The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement.

And so it’s begun–the drums of war. Again. There’s alarmism, near hysteria about barbarians already at the gate: ISIS. Twenty-one US states have now declared they will not accept Syrian refugees though not a one could explain what refugees fleeing Assad & ISIS have to do with Paris.

One European regime after another & the US are declaring all-out war on ISIS. But of course it is really war on refugees & civil liberties since they’re already bombing the hell out of Iraq & Syria.

These are scary times but we don’t have to cower in terror. Nor should we ever fall for the hysteria. Been there, done that more than once in the past several decades–actually in the past century. We stand fearlessly with civil liberties & will not sacrifice them to fear. And we stand relentlessly opposed to these monstrous wars.

The historic imperative remains: rebuild the international antiwar movement.

Taking genocide & war personally

Anyone who’s ever visited the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC can testify to its overwhelming power. Its a plain black rock wall with the names of 58,300 US soldiers who died in Vietnam etched in the order of their deaths. It’s a very moving monument because it makes the human toll of war very personal & immediate. (For the moment we’ll put aside that it’s a dishonest monument because the death toll of US soldiers was considerably higher–almost double. For the monument the Pentagon only released the names of those who died in Vietnam & excluded those who died on forays into Cambodia or Laos, on a ship on the way to hospital in Japan, or from injuries & Agent Orange health complications after they returned.)

Now numerous media sources are publishing the photos & brief bios of the terrorist victims in Paris. They were beautiful young cosmopolitans from all around Europe, the US, Chile, Morocco, Tunisia, & of course, France. Their faces, expectant of a good life, bring home to us the horrors of such monstrous acts of violence. It isn’t cynical to suggest media’s intention is to feed Islamophobia & less to pay tribute. But that doesn’t change how moving it is to see their faces & confront their loss.

What the Vietnam memorial leaves out are the names of Vietnamese victims which number somewhere between 1.5 million & 3.6 million depending on whether Cambodians & Laotians are included. And then there’s all those other wars–like Iraq, where Madeleine Albright said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were “worth it” to achieve US military goals–or Afghanistan, where 26,000 civilians have died just this year. The figures of civilian deaths from several wars are staggering & way beyond what’s possible to list on a news site or a monument.

The Pentagon works hard to keep the casualties an abstraction, just numbers, no names, no faces. no bios. We need to learn from Paris that these millions of victims were men, women, & children with every right to a long & peaceful life. They weren’t disposable; their deaths were not “worth it” but constitute war crimes. They were our brothers & sisters & we take their deaths very personal indeed.

Rebuild the international antiwar movement!

The terror of childhood under Israeli ethnic cleansing

Gaza little girl protesters ( Majdi Fathi:NurPhoto:Corbis) Nov 16 2015

Those who came of age in the US during the Cold War & McCarthy witch-hunt era of the 1950s know all about living in fear–even if the threats were entirely imaginary. Who knew communists really didn’t put fluoride in the water to corrupt the morals of youth, as we were taught? Or that the chances of Russia bombing the US were absolutely zilch? We still had to go through bomb drills in elementary school. It was an ominous intolerant time, much more than childhood should have to deal with–when childhood is already something of a fearful time.

So imagine coming of age in Gaza (or the West Bank) where the threats are entirely real–where Israeli bombers hunt & target children; where they’ve seen family, neighbors, playmates perish in one of Israel’s bombing attacks; where there is no safe place to sleep or live nor enough food to eat? Where families worry about protecting children from ethnic cleansing?

According to UNICEF, over 373,000 children in Gaza require intensive psychological treatment for shell-shock & PTSD after Israel’s carpet bombing binge in 2014. Small children suffer crying spells, nightmares, became mute, act out hysteria, are left paralyzed with terror. Surely that is one of the greatest human rights crimes of all: depriving thousands of little children of peace of mind, of a sense of security, of a childhood filled with love & play. The only thing more criminal is disabling & killing them with bombs.

These wee girls in Gaza are protesting to demand the release of prisoners in the Israeli gulag. Close to 200 children are in Israeli prisons & it is reported 75 percent have sustained physical assaults & other torture during interrogation or detention; 40 percent are sexually abused. Now with stone-throwing ruled a felonious offense by Israeli authorities, the number of incarcerated children will surely grow. When Israel’s political strategy is ethnic cleansing, children are a primary target & not just caught up in events.

Children have a right to a childhood free of such terrors. Building the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel is what Palestinians ask of international solidarity. It is the strongest way to stand with Palestinian children. Solidarity cannot give them back their childhoods but it can assure their future. Build BDS (Barcode beginning 729).

(Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Corbis)

Israeli commandoes raid Hebron hospital in violation of international law

Hebron hospital (Abed Al Hashlamoun:EPA) Nov 16 2015

It’s touching to see the whirlwind of condolences to French president Hollande from Obama, the Saudi king, India’s Narendra Modi, China’s president Xi Jinping, Syria’s Assad, David Cameron, Netanyahu–all of them responsible for the injuries, deaths, & displacement of millions of people.

Obama said the attacks were an “outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians” & the others surely concurred because if there’s one thing they all know something about, it is terrorizing innocent civilians–as does Hollande himself. Obama also said this was “an attack on all of humanity & the universal values we share.”

To expose the utter hypocrisy of the crocodile tears, most of them have been recently cited, some repeatedly cited by human rights groups for bombing hospitals in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, & elsewhere. The 1949 Geneva Conventions define human rights protections for civilians in a war zone. According to clearly defined provisions in the Conventions, hospitals have special protected status. It is illegal under international law to attack a hospital or other medical unit, whether civilian or military.

Doctors Without Borders/(MSF) are still sifting through the carnage of hospitals bombed in Afghanistan, Yemen, & Syria. Assad is accused by MSF of using barrel bombs on hospitals in Syria. Israel not only bombed hospitals in Gaza but ambulances, schools, refugee centers, apartment buildings, & public markets.

This photo from last week is documentation of Israeli war crimes & flagrant violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It’s from last Friday when Israeli commandoes entered a Palestinian hospital in Hebron, West Bank disguised as Palestinians, including one impersonating a pregnant woman in a wheelchair. They were looking for 20-year-old Azzam Shalaldeh, being treated in the hospital for gunshot wounds–who they accused of stabbing & “moderately wounding” an illegal Israeli settler. They handcuffed his sleeping brother Bilal (keeping vigil) to the next bed, yanked Azzam out of bed & arrested him, & shot dead his 27-year-old cousin Abdallah Shalaldeh as he came out of the bathroom. This is the scene when the commandoes left. If raiding a hospital, dragging a man out of a hospital bed, shooting down a man visiting his cousin isn’t “an attack on all of humanity”, then what the hell is!?

So where are the condolences? Is there a law of superior military might that renders those with bombers & AK-47s exempt from international humanitarian law? That gives Israel the right to eliminate due process, occupy & expropriate territory, bomb hospitals in Gaza & raid them in Hebron?

The need to rebuild the international antiwar movement remains imperative. The need to build BDS, the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel is a central part of that historic mission.

(Photo by Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA)