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Every child has the right to grow up free from violence and fear.
Children must be protected. Always. Everywhere.
They are #NotATarget.
—via |
NOT A TARGET FOR KILLING OR KIDNAP!!!
NOT A TARGET FOR STARVATION OR TORTURE!!!
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Thursday, February 20, 2025
UNITED NATIONS: Every child has the right to grow up free from violence and fear. Children must be protected. Always. Everywhere. They are #NotATarget. —via @UNICEF
Monday, October 16, 2023
WHAT YOU BOMB a poem by VIJAY PRASHAD
You encage two million people into 140 square miles. You are surprised when the people create tunnels to smuggle goods, to resist.
You bomb hospitals, you bomb schools, you bomb water plants, you bomb sewers – and you want us to feel sorry for you.
You have politicians who say they want to kill all Gazans, academics who call for rape as war’s weapon. And you are silent? Where are you?
Your arms have killed hundreds, injured thousands, displaced tens of thousands. You clap, you cheer. You weep when your soldiers fall.
On which side of the border should my tears fall? On the side of the bombers or the side of the bombed?
Your morality is challenged, your ethics on fire. All you can say, in bad faith, is Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.
You kill a child. Hamas. You bomb a school. Hamas. You bomb a UN building. Hamas. You bomb a disability center. Hamas. Hamas. Hamas.
For you Hamas has become a full-stop, an exclamation point, a digression, a shaggy dog, a golden ring, a do-not-go-to-jail card.
Who are you that you take shelter in five letters – Hamas – when entire families are wiped out in your name?
What you bomb is not Hamas. It is Palestine. Not a dream, but a people. Not a refugee camp, but a country alive in its peoples’ hearts.
Samah, Samah, Samah.[1]
[1] Samah, the reverse of Hamas, is an Arabic word that means Forgiveness (generosity of the soul).
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
My letter to the Guardian RE Mira Awad's enlightening and courageous column "Palestinian Israelis are often dismissed. Yet our voice is key to peace"
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| ‘When I represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009 together with the Jewish-Israeli singer Noa, the pressure from my Palestinian compatriots to withdraw was overwhelming.’ Mira Awad, right, and Noa Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images |
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/10/palestinian-israelis-dismissed-but-key-to-peace
Dear Sir,
I was delighted to read Mira Awad's enlightening and courageous column "Palestinian Israelis are often dismissed. Yet our voice is key to peace"... and it was wonderful to be able to hear her exquisite award winning voice singing Bahlawan. It is indeed time to recognize and appreciate "the acrobats"... and the many magnificently talented hard working people and good role models who practice and perfect peace as they make the most of their gifts and opportunities.
born into an Arab family in Israel (who currently teaches at the University of Maryland ) in a recent Washington Post column "How Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/08/how-israels-jewishness-is-overtaking-its-democracy/?postshare=7211457441647491&tid=ss_tw
explains the importance of Arab-Jewish relations within Israel- and the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He points out that the "loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab expresses joy at death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest."
Echo chamber thinking empowered by the internet and the entertainment driven nature of many news reports and forwards pushes many misguided people away from seeing the big picture, and away from understanding the importance of basics such true respect for universal human rights and Golden Rule thinking.
Music might be, but ethics and the rule of fair and just laws are not based on popularity polls: Ethics (and fair and just laws ) are a consensus of what generations of humankind's best and brightest have concluded is most likely right and what is most likely wrong. The test of time is the only way to know what works and what doesn't work. We know from the Nazi Holocaust that discrimination and bigotry can quickly grow monstrously evil and cruel.
We also know from Monty Python's Flying Circus that "No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition!" It is easy to look back at witch hunts and condemn the participants, but at the time things weren't quite so clear.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
My letter to the NYTimes RE "Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem" by Nathan Thrall & East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over With Despair by Jodi Rudoren
RE: "Mismanaging the Conflict in Jerusalem" by Nathan Thrall
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/opinion/mismanaging-the-conflict-in-jerusalem.html?emc=edit_ee_20151019&nl=todaysheadlines-europe&nlid=22789767
& East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over With Despair by
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/world/middleeast/in-east-jerusalem-palestinians-are-seething-after-years-of-neglect.html?emc=edit_th_20151018&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=22789767&_r=0
Dear Editor,
Mismanaging- or managing the Israel-Palestine conflict means a continuation, rather than an end to the conflict.
So far, more than sixty years and counting, violence has not ever come close to ending the conflict. Quite the opposite. Both institutional bigotry by the sovereign nation Israel, as well as individual violence by Israelis and Palestinians has only exasperated suffering, despair, angst, insults, revenge and more violence that fuels escalating hostilities- and bigotry.
Violence does make for eye catching newspaper headlines and exciting stories easily spun by professional and amateur propagandists on all sides of the conflict. In the West we tend to hear Israeli perspectives (and excuses), whereas all through out the Middle East the Palestinian perspective is quite well known on a personal level as the longest running refugee crisis in the world today continues to push Palestinians into forced exile.
One can not know what the 'wrong side of history' is until long after a situation ends, but my best guess (very much influenced by the global information age) is that sovereign Israel in harshly oppressing, impoverishing, trapping, tormenting and displacing as well as killing the native non-Jewish men, women and children of historic Palestine is on the wrong side of history.
Israel wants Palestinians - and Americans- to make peace with the idea that religion should determine citizenship rights and freedoms.
I think Palestinians are right to refuse to make peace with that.
A sovereign nation state in long term and flagrant violation of international law on multiple counts is on the wrong side of history. A recent UN Report points out an obvious place to start righting that wrong: "All settlement activity in occupied territory must cease "without preconditions" and Israel "must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers", said the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/31/israel-must-withdraw-settlers-icc#_=_
Two fully sovereign, fully secular states (based on full respect for universal human rights and the rule of fair and just laws) is the best way to actually end the Israel-Palestine conflict ASAP- for everyone's sake.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES
Tit-for-tat violence is ‘new normal’ in occupied territory..."The emerging “new normal” – characterised on the Palestinian side by spontaneous acts of violence mainly by youths, and on the Israeli side by settler vigilantes and trigger-happy soldiers – is yet another reminder that the status quo is neither manageable nor containable." Hussein Ibish
The ugly order of free-for-all killings in
Israel-Palestine - See more at: http://www.jordantimes.com/opinion/rami-g-khouri/ugly-order-free-all-killings-israel-palestine#sthash.4Q036fgT.UFvoh4TJ.dpuf
The ugly order of free-for-all killings in
Israel-Palestine - See more at: http://www.jordantimes.com/opinion/rami-g-khouri/ugly-order-free-all-killings-israel-palestine#sthash.4Q036fgT.UFvoh4TJ.dpuf
The
ugly order of free-for-all killings in Israel-Palestine
By Rami G. Khouri in the Jordan TimesEx-U.N. Official John Dugard: Israel’s Crimes are "Infinitely Worse" Than in Apartheid South Africa
Sam Bahour: Palestinians must not fall into this trap, again! "To cover up its crimes, Israel needs to feed all the western stereotypes of Palestinians as violent and subhuman rather than hungry for freedom and equal rights."
Artists got ‘Homeland is racist’ Arabic graffiti into the latest episode of ‘Homeland’
A
Palestinian woman, wearing her traditional embroidered dress
while shopping in Ramallah's open market, holds a pomegranate.
On World Food Day, we are reminded that food is so much more than just what we eat... 16 Pictures of the World's Kitchens Show the Hearts of Homes
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On World Food Day, we are reminded that food is so much more than just what we eat... 16 Pictures of the World's Kitchens Show the Hearts of Homes
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STAY CONNECTED... Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to: Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries
Unclench your fist... Live by the Golden Rule...
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Words to Honor: The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1.- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should
act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
***
Friday, June 4, 2010
From Jewish ethics to Israeli free-fire zones
From Jewish ethics to Israeli free-fire zones
By Rami G. Khouri
The events unfolding in the wake of Israel’s Monday attack against the humanitarian aid flotilla heading for Gaza can be assessed on three levels, and it matters very much how one chooses to engage the matter.
The first is the narrow technical level of who used force first - whether the Israeli attack was the problem or those on board who defended themselves against the Israelis triggered the fighting that resulted in death and injuries.
The second is the wider political context of the actions of both sides, raising important moral and legal issues - the long-running Israeli blockade and recent strangulation of the people of Gaza, and the growing Palestinian-international effort to break the Israeli siege and send basic humanitarian supplies to Gaza’s population.
The third level is Israel’s standing among the nations of the world. It is about how the entire modern Zionist movement that successfully created Israel as the homeland of the Jews who want to live there has found itself increasingly isolated because it ascribes to itself prerogatives that seem to place it above the laws that govern the conduct of all other states. This is why many have asked for years whether “Zionism is racism”.
The issues on all three levels are being widely discussed in the international media and political forums. The most important one, in my mind, is the third level - the hard questions about what Israel and Zionism have become, and how they relate to other people and states, beyond their conflict with the Palestinians and Arabs.
Are Israel and Zionism the noble manifestations of the Jewish people’s right to live in peace and security, without being subjected to genocidal pogroms - as Zionists portray their movement? Or have Zionism and Israel become so narrowly and blindly obsessed with their own needs that they have lost sight of the ethical foundations - justice, compassion, ethics-based law and equality for all humankind - that are widely seen as the core characteristics of Judaism, as of the other Abrahamic faiths?
Has Zionism, and by implication Israel and Judaism, been transformed from a commitment to preserving life to a media-based justification for siege, assault, piracy and murder?
These questions now being asked around the world are the deeper, more complex and often gut-wrenching ones that Israelis and Jews themselves need to debate and resolve. Israel wants to avoid this discussion, and prefers to keep the focus very narrow and technical. It has used its well-honed propaganda machine to shift the initial discussion in the international media to how a few passengers on one ship used sticks and knives to beat off the attacking Israeli commandos.
Jews were attacked by club- and knife-wielding mobs, the Israeli-Zionist refrain goes these days, and Jews must never again allow themselves to be attacked by mobs. In the wake of several hundred years of inhuman pogroms, racism and genocidal assaults against Jews mostly by white Christian Europeans, the message of Jewish self-defence carries special weight and resonance around the world - as it should. Yet the modern Jewish right to self-defence increasingly clashes with the modern Zionist and Israeli track record of aggression, ethnic cleansing, massacres, occupation, siege, collective punishment, low-intensity starvation, colonisation, and occasional bouts of barbarism against the Palestinians and other Arabs.
The practice of Israeli Zionism increasingly contradicts the ethical and moral foundations of historical Judaism: international law applies to the entire world, but the state of Israel reserves the special right to ignore and transcend that law, and to attack humanitarian convoys on the open seas, in the name of defending the Jewish people and their values.
Now, this Israeli-Zionist penchant for taking any measures deemed necessary to protect Jews has over-spilled the narrow conflict with Palestinians and Arabs, and has resulted in the death of Turks and a grave affront to the concept of the universality of international law.
Israel wants the world to get tangled up in an endless debate about a few knives and clubs. The world wants Israel to come to grips with the more fundamental issue of whether Israel respects the laws and norms that govern all humankind or behaves only according to an increasingly hysterical, violent and often murderous sense of its own perpetual victimhood.
Israel makes of its historical and permanent victimhood an absolute right to transform any place in the world into a free-fire zone and a killing field where it can run amok - in the name of protecting the Judaism that, in fact, it only increasingly besmirches and demeans.
Israel is becoming a new Jewish ghetto, increasingly isolated from and criticised by the world, and doubly tragic because this is largely the consequence of its own handiwork.
Jewish ethics hold human beings accountable to a higher moral code; does this also apply to Israel?
4 June 2010
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