Mariposa Rhythms -- Creative Dissent

A New Beginning

2007-01-02T14:23:00.000-08:00

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.

Ordinary Citizens' Complicity in Crimes Against Humanity

2006-08-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

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/Resistance

2006-08-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

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

From Beirut to...those who love us

2006-08-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

http://www.beirutletters.org/

My Love for Hizbullah, Revisited

2006-08-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

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.

Art therapy with kids in a Beirut shelter

2006-07-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

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.

PROTEST FEINSTEIN'S SUPPORT OF ISRAELI STATE TERRORISM AND WAR CRIMES

2006-07-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

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

Sitting Down for Peace

2006-07-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

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

For my city of birth, Beirut

2006-07-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

Poem for Lady Beirut
(Mahmoud Badreddine)

Drones, F-16's and laser-guided missiles.
American military business,
just about the only one these days
that isn't fickle

A ceasfire won't help, says Condoleeza
It's not as if your victims are dying while eating a pizza
Or while soaking up the sun in Natanya,
in Tel Aviv or Herzlyya

From our dead they're too detached
a young woman with an old woman's face replete with crevasses
sits at her doorstep with flailing arms wailing
from the piercing sorrow of her son's parting

But Bolton, Bush and Blair keep at the regurgitation
The infamy of a Hezbollah's miscalculation
with nagging repetition that will bring down a dam
Your populace isn't that fucking dumb...damn

More F-16's hover above Lady Beirut, more missiles falling
Business is good at Lockheed Martin
Profit Margins is of the essence
So Condi can promise a 30 million dollar pittance.

Lebanese Arts Org Asking for Support

2006-07-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Jalal Toufic, Saving Face 2003

Dear all,

I am sure that you do not need me to tell you about the vitality of the art scene in Lebanon that has over the last decade provided a platform for experimentation and analysis for the region. The art community that has flourished and found voice in recent times is now faced with the same questions that we are/you are all faced with which is what to do in light of Israel's violent incursion on Lebanon. A medium that has characterized the Lebanese scene and has become its signature in the post civil war period is video. In this instance it provides not only the power to document but also to voice alternative narratives, to unravel historic constructs and to challenge more traditional media.

Rarely do audiences have direct opportunities to support such compelling artistic production, to join voice and hand in artistic expression. Additionally, given the aggressively interpretive role the news media play in representing and managing the positions and perspectives of dominant agendas, it is imperative for us to provide the realities of alternative personal, intimate and more nuanced narratives of those living and looking in the midst of this devastation of a nation's accomplishments and dreams.

Many local artists are eager and anxious to continue to work during this crisis not only as a means of resistance but also to inspect, present, analyze the many layers of reality and human experience that are currently at play at this critical juncture. Some feel the need to document, others are looking to provide an homage while others are simply looking to reverse the dynamic of helplessness into a creative active action.

I invite you to join artists in Lebanon as they continue to make urgent work. Production funds are practically unavailable and the financial situation is very difficult. We are expecting the situation to deteriorate and the attacks to intensify. In the face of that fear and disappointment, I urge you to add your voice to this compelling artistic process and encourage artists through donations of much needed production funds. Please see bank details below.

Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan
SOCIETE GENERALE DE BANQUE LIBANAISE (SGBL)
MAIN BRANCH SIN EL FIL BEIRUT
SWIFT CODE: SGLILBBX
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 001004360221121016

Hoping that this email finds you in the peace that we seek and good health.
Sincerely yours,

Christine Tohme
Director, Ashkal Alwan

Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan
Ain Mreisseh, Phoenicia St., Saab Bldg. number 5, 6th Floor, Apt. 12B
Phone : +961 1 360251 – Fax: +961 1 360251
E-mail: info@ashkalalwan.org web address http://www.ashkalalwan.org

Bring the Monster Down

2006-07-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Erica passed this artwork on to me that she received from her father, Herbert Kohl, who got it in the early 70s in Berkeley – one of many amazing Vietnam War protest posters. You can see many more of these posters at http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Track16.html#Poster

As Erica said, “It is an anti-war poster during the Vietnam protest movement but
still applies to our conquests around the world.” And to the conquests the U.S. supports.

On Evil

2006-07-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

Some readers of my open letter to Amos Oz have been posing questions to me regarding how to deal with a group that calls for the destruction of Israel. They tell me they are sick of Israel being described by the Left as inherently evil.

I do not believe there is “inherent evil” in Israel, not in its government, not in the IDF, and most certainly not in Israeli civilians. Nor do I believe there is inherent evil in Hizbullah or in Hamas. But evil has a way of growing, even if that was not the intent of seeds that were planted. One of the most powerful lessons for me in anti-racist work has been that you do not need racist intentions to have racism when it is built into the system. The same is true for colonialism. There is a system that has been set up. And we can look long and hard at how it got there, what actions people took, what intentions they did or did not have, but regardless of the answers we come up with, the fact remains that the system is there. Calls for the destruction of Israel pain me. Deeply. Calls for the destruction of Israeli colonialism, however, can not be loud enough.

Readers have asked me: “How can war be avoided? Walking away from a confrontation is not a ready option because, as we have learned, the attacks will return and the arming will continue unabated. Should Israel show further weakness by not responding again?”

I answer: no, Israel should not walk away from confrontation. Israel should respond, but if it really seeks to avoid war, it needs to take seriously the question of why there are people that want to destroy it. It needs to take many actions that go much, much further than the nature of the recent Gaza withdrawal, it needs to commit to decolonization. This, I believe, is the only response that will ensure its long-term survival as well as the long-term survival of its neighbors.

But the response from readers I have been struggling with the most is the insistence that one must criticize Hizbullah and Hamas with every breath that also criticizes Israel and the U.S. I have written a piece that tries to explain my resistance to this request. I hope you understand.

Love Poem for Hizbullah from a Non-Violence Lover
Some of my friends who trust my politics and believe in my soul have been approaching me cautiously lately. In nervous whispers they put a question mark at the end of what should be a statement: “You wrote that you’re learning to have hope in Hizbullah?” The question mark begs me to take it back, to brush it off as a moment of hotheadedness, to please, PLEASE remove it from my blog. But I replace the question mark with a period, repeating, yes, I’m learning to have hope in Hizbullah. The lectures begin. Reminding me of my commitment to non-violence. Appealing to my sense of pragmatism: “Cecilia, you will never get anyone to listen to you by using such inflammatory language.” I wonder, how is it that we have learned how to muster up so much more outrage for inflammatory language than for the flames burning where people used to be? Yes, I am learning to have hope in Hizbullah and it is just that: a learning process. And an un-learning process. Because the inflammatory language of “terrorist” – even for someone like me who has an ingrained reaction of ‘who’s causing the most terror here?’ – has burned its way into my psyche, its dehumanizing smoke filling my ears and blinding my eyes.

The un/learning has not been made easy. My question-mark friends are frustrated by my increasing unwillingness to decry Hizbullah and Hamas each time I open my mouth about Israel and the United States. I, too, am frustrated. Frustrated by the insistence on symmetry where there is none, frustrated by terms that oversimplify like “cycles of violence,” frustrated by my own tendency to retreat into these terms when the question-marks pry at me.

But I am making progress, seeking and finding new information, clearing some of the smoke. I am coming to terms with something that I’ve tried to deny, something I’ve been taught to deny. And so I have written a love poem. For Hizbullah. Like love that inspires poems often is, this love is not all rosy and sweet. It is complicated, tortured, frustrated, somewhat inappropriate, certainly scandalous, sometimes hesitant. It is irrational and overly rational. But still, it is love. A dear friend told me today, “Nobody ever really learns something without feeling something.” So, to Hizbullah, I offer this poem.

I Don’t Want to Love You, But I Do

You were born out of death to a life in a cage

Where bombs are not the only reason people die

Fed by the violence of hunger and homelessness

Raised by colonialism

Your heart and your will still grew strong

You scare me

Not just because they tell me to be scared

Not just because they repeat, repeat, repeat

The story of 1983

Begging me to understand

Americans are worth more than Lebanese

Why do they never tell me about Jihad al Bina

That you have created so much

Saved so many lives

Improved so many more

It scares me

When I admit to myself

That I would be more scared without you

If I still took the time to see

To see the violence

that does not just fall from the skies

that exists in hunger and homelessness

in colonialism

It scares me

That my hope is tangled up

In actions I would never want to commit

But I don’t sleep much these days

And I’ve tried hard

But I haven’t found

Anything

to give me hope that they will listen

They repeat, repeat, repeat

The story of Gaza withdrawal

Hoping we won’t see

The violence that continues

That kills in so many ways

Hoping we will now support it

Or at least stop looking

They insist talk does not work

When there is no one to talk to

It is hard to find an interlocutor

When you’re not willing to listen

To see

To feel

How do you keep faith that talk will work

When even they are insisting it won’t?

I am learning to have hope in you

I am learning to see you as so much more

Than those actions I would never want to commit

You amaze me.

Born out of death to a life in a cage

Raised by colonialism

You did not accept imprisonment as natural

You did not accept hunger as justice

You did not accept

the ceaseless killing in so many ways

Of those next to you

Or those farther away

I love you

But I will never be yours

I don’t want you inside me

You are too male for me

And I cannot, gratefully, fully silence the voice that insists:

Some deaths you did accept

Including of some who were listening

That is why the full statement that the question-marks pry me with reads:

It is sad, but I’m learning to have hope in Hizbulla

Maybe it is the naivety

of one whose life has never been directly threatened

I still believe:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

you are human, too, i think

2006-07-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

eyes closed, i can see it better…all the colors i can name and more that i cannot, wings beating out rhythms that make my blood pulse…the mariposas are playing, creating so much life…their density reaches the point where there is nothing left to do but fuse together, forming a pulsating, vibrating earth from which yet more new life springs…

this image comes from a memory inside me, deep inside me, not dependent on having used my eyes to capture it…butterflies are difficult to capture, anyway…but our methods for doing so are getting more sophisticated, and it scares me…capture, terrorize, kill and pin up in a proud display…all that color and vivaciousness brought under control…

as my eyes and ears open again to the san francisco street, the image i’m surrounded by mixes with the one in my blood…

The voice of the woman on the other side is screaming at us, rattling my eardrums. “Hezbollah out of Israel!” Her bullhorn shrieks as though trying to echo air-raid sirens far away. I wonder whether she, like me, has only ever felt the ground tremor around the San Andreas fault, or whether she knows what it is like to live in a war zone.

The woman next to me screams back. “Murderer! Murderer!”

I can’t find my voice. The cop standing in front of me watches the tears streaming down my face and lowers her head, her hat covering her eyes. Ah, you are human, too, I think.

The scenes around me escalate as 17 protesters are arrested for stopping traffic by sitting across the road. Applause (some for them, some for the cops) as they are led off, smiling. How far away we are from where people are not led off, but knocked off. No bail, no return. If I could erase the images of bombed bodies and cities from my eyes, the sounds of sirens and explosions from my ears, I might have found the ensuing parallel chants comical. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the occupation’s go to go!” “Ho, ho, hey, hey, Israel is here to stay!” But the mariposas stirring up my blood, and my sense of time and place, are insistent. When you decide not to kill them, you must face the connections they are striving to maintain, to create, to recreate. You must work to translate the turmoil they can set loose in your stomach.

I sneeze and am startled that my nausea does not manifest itself in streams of vomit pouring from my nose. A cop, a different one, says, “Bless you.” It’s wild how such a tiny gesture can touch you, break through some of your prejudices and defenses. I ask him a question and he takes his earplugs out to hear:

-- So are you guys allowed to have opinions on these things?

-- Nope.

-- Well, never mind the allowed part. What about when you go home at night?

-- We’re just like the military, we just do what we’re told.

His conviction does not look or sound complete, and he puts his earplugs back in.

It’s sad, but you learn to find hope in Hezbollah in a world filled with earplugs and butterfly displays.

***********

Ways to donate to organizations working with refugees in Lebanon:

1) In Saida, the Municipality is coordinating all efforts with the various civil society organizations and all resources we are asking to go through the municipality.

Intercontinental Bank of Lebanon, SAL

Saida Branch

Account no: 0100021820073492016

Account holder: Dr. Abdul Rahman Nazih Al-Bizri (Head of the Municipality)

Swift Code: -INLELBBE

2) Collective for Research and Training on Development – Action ( www.crtd.org) (Are working in Beirut but also coordinating with several groups in the Saida and other areas).

1. Bank Address: Audi Bank SAL, Sodeco Branch, Sodeco, Beirut - Lebanon

2. Bank telephone number: + 961 1 612792

3. Bank fax number: + 961 1 612793

4. Post address: P.O.BOX: 11-2560, RIAD EL SOLH, 1107-2808, BEIRUT

5. Account Name: CRTD-A

6. Account number: 832593-461-002-044-01 (US$)

7. ABA/SWIFT number: AUDBLBBX

8. Name and address of corresponding US bank (in case needed):

Audi Bank -USA

USA Building

19 East 54th Street,

New York, N.Y 10022

USA

Phone: +1 212 833 1000

Swift Code: AUS AUS 33

3) Helem, a progressive NGO which normally does sexual minority human rights work and women's rights work (see helem.net),
has shifted its center to a refugee intake point, providing blankets, food, etc for the refugees from the dahyieh and south Lebanon. Information is below on how to donate both online through paypal or wire transfer.

You can contribute online using PAYAPL at
http://www.helem.net/donations.zn or you can send payments to the accounts below

Credit Libanais S.A.L Beyrouth
Agence Sassine
SWIFT CODE: CLIBLBBX
Client Name: Al Azzi Georges
Account number: 043.001.208.0006817.35.6

SGBL Hamra Branch
SWIFT CODE: SGLILBBX
Client Name: CHIT Bassem
Account: 007.004.367.092.875.014

(4) Women's Humanitarian Organization

Bank of Beirut
Tarik Jdideh
Swift code# BABEL BBE
Account number :11 401 091280 01

An Open Letter to Amos Oz

2006-07-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

In response to the July 19, 2006 piece Amos Oz wrote for the LA Times.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-oz19jul19,0,4509327.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail)

the original longer version of this letter can be found at http://the-osterley-times.blogspot.com/, where you will also find lots of "political commentary from a left-wing perspective on current affairs"

another version that includes links to relevant references in the letter can be found at http://www.pierretristam.com/, aka Candide's Notebooks, "a daily portal to minds without borders"

An Open Letter to Amos Oz

July 20, 2006

To Amos Oz:

While it may be true that some participants in “the Israeli peace movement” have become less vocal in their criticisms of Israel over the past 8 days, it is certainly not the case, as the title of your July 19 LA Times article declares, that “Hezbollah Attacks Unite Israelis.” Yes, “this time,” too, there are voices of outrage by Israeli peace activists desperately trying to be heard, including that of Gideon Levy, from whose July 16 Haaretz article the following is taken:

“Israel once again is not distinguishing between a justified war against Hezbollah and an unjust and unwise war against the Lebanese nation.”

These words are not so different from ones you yourself wrote in 2002, in an article read and quoted by many. But I am writing to remind you of your words of 1987. They are not quite as well known, but they reveal something about why, perhaps, you are forgetting, about why your voice has grown so cold. I am referring to your essay, “Hebrew Melodies,” part of a collection titled The Slopes of Lebanon.

In that beautiful piece, you discuss what you learned from the 1982 war on Lebanon, the need to take responsibility, and the struggle against amnesia:

“The guilt for Lebanon lies not with Begin alone…We will have to grit our teeth and admit that this war was a war of the people. The people wanted it and the people (most of them) supported it, took pleasure in it, and hated the handful who were opposed. At least that is how it was until the war got “bogged down”…There are times when I forget a little, when I try to persuade myself that the “people” learned a lesson, that they have learned—the hard way—the limits of power, that there’s a catch in a philosophy based on violence. There are times when I think that “it” can’t happen again.”

It is happening. This time, you have joined “the people” and are using your powerful voice to convince us that this is a different “it.” That this is a justified war, a war of self-defense. Of course, as you described in 1987, there were voices in 1982 trying to convince us of the same. What will it take, Amos Oz, for this war in 2006 to be considered “bogged down”? Are 300-and-counting dead civilians not enough? Do we need another BBC report on Phalangist slaughter? Do we need more anti-war activists to be murdered? Do we need the dead body count to rise into the tens of thousands until you and all those who stand “united” behind Israel (regardless of their nationality) can see the obscene destruction of Lebanon and its inhabitants as an extraordinarily exaggerated escalation of violence?

Your essay gives me clues as to how you could think today’s war is so different. In 1987 you wrote:

“Missing is the fear that the war may descend upon our own red-tiled roofs here at the kibbutz. Unlike earlier wars, no one bothers to clean out the bomb shelters or to reinforce the windowpanes with strips of masking tape…The results of this war are clear from the outset, and, in any event, not one sliver from it will reach us here. The whole war will be taking place in another country, and may Allah have mercy on them.”

In 2006, this is not the case. Although Hezbollah is not nearly as powerful as Israel (or, if it is, it is not abusing its power to nearly as great an extent), it is managing to bring some of the effects of war onto Israeli soil. Sometimes I find myself thinking, “while I understand people who are, I am not sympathetic to Hezbollah’s methods.” But then I think perhaps that is because I am not living in Lebanon. Perhaps that is because it is unimaginable to me what it is like to live in a war zone, in a constant state of terror, homeless, family and friends dying every day, the world around me literally crumbling to the ground. Perhaps then I, too, would feel a surge of hope at a group that I may have despised during peace time but that is now not willing to back down when Israel lets its muscle be felt. It’s easy from afar to sum the moral of the story up in a paternalistic, moralistic sigh: “Now, now, Hezbollah. I know Israel is being monstrous, but you should know better than to provoke a lightly sleeping monster.” And perhaps it is because Israel has not been able to keep this war entirely off of its roofs that you, too, are finding yourself in a state of terror. Perhaps this is why you have forgotten what you learned in 1982.

But I agree with you on one thing you wrote in your recent article: “there can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel.” Both sides have and continue to destroy and to terrorize. And while it is always a tragic set of circumstances when one is led to compare atrocities, those committed by Israel and Hezbollah are, in fact, not equal. Israel has much more military might (not least because of money, missiles and political backing provided by the United States) and has caused much more human (including civilian), property and environmental destruction. And not just in Lebanon. And not just in 2006 and 1982.

In 1987, you seethed at those who said things like, “Well, who told those bastards to hide behind old women and children?” when reports of Lebanese civilian deaths were printed. Now, as Israel shatters Lebanon’s infrastructure, creates hundreds of deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees, it is you who are claiming that “Hezbollah missile launchers are too often using Lebanese civilians as human sandbags.”

I have some final questions for you, Amos Oz, as I try to remain as close as I can to these atrocities while sitting safely in the belly of a mighty empire. In places and times when the wail of the air-raid sirens is not drowning out all other sound, do you still hear the “old-time Hebrew melodies”? Do you still wonder “what emotions…those cloying tunes [are] meant to arouse or to silence”? Do you still offer the answer “that we are beautiful, gentle people, righteous, pure, and sensitive, completely out of touch with our actions; that we will be forgiven because our pure and poetic hearts know nothing about the filth that is on our hands; that the evening scent of roses will come to perfume the stench of dead bodies that will pile up by the hundreds and thousands in the days to come”? Can you, today, in between (or far away from) the sounds of war hear the strains of “We love you, precious Homeland/ in joy, in song, and toil/ Down from the slopes of Lebanon to the shores of the Dead Sea/ We will rake your fields with plows…”?

I have been touched by your words, Amos Oz, and so I will end this letter with those words that I hope will inspire you once again:

“among the victims of the Lebanon War was “the Land of Israel, small and brave, determined and righteous.” It died in Lebanon perhaps precisely because, in Lebanon, its back was not to the wall…After Lebanon, we can no longer ignore the monster, even when it is dormant, or half asleep, or when it peers out from behind the lunatic fringe. After Lebanon, we must not pretend that the monster dwells only in the offices of Meir Kahane; or only on General Sharon’s ranch, or only in Raful’s carpentry shop, or only in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It dwells, drowsing, virtually everywhere, even in the folk-singing guts of our common myths. Even in our soul-melodies. We did not leave it behind in Lebanon, with the Hezbollah. It is here, among us, a part of us…That which you have done—whether it be only once in your life, in one moment of stupidity or in an outburst of anger—that which you were capable of doing—even if you have forgotten, or have chosen to forget, how and why you did it—that which you have done and regretted bitterly, you may never do again. But you are capable of doing it. You may do it. It is curled up inside you.”

Struggling against amnesia,

Cecilia Lucas

cecilialucas@gmail.com