for Megan Heeney

I was dreaming about your future:
Later twenties, Manhattan, Union Theological Seminary,
“What’s a nice Catholic senorita like you doing in a place like this?”
It’s back to the books,
But with an occasional downtown jaunt to the Catholic Worker,
You cultivate an affinity group with your cheerful animation,
Speaking Spanish to the chicas on the subways,
Standing on Malcolm X Boulevard and 110th Street and listening to Dylan’s koan-like wind,
Picking up trash on the sidewalks as a spiritual exercise,
Watering geraniums at your studio apartment,
Teaching your teachers about the limits of language,
A NYU undergrad wants to come uptown and make a two-minute “movie” about you
And you say with a giggle to Katie, “I don’t want to be dismissed so cinematically!”

So far from the Midwest
With our cornfields and stolidness and segregations,
You feel liberated, like you could leap over the Empire State Building
Some days,
Other days, lost in the carrels,
Like Dorothy at the end of her life
(even though you’re still so young—une jeune femme en fleur)
You have elbows on the table, hands holding head of Botticelli Venus hair,
Weeping, sobbing, gasping for air
Half hour
Two hours
No studying today, simply
Soaked, spent, screwed

But then
(It’s a dream after all)
Like a bullet
You’re straight out of the frenzied focus of the library
Into the magnificent polluted spring air
Your eyes radiant, resurrected because
It came to you
It landed on you
It burrowed inside you
That precious, precarious image
That needs your noon-time and nocturnal nurturing
The image that suggests

How
To
End
The
War.

1.

“The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme and they were right to leave… Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”

–Jean Donovan, US lay missionary in El Salvador, raped and murdered by US-backed Salvadoran troops, 2 December 1980

“I’m having a hard time right now.   Just feel sick to my stomach from being doted on very sweetly, by people who are facing doom.  I know that from the United States it all sounds like hyperbole.  A lot of the time the kindness of the people here, coupled with the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me.  I can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry.   It hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be.”

–Rachel Corrie, US college student and activist in Rafah, Gaza, bulldozed to death by US-backed Israeli Army, 16 March 2003

2.

In the fall of 2003, I decided to take a sabbatical. Since I always encourage my Social Justice students to leave their comfort zone, I planned on doing the same: I worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For six weeks, I lived and worked in Rafah, Gaza, which had been the scene of many killings of Palestinian civilians and the demolition of hundreds of homes by the Israeli Army. While I was in Rafah, I thought many times of one of my predecessors there, an American college student by the name of Rachel Corrie.

On 16 March 2003 Rachel was killed by an Israeli soldier who bulldozed her as she tried to prevent a physician’s home from being demolished. The Palestinians considered her a shaheedah, a martyr, one who had died in the struggle against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. At our ISM office, we saw photographs and posters of Rachel Corrie in the full bloom of youth, with an exuberant smile, a bright future of promise in her eyes. When we met Palestinians on the street who wanted to know who we foreigners were, we would say, “ISM,” and they said back with effusive respect, “Yes, yes, Rachel Corrie, Rachel Corrie!”

One room of the ISM office in Rafah has a wall collage of shaheed posters, remembrances of those ordinary Palestinians (and a few internationals) who’ve been killed since the second intifada began in September 2000. These posters include young girls, teen-age boys, bookish-looking bespectacled young men, as well as confident resistance fighters posing with weapons that were unable to protect them from Israeli Apache helicopters or tanks. How many walls would be filled by all the martyr posters of this intifada? I could not imagine. And for each face there, I supposed that there were 10, or 30, or 60 family members and friends still reeling from the loss.

Early in my time in Rafah, our ISM team wanted to visit where Rachel Corrie was killed. Two white Mercedes taxis drove our group to the area where the doctor’s home still stood (it has since been demolished). When we got out and drew near to the site, our local Palestinian coordinator noticed an approaching Israeli jeep and a tank. He did not think it safe for us to stay and so he hurried us back in the taxis and said, “We will come another day.”

So instead we went to the nearby Al-Salaam neighborhood so we could inspect the damage caused by the recent Israeli Operation Root Canal. We got out our cameras and took video and digital photos of the massive home destruction. We also had a brief exchange with the family whose homes were blown up; they erected tents on their property and that’s where they were trying to live. One ISM volunteer, Kristi, age 26, and best friends with Rachel Corrie, began to weep at the misery before her eyes, the misery that also moved Rachel Corrie, day after day.

A few days later we made another attempt to see Dr. Sameer’s home. Many of our team were taking photos and video footage, but I didn’t have the heart to reach in my backpack to pull out my camera to document more devastation. Then we saw an Israeli tank in the distance coming toward us (they patrolled that area every 15 minutes, I was told). Our Palestinian guide insisted that we duck and run but some of us were not so quick in following his instructions. Live ammo came whizzing our way, ricocheting off the wall we had just passed.

In an email to her mother while she was in Rafah, Rachel wrote, “When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them - and may ultimately get them - on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity - laughter, generosity, family-time - against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death.… I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.”

3.

Not surprisingly, some people have demonized Jean Donovan and Rachel Corrie: Jean was a “Communist” and Rachel was a “terrorist,” with the imputation that they “got” what they deserved.

Yet, all over the world others have been inspired by their commitment to justice. They are witnesses not only to the horrors of injustice, so smoothly explained away by U.S. leaders; they are also witnesses to our capacities for accompaniment, risk taking, and solidarity.

As a teacher, I am grateful to so many former students whose commitment also challenges and inspires me. Some of them have chosen to work overseas, and have become able to recognize in the people with whom they shared their days and nights what Rachel simply called “dignity.” I am thinking of such people as Mary (Mozambique), Wendy (Cameroon), Marybeth (Uganda), Magan (Palestine), Bridget (Chile), Danielle (El Salvador), Laura (Bolivia), James (Nicaragua), Randa (Mali), Ginny (Mexico), Laura (El Salvador), Becca (Haiti), Colette (El Salvador), Elizabeth (Colombia), Anna (Poland), Kristen (Belize), Zeina (Palestine), Layla (Afghanistan), Josh (Bolivia), Matt (Mozambique), Christine (Mexico), Lauren (Uganda), Jen (Guatemala), Megan (Colombia), and Lala (Indonesia).

4.

“I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in, a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that our future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall.”

–Rachel Corrie, email from Gaza

In the first chapter of The Book of Mev (on writing Mev’s obituary), I cited Natalie Goldberg, whose book Writing down the Bones has been a companion of mine since 1986. Natalie will be doing a reading from and signing of her new book, Old Friend from Far Away, on Monday 16 March at Left Bank Books in the Central West End at 7 p.m. I have assigned Writing down the Bones for at least sixteen semesters, often to two or three classes each semester. Hundreds of my students at Saint Louis University and Webster University have been exposed to this wise and encouraging teacher.

Two passages, one from Writing down the Bones, and the other from Thunder and Lightning:

“When you begin to write this way — right out of your own mind — you might have to be willing to write junk for five years, because we have assimilated it over many more than that and have been gladly avoiding it in ourselves.”

“As a writer you should go to a book thirsty and suck it dry.”

1.

I have noticed that some Missourians are converging on Columbia on Saturday 21 March “to mark the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War.” The slogans for this gathering include the following: “Yes We Can! Begin the Peace Economy. End the Wars!” In the words of the flyer now circulating, the day will be a time for “Speakers! Music! Marching!” In remembering such a dread event as the U.S. invasion, I’m unsure how to interpret the exclamation points.

I make the following surmise: The invocation of “Yes we can!” is a direct reference, not to Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, but to the new American president, whose campaign adopted this self-empowering mantra.

Further, I admit to the following nagging curiosity: How can we end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially given President Obama’s undeniable commitment to the well-being of the military-industrial complex? Why would the Missouri peace movement adopt Obama’s own borrowed phraseology when he is escalating the U.S. commitment to “win,” whatever that means, in Afghanistan?

Last, I ask the following question: Why say “begin the peace economy” now? Haven’t people been addressing this issue since the end of the Cold War? Is now a particularly auspicious time to do so? What evidence is there to suppose so?

2.

“I don’t really see that we’re the bad boy.”

“Why should I feel responsible?”

“But the thing which I think I will remember about Vietnam when I am a hundred years old and will talk about it with my grandchildren is the countryside, how beautiful the women looked, and the food.”[1]

3.

A few elementary truths…

The United States has no right to be in Iraq.

The United States has committed war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

No American officials are above the law, while they are in office or after leaving office.

American citizens have a responsibility for the crimes committed in their names by their government officials.

4.

“I don’t hate Americans. I hate the policy of invading other countries. And the debt, the distribution from the Paris Agreements, why haven’t they given us anything? We are very poor because of the war. The Americans don’t see how they destroyed everything, and they won’t pay their debt. I listen to the radio and hear how the Americans still have an embargo on our economy, and have no diplomatic relations with us. That’s not right.

This is the Vietnamese people’s land. Why did the Americans come to destroy us and make war, and why don’t they help now to rebuild our country? I am a farmer, I stay here. And I ask a simple question. Why did the Americans come here to destroy homes and kill people? And I ask you, who invaded who? If Vietnam decided to invade America they would have to send troops—the distance is far, thousands of kilometers. I ask you, if I came to your land to destroy and burn your houses, how would you feel? So I say, when the Americans came here to fight and destroy the Vietnamese people, they were wrong. The Vietnamese were not wrong to defend their land. And when the Americans lost the war, why didn’t they want to have relations with us?”[2]

5.

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza in late December and January, there has been increasing discussion about the need for supporting the Palestinian call to a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel.[3] Embraced by numerous organizations in Palestinian civil society, the BDS movement seeks to put the kind of pressure on Israel as was placed on apartheid South Africa by international civil society in the days when Nelson Mandela was still in prison.

U.S. citizens ought to consider whether BDS is an appropriate strategy here to force changes in Israeli policy, given that U.S. government has long been an enthusiastic accomplice with Israel in its torment of the Palestinians. But at this late date, six years into the American aggression against the Iraqi people, I wonder: Has anyone from within the U.S. or beyond called for a BDS movement against the United States, for example, by tactics such boycotting our artists and universities, and divesting from American companies? After all, the Bush administration was the singular instigator and relentless perpetrator of the war, occupation, mass death, torture, extraordinary rendition, destruction of Fallujah, devastation of culture, and unimaginably much more in Iraq.

6.

“I don’t think we ever lost hope or determination. But because the war was around for so many years the frustration was high and we ran out of what to do next. I mean first you have a picnic type of peace demonstration in the park, then you take it to Washington, or you have five demonstrations in five key cities. But that’s not working. They’re not paying attention. They don’t care if you have one peaceful demonstration. It doesn’t take any toll on the establishment. They can still pursue the war. There’s no price they have to pay. They don’t care if we don’t go to school. They don’t care if we’re out of our jobs and running around Washington or staying up all night. They don’t care.”[4]

7.

In a stirring conclusion to his brilliant examination of Gandhi’s relevance to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, Norman Finkelstein said,

Gandhi translated satyagraha as “hold on to the truth.” Herewith is our challenge: to hold on to the truth that what Israel has done to the Palestinians is wrong; to hold on to the truth that Israel’s refusal, backed by the U.S., to respect international law and the considered opinion of humankind is the sole obstacle to putting an end, finally, to their suffering. We can win if we hold on to the truth, and if, as the Negro spiritual put it with cognate wisdom, we “keep our eyes on the prize, and hold on.” That is, if we keep remembering what the struggle—the prize—is all about: not theoretical fad or intellectual provocation, not holier-than-thou radical posturing, but—however humdrum, however prosaic, by comparison—freeing the Palestinian people from their bondage….

Where was the world during the Nazi holocaust?, we still ask. Where is the world now? Has the Palestinian struggle gone on too long? Has it become boring and passé? Has the time come to move on? But the Palestinian people continue to be ground under, the merciless Israeli juggernaut keeps pressing on, confiscating yet more land, demolishing yet more homes, destroying yet more lives. The time now is not to move on—but to hold on![5]

This month, as people remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to which truths will we hold on? To whom will we communicate such truths? Will we blunt the edge of those truths so we can be more “effective” to get the ears of people in power? Will we challenge those who admit that, yes, some mistakes were made in Iraq during the Bush years, but things are different now? Will we remember our crimes with shame or will some of us say with a shrug that Iraq is now passé?

Do we have any idea how to free the Iraqi people from their bondage by us? Do we have any strategy for dealing with the permanent U.S. military bases and the business-as-usual profiteering of U.S. corporations in Iraq? In this period of daily talk of hundreds of billions of dollars for the economy, have we given thought to the case for reparations we owe the people of Iraq?

Will we interfere with the merciless American juggernaut as politicos and intellectuals soberly debate whether or not to add Iran to the other two Muslim nations we are currently dominating?

When we were reading Chan Khong’s book, Learning True Love, I compiled the following for my young students who do not know much about the American War in Vietnam.

American Heritage Dictionary

Napalm, incendiary material used in bombs and flame throwers. Developed during World War II, napalm is a mixture of gasoline (sometimes mixed with other petroleum fuels) and a thickening agent. The thickener turns the mixture into a dense jelly that flows under pressure, as when shot from a flame thrower, and sticks to a target as it burns. Earlier Soap thickeners were replaced by polystyrene and similar polymers.

Philip Jones Griffiths, Vietnam, Inc.

NAPALM. The most effective “anti-personnel” weapon, it is euphemistically described as “unfamiliar cooking fluid” by those apologists for American military methods. They automatically attribute all napalm cases to domestic accidents caused by the people using gasoline instead of kerosene in their cooking stoves. Kerosene is far too expensive for the peasants, who normally use charcoal for cooking. The only “cooking fluid” they know is very “unfamiliar” – it is delivered through their roofs by U.S. planes.

Some of its finer selling points were explained to me by a pilot in 1966: “We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow [Chemical Company]. The original product wasn’t so hot – if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (WP – white phosphorous) so’s to make it burn better. It’ll even burn under water now. And just one drop is enough, it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning.”

Philip Jones Griffiths, in the book Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian Appy

There was a napalm ward in the provincial hospital of Quang Ngai where the people were so badly disfigured they could probably never go back into society. Many had been put in there to die. I was there once and saw this kid. He had his eyelids burned off, his nose burned off, and his lips burned off. He was halfway to becoming a skull, but he was still alive. I could hardly look at him—he was so ugly, so frightening, really, really frightening.

So I just glanced at him and turned around. I was photographing someone else and I felt somebody pulling at the back of my shirt. I turned around and it was the boy. He indicated with sign language that he wanted me to take his picture. As I took his picture, I remember thinking that it will never get published but it’s something we should have for the war crimes trial. Of course that never happened.

When I came out of that ward there was an American journalist. She said, “I can’t go in there, it’s too horrible. Can you take my camera and take some pictures for me?” I said, “No, you go in there. Those people were burned with your taxpayer’s money. Go and see what they did to those people with your money.”

Teachings from the Buddhist Order of Interbeing

Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to life. Select a vocation which helps realize your ideal compassion.

Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and to prevent war.

Respect the property of others but prevent others from enriching themselves from human suffering or the suffering of other beings.

Review of Jimmy Carter, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), $27.00.

Now in his eighties, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter persistently continues his pursuit of peace in the Middle East. In the follow-up to his controversial book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (2006), Carter covers familiar territory and comes up with a surprisingly optimistic perspective, revealed in the book’s title: We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.

For his last book, Carter was denounced by some as an anti-Semite and the best friend of terrorists; nevertheless, he accomplished what he set out to do: namely, to provoke a lively debate on this central foreign policy question of how to foster peace in what he calls the Holy Land (i.e., Palestine and Israel).

I read Palestine Peace Not Apartheid with some appreciation and interest, because Carter used his immense cultural, symbolic, and political capital to draw attention to issues long downplayed or ignored in the U.S. mainstream. For example, in that book, he wrote, “Regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or one with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet, Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land. In order to perpetuate the occupation, Israeli forces have deprived their unwilling subjects of basic human rights. No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements.” [208-209] I and several friends in Saint Louis have taken the opportunity to visit and work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and can confirm Carter’s analysis.

Early in his this book, Carter asks, “What is the existing deadlock in promoting peace?” [xvii] In the latter part of the book, he makes the following observations:

For the past thirty years, there has been no doubt in both private and public discussions, within the Holy Land and globally, the confiscation of land and building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are recognized as one of the primary obstacles to peace. There has been a recent outpouring of condemnations by political leaders. [151-152]

The chance for successful peace negotiations would be greatly enhanced if the threat of terrorist acts could be effectively addressed. There is little doubt that a peace agreement in the Holy Land with a contiguous and viable state for the Palestinians would remove a major cause of terrorism throughout the region. [155]

Palestinians, Israelis, and other observers recognize that during the past sixteen years, U.S. political leaders have acquiesced in Israel’s massive settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Intended to establish permanent “facts on the ground,” the result has been to diminish (or eliminate) the prospect of a sovereign, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state with the West Bank linked to Gaza and its capital in Jerusalem. [166]

These three observations, then, go a long way to illuminating that issue of deadlock: Both the U.S. and Israel have been unwilling to agree to Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian territory. Under Carter’s presidential successors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the so-called “peace process” can more accurately be described as the “ghettoization process” of the Palestinians.

Carter achieved lasting fame for his role in bringing together Israel and Egypt in the Camp David Accords in 1979. During those negotiations, Carter noted that the Israeli leaders Menachem Begin and Moshe Dayan were not willing:

(1) to withdraw politically or militarily from any part of the West Bank; (2) to stop the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing ones; (3) to withdraw Israeli settlers from Egypt’s Sinai or leave them under U.N. protection; (4) to acknowledge that U.N. resolution 242 applied to the West Bank-Gaza area; (5) to grant the Palestinians real authority or a voice in their own future; or (6) to discuss the issue of refugees. [35]

Many of the foregoing refusals characterize recent Israeli policy. Indeed, over the last thirty years, there has been a remarkable consistency in Israeli leadership. One expression used to describe their strategy is “movement without motion”—producing the illusion that diplomacy was focused on peace (while “facts on the ground” were being established that negate the possibility of a real peace settlement).

The “plan” referred to in the book’s subtitle refers to the long-standing two-state solution, which calls for Israel to return to its 1967 borders and terminating its settlements. (The two-state solution is based on the crucial U.N. resolutions, and embraced by the Arab League, and is the subject of several appendices in Carter’s book.) Yet, Carter plainly sees the continued, operative U.S. support for Israel’s “facts on the grounds,” as in these two passages: “As President Bush had not mentioned settlements in his Knesset speech, the Israelis not only ignored [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] but announced plans to build another thirteen hundred new homes in the West Bank and projected forty thousand more during the next decade.” [152] “On March 17 [Ehud Olmert] announced that Israel had the absolute right to continue expanding existing settlements and building new ones, especially around Jerusalem, despite objections from Washington or anywhere else.” [114]

Carter acknowledges the baleful significance of these settlements for the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine. Further, he cites Palestinians and Israelis who believe that the settlements have rendered impossible a two-state solution, thus raising the issue of both peoples living together in one state. Carter notes: “The next stage within a single state would be a struggle before world opinion for equal political rights for millions of Palestinians voters similar to what took place in South Africa.” [162] Israel would then face the choice of losing its Jewishness as a state, or gaining full apartheidness as a state. Carter soberly concludes, “Perhaps the most important overarching decision for the Palestinians is whether to seek equal citizenship within a single nation instead of continuing their frustrated struggle for separate statehood. The Israelis will have to provide the ultimate response.” [170]

It is with that last sentence that I have to disagree. What is jarring in Carter’s book is his view, not of Israel or Palestine, but the United States. Consider these excerpts:

The United States will find all parties to the conflict—and leaders of other nations—eager to support strong, fair, and persistent leadership from Washington. [xx]

Yet for the past fifty years the United States has been widely recognized as the essential interlocutor that can provide guidance, encouragement, and support to those who want to find common ground. Unfortunately, most leaders in Washington have not been effective in helping parties find peace, while making it harder for other potential mediators in Europe, the Near East, and the United Nations to intercede. [xv]

I know from personal experience that the influence of our government is limited, but there is no prospect for regional harmony and stability unless the United States plays a leadership role … [179]

The historical record demonstrates that the U.S. government has overwhelmingly backed one side (Israel) with abundant military aid, steadfast diplomatic support in the U.N. and ardent Congressional backing as well, hardly a fair and balanced approach to the conflict. Accordingly, Washington has been relentlessly effective in enabling Israel to pursue its goals, not of peace and normalization, but of conquest of the choicest parts of Palestinian territory and of the elimination of any meaningful sense of Palestinian sovereignty. But even as Carter admits that U.S. influence is limited, surely, he must also realize the enormous agency the U.S. has long exerted in the region, agency that has been detrimental to the cause he champions. The U.S. has overwhelming power and has used that power as it sees fit, in this case, to empower Israel through dollars, votes, and deals. Regardless of official pronouncements, the U.S. government has been a full, bipartisan, and devoted partner to the demise of the two-state solution.

After the cover the United States provided Israel in its assault on Gaza in December and January, our claim to be interested in peace for Israel and Palestine is simply incredible to increasing numbers of people around the world. The U.S. has wanted it both ways: To be Israel’s staunch ally and to be seen in the international community as an honest and judicious broker. This is impossible. Either the Obama administration continues to unconditionally back Israel or else it must substantively change course and pursue an even-handed, balanced peace process.

For, as Palestinian Salam Fayyad put it simply to Carter, “Unless America stops the Israelis from expanding settlements there can be no peace. Not one more brick!” [124]