Before I Was A Gazan -poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Before I Was A Gazan

- Naomi Shihab Nye

 

I was a boy

and my homework was missing,

paper with numbers on it,

stacked and lined,

I was looking for my piece of paper,

proud of this plus that, then multiplied,

not remembering if I had left it

on the table after showing to my uncle

or the shelf after combing my hair

but it was still somewhere

and I was going to find it and turn it in,

make my teacher happy,

make her say my name to the whole class,

before everything got subtracted

in a minute

even my uncle

even my teacher

even the best math student and his baby sister

who couldn’t talk yet.

And now I would do anything

for a problem I could solve.

 

 

https://poets.org/poem/i-was-gazan

CNN: A group of US officials who publicly resigned over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy are banding together to support ongoing dissent and put pressure on the government to change course.

Former Biden officials explain why they are working to get him to change US' policy in Gaza

By Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood, CNN

8 minute read

Updated 11:37 AM EDT, Sun June 9, 2024

CNN  —  More than half a dozen people from across the US government have left their jobs in public protest, saying they could no longer work for the administration, and even more have quietly departed. Many of the officials who resigned publicly said they would instead seek to have an impact outside the government.

President Joe Biden has faced pressure both abroad and at home over his support for Israel eight months into the war in Gaza with Hamas – a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of civilian lives, displaced millions and brought extreme hunger throughout the enclave. Although the rhetoric from the administration has become harsher – with warnings that Israel must do more to protect civilians and allow more aid in – the policies have remained largely unchanged.

The former officials who resigned publicly – Josh Paul, Harrison Mann, Tariq Habash, Annelle Sheline, Hala Rharrit, Lily Greenberg Call, Alex Smith, and Stacy Gilbert – said that they felt their perspectives, expertise and concerns were not being heeded, and that the administration was willingly ignoring the humanitarian toll caused by Israel’s military campaign. They spoke of the damage they felt US policy on the war is having on the country’s credibility and a sense that the administration did not fully grasp that impact.

All the officials who have resigned publicly and spoke with CNN said they have many colleagues who are still within the government but agree with their decision to leave.

Providing support and advice to those colleagues – whether they choose to leave or continue to dissent from within – is one of the key reasons that they have come together collectively. Another key reason, they said, is to increase the pressure on the administration to change course.  READ MORE...  https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/08/politics/us-officials-gaza-policy-resignations/index.html

  [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] 

Why are America’s elite universities so afraid of this scholar’s paper? ... The Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah's article was censored- disappeared... The Columbia Law Review website was temporarily shut down after it published a Palestinian human rights lawyer’s article proposing a new way to understand Palestinian life under Israeli rule

The Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah. Photograph: Courtesy Rabea Eghbariah

Jonathan Guyer

Sun 9 Jun 2024 08.00 EDT

When the Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah arrived at a Manhattan cafe on Thursday afternoon, he had just learned that his article had been reinstated in the Columbia Law Review. After a weeklong censorship controversy, the prestigious journal’s website was back online, too.

The law school journal’s faculty and alumni board had shuttered the website for most of the week rather than publicize Eghbariah’s 105-page article, titled Toward the Nakba as a Legal Concept. In it, he proposed a new framework to explain the complex, fragmented legal regimes governing Palestinians. He wanted to bring the word Nakba – which translates from the Arabic as catastrophe, and is better known for describing the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 – to the center of a new legal conversation.

Wearing a white T-shirt and linen pants and sipping iced coffee, he reflected on an extraordinary week that saw his legal theories – ordinarily the stuff of arcane law school debates – ignite emotive conversations about the legitimate bounds of debate about Israel and Palestine.

What’s more, it wasn’t the first time his ideas were deemed too dangerous to publish by the Ivy League.

He had worked on his contribution for almost half a year, finding a home for it at the Columbia Law Review after a shorter web piece he had written for the Harvard Law Review had been blocked at the last minute.

He was proud of his scholarship but found it dangerous that the content of his article had become secondary to what he saw as the manufactured controversy of its censorship. “Now, we have to debate about my right to say what I want to say instead of debating about what I actually said,” he told the Guardian.... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/columbia-law-review-rabea-eghbariah-palestine-censorship-controversy

   [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Where Olive Trees Weep: Official Trailer (2024).... "There is no post traumatic disorder because THERE IS NO POST " - Dr Gabor Mate’ #Palestine

United Nations: More than 78 years ago, 50 nations came together to create a new organization for peace, prosperity & human rights.

Original manuscript of the UN Charter preamble, complete with handwritten notes.

United Nations

@UN

On Sunday’s #InternationalArchivesDay, check out the original manuscript of the UN Charter preamble, complete with handwritten notes. More than 78 years ago, 50 nations came together to create a new organization for peace, prosperity & human rights. https://un.org/en/about-us/un

 

 

United Nations Charter:
Preamble

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.  https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/preamble

United Nations Charter, Chapter I:
Purposes and Principles

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

.... READ MORE  https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/preamble

 

The Charter of the United Nations is the founding document of the United Nations. It was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into force on 24 October 1945...       READ MORE  https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter