“On Conscientious Objector’s Day we remember those who had the courage to stand up for what they believed – even in the face of death”

Guardian writer Virginia Moffatt has written an elegant piece in honor of what most of us don’t realize is “Conscientious Objector’s Day,” May 15.

Jesus preached “Love your enemies” and chose to die on the cross, in a supreme act of self-sacrifice. As a Christian, I can’t think of a good cause to kill for, but I can think of plenty of reasons why I might be ready to die.

When I was a child, I was always drawn to the stories of the early Christian martyrs. This may have had something to do with gore factor – the beheading of St Agnes, the strapping of St Catherine to a wheel – having a particularly gruesome appeal. Yet it was more than childish horror that attracted me to these tales – there was something of the personal courage and strength of the individuals that moved me. Indeed, a more mature understanding of martyrdom recognises that it is not the manner of death, but the manner of living that is important. But I have often wondered since – if I was faced with such a choice, what would I do?

As I grew up and developed political awareness, I discovered that martyrdom was not a thing of the past. The stories of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Anne Frank are of course well known, but there have been many more people who have inspired me. People such as Fr Callisto Caravario and Fr Luigi Versiglia, murdered in China; Archbishop Romero and the six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper, killed in El Salvador; Sr Dorothy Stang in Brazil; Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, Basam Abu Rahma in Palestine; Margaret Hassan in Iraq; Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finnucane in Northern Ireland. The list is endless.

I wanted to capture this post on Wikileaks before it was hashed to bits by certain interests in the great West Bank colonial experiment. I don’t know how “full” this actually is. Interesting the leak cam out of the Open Source Center, though. Apparently someone’s being more open than others.

May 1, 2009
Summary
In late January, WikiLeaks released a 186 page secret Israeli Ministry of Defense database, which showed the full extent of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. A version of the document had first been obtained by the well regarded Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The leak made headlines, but its global political impact was limited by its presentation in Hebrew.

Subsequently the United States commissioned the Central Intelligence Agency’s Open Source Center to translate the leak to English. The translation was not released by the CIA, but a copy was obtained by Stephen Aftergood, editor of the US based Federation of American Scientist’s Secrecy News and is presented here.

According to Haaretz, “An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued,”, and “The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents.”

DOWNLOAD/VIEW FULL FILE FROM

fast site, current site, Sweden, US, Latvia, Slovakia, UK, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, Tonga, Europe, SSL, Tor

via Wikileaks

Laura Durkay writes in her blog, “As some readers may know, after spending the past semester writing about Gaza, I will be traveling there in real life from May 28 to June 5, with a solidarity delegation organized by CODEPINK, a women’s antiwar organization.”

Although traveling halfway around the world to an area under military occupation is not a commitment to be taken lightly, in truth it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made. I had been desperately wanting to go to Palestine after spending so much time writing about it. The rational empiricist in me tends to resist the idea that things happen for a reason, but when I received the email from Cindy Corrie (mother of murdered peace activist Rachel Corrie, who would have turned 30 this month) announcing this delegation, I very quickly became certain that I was supposed to go.

 Read her posts at Laura on the Left Coast

Ma’an News Agency has reported that arms shipped from the U.S. to Israel were used in gross human rights violations during Israel’s attack on Gaza.

“Legally and morally, this US arms shipment should have been halted by the Obama administration given the evidence of war crimes resulting from military equipment and munitions of this kind used by the Israeli forces,” said Brian Wood, arms control campaign manager for Amnesty International. “Arms supplies in these circumstances are contrary to provisions in US law.”

The United States was by far the largest supplier of weapons to Israel between 2004 and 2008. The US government is also due to provide 30 billion US dollars in military aid to Israel, despite the alleged misuse of weaponry and munitions in Gaza and Lebanon by the Israeli military. President Obama, according to published reports, has no plans to cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel under a new 10-year contract agreed in 2007 by the Bush administration. This new contract is a 25 percent increase, compared to the last contract agreed by the previous US administration.

Read the rest at the ISM website

Owen Amos reported on April 3 for the Press Gazette that The Jewish Chronicle has agreed to pay £30,000 in damages, plus costs, to a man wrongly accused of “harbouring” terrorists. The event stems from a 2003 memorial to Rachel Corrie in Gaza, which was attended by two men later named in the attack on a Tel Aviv bar. Owen reports: “In the high court today, Cohen’s solicitor, Stephen Loughrey from Carter-Ruck, said: “In fact, as the defendant now accepts, the claimant did not ‘harbour’ the bombers. He met them briefly and by chance at a memorial ceremony for Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement volunteer, which was held five days before the bombing.”

— Link

MediaShift, a PBS website does a moderately OK piece of reporting on a very interesting topic: The use of social media for propaganda campaigns.

At left we have an image from MediaShift showing a fleet of young recrutis getting briefed before trolling blogs, twitter, Facebook, Youtube and elsewhere for content that wan’t on message about Israeli strikes on civilians in Gaza.

The writing doesn’t really get too analytical and attempts to strike a false balance in its coverage, but by looking at how the pro-occupation lobby Stand With Us incorporates social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to spin the recent Gaza attack, it shows a very interesting case study in how passive information can be a potent framing tool.

“We are fighting against the mainstream media who prefer to ignore certain bits of information about Israel,” Berger told me in an interview, “and social media is an effective way of providing the right information passively.”

Yes, yes, the apparatus that spends millions each year is having trouble getting its message across, which is why the United States government spends something like $30 billion a year on foreign aid supporting Israel.

— MediaShift article: How Social Media War Was Waged in Gaza-Israel Conflict

Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

 by Gila Svirsky

I was not present in Rafah that terrible day, 16 March 2003, but I have frequently replayed in my mind the events leading up to the moment when a bulldozer rolled over Rachel Corrie.  I think to myself:  What compelled this young woman, neither Jewish nor Palestinian, to travel 10,000 miles from home, throw in her lot with a family not her own, a people not her own, and ultimately meet a death that came suddenly, swiftly, in an instant of shocked comprehension. (more…)