rivervision

john shuck pointed me to an excellent article by brian mclaren about actually being able to talk about gaza, with people on the opposite side of the issue. thanks john! (and cherice! and brian m!) here’s a snippet - and then go read the rest on your own.

Rule No. 2: Acknowledge the real issues on the other side. Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, models this in his recent press release when he says that he has been in Sderot and has “seen firsthand both the physical and emotional destruction caused by the rocket attacks”. That acknowledgment doesn’t take away from something else that Ellison says - which is that conditions in Gaza are “unliveable”. It merely means that Ellison has the eyes and the heart to imagine life on both sides of the fence.

In Status Quo Rules, recognizing the challenge on the other side makes you a traitor. In the Solution Rulebook, it makes you a true patriot, because it’s the fastest way to build trust with the people you have to build peace with.

here’s the rest of brian’s excellent thoughts on building bridges in the middle east (that really could be applied to other conflicts as well).

my friend cherice took time from her thesis writing to remind me, and us, that we need to not only remember those who are being oppressed, but those who are doing the oppressing:

Tuesday, January 06, 2009
on loving one’s enemies & gaza
I’m working on my thesis on Romans 12 & 13. I noticed something yesterday in one of the commentaries (an excellent 2007 commentary by Robert Jewett in the Hermeia commentary series). In Romans 12:14 it says, “Bless those who persecute, bless and do not curse.” In the other places where this sentiment is found is says, “Pray for those who persecute YOU” (Matthew 5:44), or “Bless those who curse YOU” (Luke 6:28), or “Bless those who curse YOU and pray for YOUR enemies” (Didache 1:3 [a kind of instruction manual used by early Christians]). Although in translations of this passage the word “you” is usually included, Jewett points out that Paul did not include it here. It is as if he is saying, “Bless all persecutors, whether persecute YOU or not.” In this way we act in solidarity with those who are oppressed, by recognizing the act of persecution and praying for and wishing health and life to those who are persecuting, rather than hatred. This obviously doesn’t mean that we bless the actions they are taking, but that we truly desire what is good for them, living out love even to those who persecute and oppress others.

go read the rest of her post: on loving one’s enemies in gaza.

thank you cherice, very much.

why is hamas considered a terrorist organization but not the israeli government - or the us government for that matter?  i don’t understand what deliniates terrorist versus legitimate.  is it terrorist when the bombs are handmade and legitimate when they are factory made?  i don’t understand, i really really don’t understand.  i wish i did because if we could call the israeli government a terrorist organization then it would be painted just as bad in the eyes of people around the world as hamas.  then maybe israel would have to give up it’s factory made bombs and planes and have to rely on handmade weapons of war.  then maybe things would be equal between the two sides.

i hate this situation in gaza.  it breaks my heart each and every day.

i must comment on the use of twitter during the gaza incursion / massacre.  i wonder if this is the first world event of this type where twitter has been used to keep friends, family members, and the world informed of the minute by minute actions on the ground while bombs of various kinds are going off all around?

first the web was used for geeks, then people to connect socially, then the capitalists and the educators, and now victims of war are using it during the war.  everything has it’s positives and negatives and i think this is an extremely positive way to be using all this web 2.0 technology.

gazamom (from diary of a palestinian mother) and kabobfest (from kabobfest) have my two favorite twitters.

i woke up to a list of comprehensive questions this morning.. not mine, but someone else’s because my chair thought it would be helpful for me to see them because i’ll be doing mine soon.  i can say that while i appreciate her consideration, i do not appreciate that it was the first thing that i chose to open this morning.  it wasn’t a good way to start the first day of this new semester.  plus finding out that a student a year behind me is going to take her comps around the same time as me, well - a confession - it digs at that whole competitive side of me, which is also not a good way to start the first day of a new semester.   sometimes i’m just not my biggest fan.  blurgh.

oh and it’s a blamy 4 degrees outside too.  *shiver*

instead of surfing the web for gaza updates and more information i really should be either going to sleep or reading articles related to measuring technological pedagogical content knowledge (my dissertation research topic and thusly focus of my comps questions, i hope) but i’m not so i decided to put together a list of action items that people can do about gaza.  fwiw any of these things may not stop that feeling of helplessness (they don’t help mine) but it is something positive you can do rather than surf the gaza web mindlessely (like i’ve spent too many hours doing).

here ya go:

• write your congressperson, your senator, and president-elect obama about the situation and tell them to stop this genocide and further to stop sending money to fund the israeli military - humanitarian help yes, but military, no.

• hold a public talk at a community center, your church, your school about the facts on the ground - the other side of the facts that the western media is not covering (i’m going to talk to my pastor about holding something like this at my church when i see him on tues or wed).

• organize a pro-gaza / anti-massacre rally in your town (yes, i need to do this).

• attend a pro-gaza / anti-massacre ralley in your town.

• find a way to donate money to an organization that is helping out with humanitarian assistance.  2 organizations that i know of that are working together are the presbyterian disaster assistance which is working with action by churches together to give assistance to gaza as it is possible.

• write a letter to the editor of your local paper about the situation there.  cite facts from reliable sources.

• talk to everyone you know about the situation - people mostly watch western news sources and form opinions “hamas = bad, israel = good, jews need protection, arabs and muslims = bad.”  even if your friends don’t hold the general western line - they still might not know as much as you do and you can correct errors in their knowledge (the other day i was talking to a full professor at utah state who is very sympathetic to the palestinian cause and keeps up to date on current events.  i was talking about going to dheisheh refugee camp (which is just outside of bethlehem, just 10-15 minute drive from the church of the nativity) and they were suprised to hear that there was a refugee camp so close to the symbolic heart of bethlehem).

• resist online: gaza talk has a whole list of links about how to resist online

• if you are the praying type - pray.

• create flyers of basic facts about gaza and hand them out and put them up around your town (or university).

• tell your local palestinians that you care.

• tell palestinians online that you care.

• keep reading the news.

does that help?  by the way, i got an email from a friend who spent time working as a physician in the west bank.  she said she’s heard from people she worked with there that things in the west bank are bad too - there are shootings every day, violence and demonstrations.   so i guess the last thing to do amid this crisis in gaza is:

• don’t forget about the west bank.  things there are awful too, not the crisis like gaza is, but for any of us who live in safety and comfort -  if our lives were like the lives of the palestinians in the west bank we would call it a crisis.

from b’tselem via electronic intifada

Testimony: “They found her body in the kitchen”
Testimony, B’Tselem, 4 January 2009

Abdallah Tawfiq Hamdan Kashku, 44, married with four children, is a policeman who mediates disputes and is a resident of Gaza City. His testimony was given to Khaled Azaiza on 30 December 2008 alongside the family’s bereavement tent:

My family and I live in a three-floor house in al-Zeitun, Gaza City. On Sunday [28 December], around 7:00pm, I was sitting with nine members of my family around a bonfire in the yard. It was cold, and we didn’t have electricity to heat the house. I asked my little daughter, Ibtihal, who is eight, go up to the second floor, to the apartment of her brother Talal and his wife to ask for some chamomile for tea. She got up and went upstairs.

I turned on the generator to turn on the light. Then we heard the sound of planes in the sky. I heard a buzz and within a few seconds, I found myself under ruins. Everything collapsed so quickly, like in an earthquake. I didn’t know what happened to me or to my family. I began to cry out for help. The smoke was thick. I couldn’t see any of my family, who had been sitting with me a few moments earlier.
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here are a couple of pictures of my faithful cat companion - max. he’s terribly loyal, independent, sweet (yes lisa, sweet) and at 10.5 years old still very very playful. oh and very vocal about his feelings - when he’s ticked off he likes to growl, though it’s VERY VERY rare that he bites or scratches me. oh, and right now he’s got his head on my knee being terribly cute and loving (yes and he also knows when i’ve had a craptastic day).

max at 9 weeks. he’s got a harness we made for him because just a few days after this trip we drove 2700 miles from my old home of blacksburg, va to our new home of eugene, ore.

max at 10 years old (and me) doing some serious cuddling.

from the institute for middle east understanding.

As the troops enter, we fear the worst
Eyad El-Sarraj, The Washington Post, Jan 3, 2009
This testimony was originally published by The Washington Post and is republished with the author’s permission.
GAZA CITY

How much worse can it get? After a horrifying week, the Israelis have arrived once again at our doorstep. What now? Already we have experienced so much terror and want.

When the Israeli strikes first began, my wife and I were worrying about lentils. She said we could not have lentil soup for lunch because there were no lentils in the shops. Nor any rice or flour. Suddenly there was a deafening noise, followed by a succession of blasts the likes of which I had never experienced. Our house was rocking, the windows rattling in their panes.

Panicked, we ran into the small hallway. My sister-in-law, who lives upstairs, joined us, frantic because her young daughter was not yet home from school. Sari, a boy from the neighborhood, banged on our door asking for shelter. He trembled as he told us that he’d been on his way home from school in a taxi when there was a thundering blast. The driver stopped the car and ran for cover. The passengers scattered in all directions. Sari found himself running aimlessly. The explosions seemed to be chasing him, he said. Suddenly, he came upon people lying bleeding in the street. He went up to a man, wanting to help him, and touched his hand. It was nothing but a piece of burnt flesh. Somebody shouted at him to get away, so he ran off.
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yes, the kitchen needs some serious cleaning from the making of the spinach, tofu, broccilli, mushroom, onion, chicken and celery, with a tomato base, fresh garlic, ginger, thyme, zatar (from palestine) and cayenne pepper for spices stew i made yesterday (it’s VERY yummy) but i’m lazy. so instead, what do i do? browse the web looking at gaza related stuff.

here, from al-jazeera, voices from gaza: “we are living a nightmare”:

Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA director in Gaza

“The problem is very complicated. Even before the bombing Gaza was in need of everything.
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