As joyfulness and tears mingle together in the streets of Gaza this morning;
as those who are alive give thanks to God and mourn their dead;
as European leaders meet in Sharm El Sheikh to discuss funding for the rebuilding of the shattered Gazan infrastructure;
I'm left wondering, what recompense will Israel pay,
A volley of machine gun fire crackled out over Wellington's Civic Square. It hit me like a hot wind and exploded like white light in my brain. My knees buckled and my head and spine jerked back as it exploded in my chest .
I slumped to the ground amid others collapsing and falling all around me, a total in excess of 800 of us symbolically dead.
The simulated gun fire continued to rattle all around us, confronting the internal silence within as we remembered, and prayed, for those living with the nightly reality of death in both Israel and Gaza.
Unlike them, we rose, symbolizing our hope that the people of Palestine and Israel would rise too. Rise above the madness that is war and realize that in God's eyes, both Palestinian and Israeli blood are of equal value.
(Today I attended a 'Die In' sponsored by the Christians for Justice in Palestine - a very moving event)
As the world pauses to consider peace in the middle east, both Israel and Palestine would do well to look again at Pope John's reminder to the world forty years ago, of the Four Pillars of Peace which are the basis of right order in our world.
Persecution and cruelty feed the human spirit and are the manure from which patriotism and nationhood are forged.
The Roman treatment of the early Christian community and the German Concentration camps of the Second World War did not wipe out Christianity or Judaism but resulted in the worldwide spread of Christianity and the establishment of the Israeli State, for example.
So what is the likely outcome of inflicting continuing human suffering on innocent Palestinians and Gazan civilians ?
Israel's Prime Minister says, 'they left us with no alternative'. But there is always an alternative.
Peace with our neighbours comes through dialogue & respect not aggression and cruelty.
Hearing both sides of news story certainly makes you stop and think.
We spent 4 glorious weeks in Georgia recently. We had a great time and made lots of wonderful friends in this warm and hospitable country, so naturally we were horrified to see the advance of Russian tanks on the streets of Gori and feared for our friends in Tblisi.
Yesterday however I watched the Russian TV News Channel and was equally disturbed to see first hand the death and destruction wrought on the citizens of South Ossetia, and the very real humanitarian crisis that exists there.
It showed a perspective I've not seen explored in any western media, and it makes me wonder, who are the true victims of propaganda -
- them, us or both of us? .
Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.
Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday at age 67. He was famous throughout the Middle East and widely respected for his non violent quest for peace, and as Palestines national poet.
Delivering harsh criticisim for the factional fighting between Hamas & Fatah which he described as 'a public attempt at suicide in the streets,' he gave a voice to Palestines dreams of statehood.
Amidst all the chaos that surrounded him he did, as the opening lines of his poem, Under Siege state, live a life which cultivated hope.
His voice of prophetic wisdom will be much missed.
Because of my sympathy for the plight of Gazan's I was recently asked if my views were anti semitic. It made me think.
You see the New Zealand I grew up in during the 50-60's was a country that prided itself on its egalitarian attitudes and practices. It was 'God's own country' and we were lucky to live here. Yet Maori were invariably rural dwellers, educationally and economically disadvantaged, the few Chinese who came here during the gold rush days, were limited to selling vegetables and emigrants were all winging Poms who should go home if they didn't like it here.
Apart from them we were mainly white, protestant and proud of our colonial uniqueness.
Yet I grew up believing the myth of our equality and laid back acceptance of all: well, anyone who was exactly like us that is. - or unless they were Australian, of course!
It wasn't until I contemplated backpacking through central Asia and the Middle East where I would be the foreigner that I became aware of my fear of non Christian religions, my mistrust of Asia's poor, my suspicion of anyone who dressed differently from me and especially, my frustration with those who didn't speak English as their first language. I was afraid of what I didn't understand and there was much I didn't. Acceptance of others was great in theory but, like Siberia, it's may be a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
Despite misconceptions about my egalitarian culture I began to realise that I was just as racist as the anti Pommie jokes that were so much a part of my colonial heritage.
What I discovered in realty was that beneath the cultural cloak we all wear, we are all the same. We share the same need of food, shelter, affirmation, justice and love because we are all made in the likeness of the one God - whatever we call him/her. However we dress and regardless of our social practices I began to learn that there are no bad men, just bad decisions.
That doesn't mean I support every Hamas policy or that I oppose every action taken by Israel. Just the political game playing of the few (on both sides) who ruin it for the majority and cause unnecessary pain and suffering on innocent people.
I wonder, is that prejudice or just the sign of an open mind?
Haaretz, the official Israeli News Agency ran this story in todays issue saying that Israel could announce their acceptance of the Hamas peace proposal later this week, insha'Allah.
Check it out!
Air Force One will travel back in time this week, banking low near the southern Mediterranean coast and touching down on contested soil where the past is always present.
In the Holy Land, the battles over the historical narrative surrounding the founding of Israel in 1948 are as hard-fought as the contemporary struggles over West Bank settlers, Palestinian refugees, and negotiations for a two-state solution.
In a long and bitter dispute, there are profound consequences for the "honest broker" (as the US government has long described itself) in identifying with only one side's history.
Yet when George Bush, the US president, steps off his plane to help Israel mark its 60th birthday, he will stride firmly into the past of one side.
Officials of the Jewish state will sweep the US president into their own powerful and compelling narrative: The birth of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust on May 14, 1948, the invasion of the state a day later from Arab armies marching from the north, south, and east and the loss of one per cent of the Jewish state's population in a fierce defence that evokes Israel's unofficial motto - "never again".
What the president will not hear is the Palestinian story.
He will not be told that one side's "War of Independence" is the other side's "Nakba", or "Catastrophe".
And no one is likely to mention that Israel's heroic survival was, to the Arabs, a dispossession in which 750,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes.
Here then, is a brief Nakba primer for the US president, a chronicle of the untold to accompany him on his visit to Jerusalem.
I've been combing the news sites to see if there had been any official response to Hamas offer of a 6 months cease fire - see previous posting, perhaps this is it?
I do hope not.
Within days of Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas leaders, the Palestinian group has proposed a six month truce with Israel, aimed at easing a blockade on the Gaza strip.
Key points of their proposal are:
(Aljazeera 21 March 2008)
Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called for Hamas to be included in peace negotiations, saying they are willing to "live as a neighbour next door in peace" with Israel if Palestinians approve a deal.
Carter said on Monday that Hamas leaders told him they would accept a negotiated peace agreement, if voted for by the Palestinian people.
His comments come after he met several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas politico, in Syria last week.
Carter said Hamas leaders had told him they would accept a peace agreement negotiated by their rival Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president whose Fatah faction controls the West Bank, if Palestinians approved the deal in a vote.
Peacemaking
"They said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians ... even though Hamas might disagree with some terms of the agreement," Carter said.
The Carter proposals
The former US president has put forward the following guidelines in an effort to start peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis:
1. An end to hostilities, or a truce between Hamas and Israel, which includes a halt to rockets attacks.
2. Securing the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas fighters.
3. The release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
"It means that Hamas will not undermine Abbas's efforts to negotiate an agreement and Hamas will accept an agreement if the Palestinians support it in a free vote."
Carter, who has angered Israel by meeting Hamas, also said the peace efforts had "regressed" since a US-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.
He said: "The problem is not that I met with with Hamas in Syria. The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved."
In his speech to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations at the King David hotel in Jerusalem, Carter reiterated that he has no mandate to secure a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.
Speaking of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid in June 2006, Carter said he was disappointed that his proposal to Hamas to release Shalit has been rejected.
But Carter said that he understood the Palestinian group could not free the Israeli soldier outside of a prisoner exchange with Israel.
'Side by side'
Speaking to Al Jazeera after his news conference in Jerusalem, Carter reiterated that he believe Hamas would accept the existence of Israel, if the Palestinian population voted to accept it.
"There has been a lot of conflicting statements about this issue. But from what I understood, and announced, if Abbas and [Ehud] Olmert [the Israeli prime minister] agree to a peace deal, that would ultimately allow the two states to live side by side. Hamas was asked whether they would accept the decision - they said yes."
Carter also said the "deplorable" situation in the Gaza Strip made establishing a peace deal more urgent.
"A resolution needs to be made, as people [in Gaza] are continuing to suffer. I believe however, a greater, and more effective American role is needed here - going beyond the commitments made by the Bush administration to reach a peace agreement."
Engaging Hamas
Amani Soliman, Al Jazeera's Middle East analyst, said Carter's attempt to engage Hamas was a major breakthrough.
"What he has done was a long time coming, considering that Hamas needed to be involved in the peace process," she said.
"Despite the engagement with Abbas, Tzipi Livni [the Israeli foreign minister], and other Fatah negotiators, Carter is adamant that Hamas be included in the equation – which can be viewed as a breakthrough for a Western diplomat to take this route."
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Gaza, said that Hamas's willingness to continue to secure a peace deal, implicitly reflects the movements recognition of the state of Israel.
"This effectively pulls the rug from under Israel, as they have constantly maintained that the reason they will continue isolating Hamas is because they will no recognise their state. The ball is now in Israel's court."
'Breaking the ice'
Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Damascus, said that Hamas had expressed willingness to go along with Carter's proposals.
"However, also from the Hamas side, the point being made that something must come in return," he said.
"What Jimmy Carter is trying to do is to break the ice - trying to get some sort of momentum going in a situation that has been utterly static."
Hamas officials said they talked with Carter about an internationally backed Israeli embargo on Gaza and a possible Israel-Hamas prisoner swap.
But Hamas did not respond to Carter's requests that it halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns and agree to talk to Eli Yishak, the Israeli deputy prime minister, about a prisoner exchange.
Over the weekend, Israel killed seven Hamas fighters in a series of air strikes after the group detonated two jeeps packed with explosives at an Israeli crossing on the Gaza border.
Israel and the US, which both consider Hamas a terrorist group, have criticised Carter's efforts to broker negotiations.
Today's BBC website carried yet another story of the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from the blockade of Gaza over the past nine months.
It focused on two stories. Both are tragic but both all too common. The first concerned Nael, a young man with terminal cancer. Despite numerous official appeals to the Israeli authorities for a medical visa to leave Gaza for treatment in Egypt, treatment not available in Gaza, Naels application was continually refused and he eventually died in poverty in Gaza age 21 years. His mother left to harbor the resentment alone.
The second concerned another young man, Samir who had been an employee at Abudan as a garment machinist. The factory were he worked, like many others closed through the strangling effects of the blockade. He said he returned to the factory every day just to check if, by some chance, it was working again and he could have his job back.
He took the BBC reporter to his home: a small, dark construction of breeze-block and corrugated iron.
There his wife held the youngest of their five children as she sat on a thin mattress on the floor. Two other toddlers ran around barefooted while they spoke.
He explained how he managed to make a little money by selling bread from a cart he wheeled through the town. It was not enough, he said, to feed his family.
His eyes welled up as he told the reoprter he had not been able to pay his rent for four months but that his landlord had taken pity on him.
There was an alternative, he said, one which he had refused but which nearly half of his former colleagues had taken up.
It was to join a work-force that was still well paid in spite of the troubles everywhere else: that is, the security forces of Hamas.
The pressure being put on Gaza - not just by Israel but the international community and even the Palestinian government in the West Bank, which is run by the Fatah faction - is seen as a means of weakening Hamas, strengthening the moderates and stopping the rocket fire.
But, in fact, the rockets continue to be launched and mothers like Nael's are calling for revenge while working-age men like Samir are accepting Hamas' offer to pick up arms.
It's the same scenario we saw in Northern Ireland where unemployment and financial hardship left the IRA as the only reliable employer.
When will they ever learn?
Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff reflects upon the ongoing conditions in Gaza and the middle east.
He titles this carton The Mother of all Wars
It's an impassioned term, but on reflection. the only one I can find that adequately describes Israels current military assult on Gaza. The term in ethnic cleansing.
A recent report published by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem highlights Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
I am the first to admit that the launching of Palestinian rockets in to Israel from Gaza must stop, but is Israel's current arsenal of responses helping or inflaming the situation?
And does Israel really want to eliminate the rocket attacks or just eliminate Gaza?
The New Zealand theologian who was tried in the 1960's on heresy charges is today heralded as a national hero.
Holder of New Zealand's prestigious Order of Merit Award, the equivalent of a Knighthood in earlier years, Lloyd Geering, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University is now very definitely a respected part of the establishment, and the church that once persecuted his 'outrageous' beliefs is now to hold a special service commemorating the 40th anniversary of his heresy trial.
This illustrates how yesterdays radicals become todays conservatives, that every 'ism becomes a 'wasim' and that every 'doctrine' has its day.
As much as this evolution in our understanding of 'truth' appeals to me, it does makes me wonder (worry) about how we will view George Bush in a hundred years?
I remember a cartoon I saw many years ago in a local newspaper.
It showed two young boys. One was crying in a corner while his elder brother, who had been fighting him, was being 'punished' by his angry father.
The caption simply read
'Boy, I'll teach you to fight with your little brother!"
The sad thing was, that is just what the father was doing. Modeling violence for his older son.
The attached video shows much the same thing. It depicts Arab & Israeli children 'at play' though it could just as easily be Catholic and Protestant children in Belfast or playground violence in your local school.
Despite the political bias of the video the end result is the same: violence hatred and prejudice is being invested into the future as children on both sides imitate their parents behaviour and practice how to behave themselves when they grow up.
A two nation solution in Palestine by 2009 may tear down the 'Walls of Shame' that physically divide Israel and Palestine but it will take generations to remove the walls that divide their hearts.
Today Egypt defied an Israeli request and opened its border with Palestine to allowed more than 1000 religious pilgrims to cross back into Gaza through the Egyptian border with Palestine at Rafah.
But why was this such a big deal?
The pilgrims had left Gaza via the Rafah crossing prior to Christmas to make Hajj at Mecca. They had done this with the full approval of the Israeli authorities (as Palestinians they have no political status) and naturally expected to return the same way.
When they did arrive back at Rafah several days ago they discovered to their surprise that the border was closed to them. Israel was insisting that they returned home via an Israeli controlled checkpoint and had put political pressure on Egypt to support them by closing its border fearing some of the pilgrims might be bringing money with them which could be used in support of Hamas.
The pilgrims were 'held' in a nearby transit camp, political wrangling pursued and in a surprise move today, Egypt took control and allowed the Gazans to return to their homes without passing through Israeli controlled territory.
So, has Israel suddenly gone soft and developed a conscience?
Will Egypt's actions turn a political spotlight on the humanitarian crisis that has gone largely unnoticed since Israel 'blockaded' Gaza last June?
Or is it a one-off gesture that will be smoothed over and quickly forgotten by the international media?
Watch this space!
Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of the Annapolis conference last week is a story which, understandably, the western media have failed to focus on Olmert's after conference statement to Israeli media that did not even seek to disguise his deepest fears.
"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."
For almost 30 years now the (impossible) idea of a two state solution has failed, mainly because one state, Israel, would control all the resources, and now Israel is left exposing its true Apartheid like nature:
As in all international conflict the bottom line is always social justice and human rights.
Perhaps it's about time Israel showed it's neighbors the same sort of compassion God once showed them?
Several days ago New Zealand police released details of the terrorist surveillance program that lead to the arrest and detention of a number of Maori activists under NZ's new anti terrorism laws.
Much of the emerging argument centers around weather or not the media have been overly selective in the information they published but the real issue is not that journalists may have conveniently paraphrased the report, but that this report exist at all.
The fact that more and more intrusive surveillance technology is available to our police should frighten rather than reassure us. Researchers at Georgetown University in 2002 developed what they called 'Gait recognition profiling'. This technique uses CCTV monitors (as seen in banks, railway stations, etc. in NZ) to map any individuals walking style, which is as unique apparently as their DNA profile, with out that persons knowledge or consent.
Coupled with existing face recognition capabilities this technology, potentially enables CCTV systems to identify any individual from a crowd, confirm their ID by matching to their 'Gait' profile and, again potentially, link to and access any other data held about the person under surveillance.
This is fine if we only use on in rare occasions to identify real terrorists.
The question is,
. . . . is that all it will be used for?
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