Happy New Year, Israel – To All Of You, Even The Strangers In Our Midst by Angela Godfrey 10:14pm Wed Sep 4 '02 alwgodfrey@hotmail.com The State of Israel’s currently involved in various states of war, some more superfluous than others. There’s the so-called war on terrorism which seems to be a good excuse to hi-jack the democratic process along with the peace process, curb human rights, silence critics, alienate and torment Palestinian and Israeli Arabs alike, cynically sacrifice citizens without solving the problems behind the terrorism (It’s the Occupation, stupid!), and allow trigger-happy teenage soldiers to have a field day while retired Pentagon generals rake in money selling arms. print article Happy New Year, Israel – To All Of You Even The Strangers In Our Midst The State of Israel’s currently involved in various states of war, some more superfluous than others. There’s the so-called war on terrorism which seems to be a good excuse to hi-jack the democratic process along with the peace process, curb human rights, silence critics, alienate and torment Palestinian and Israeli Arabs alike, cynically sacrifice citizens without solving the problems behind the terrorism (It’s the Occupation, stupid!), and allow trigger-happy teenage soldiers to have a field day while retired Pentagon generals rake in money selling arms. If that’s not enough, then there’s the threatened war on Iraq (carpets, daisies away, collateral damage…? Who cared about hundreds of thousands of dead kids during sanctions?) and its possible repercussions here. Never mind over there in America, where maybe yet again they’ll have to start asking that tricky question: Why do they hate us? Other wars? There’s the passive, heroic militancy of 486 refuseniks (Yes!). A war on the roads, with Israeli youth gung ho as ever. The lost battle of enlisting the yeshiva bokers, who’re busily fighting for peace through prayer (oh yeah! Amen, amen). Wars of words, epitomised by the CNN case, not to mention the war for the media now imposing actual control on it, viz. the IBA, which may finally bring Labour out of the unholy coalition. A minor matter of theocracy (Hebron’s thugocracy et al) versus democracy. A war against demographics -- bring me your Peruvians and I shall show them a West Bank home flowing with tapwater and electronic fences. A war for the soul of Jewishness: slight, tiny oversight…. no one’s yet come up with an actual definitive definition of Jewishness. What kind of a people need to be told Thou Shalt Not Kill? Answer: Anyone believing the IDF logic: “If force doesn’t work, try more force”. And then there’s the battlefield called Zionism is Racism which – as Yeshayahu Liebowitz predicted – increasingly threatens Israel’s moral fibre. Racial superiority soon translates into transfer and apartheid especially with this government. Can we learn from South Africa? Probably not, even though the merciful downfall of apartheid came through outside pressure from an outraged world and from the internal strains and stresses of all the exceptions to those purist rules, which made racism, in the end, an unworkable final solution traumatising both black and white society with its inherent evil. Should you protest “Israel isn’t racist!” consider then the case of the Negev Bedouin. Year after year recommendations are made to government committees that the problem of the Bedouin in the Negev must be solved. Year after year nothing is done. These are full Israeli citizens, loyal soldiers in the IDF, who have never rioted, demonstrated or mounted an Intifada. They’ve been shamefully, tragically mistreated. The only reason for their untouchable caste status (apart from the fact that they come from a calm culture which doesn’t get publicly uptight, noisily rebel or go in for political extortion) is their race. Only mindlessly automatic knee-jerk deniers could try to intellectualise an excuse for such bad faith on the part of repeated governments. In August, 150 civil society activists and the Israeli Police escorted three large water tankers from the Reading Power Station in Tel Aviv down to the Sayag region. There the activists were given a guided tour of unrecognised villages. Unmade roads, unfit for buses or school transport, which turn to mudslides in winter. Shacks and cinderblock shanties. Like Third World encampments, they have no infrastructure: education, health, water, sewage, telephone or electricity. Scores of thousands of people who have no access to a water system. Scores of thousands of people whom you probably only see at a distance as your car whizzes you down to glitzy Eilat. People who travel long distances daily to bring water to their homes – water in often contaminated plastic or metal containers which spread disease. People living on the fringes of civilisation, who have been given no democratic benefits of citizenship.The reason? These people chose not to be forced off their land into the ghettoes of Rahat because – like all indigenous peoples the world over -- they prefer to maintain a link with their land, which put simply means they want to continue their lifestyle and maintain their livelihoods. And there’s the rub. Their land. The state, in ever increasing addiction for acquisition, is maintaining a campaign of home demolitions, land confiscation and destruction of precious crops. Whereas the Jewish population everywhere, even in neighbouring settlements, and even in nearby development towns, now enjoys a comparatively luxurious lifestyle. An abundant supply of piped water. In 1994 the Jewish settlements of the region used five times as much water per person as their non-Jewish neighbours. In 1988, the total consumption of water for drinking and farming was 1.3 billion m3 for the Jewish population versus 26 million m3 for the non-Jewish – a mere 50 times as much! And we’re not racist? Go tell it to the mountains. And the Bedouin. Sometimes one wonders whether everyone really does want peace, as they all say, or if those vested interests disguised as national need maybe just prefer to have all those fun fun fun, oh we’re so macho wars self-perpetuating. Peace for them still translates as someone loses, and it just might have to be us. Sharing just doesn’t have the same cachet as winner takes all, somehow, does it? Whereas in fact, real winning means everyone wins. Leshalem (to pay) for shalom (peace), so we can all be shalem (whole). For God’s sake, give peace a chance. Give peace. Before all these wars wipe us out. One way or another. Happy New Year. Now can we please get on with a normal life… add your comments Source file

Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy by Angela Godfrey 10:18pm Wed Sep 4 '02 alwgodfrey@hotmail.com Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy add your comments Source file

Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy by Angela Godfrey 10:20pm Wed Sep 4 '02 alwgodfrey@hotmail.com Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy add your comments Source file

Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy by Angela Godfrey 10:26pm Wed Sep 4 '02 alwgodfrey@hotmail.com Pictures of Bedioun Water Convoy add your comments Source file

Depression by Lora Marlow 11:29pm Wed Sep 4 '02 print comment Happy New Year! Ha Shana Tov! Yesterday I've given birth to a fantastic boy. He is so cute! And we do not circumcise him, we hope other Jews and Israelis shall follow us. Do you want your sons to be unsensible?.. Liberate yourself, stop being invalides, it's enough we kill everybody around, why we need to cut off the beautiful tasty envelops of our best friends?.. Liberate yourself! Arm yourself against the Rosh-Hashana depression. Arm yourself with flowers, arm yourself with Kalshnikov, it's up to your taste - but fight depression. Liberation is not for tomorrow but it is growing with each hour. Like my son. More and more New Jews free themselves from our mental cannibal cut-penis rabbis. More and more New Jews organize themselves in Jewish Republican Brigades. They are in every house, in every street where you smell the rotten odour of 95% of our fable parents. Liberate yourself. Shana tov! add your comments

co-op is the answer by La Charrone 3:07pm Wed Sep 18 '02 print comment As an "Earth Artist" who created Art Projects with Bedouins in the seventies and now am exiled - the only answer is cooperation. If changes are needed - in land, etc., they should be involved in change-making policies, with relation of how to modernise society with obvious rights and duties involved; M.S. www.msamuseum.com add your comments