December, 2009

by Sandra Tamari

Am I deserving of that kind of love?

Would she have been my friend?

Would she have had kids by now?

What happened to the cats?

Waiting for Jad’s Tae Kwon Do

to let out

Tired suburban parents yawn

and comment about all they need to do for Christmas

rather than all they need to do for Christ

12-foot plastic trees don’t go up by themselves

I want to shove one of Mev’s photos–

the one of the beautiful boy from Chiapas–

under their noses

and tell them

Wake Up! We are the Eyes of the World.

I want Arco Angels of my own

I want to have long discussions over wine and chocolate

with Mev and Mark

I want to be good

I want to be worthy

I want to live my life fully

rather than tell kids with big hopes that

they don’t

make the cut

for the American dream

Suffering can be beautiful

Why have I avoided it?

I will look at suffering in Gaza

and witness the beauty and the dignity

and the sorrow and the sadness

and I will be better for it.

I came across the following passage on mothers of the disappeared from Daniel Berrigan’s Steadfastness of The Saints: A Journal of Peace and War in Central and North America, in which he writes about his visits with Salvadoran women during the U.S.-backed bloodbath of the mid-1980s.

And after each interview, the mother would invariably walk to the far end of the table, to a heap of photo albums laid there. Would take one of them in hand, gravely turn page after page, these images out of the national abattoir, the tortured, raped, amputated. The photos that stood horrid surrogate for the young men, absent from streets and homes and churches and factories. The disappeared generation. I could scarcely bear to look at the faces that dared look at such images, and not be turned to stone. How much can one bear? I did not know. But I sensed that the measure of what could be borne would be revealed neither by psychiatrist nor politician not bishop. I must go in humility to these unknown, despised lives, upon whom there rested the preferential option of God.

At a 1990 commemoration of the murders of the Salvadoran Jesuit intellectuals, Rev. Jose Maria Tojeira stated, “The developed world’s solidarity will not be authentic as long as it is limited to supporting us, the Jesuits . . . while alienation, poverty and injustice continue to batter the disenfranchised.”

In his 1986 address upon receiving the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel pointed out that, during the Holocaust, “the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”

Yet, on one of the great issues of our time, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mr. Wiesel has not abided by the moral maxims he championed in the above address. For example, in the second volume of his memoirs, he admitted, “Indeed, I can say in good faith that I have not remained indifferent to any cause involving the defense of human rights. But, you may ask, what have I done to alleviate the plight of the Palestinians? And here I must confess: I have not done enough….In spite of considerable pressure, I have refused to take a public stand in the Israeli-Arab conflict. I have said it before: since I do not live in Israel, it would be irresponsible for me to do so.”

In recent years, we the undersigned have traveled to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories—the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip—and have seen for ourselves the disturbing, heart-breaking, and outrageous effects of Israel’s domination and aggression against the Palestinian people, aided and abetted by the U.S. government and armaments corporations. December and January mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s attack, which is described by the Goldstone Report of the United Nations as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

In the spirit of Mr. Wiesel’s call to interference, three people from the Metro area –Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor; Sandra Mansour, a Palestinian activist; and J’Ann Allen, a grandmother and wife of a retired military officer—will leave for Gaza on December 26^th to join over a thousand people from approximately 40 countries on the Gaza Freedom March [http://www.gazafreedommarch.org/]. Along with 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza, they will march to call attention to the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis there.

Hedy, Sandra, and J’Ann call on Mr. Wiesel to join them and bear witness to the suffering, humiliation, and torment caused by Israel’s indiscriminate violence:

Let us go, Mr. Wiesel, and listen to the lamentations of Palestinian parents who have lost their children, and the children who are now orphans;

Let us go, and stand amid the desolate ruins everywhere the eye can see—of destroyed homes, hospitals, clinics, factories, mosques, and schools;

Let us go, and interview a few of the tens of thousands of still homeless men, women, and children;

Let us go, and listen to the doctors’ heart-rending accounts of the misery and maiming inflicted on civilians by the munitions of the Israel Defense Forces;

Let us go, and walk with the farmers among their destroyed fields, greenhouses, and groves;

Let us go, Mr. Wiesel, and make eye contact with the Gazans who daily battle hunger and daily fight despair due to Israel’s inhumane siege.

Let us refuse neutrality. Let us not be silent.

May more of us be willing to turn the following words of Mr. Wiesel into concrete deeds of solidarity and witness: “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”

Seeing is believing,

J’Ann Allen, Center for Theology and Social Analysis; adjunct instructor, Forest Park Community College

Anna Baltzer, Jewish American human rights advocate; author of Witness in Palestine

Barakat Barakat, SLU undergraduate

Sharifa Barakat, SLU alum, 2009

Mark Chmiel, Center for Theology and Social Analysis; adjunct professor, Saint Louis University

Hedy Epstein, Holocaust survivor; author of Remembering Is Not Enough; SLU alum

Daanish Faruqi, Graduate student, Washington University

Dianne Lee, Center for Theology and Social Analysis; professor, Forest Park Community College

Sandra Mansour, Georgetown University, Graduate School alum

Kelly McBride, Graduate student, American University at Cairo; SLU alum, 2006

Matthew Miller, Graduate student, Washington University

Angie O’Gorman, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, Immigration Law Department; adjunct professor, Saint Louis University

Nima Sheth, SLU medical student; SLU alum, 2008

Magan Wiles, MFA student, University of Tennessee; SLU alum, 2004

Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, author of Night, 1986 Nobel Peace laureate, adviser to American presidents, acclaimed humanitarian—is speaking at Saint Louis University on Tuesday 1 December 2009 at 7:00 p.m.. What follows are some questions students and others might consider as they listen and then respond to Mr. Wiesel.

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Mr. Wiesel, do you think the Obama Administration should put pressure on Israel’s government to cease building illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank? Would you support President Obama in calling for such pressure?

Do you support a major troop increase by President Obama for the war in Afghanistan? Why or why not?

Do you think both Israelis and Palestinians should be prosecuted for war crimes they committed during last December and January’s conflict in Gaza?

In the 1970s you wrote about South African apartheid as follows: “Only, when you go inside Soweto, outside Johannesburg, you are confronted by concentrated poverty and humiliation without parallel. You see men and women barely able to keep body and soul together. You see children without a future. You see a hopeless world.” In the late 1970s you worked closely with President Jimmy Carter in establishing the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Yet Jimmy Carter has recently said that what Israel is doing in the occupied Palestinian territories is akin to apartheid. Would you please comment?

In the news there has been a lot of concern expressed about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Do you think that the entire Middle East should be a nuclear-free zone, that is, Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and Israel should dismantle its nuclear arsenal? Would you support weapons inspectors going into both Iran and Israel?

Your life has been a testimony to the imperative to remember the Holocaust, particularly in the United States with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do you think that Americans and Israelis should take it upon themselves to remember the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their cities and villages by Israeli forces and never allowed to return? [http://www.alnakba.org/]

In your 1986 Nobel address, you proclaimed, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” What do you think of Israelis like Jeff Halper who try to interfere with Israel’s demolishing of Palestinian homes, or the Israeli pilots and soldiers who have refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories? [http://www.icahd.org/eng/ and

http://www.seruv.org.il/english/default.asp and http://www.yeshgvul.org/index_e.asp]

One stated reason among many Western governments for its opposition to Hamas is that it doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. Could you name any current or past Israeli leader who has explicitly recognized Palestine’s right to exist?

You have been a fierce critic of people who use the Holocaust for political purposes or engage in offensive analogies. What do you think of Israeli leaders like Menachem Begin and David Ben-Gurion who have used the Holocaust to discredit Israeli political opponents or to compare Yasir Arafat or other Arab leaders to Adolf Hitler?

In the Los Angeles Times in March 2003, you wrote in support of George Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq, even though the UN Security Council did not grant authorization. Two questions: First, do you believe that the U.S. government is entitled to ignore international law? Second, after all that has happened in Iraq—the hundreds of thousands dead, the four and a half million people displaced, the destruction of its infrastructure and culture—do you still believe that the U.S. invasion and occupation have been justified?

Do you think former President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should be held accountable for their authorization of torture during the war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo?

Do you now think former President Bush took the U.S. into war under false pretenses with his claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMD threat and alleged connection to the 9.11 attacks?

Over the decades, have Christian audiences become more open to your critiques, such as the following, from your book, A Jew Today: “How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the church? That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka? That among the S.S. a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end? That there were killers who went to confession between massacres? And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?” [Note to reader: The undergraduate library at Saint Louis University is named the Pius XII Memorial Library.]

In your memoir, And the Sea Is Ever Full, you wrote, “In spite of considerable pressure, I have refused to take a public stand in the Israeli-Arab conflict. I have said it before: since I do not live in Israel, it would be irresponsible for me to do so.” Mr. Wiesel, you did not live in Iraq, but that didn’t stop you from strongly criticizing Saddam Hussein. Could you offer criteria for responsible criticism of policies of a variety of governments, such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Cuba, Sudan, Guatemala, and Israel?

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How is it possible that a man so intelligent, knowledgeable, and informed could not have been aware of the anti-Jewish laws of Vichy? The plundering, the persecutions, the arrests, the roundups — how could he have failed to know about them?

–Elie Wiesel, on French President François Mitterand’s World War II experience

Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the crux of the problem between the two peoples and it will remain so until it ends. For the last thirty-five years, occupation has meant dislocation and dispersion; the separation of families; the denial of human, civil, legal, political and economic rights imposed by a system of military rule; the torture of thousands; the confiscation of tens of thousands of acres of land and the uprooting of tens of thousands of trees; the destruction of more than 7,000 Palestinian homes; the building of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands and the doubling of the settler population over the last ten years; first the undermining of the Palestinian economy and now its destruction; closure, curfew, geographic fragmentation, demographic isolation and collective punishment….Occupation is about the domination and dispossession of one people by another. It is about the destruction of their property and the destruction of their soul. Occupation aims, at its core, to deny Palestinians their humanity by denying them the right to determine their existence, to live normal lives in their own homes. Occupation is humiliation. It is despair and desperation.

–Sara Roy, Gaza expert, Harvard researcher, daughter of Holocaust survivors