From The Progressive:
At his comforting speech last week in Tucson, Ariz., President Obama briefly mentioned the “merits of gun safety laws.” I wish he had used the occasion to press for tougher ones because America’s love affair with weapons is a huge problem.
With 90 guns for every 100 people, the United States is by far the most heavily armed nation in the world. Yemen, in second place, has 61 guns per 100 people.
Not surprisingly, nearly 100,000 people are injured or killed with a gun in this country each year. America’s homicide rate is 6.9 times higher than rates in 22 other industrialized nations combined, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. More than 1 million people have been killed with guns in the United States since Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.
We need to stop this madness.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. — whose husband was murdered in a 1993 shooting rampage — and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., are sponsoring legislation to restore the ban on high-capacity gun magazines that allow for mass slaughter, reducing the clips to 10 rounds. And Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has proposed legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a veteran lawmaker, recently expressed his support for a ban on assault weapons. And Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., an avid gun supporter, said he would work to make sure that the mentally ill are not allowed to buy and use a gun.
So far, House Speaker John Boehner has rejected gun control legislation, and the National Rifle Association consistently lobbies against gun restrictions.
“I think there are a bunch up wimps up there,” gun control advocate Sarah Brady said of legislators who are unwilling to take on the gun lobby. (She is the wife of James Brady, President Reagan’s press secretary who was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan.)
Perversely, some gun rights supporters suggest that there should be more guns, not fewer, in schools, in public places, in houses of worship. This approach is reckless and irresponsible, and will only lead to more innocent lives lost.
We’ve lost more than enough already.
January 31, 2011
January 30, 2011
The International Movement That Would Bring Peace to the Mideast
Recent talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians point to a seemingly dysfunctional and hopelessly intractable process. The construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has not abated, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls by defense minister Ehud Barak to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, recent news reports demonstrate that the occupation is both unsustainable and incompatible with democratic principles. For example, Israeli police are arresting Palestinian children as young as five for stone throwing. This, as Al Jazeera and The Guardian just started to release over 1,600 documents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And recent Wikileaks cables revealed that Israeli officials took bribes to allow U.S. goods into Gaza, requiring American companies to pay up to 75 times more than the usual cost. Wikileaks also learned that Israel has intended to keep Gaza near collapse, just as the Israeli government plans to wage a full-scale war on the territory and Lebanon.
This year, the Palestinians hope to build upon the wave of nations recognizing a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. There is a strong and ever-growing peace movement that is joined from within Israeli society and the international community. Ultimately, the leaders of this movement want to bring about positive change in the Mideast, and they hope to succeed where the politicians and diplomats have fallen short. And in many ways, they are a nonviolent movement on the lines of the U.S. civil rights and South African anti-apartheid movements. They seek dignity and a respect for human rights for both sides of the conflict, and seek to liberate Israelis and Palestinians from a system that has hopelessly oppressed each.
Two human rights leaders from two different conflicts in different parts of the world found themselves participating in the recent flotillas to break the blockade of Gaza: Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who lost family members to sectarian violence and fought for nonviolent reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and Yonatan Shapira, a former elite Israeli pilot who decided he could no longer participate in the occupation of the Palestinian people. This unlikely pair of shipmates had a conversation recently, which was hosted and facilitated by Jewish Fast For Gaza, a group founded by Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt.
Maguire was transformed by a world of violence in Northern Ireland when her niece and two nephews were killed - all little children - and her sister injured on a Belfast street in 1976. “When that happened, myself and two others…we came out for peace, our message was that violence isn’t going to solve our problems, and there’s got to be another way to use nonviolence,” said Maguire.
At that point she cofounded the Community of the Peace People in 1976, and organized weekly marches and demonstrations that attracted over half a million people from across Northern Ireland, Ireland and the UK. “I think we recognized that we had a deep ethnic conflict, but it wasn’t going to be solved through militarism and paramilitarism, and we had to begin to sit down with each other and dialogue and to find a way through our problems.” Along with a colleague, Maguire received the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for their peace efforts, and she would later broaden her work from Northern Ireland to other places.
Ten years ago, Maguire went with a delegation to Israel. She was invited by a group of rabbis who were fighting for human rights in the territories and against the demolition of Palestinian homes. Relating to her own experiences back at home, she was moved by the suffering on both sides, and inspired to see Israelis and Palestinians finding a way to working together and seek justice.
More recently, Maguire has decided to focus her efforts on Gaza, and has sailed on three humanitarian boats to the territory. Two of the boats were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, and one of them was a part of the Freedom Flotilla that was attacked by Israelis, claiming nine lives on the MV Mavi Mamara. “1.5 million people are living in a prison, cut off from the world, literally,” she said of the conditions in Gaza, of the tremendous suffering she witnessed. “The Palestinian people are really living in a prison and the Israelis are holding all the keys. This is not happening in any other part of the world, and yet we see Israel and the international community remaining silent on it.”
With its ports closed for 40 years, and bombed-out infrastructure, the Gazan population, half of which is under the age of 18, is the victim of a collective punishment, according to Maguire. Her words were echoed by Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who issued a UN report on Israeli human rights violations during Operation Cast Lead, the military campaign in Gaza that claimed 1,400 Palestinian lives. According to the Goldstone report, “houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed.” Around 240 of the Gazan deaths were police officers. And the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prison were bombed as well. The report called on Israel to do an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead, and punish those elements of the IDF who were responsible.
The severity of the Gaza blockade - imposed by Israel following the Hamas victory and takeover - was brought home for Maguire when she appeared in court following her arrest. “When I was at the Supreme Court for the hearing, there was a case up just before me, and the case was a mother and father who had been visiting on the West Bank when the border was closed to Gaza and their young child was in Gaza. They were appearing at the court to ask if after four years they would be allowed to travel from the West Bank to Gaza to see their little boy who hadn’t seen them since the border had closed.”
And while Maguire condemns what she views as violation of international law against the Palestinians, the pacifist condemns all violence, including Palestinian acts of violence on Israeli cities. And yet, the Nobel laureate was hopeful at what she saw in the people in Gaza. “There is a passion among the people of Gaza for peace. They just want to have peace because they suffered so much. So we were hopeful because it reminded me of Northern Ireland when the Peace People started.” When Israel began bombing Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, however, there was a setback in the hopes of peace between Fattah and Hamas, and hopes the Palestinians would have a united voice that could reach out and dialogue with Israel.
Meanwhile, Yonatan Shapira’s introduction to the Mideast conflict came as a member of the Israeli Air Force, an elite Blackhawk helicopter pilot who had flown hundreds of missions over the occupied territories. Upon first glance, this seasoned, eleven-year veteran would appear to be the least likely candidate for a peace activist. But then again, no one knows how he or will she will react after becoming a firsthand witness to suffering and the effects of violence, on the Israeli side in Shapira’s case. “During this time I volunteered with victims of suicide attacks, mostly new immigrants, people who are poor and with less family support in the country. And I got to know Israeli suffering through my military service as a rescue pilot bringing children and soldiers and people to hospital after they were injured and killed, and as a volunteer meeting with the children and families of survivors, and trying to bring them back to society to try to overcome their trauma,” Shapira said.
Then there was a targeted bomb assassination attempt on Hamas leaders that left fourteen civilians dead in Gaza.
“And at some point along this process, I started to realize I am, there is a cycle of violence and I am just a part of this cycle, even if I am not killing anyone directly myself, I am part of a system that is causing huge suffering for people,” he added. Speaking of the Palestinians, he said “For many years I didn’t know their story, their narrative, the way I’ve been brought here up in Israeli society, to just know half side of the history. The first time I knew the word Nakba, the disaster for the Palestinians of what happened in ‘48 was when I was 30-something. And when you realize that you were blind to such a huge part of the history and the present, and there is a circle of violence and you are part of it, it’s a very strong emotional step to overcome, and I think at that point you can decide whether to ignore it, suppress it and continue to fight anyone that brings these issues up, or try to learn more and take responsibility and try to change the situation. And that’s what happened to me and to many of my friends.”
When Shapira found his moment of truth and chose to deal with the “dark side” of his existence, he decided to write a petition of air force pilots who declared they were no longer willing to fly missions over the territories. They would no longer be a part of “illegal and immoral attacks” on the Palestinians. In 2003 - on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - the pilots placed the declaration on the desk of the commander of the air force. “I think that was the beginning of a new life for me in many, many ways,” Shapira noted.
Shapira founded Combatants for Peace on the assertion that it is not merely enough to say what you are not willing to be a part of. “It’s important to reach out to the other side you’re fighting against, and find people and work together - Palestinians who are rejecting violence and are refusing to be a part of this cycle of violence,” he said.
This IDF pilot made a transition from leader among soldiers to a solidarity leader with the Palestinians. He and other Israelis participate in the call by nonviolent Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. Shapira sees this as a struggle for Palestinian liberation, a process that will also liberate Israelis from being oppressors of a horrible, decades-long occupation. “We don’t wait anymore for Lieberman and Bibi and Barak and other people to bring the solution today. We are calling on the international community, we call on Jews…, and we call on governments all around the world to understand the situation is disastrous, and there is no time to wait for a peace process that is being used just to delay and build more settlements.”
Shapira - who is disheartened by Mairead Maguire’s arrest in Israel - noted that it was his own squadron that dropped commandos on the Mavi Mamara. “It was a double shock because I know the organizers of the flotilla…and to see what the navy and the Israeli army did on the boats and especially this whole ordeal of not showing the whole video, just showing a few seconds of that and manipulating the whole world media. …And the same Blackhawk helicopter that Israel gets for free in billions of aid from the United States, that’s the same helicopter I flew on years back. So it was also very personal for me to decide I need to be on the side of the people trying to symbolically break the siege.”
And so this veteran pilot decided to participate in a flotilla to Gaza, alongside Israeli activists and a holocaust survivor. Shapira said it was sad to see 8 or 10 warships approaching them and violently attacking them, when the only weapons they were carrying to Gaza were harmonicas, musical instruments for the children. “I guess that was too dangerous for the Israeli army to let into Gaza,” he said.
Shapira, who had once been involved in logistics for the Navy, was arrested by the Navy. When the soldiers boarded the ship, they shot him with a stun gun, an electrical shock close to his heart. “My whole body convulsed. Now I also have accusations of attacking the soldiers because my legs were jumping form the shock in my heart, so they also accuse me of attacking the soldiers,” he said. “It is important to understand that if we were Palestinian fisherman, they’d just kill us from a far distance, and maybe Turkish activists we would be shot to death, so it is important to put this in proportion.”
Activists such as Shapira are touching a nerve in Israeli society regarding the occupation, and they are a thorn in the side of Israeli authorities. He sees hope in the Israeli resistance movement, noting that he sees more people attending demonstrations these days, types of people he hadn’t seen in the past. “Maybe with this tendency of this country becoming more and more fascist, and the laws are coming one after another, it may be able to penetrate this thick skin that many people have developed over here. There is a little bit of optimism that when things become so bad and brutal, maybe it helps people to wake up.” Shapira speaks of the ultra-right-Orthodox coalition that currently controls the Israeli government, and the oppressive and racist laws that have come down the pike. Examples include a law requiring non-Jewish Israeli citizens to proclaim allegiance to a Jewish state, a rabbinic ruling forbidding leasing property to non-Jews, attempts to bar Jewish women from the wailing wall, gender segregation in public areas, determining who is not a Jew, and laws forbidding a Jew to marry a non-Jew in Israel.
At the same time, Shapira realizes that his movement is a minority of a minority, albeit with an important role in helping to wake up world Jewry. “It is important not to exaggerate how effective we are here. We are very much hated within the Israeli mainstream, especially when we mention things like international pressure and BDS, it is almost like cursing God in a synagogue or something like that.” Shapira believes the change will come from international pressure, as was the case with South African apartheid. “It is important to remember that no struggle for liberation for equality and for freedom around the world nonviolently succeeded without the mass participation of people around the world. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, all of these heroes would never succeed without huge international pressure.”
Ultimately, Israel must find security through some other means outside of militarism, say these two human rights fighters. “Israel has a right to self-defense, and therefore the first thing for defending ourselves is to stop torturing and killing Palestinians,” said Shapira, who compares Israel to the participant in a gang rape who complains that the victim is fighting back. “When you imprison a million and a half people in a huge ghetto like Gaza, bombing them, what do you expect to happen?” he said. “Since we are committed to nonviolent principles we believe more killing of the other side will just cause you more suffering.”
“We have to move from culturally sanctioned violence wherever we live into building communities based on respect for each other and nonviolence,” said Maguire. She believes the best security the Jewish people can have is to make plans with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, make friends, and begin to build policies based on human rights and justice. “We’ve got to move away from the idea - and really all of us not just Israelis - this idea that militarism provides our security. We have to move to human based and ecological based security. That’s a huge challenge for the whole human family, and particularly a challenge now in Israel and Palestine to move on to a different kind of security.”
Meanwhile, recent news reports demonstrate that the occupation is both unsustainable and incompatible with democratic principles. For example, Israeli police are arresting Palestinian children as young as five for stone throwing. This, as Al Jazeera and The Guardian just started to release over 1,600 documents on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And recent Wikileaks cables revealed that Israeli officials took bribes to allow U.S. goods into Gaza, requiring American companies to pay up to 75 times more than the usual cost. Wikileaks also learned that Israel has intended to keep Gaza near collapse, just as the Israeli government plans to wage a full-scale war on the territory and Lebanon.
This year, the Palestinians hope to build upon the wave of nations recognizing a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. There is a strong and ever-growing peace movement that is joined from within Israeli society and the international community. Ultimately, the leaders of this movement want to bring about positive change in the Mideast, and they hope to succeed where the politicians and diplomats have fallen short. And in many ways, they are a nonviolent movement on the lines of the U.S. civil rights and South African anti-apartheid movements. They seek dignity and a respect for human rights for both sides of the conflict, and seek to liberate Israelis and Palestinians from a system that has hopelessly oppressed each.
Two human rights leaders from two different conflicts in different parts of the world found themselves participating in the recent flotillas to break the blockade of Gaza: Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who lost family members to sectarian violence and fought for nonviolent reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and Yonatan Shapira, a former elite Israeli pilot who decided he could no longer participate in the occupation of the Palestinian people. This unlikely pair of shipmates had a conversation recently, which was hosted and facilitated by Jewish Fast For Gaza, a group founded by Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt.
Maguire was transformed by a world of violence in Northern Ireland when her niece and two nephews were killed - all little children - and her sister injured on a Belfast street in 1976. “When that happened, myself and two others…we came out for peace, our message was that violence isn’t going to solve our problems, and there’s got to be another way to use nonviolence,” said Maguire.
At that point she cofounded the Community of the Peace People in 1976, and organized weekly marches and demonstrations that attracted over half a million people from across Northern Ireland, Ireland and the UK. “I think we recognized that we had a deep ethnic conflict, but it wasn’t going to be solved through militarism and paramilitarism, and we had to begin to sit down with each other and dialogue and to find a way through our problems.” Along with a colleague, Maguire received the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for their peace efforts, and she would later broaden her work from Northern Ireland to other places.
Ten years ago, Maguire went with a delegation to Israel. She was invited by a group of rabbis who were fighting for human rights in the territories and against the demolition of Palestinian homes. Relating to her own experiences back at home, she was moved by the suffering on both sides, and inspired to see Israelis and Palestinians finding a way to working together and seek justice.
More recently, Maguire has decided to focus her efforts on Gaza, and has sailed on three humanitarian boats to the territory. Two of the boats were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, and one of them was a part of the Freedom Flotilla that was attacked by Israelis, claiming nine lives on the MV Mavi Mamara. “1.5 million people are living in a prison, cut off from the world, literally,” she said of the conditions in Gaza, of the tremendous suffering she witnessed. “The Palestinian people are really living in a prison and the Israelis are holding all the keys. This is not happening in any other part of the world, and yet we see Israel and the international community remaining silent on it.”
With its ports closed for 40 years, and bombed-out infrastructure, the Gazan population, half of which is under the age of 18, is the victim of a collective punishment, according to Maguire. Her words were echoed by Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who issued a UN report on Israeli human rights violations during Operation Cast Lead, the military campaign in Gaza that claimed 1,400 Palestinian lives. According to the Goldstone report, “houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed.” Around 240 of the Gazan deaths were police officers. And the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prison were bombed as well. The report called on Israel to do an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead, and punish those elements of the IDF who were responsible.
The severity of the Gaza blockade - imposed by Israel following the Hamas victory and takeover - was brought home for Maguire when she appeared in court following her arrest. “When I was at the Supreme Court for the hearing, there was a case up just before me, and the case was a mother and father who had been visiting on the West Bank when the border was closed to Gaza and their young child was in Gaza. They were appearing at the court to ask if after four years they would be allowed to travel from the West Bank to Gaza to see their little boy who hadn’t seen them since the border had closed.”
And while Maguire condemns what she views as violation of international law against the Palestinians, the pacifist condemns all violence, including Palestinian acts of violence on Israeli cities. And yet, the Nobel laureate was hopeful at what she saw in the people in Gaza. “There is a passion among the people of Gaza for peace. They just want to have peace because they suffered so much. So we were hopeful because it reminded me of Northern Ireland when the Peace People started.” When Israel began bombing Gaza in Operation Cast Lead, however, there was a setback in the hopes of peace between Fattah and Hamas, and hopes the Palestinians would have a united voice that could reach out and dialogue with Israel.
Meanwhile, Yonatan Shapira’s introduction to the Mideast conflict came as a member of the Israeli Air Force, an elite Blackhawk helicopter pilot who had flown hundreds of missions over the occupied territories. Upon first glance, this seasoned, eleven-year veteran would appear to be the least likely candidate for a peace activist. But then again, no one knows how he or will she will react after becoming a firsthand witness to suffering and the effects of violence, on the Israeli side in Shapira’s case. “During this time I volunteered with victims of suicide attacks, mostly new immigrants, people who are poor and with less family support in the country. And I got to know Israeli suffering through my military service as a rescue pilot bringing children and soldiers and people to hospital after they were injured and killed, and as a volunteer meeting with the children and families of survivors, and trying to bring them back to society to try to overcome their trauma,” Shapira said.
Then there was a targeted bomb assassination attempt on Hamas leaders that left fourteen civilians dead in Gaza.
“And at some point along this process, I started to realize I am, there is a cycle of violence and I am just a part of this cycle, even if I am not killing anyone directly myself, I am part of a system that is causing huge suffering for people,” he added. Speaking of the Palestinians, he said “For many years I didn’t know their story, their narrative, the way I’ve been brought here up in Israeli society, to just know half side of the history. The first time I knew the word Nakba, the disaster for the Palestinians of what happened in ‘48 was when I was 30-something. And when you realize that you were blind to such a huge part of the history and the present, and there is a circle of violence and you are part of it, it’s a very strong emotional step to overcome, and I think at that point you can decide whether to ignore it, suppress it and continue to fight anyone that brings these issues up, or try to learn more and take responsibility and try to change the situation. And that’s what happened to me and to many of my friends.”
When Shapira found his moment of truth and chose to deal with the “dark side” of his existence, he decided to write a petition of air force pilots who declared they were no longer willing to fly missions over the territories. They would no longer be a part of “illegal and immoral attacks” on the Palestinians. In 2003 - on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - the pilots placed the declaration on the desk of the commander of the air force. “I think that was the beginning of a new life for me in many, many ways,” Shapira noted.
Shapira founded Combatants for Peace on the assertion that it is not merely enough to say what you are not willing to be a part of. “It’s important to reach out to the other side you’re fighting against, and find people and work together - Palestinians who are rejecting violence and are refusing to be a part of this cycle of violence,” he said.
This IDF pilot made a transition from leader among soldiers to a solidarity leader with the Palestinians. He and other Israelis participate in the call by nonviolent Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. Shapira sees this as a struggle for Palestinian liberation, a process that will also liberate Israelis from being oppressors of a horrible, decades-long occupation. “We don’t wait anymore for Lieberman and Bibi and Barak and other people to bring the solution today. We are calling on the international community, we call on Jews…, and we call on governments all around the world to understand the situation is disastrous, and there is no time to wait for a peace process that is being used just to delay and build more settlements.”
Shapira - who is disheartened by Mairead Maguire’s arrest in Israel - noted that it was his own squadron that dropped commandos on the Mavi Mamara. “It was a double shock because I know the organizers of the flotilla…and to see what the navy and the Israeli army did on the boats and especially this whole ordeal of not showing the whole video, just showing a few seconds of that and manipulating the whole world media. …And the same Blackhawk helicopter that Israel gets for free in billions of aid from the United States, that’s the same helicopter I flew on years back. So it was also very personal for me to decide I need to be on the side of the people trying to symbolically break the siege.”
And so this veteran pilot decided to participate in a flotilla to Gaza, alongside Israeli activists and a holocaust survivor. Shapira said it was sad to see 8 or 10 warships approaching them and violently attacking them, when the only weapons they were carrying to Gaza were harmonicas, musical instruments for the children. “I guess that was too dangerous for the Israeli army to let into Gaza,” he said.
Shapira, who had once been involved in logistics for the Navy, was arrested by the Navy. When the soldiers boarded the ship, they shot him with a stun gun, an electrical shock close to his heart. “My whole body convulsed. Now I also have accusations of attacking the soldiers because my legs were jumping form the shock in my heart, so they also accuse me of attacking the soldiers,” he said. “It is important to understand that if we were Palestinian fisherman, they’d just kill us from a far distance, and maybe Turkish activists we would be shot to death, so it is important to put this in proportion.”
Activists such as Shapira are touching a nerve in Israeli society regarding the occupation, and they are a thorn in the side of Israeli authorities. He sees hope in the Israeli resistance movement, noting that he sees more people attending demonstrations these days, types of people he hadn’t seen in the past. “Maybe with this tendency of this country becoming more and more fascist, and the laws are coming one after another, it may be able to penetrate this thick skin that many people have developed over here. There is a little bit of optimism that when things become so bad and brutal, maybe it helps people to wake up.” Shapira speaks of the ultra-right-Orthodox coalition that currently controls the Israeli government, and the oppressive and racist laws that have come down the pike. Examples include a law requiring non-Jewish Israeli citizens to proclaim allegiance to a Jewish state, a rabbinic ruling forbidding leasing property to non-Jews, attempts to bar Jewish women from the wailing wall, gender segregation in public areas, determining who is not a Jew, and laws forbidding a Jew to marry a non-Jew in Israel.
At the same time, Shapira realizes that his movement is a minority of a minority, albeit with an important role in helping to wake up world Jewry. “It is important not to exaggerate how effective we are here. We are very much hated within the Israeli mainstream, especially when we mention things like international pressure and BDS, it is almost like cursing God in a synagogue or something like that.” Shapira believes the change will come from international pressure, as was the case with South African apartheid. “It is important to remember that no struggle for liberation for equality and for freedom around the world nonviolently succeeded without the mass participation of people around the world. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, all of these heroes would never succeed without huge international pressure.”
Ultimately, Israel must find security through some other means outside of militarism, say these two human rights fighters. “Israel has a right to self-defense, and therefore the first thing for defending ourselves is to stop torturing and killing Palestinians,” said Shapira, who compares Israel to the participant in a gang rape who complains that the victim is fighting back. “When you imprison a million and a half people in a huge ghetto like Gaza, bombing them, what do you expect to happen?” he said. “Since we are committed to nonviolent principles we believe more killing of the other side will just cause you more suffering.”
“We have to move from culturally sanctioned violence wherever we live into building communities based on respect for each other and nonviolence,” said Maguire. She believes the best security the Jewish people can have is to make plans with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, make friends, and begin to build policies based on human rights and justice. “We’ve got to move away from the idea - and really all of us not just Israelis - this idea that militarism provides our security. We have to move to human based and ecological based security. That’s a huge challenge for the whole human family, and particularly a challenge now in Israel and Palestine to move on to a different kind of security.”
GOP Austerity Plan Is an Assault on Blacks and Latinos
"Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose," as the Billie Holiday song goes. "Yes, the strong gets more while the weak ones fade. Empty pockets don't ever make the grade."
It is a tale of two cities in early twenty-first century America. Wall Street is enjoying hefty bonuses and corporate America is awash in cash. Yet, all you can hear, whether inside the Beltway or around state houses is talk of austerity, the new buzzword that's all the rage. Conservative politicians in Congress and in statehouses around the country rode a wave of Tea Party pseudo populism, funded by Republican philanthropy, corporate lobbyists and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Austerity is certainly not for the wealthy -- those who paid for the election and have already been awarded their extended and possibly permanent tax breaks under the Obama-GOP "compromise" -- but rather for the folks of meager means. And so, those who are already struggling are told to tighten their belts even further. After all, they're told, it's good for you, builds the character and allows you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
And so, the public unions replace the welfare queens as the scapegoats of choice, the latest casualties in a long, protracted class warfare. And as the rich get more money, the poor, working poor, and what's left of a paltry middle class are given pep talks, tough love and sermons. The GOP and their Tea party compatriots have stepped up their austerity game of late, but you should know that this game has been played since the 1970s, when a conservative political backlash sought to widen the gaps along economic and racial lines that people such as Martin Luther King had sought to close. And yet, as we just celebrated the man's birthday, a man who was gunned down while fighting for sanitation workers, the nation fails to follow his philosophy of economic justice and caring for the needs of the poor.
The nonpartisan nonprofit group United For a Fair Economy just released a report called "State of the Dream 2011." The report makes the point that communities of color already had it harder than everyone else. And although the GOP austerity programs will negatively impact all working people, they will increase economic inequality and the racial divide. The social safety net programs that are under attack, such as Social Security, are of great importance to blacks and Latinos.
For example, 42 percent of African-Americans and 37 percent of Latinos are unable to meet their minimal household expenses even three months after they become unemployed. This underscores the devastating effect that cuts in public assistance programs will have on people of color.
Meanwhile, the benefits to the rich are almost exclusively benefits to whites. Blacks and Latinos have no capital gains -- they only earn 13 cents and 8 cents, respectively, for each dollar of dividends that whites earn. And with whites three times more likely than African-Americans to earn $250,000 -- and nearly five times more likely than Latinos -- so much for benefiting from the tax cuts for the big money people.
"The deficits that these tax cuts help create are being used to justify a host of austerity measures that will harm Americans of all races, but will hit Blacks and Latinos the hardest," says Brian Miller, executive director of United For a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. "With 42 percent of Blacks and 37 percent of Latinos lacking the funds to meet minimal household expenses for even three months should they become unemployed, cutting public assistance programs will have devastating impacts on Black and Latino workers."
Miller points out that state and federal workers such as teachers, police officers and food inspectors are on the front line of the budget cuts. Severe cuts to the public sector will hinder America's ability to need the needs of all citizens. But African-Americans will bear the brunt of the layoffs, since they have been disproportionately employed in the public sector. In fact, blacks are 30 percent more likely to work in the public sector, and 70 percent more likely to work for the federal government. So, austerity will only serve to erode any gains that racial minorities have made on the economic front. And given that the purveyors of these austerity measures are job killers -- scoffing at any suggestion that the government should play a role in job creation -- their policies will bring disproportional suffering to disproportionately unemployed workers of color.
This report contains many useful though sobering statistics. The devil's in the details. Here is a sample:
• The official unemployment rate for whites is 8.5 percent. For blacks it is 15.8 percent, and for Latinos the rate is 13 percent. These figures do not take into account the underemployed and those who stopped looking for work.
• 59.1 percent of elderly blacks, and 64.8 percent of Latinos depend on Social Security for over 80 percent of their family income, as opposed to 46 percent of whites, turning the attacks on Social Security into a war on black and brown people. Without the program, 53 percent of older black folks and 49 percent of older Latinos would be impoverished, in contrast to the current rate of 20 percent for these groups;
• Blacks earn 57 cents for every dollar of white median family income, and Latinos earn 59 cents. Looking at median household income, the numbers are 60 cents and 70 cents, respectively;
• Blacks hold 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar held by whites;
• Blacks are 2.7 times as likely as their white counterparts to have zero or negative net worth. Meanwhile, Latinos are twice as likely to have zero or negative net worth;
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the government played a pivotal role in wealth creation and opportunity. Now a new crop of politicians are perpetuating a regime of wealth inequality, with people of color on the losing end most of the time. Racial minorities are overrepresented among the low earners, and underrepresented among the top earners.
What are the solutions? The report suggests a number of remedies, including a Marshall Plan for the U.S. to create jobs and end the Great Recession; protecting public employees and increasing federal aid to the states; strengthening the social safety net; restoring progressive taxation; reducing wasteful spending such as in the Pentagon, and strengthening labor and the right to organize.
This new wave of austerity is a con game, and it's racist too. Now is the time to reverse the trend and restore equity, justice and sanity to America's economic system.
It is a tale of two cities in early twenty-first century America. Wall Street is enjoying hefty bonuses and corporate America is awash in cash. Yet, all you can hear, whether inside the Beltway or around state houses is talk of austerity, the new buzzword that's all the rage. Conservative politicians in Congress and in statehouses around the country rode a wave of Tea Party pseudo populism, funded by Republican philanthropy, corporate lobbyists and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Austerity is certainly not for the wealthy -- those who paid for the election and have already been awarded their extended and possibly permanent tax breaks under the Obama-GOP "compromise" -- but rather for the folks of meager means. And so, those who are already struggling are told to tighten their belts even further. After all, they're told, it's good for you, builds the character and allows you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
And so, the public unions replace the welfare queens as the scapegoats of choice, the latest casualties in a long, protracted class warfare. And as the rich get more money, the poor, working poor, and what's left of a paltry middle class are given pep talks, tough love and sermons. The GOP and their Tea party compatriots have stepped up their austerity game of late, but you should know that this game has been played since the 1970s, when a conservative political backlash sought to widen the gaps along economic and racial lines that people such as Martin Luther King had sought to close. And yet, as we just celebrated the man's birthday, a man who was gunned down while fighting for sanitation workers, the nation fails to follow his philosophy of economic justice and caring for the needs of the poor.
The nonpartisan nonprofit group United For a Fair Economy just released a report called "State of the Dream 2011." The report makes the point that communities of color already had it harder than everyone else. And although the GOP austerity programs will negatively impact all working people, they will increase economic inequality and the racial divide. The social safety net programs that are under attack, such as Social Security, are of great importance to blacks and Latinos.
For example, 42 percent of African-Americans and 37 percent of Latinos are unable to meet their minimal household expenses even three months after they become unemployed. This underscores the devastating effect that cuts in public assistance programs will have on people of color.
Meanwhile, the benefits to the rich are almost exclusively benefits to whites. Blacks and Latinos have no capital gains -- they only earn 13 cents and 8 cents, respectively, for each dollar of dividends that whites earn. And with whites three times more likely than African-Americans to earn $250,000 -- and nearly five times more likely than Latinos -- so much for benefiting from the tax cuts for the big money people.
"The deficits that these tax cuts help create are being used to justify a host of austerity measures that will harm Americans of all races, but will hit Blacks and Latinos the hardest," says Brian Miller, executive director of United For a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. "With 42 percent of Blacks and 37 percent of Latinos lacking the funds to meet minimal household expenses for even three months should they become unemployed, cutting public assistance programs will have devastating impacts on Black and Latino workers."
Miller points out that state and federal workers such as teachers, police officers and food inspectors are on the front line of the budget cuts. Severe cuts to the public sector will hinder America's ability to need the needs of all citizens. But African-Americans will bear the brunt of the layoffs, since they have been disproportionately employed in the public sector. In fact, blacks are 30 percent more likely to work in the public sector, and 70 percent more likely to work for the federal government. So, austerity will only serve to erode any gains that racial minorities have made on the economic front. And given that the purveyors of these austerity measures are job killers -- scoffing at any suggestion that the government should play a role in job creation -- their policies will bring disproportional suffering to disproportionately unemployed workers of color.
This report contains many useful though sobering statistics. The devil's in the details. Here is a sample:
• The official unemployment rate for whites is 8.5 percent. For blacks it is 15.8 percent, and for Latinos the rate is 13 percent. These figures do not take into account the underemployed and those who stopped looking for work.
• 59.1 percent of elderly blacks, and 64.8 percent of Latinos depend on Social Security for over 80 percent of their family income, as opposed to 46 percent of whites, turning the attacks on Social Security into a war on black and brown people. Without the program, 53 percent of older black folks and 49 percent of older Latinos would be impoverished, in contrast to the current rate of 20 percent for these groups;
• Blacks earn 57 cents for every dollar of white median family income, and Latinos earn 59 cents. Looking at median household income, the numbers are 60 cents and 70 cents, respectively;
• Blacks hold 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar held by whites;
• Blacks are 2.7 times as likely as their white counterparts to have zero or negative net worth. Meanwhile, Latinos are twice as likely to have zero or negative net worth;
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the government played a pivotal role in wealth creation and opportunity. Now a new crop of politicians are perpetuating a regime of wealth inequality, with people of color on the losing end most of the time. Racial minorities are overrepresented among the low earners, and underrepresented among the top earners.
What are the solutions? The report suggests a number of remedies, including a Marshall Plan for the U.S. to create jobs and end the Great Recession; protecting public employees and increasing federal aid to the states; strengthening the social safety net; restoring progressive taxation; reducing wasteful spending such as in the Pentagon, and strengthening labor and the right to organize.
This new wave of austerity is a con game, and it's racist too. Now is the time to reverse the trend and restore equity, justice and sanity to America's economic system.
January 17, 2011
Arizona Goddamn
(Click HERE to listen to my January 13 interview on "Make It Plain" with Mark Thompson on Sirius/XM Radio)
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said it all. "We have become the mecca for racism and bigotry," Dupnik said of the political climate in his state of Arizona. Of course the sheriff was referring to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in Tucson. Jared Lee Loughner went on a shooting spree in front of a grocery store, wounding at least 18 people, including Giffords his intended target, and killing six, including U.S. District Court Judge John Roll and a 9-year-old girl born on 9-11. "Mein Kampf" was reportedly listed as one of Loughner's favorite books.
According to Dupnik, the gunman did not act alone. And he said what needed to be said about this senseless act of violence and the larger implications for Arizona and our nation as a whole. "It's time to do a little soul searching about the rhetoric we hear on the radio, how our children are being raised," he added.
Contrast this with the empty words of Governor Jan Brewer. Calling the shooting "this senseless and cruel violence," Brewer said she is "heartbroken," adding that "all of Arizona is shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific tragedy that transpired this morning in Tucson." Now, I do not claim to know what is in Brewer's mind, nor do I question whether she might actually show genuine sadness for the victims. That is not the point. Rather, Governor Brewer is part of the problem in Arizona. And when you contribute to a harsh political climate full of vitriol, hatred and scapegoating, your words ring hollow when you later condemn those violent acts that climate produced.
Arizona is ground zero for hatred and intolerance in America. Brewer signed SB1070 into law, which allows for the racial profiling of Latinos and those suspected of being undocumented aliens. It is a pure public policy expression of racial hatred and intolerance, and was drafted by an anti-immigrant hate group, with input from the private prison lobby. In addition, Russell Pearce, the bill's cosponsor in the Arizona state senate, has ties to white supremacist groups. Similar in spirit to SB1070 is Arizona's new ethnic studies ban, which the state legislature passed and Brewer signed into law. The law prohibits the teaching of Mexican-American studies in the Tucson public schools and throughout the state--even as similar courses in Asian, black and Native American studied remain unaffected by the ban. Schools will lose funding if they dare to teach Chicano studies in Arizona, and that's a crime unto itself.
This codification of hate is made possible in a state such as Arizona, where a climate of anti-immigrant sentiment emboldens those who would take matters into their own hands. Lax gun laws don't exactly help things, either. Arizona allows almost everyone who passes a federal background check to buy a gun, and a new law allows people to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Really?
Opportunistic and unscrupulous politicians such as Jan Brewer never have to raise a fist to contribute to a climate of violence. They don't have to own or use a gun, or wish anyone harm. Similarly, the Southern Dixiecrats who hoped to preserve segregation kept their hands clean, as did the White Citizens Councils, also known as the "white-collar Klan." But through their rhetoric, these politicians gave a wink and a nod to those unbalanced, hate-filled members of the unwashed masses who have no qualms about using their gun to assassinate someone.
On the national scene, the anti-Obama rhetoric of the Birther and Tea Party movements encourages death threats against the President, and the carrying of loaded weapons to Obama events. Some political candidates such as Nevada Sharron Angle stir the pot when they call for "Second Amendment" remedies if they don't get what they want. Meanwhile, some congressional lawmakers openly question the President's citizenship and legitimacy, dangerously crossing the line and going far beyond an honest disagreement over policies.
"There has never been one unkind, angry or cross word come between us," said Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) of his colleague Giffords. Calling the assailant "either deranged or evil beyond words" and concluding that "someone has stepped out of bounds of humanity," Giffords added that Giffords is "a precious, decent human being and this tragedy is beyond my ability to articulate. ...She was just out there doing her job." And yet, while Franks certainly must appreciate the security risks and threats of physical violence public figures face, he has participated in venomous attacks against President Obama. Franks called President Obama an "enemy of humanity," and his stance on abortion "insane" and godless. He once demanded that Obama release his birth certificate to prove his citizenship and eligibility to hold the office. At a town hall meeting Rep. Franks said he was terrified of Obama, and came within three days of filing an Obama citizenship lawsuit.
Giffords--a moderate who happens to be the first Jewish congresswoman from Arizona-- has been no stranger to threats. Her office was vandalized, and she received death threats after voting for the health reform package. On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin targeted 20 House Democrats, including Giffords, with a map featuring 20 gun sights. Palin has been scrubbing those graphics from her website, the way you try to put toothpaste back in a tube. Moreover, in June 2010, Gifford's Tea Party opponent Jesse Kelly hosted a campaign event to "Get on Target for Victory in November," "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office" and "Shoot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly." And Judge Roll was a target of death threats from the far right, receiving 200 threatening phone calls in one afternoon.
Looking at all of this from a purely political vantage point, the shooting puts a crimp in the plans of Congressional Republicans. Thriving on the politics of scapegoating, GOP lawmakers seek whipping boys to detract attention from their conservative policies of upward wealth redistribution. They throw red meat to uneducated whites in their base by blaming Muslims, Mexican immigrants, gay marriage and black and Latino homeowners for America's woes. Before the Giffords shooting, Republicans in Congress started to tar and feather public unions as the cause of our problems. And attack dog Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) had plans to vilify President Obama, using the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to wage a witch hunt of investigations against the administrations. Issa is a Lebanese-American, and his party routinely depicts the President as an Arab and Muslim terrorist.
There's an old saying that God don't like ugly. Well, there's a lot of ugly coming out of Arizona. The state is in a bad way. In the middle of the desert, Arizona languishes in a sea of putrid waters. And yet, Arizona is very American.
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