for our teachers to reach the point German teachers did, the point where it becomes impossible to turn away from the heinousness of our country's deeds, the point where they must help the younger generation grapple with how this could have happened?

So tell me now so that this question does not just wait for answers from future teachers: where is the U.S. resistance?

Silence here is more frightening than the most frightening bomb







To see more of Mazen Kerbaj's work, visit his blog, "Kerblog" and his website http://kerbaj.com

A brief, powerful video/song/letter...

http://www.beirutletters.org/

When you write a love poem to Hizbullah, you receive a lot of hate mail, including graphic descriptions of the ways you should die, of the ways you should be raped. But those descriptions, of course, do not even come close to capturing the terrifying ways people are being massacred. These real deaths are then described by Condoleeza Rice as “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

I prefaced my poem to Hizbullah with the statement that I don’t think there is such a thing as inherent evil. Rather, systems get created – regardless of intent – that allow great cruelty to grow, flourish and become institutionalized. Cruelty becomes common sense, begins to seem natural, comes to be accepted as the only possible course of action. So long as the people who actually are in positions of power to resolve conflicts peacefully fail to do so, there will be many more of us who start to acknowledge our love for Hizbullah. The hate mail I have received has been outweighed by messages from people who are also struggling to come to terms with their support of Hizbullah by learning more about who they are, what they have done, and what they believe. Though we may not agree with all of their ideologies, though we may condemn some of their actions, Hizbullah is right now standing up to great cruelty.

I can hear some of my readers screaming at me: “What about the cruelty of Hizbullah?!?” I insist that even those of us who believe in the power of non-violent resistance must acknowledge that there is no moral equivalency between the violence committed by the oppressor and the violence committed by the oppressed. Who is in which role may change over the course of history – but that must not paralyze us from dealing with the power relationships in play today. It is, of course, ridiculous to support a group just because it is the underdog resisting a stronger party. But Hizbullah is resisting forces that have institutionalized cruelty and insanity. What else can you call it when the deaths of thousands and the displacement of millions across Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq are described as “birthing pangs”?

Many have asked me, “What if Hizbullah wins? Do you really want to live in a world of their design?” To answer that question, as it is framed, in a nuanced and thoughtful manner would require more space and time than is available here. Ultimately, however, the answer to that question as framed is “no.” But that question need not be framed as it is, implying that Hizbullah’s fending off Israel means that it will go on to be the new super-power, waging wars at the rate and with the destructive capacity of the U.S. and Israel.

But, of course, the U.S. needs to see Hizbullah as a huge threat that will terrorize the world if every member is not exterminated. Terrorism has become for the 21^st century what communism was for the 20^th. The construction of a distinct, one-dimensional evil other against which we can define ourselves as virtuous, enlightened, free and worthy – and thus justified in pursuing our unending and highly profitable wars. If you are dependent on war, you need a never ending supply of enemies that the public will believe are worth the expense and the immorality of destruction.

Some of my readers are screaming again: “What about the immorality of Hizbullah?!?” Okay, let’s compare. A wise woman once taught me, “When they tell you about all the horrid things those people over there are doing, always ask yourself (and ask them): as compared to what?” When they talk about mistreatment and rape of women as if these are things that belong to foreign cultures, ask them to look up the domestic violence and rape rates in the United States. When they tell you about the civilians the “terrorists” have killed, ask them to look at the numbers of civilians killed by the militaries they are defending. Compare those numbers. When they insist these numbers can not be compared, that Hizbullah is hiding behind civilians, remind them that Hizbullah is not only a militarized resistance movement, it is also a widely supported and legitimized political party and social service provider whose members live as citizens among other citizens of Lebanon. Ask them where the Israeli soldiers live and whether these areas are thus legitimate bombing targets. Moreover, ask them to compare the global atrocities committed over the last 20 years by Hizbullah, Israel and the United States. Ask them, then, what meaning the word “terrorism” still holds.

On Sunday, I bore witness to a public altar for Arabs and Arab-Americans to collectively mourn and to express outrage and hope. As candles were being lit and family members were being remembered, the bodies of the Qana massacre were still being unburied. Israeli hands released those bombs, but we should not neglect to speak of the role the U.S. is playing in all of this. Through supplying missiles, through vetoing ceasefires, through strategic advice. Many have been asking, “Don’t the U.S. and Israel realize that their actions are just increasing ‘terrorism’?” I think they do realize this. I think they see this as a win-win situation. (Especially the U.S., whose civilian population -- unlike that of Israel -- is not in the line of fire.) If the Arabs are quickly bombed into submission and fear, then we can move right in and set up camp and shop. If there is resistance, we have all the more justification for waging this profitable war -- and it will ultimately make the long-term conquering process easier as the people and their environment will already be broken.

It is true that the U.S., Israel and Europe have not been the only colonial/imperial forces in the world. And, if we manage not to blow up the whole planet in the near future, it is likely that they will not be the last. But this does not excuse us from seeing them as what they are right now and from doing everything in our power to stop this institutionalized, naturalized cruelty.

Maybe if enough of us within this country and Israel could get together and really put massive consequence-inducing non-violent pressure on our current administrations as well as on our larger so-called democratic systems, we wouldn’t find ourselves turning to Hizbullah for hope. In the meantime, though, the number of deaths rises every day, mostly at the direct and indirect hands of Americans and Israelis. In the meantime, I will continue to express my reluctant love for Hizbullah even as I mourn the deaths on both sides of the border.

Mayssoun Sukarieh writing from Beirut, Live from Lebanon, 25 July 2006
(found at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5223.shtml)



"This is our apple tree, and this is our lemon tree. And this is our house in our village," Hadi said, trying to explain his drawing to me.

"Do you think that the Israelis ate the apples?" he asked suspiciously.

"Of course they ate them; do you think they left them for you? They eat the green and the dry (el akhdar wel yabes)," his friend Ali quickly responded.

"It was full of apples, and I was waiting them to ripen, evey day I look to see if any of them is ready. I like apples; if they take the lemon, it is okay, but I hope the apple tree will be full when I get back."

Hadi ignored the comments of his colleague in displacement, Ali.

"I do not think they ate them," he mused aloud. "They haven't invaded Ya'ater yet, they are just shelling from the air. I am sure your apple tree is still intact waiting for you to come back for you to water it so it ripens and you eat its fruit," I said to Hadi.


Hadi is one of almost 300 displaced children who ended up in one of the schools of Beirut, Rmel El Zarif School, where four to five families are staying in the same classroom. He is ten years old and from Ya'ater, a village at the borders with 1948 Palestine. Zahi has been in this school/shelter with his family and 500 more families,mainly from the south of Lebanon and the Suburbs of Beirut, for more than ten days now.

Ali, the other child, is from the southern part of Beirut, and who ended up in the same school as Hadi "all by chance," as Ali's mother explained. "The taxi driver kept driving until we found this school, and he dropped us here, we had no say. We simply escaped and left everything behind ... We left with our pyjamas on, I even forgot to get them any clothes to put on, we were so scared."

Many organizations and volunteers have started to work with children who were displaced with their families from many parts of the country, and who are now filling the schools, parks and different establishments in Beirut. The goal of current efforts and programs is first to encourage the children to express their feelings and anxieties about the war, and second, to give some time to their parents to relax a bit during the days.

In addition to drawing, many volunteers are reading with children, singing, playing, or even just sitting and talking. Although the children were asked to draw freely, i.e., they were not asked to choose a certain theme, most of their drawings depicted houses.


Darine, an eight-year-old from Shayyah, in the suburbs, drew a house with three sides.

"The fourth side was hit by a missile," she exlained.

Nour, who is ten and from the Beirut suburb of Bir El-'Abed, drew a house hit by a missile that smashed its roof and penetrated in the room and left the table broken. And although Zeyneb decided to draw a hotel, with the Abou Ali grocery on the side, the reason why she drew the hotel was, as she explained, to make a place "where all the displaced would stay instead of sitting in a school sleeping piled up in the ground as if it is Doomsday."

Zeyneb is a 13 year-old from Tariq al Matar, the Airport Road, and was among the first residents of this shelter, since the airport was among the first targets of Israel.


"We left the second day of the shelling, when they hit the airport. The sound of the shelling was so loud, I was so scared and we heard screams from everywhere. When the shelling stopped, we left with many other neighbors in a minibus and ended up here. We were among the first to arrive to this school; many people started to come in the days after, and in the room where I stay now, there are eight families. Forty people sleep in the same room at night, men sleep outside though" Zeyneb said.

Though the children in Ramel El Zarif school depicted the war through the hitting their houses in the very first days of their displacement, with time the drawings have changed to tanks, planes and warships which yet again were hitting houses.

In most of the drawings, it was Israeli war machines. Just one child drew a picture of the "shatyouka missiles" -- meaning katyusha -- of the resistance hitting back at the Israelis.

"Can I have the red pen?" a child would ask every few minutes. I did not pay attention to her at the beginning, but then the third time and after a complaint from another child about what she needed the red pen for, I wondered why is she sitting by herself in another corner of the school playground, and what is it she was drawing?

In response to the complaints of her fellow displaced children, she answered, "All the red pens are dried up and I cant finish my drawing!"

"What are you drawing?" I asked.

"The Palestinian flag," she answered.

"Are you Palestinian?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, "I am from 'Ain el Helweh (the Palestinian refugee camp in the south near Sidon). My name is Walaa and I am from Haifa in Palestine."

She introduced herself, as almost all children in the Palestinian camps do: they mention their name, their camp, and where they come from Palestine. It seemed like an automatic response to assure her identity. "Me and my parents were visiting with my aunt in the southern suburb of Beirut, and we got stuck here, when my aunt was displaced with her family, me and father came with them, too, and we have been here for a few days now," she said, explaining how she ended up in this school with displaced from the southern part of the city.

"And your mother?" I asked.

"Still in 'Ain el Helweh with my two brothers," she said sadly.

"She can't go back to them; the roads are full of holes, because the Israelis shot the roads," Fatima, another child in the circle, volunteered to explain for Walaa.


When Walaa brought her drawing of the Palestinian flag to show to the other children after she was asked, one of the parents asked children to draw the Lebanese flags. Hadi, the child from Ya'ater, refused, saying, "I am with Brazil, not Lebanon! The Brazilian flag was still on the roof of our home when we left, I did not want to take it down after the World Cup was over; do you think it will be there when we go back?"

I wanted to tell Hadi, "Let's hope you will be back," but I could not. His home lies in the border and if the Israelis decide to have a buffer zone, who knows where Hadi will end up? Hadi was born in the southern part of Beirut, and "we moved back to our village after the liberation (of south Lebanon, when Hizbullah drove the IDF out in May 2005); we built a house and settled there. I myself never set foot in our village before the liberation of the south."

"I wanted my children to grow up there; it is beautiful in the south," Hadi's mother says.

We who are volunteering at the shelter can say nothing.

"May god protect the resistance so we can return to our homes, inshallah," Hadi's mother says.

The war will end, whether in a week, a month, a year, or two years. No matter how it will end, Hadi, Ali, Zeyneb, Nour and all the children will live with these memories; their children will also know about it, as Walaa who never lived in Palestine, knows well.

The war will live on in them and they will always remember the brutality of Israel, and I am sure some will find a way to fight this injustice and shout out against it. Maybe then, the world will have been cured from its deafness and will listen to their stories and they will be able to return to their homes, not only in the south but also in Palestine.

Rally and Protest at 5 PM
Thursday, July 27
Senator Feinstein’s Office
1 Post (at Montgomery and Market streets -Montgomery BART)
San Francisco, CA

For more information please go to www.adcsf.org

From Jonah Zern @ Education, Not Incarceration


A beautiful and spontaneous thing happened last night.
Four of us sat down on the street corner and by the
end of the night, hours later, a group of 14 of us sat
together. Jewish and Muslim, migrant and US born and
together we took a small step for peace.

From little things, sometimes big things grow...

********************************************
Sitting Down for Peace

I went with a few friends of mine to Friday night
services. My friends were Jewish and Muslim, US born
and migrant. After services a friend
of mine (Israeli) came up to me and said,
"I need to talk to you."

We sat down and she told me with so much pain that she
wanted to do something; that she wanted to plan some
sort of event, rally, something that brought
together everyone, that truly was about peace. I
stopped for a long minute. I said "I don't think
that's as easy as it seems." By the end of the night,
I realized perhaps it is.

Peace for me is really about understanding. As a
Jewish person, I grew up indoctrinated with Zionist
propaganda. I wrote in a childhood essay that I found
recently "It was great to hear the speech and I
understand how Israel is the land given to Jews by
God and the Arabs should leave."

For me coming to a point where I can understand what
peace means in the Middle East, has been about
understanding that the creation of Israel was done
under a false pretense. As I understand God she
or he does not have any intention for one type of
person or being living on any land to the exclusion of
another. I can see little difference in a people
saying only white people with blue eyes are
entitled to live on a land, all others must leave; to
a people saying only people of a certain faith are
entitled to live on a land, all others must leave.

It is clear to me that the idea of "homeland" that is
only for me and not for you is far from God or
spirituality, not only because of the pain and
suffering I see in the people of Palestine and
Lebanon, but because of the anger and violence and
suffering I see in my Israeli friends as they try to
justify their right to power and land above another.

So, what is the solution? The land now called Israel
and Palestine is now lived upon by Jewish people and
Palestinian people as it has been for a long part of
history. Zionist people living there are scared that
if they stop living with the extraordinary amount of
violence that they use that they will not be able to
live.

My answer is that we need to respect
the history of the creation of Israel, that the land
was the home to someone else when we started to
migrate there in such massive numbers. We cannot use
the Pogroms or the Holocaust as an excuse to expel
another group from their land, to cause them to live
in refuge camps, seperate them from their families and
livelihoods with wall, or to deem them terrorists for
fighting back in desperation. If I was to go through
enormous struggle in my life, it would not give me the
right to force someone out of their home, even if I
was scared and landless. Just as the Holocaust does
not give us, as Jews, the right to take the homes of
the Palestinian people, even if we lived there a long
time ago.

What we can do is to take a step back and apologize.
We must say, "we have joined you on this land that our
ancestors have also lived upon and shared with your
ancestors. We have faced many struggles through our
history as a people, as have you. We are looking now
to find a way to share the land with you, and BECAUSE
WE HAVE WRONGED YOU SO TERRIBLY IN TAKING THIS LAND
AND FORCING YOU INTO EXILE, TO DEATH AND TO POVERTY
that are willing to make some major sacrifices to the
way we identify with the land to allow us to live
together in peace. We are willing to be truly humble
in our apology. This means letting go of the idea of
Zionism as it says the land can only be ours. It
means finding a home in the land in a way where we are
truly on a spiritual path to sit down with others in
peace.

We cannot argue over borders and titles, over walls
and guns, until we come to an understanding together.
We can only come to an understanding if each one of us
is willing to be humble. If more of us sit down,
perhaps we will find a solution. My words are of
course, just some words; it is only if we sit down
will we find a solution.

Last night four of us sat down on the street corner.
By the end of the night, hours later, a group of 14
of us sat together. Israeli and Muslim, migrant and US
born and together we took a small step for peace.
From little things, sometimes big things grow.

Jonah Zern
Program Committee Coordinator, Education Not
Incarceration (www.ednotinc.org)

"Not by might and not by power, but by spirit alone,
shall we all live in peace." Jewish folk song