When I speak out against the state of Israel I remember these things

Audre Lorde cross-stitch

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
Audre Lorde

Tagore and Einstein

Einstein:

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

Tagore:

If no one answers your call
make a stride and walk alone
When everyone is closed and shut
Open your mind and speak alone.

Walk Alone, Walk Alone, Walk Alone

If they turn away and desert
and the wild path obstacles exerts
trample the thorns no matter the hurt
And Alone along blood-lined track traverse.

Walk Alone, Walk Alone, Walk Alone

If no one holds up the light and
a fierce storm troubles the night,
with the thunder flame of pain
ignite your heart, alone, and let it burn bright

Walk Alone, Walk Alone, Walk Alone

This translation of Tagore's Ekla Cholo Re by Shiv's Angels.

Mahatma Gandhi used to sing this song every morning and evening, as the song resonated with his own sentiments. Gandhi said that even if you are in a minority of one, truth is truth, and you should stand up for your convictions without fear.

blame Iran. blame the Lebanese.

image Gallo/Getty

The scale of the devastation [in 1948] was overwhelming: four in five Palestinian villages inside the borders of the new state were ethnically cleansed, an act of mass dispossession accompanied by atrocities. Around 95 per cent of new Jewish communities built between 1948-1953 were established on the land of expelled, denationalised Palestinians. Referring to these refugees, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously said that "the old will die and the young will forget". In fact, rather than "forgetting", the Nakba has become one of the central foundations for activism by Palestinians - and their supporters - around the world. Why is the Nakba such a strong framework of analysis and action? Because rather than being an isolated historical event, it is an ongoing process of dispossession and colonial settlement.

Fourteen people were killed commemorating Nakba Day yesterday. Yet this morning when I looked on the online news site of the CBC, Canada's national news, I didn't find even a mention that Palestininans were killed by Israeli forces. Nothing on the Globe and Mail, either, not even in World news. What is the big World News headlines? Some IMF guy is accused of sexually assaulting a maid in a hotel room but his wife says it's a lie and she stands by her man.

Is it any wonder that these mainstream newspapers are losing readers to online sources? Why would anyone stay in their narrow straitjacketing of news that too often sounds like entertainment for a celebrity-obsessed culture where reality shows are more important than politics and economics?

The online Toronto Star did include a short article: Israeli army opens fire on protesters, as many as 13 Palestinians dead

However, although I found the article on the front page headlines early this morning (way down at the bottom), it is now filed under Yesterday in the World News section, so people will have to do some sleuthing to even find it. The article, which starts with the Israeli perspective (the standard way of subliminally shaping the public's perception), gives us Netanyahu's point of view on this and soon we learn that an Israeli army spokesman blames Iran for the "provocation."

I guess Iran was behind the creation of the state of Israel in 1948?

Seriously, when are root causes going to be examined rather than deliberate distortions by the powers-that-be?

This articl doesn't even mention that Israel made illegal the public commemoration of the Nakba Day.

It seems that some human rights are not newsworthy to note. It seems some demonstators demanding their rights during this Arab Spring of uprisings, protests, and non-violent gatherings are to be blamed rather than commended for their march for justice. This is true if one happens to be Palestinian, Bahraini, or Yemeni. Where is the clamouring to address their just causes? Where is the critique of the regimes that stifle their legitimate demands?

In that same Toronto Star article, it states that Israel denies killing the Palestinians who gathered at the Lebanese/Israeli border yesterday. They blame the Lebanese Army for shooting and killing them.

Not surprisingly, another perspective is found in Lebanese news reports:

"Israeli troops Sunday shot dead 16 people and wounded hundreds more as Palestinians marched on its borders with Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, as part of commemoration of the Nakba - the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

On the Lebanon border, 10 protesters, all Palestinian refugees, were killed by Israeli gunfire and more that 100 were wounded. A critically wounded protester died Monday, raising the death toll to 11, security sources said.

Protesters had taken part in Nakba Day commemorations in the south border town of Maroun al-Ras, some of whom had descended to the fence separating the two countries and pelted stones at Israeli troops."

Memoricide and May 15th

Memoricide is the killing of memories. It is not just the forgetting of the past, which might happen to any individual who thinks history is dusty or who has lost his or her family stories. Rather, memoricide is the determined policy of getting rid of parts of history that trouble the preferred history of the powerful, those whose stories have the most political, economic, social, and cultural currency.

Memoricide is accomplished by destroying both physical places and conceptual and imaginative spaces. For example, by destroying and building on top other peoples’ living, gathering, or sacred places (such as building a highway over Indigenous graves) or by killing the ability to imagine what used to be (such as replacing one way of thinking with another that disparages the concepts of the former; e.g. through language).

In a democracy who could imagine that not only another history is disparaged and dismissed but even talking about it with others would be a crime? That making memories public becomes an illegal act?

Yet this March 22 Israel did just that by passing The Nakba Law. Beginning May 15 it is illegal in Israel to publicly commemorate the Nakba. Arabic for “catastrophe,” the Nakba marks the loss of the lands of Palestine and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, cities, and villages through the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in 1948.

Israel’s new Nakba Law criminalizes stated-funded organizations, bodies and schools from observing May 15 as the Palestinian catastrophe, instead of Israeli Independence Day. Through this law, Israel has outlawed commemorating the Palestinian story that lies inside Israel’s creation.

Stories, histories and memories, however, cannot be killed even if they are made illegal.

Palestinian teachers, groups, and communities dedicated to non-violent resistance against memoricide are challenged this May 15 to bring into public places their call for the recognition of their human rights, for their right to voice history as they see it and tell their stories in public.

Who could imagine that telling and listening to stories is such a dangerous pastime? Stories hold memories and histories and through their telling and circulation, history cannot be killed.

Stories can’t be killed even if languages, lands, and people are lost, killed, or made illegal.

Nakba demonstrations at Qalandia checkpoint

democracy and human rights under the gun in Israel

87 year old Eisha describes her family's flight from Beit Nuba in 1967.
Stories hold memories and histories and through their telling and circulation, history cannot be lost.

You can find more images of where the Palestinian villages of Imwas, Beit Nuba and Yalo once existed on Excursion to Canada Park. Although most Canadians have no knowledge about Canada Park because it is not a story visible in our mainstream media, this park "happens to be located in the Occupied Territories sitting atop of what once three thriving Palestinian villages, Imwas, Beit Nuba and Yalo.During the 1967 Israeli-Arab War, nearly 10,000 Arab residents were driven out of their homes and forced to march for days over rocky hillsides to safety. Some died along the way. Israeli soldiers then set about destroying the villages and plowing under their orchards. The villages ceased to be as if they never existed and the former residents now live as refugees."

One cannot escape discussion of human rights these days. This morning, watching AJE on satellite TV, I was dismayed to hear of the ever increasing repression of human rights in Bahrain. After the recent protests and the violent clampdown on peaceful, unarmed demonstrators rallying for their human rights, the country has been more repressive. The US, Canada and Britain are silent on defending the human rights of the Shia people of Bahrain. They are not speaking out to support the cry for justice and democracy by the Bahraini population. The US, Canada and Britain are not critical of the repressive measures of the ruling government.

More than 2000 Shia people have been fired from their jobs, the opposition newspaper has been shut down, many doctors and medical personnel have been arrested and are missing, a Reuters journalist was kicked out of the country. A leader of the opposition died in custody; cause "kidney failure." Five members of one woman's family are missing and she wonders why the world is not speaking out, asking why, where, how? She says the silence leads her to believe that the violent attacks on the Bahraini demonstrators had/have US support and complicity.

Shia mosques have been torn down, bulldozed, and removed from public consciousness as even the rubble has been carted away leaving empty lots. Memoricide, I said to my husband. It seems those in power have been taking lessons from Israel. Wiping out history by physically removing what is in place, by physically destroying memories. They count on many people forgetting or never knowing what was there. What happened there. Whose place it was. What they have to say. What concerns they have. What criticisms and questions they have.

Without physical places to meet, to bear witness to existence, it can be argued through the histories told by those in power that those places--and their people-- never existed.

The struggle for human rights, however, cannot be shut down, but it is indeed an arduous struggle these days.

Even in places where it's supposed to be a given, it seems some would like human rights--the human rights of particular people, that is-- to be gotten rid of.

Although the North American corporate and mainstream media continuously touts Israel as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, it seems increasing numbers of Israelis want no part of democracy or human rights and are especially critical of academics who strive to create discussion about them.

I can't imagine entering a classroom and not being able to speak about truth and knowledge from many voices, many perspectives, especially the marginalized or misrepresented. I can't imagine having to defend teaching democratic principles and human rights, as if these are problematic concepts. But it seems in Israel that professors in academia have a much harder time than me.

Indeed, here are a few of the troubling situations faced by Israeli academics who seek to bring critical discussions of democracy, human rights, citizenship, and multiculturalism into university spaces:

1. "the Education Minister wants to erase democracy and citizenship studies from the curricula and replace it with Zionism and Judaism."

2. some students film professors to monitor what is said in class, selectively edit what they have filmed , send this "information to donors in the US or England and a handful of these donors send letters to university administrations pressuring them to stifle academic freedom."

3. "It’s becoming increasingly impossible to hire people who are critical of the Israeli government, or who have signed a [critical] petition."

4. "There’s an assault on Israeli academia in general. It involves an alliance between forces such as IsraCampus and Israel Academic Monitor on the one hand, who try to convince donors to stop giving money to universities that harbor leftists, and Im Tirzu, which tries to mobilize government Ministers and Members of Knesset to pressure the top university executives to discipline recalcitrant academics."

Read the full text of an interview with Israeli professor Neve Gordon, Chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, by Dahlia Scheindlin, adjunct faculty member at Ben Gurion University.

"It has been a troubled year for Israeli academia. The rising nationalist sentiment in the government, legislature and civil society has spilled over into bitter struggles on campuses throughout the country. Nationalist groups such as IsraCampus, Israel Academia Monitor, and the ultra-nationalist Im Tirtzu have set their crosshairs on academia, seeking the dismissal of faculty members and control over curricula, and urging foreign donors to withdraw funds unless the faculty they have targeted are removed. They have published blacklists and ranked each university and department according to political legitimacy.
....

DO YOU FEAR FOR THE FUTURE OF ISRAELI DEMOCRACY?

We don’t need to imagine a dark future, we’re already there. Democracy is severely curtailed, we’re on a dark path, and unless something radical changes, unless a miracle happens, I think that within not so many years, the last remnants of Israeli democracy might be lost. The pattern may still change, but if the youth polls are correct, Knesset legislation in the future will be even worse. Democracy will be destroyed."

The travelling sauna, part 1

The story of my travelling sauna begins like this:

This old house of ours (102 years old) does not have a sauna. The house was not built by a Finnish immigrant; it is a Victorian-style turn-of-the-century (19th-20th) tall brick house that has no Finnishness in its construction at all. It is unlike any house I grew up in, many that were built by my dad. None of the people who have lived in this house over the years, and there must have been quite a few, felt the need to put a sauna in the basement.

When we moved out of our previous house, which did have a sauna in the basement that had been built by the previous owners, descendents of Finnish immigrants, I lamented the loss of the sauna. How am I going to manage without a sauna?

About a year ago, we had a leak in a tap in the basement. Whoever had done some remodelling in the basement in the 1970s made the mistake of hiding this tap inside some panelling. Smart guy. Obviously, not a Finlander. Somehow over the years, the tap squeaked itself open unbeknowst and water leaked for quite some time, ruining walls and panelling and stuff in boxes.

Once my son had ripped out all the walls, I said happily, "Now, we can put in a sauna! Don't put up any sheetrock; I want a small sauna right here. Either build the sauna or buy a small pre-fab sauna kit and set it up right here."

Well, eventually, my son found the sauna he wanted to put in the basement.

"Mom. Look at this," he said. I looked over his shoulder at the laptop. "It's an infra-red sauna. It's really easy to set up. It's not very expensive. It's small and nice. It's made of wood and has a glass door. You just plug it in, warm it up a bit, and go sit inside." He told me a bit about how it worked. "Mom. You'll like it."

"I don't want an infra-red sauna," I said. "I want a regular sauna. How can it be a sauna if you can't throw water on the rocks? I can't sit in a dry sauna. What is this infra-red energy? Is it even safe? What? Am I going to be micro-waving my body? I don't think so. It doesn't make any sense to me. Get me a regular sauna. Forget this infra-red stuff."

Months passed.

"Mom. Canadian Tire has an infra-red sauna for sale this week. It's $799 from $1200. You'll like it. It detoxifies; it warms up like a regular sauna; you'll sweat, feel relaxed. You'll like it. You just have to get used to a different kind of sauna. Don't be so stubborn. So, it's different from what you're used to. Mom. Don't be so stubborn."

"No, I don't want an infra-red sauna. I want a real sauna."

End of the week came.

"Mom. Dad says let's get the infra-red sauna. It's easy to put in; a regular sauna is way too much work to build. Look at it this way: we'll use the infra-red sauna for awhile and if you don't like it, we can sell it and then put in a real sauna."

I could see that I would not be getting a real sauna any time soon.

"Whatever...Go get the infra-red sauna then. I don't care. I don't think I'm going to like it, though."