An Interesting Arrival

by Sharifa Barakat

Palestine, Jerusalem, the Middle East—all conjure up various images and thoughts. For me, it’s the birthplace of my parents and the part of my heritage that I’ve grown up with through photographs and stories, the language and food, and, most outwardly, through the conflict that has been stewing for more than half a century as noted in our history books and the media. I felt like I already knew this place, but I had never visited it until last year. This past summer, my family was able to make the trip there, and I had an eye-opening experience that cemented my perception of the world before I even set foot in my family’s hometown of Ramallah, Palestine. More...

A Preferential Option for the Iraqi People

by Mark Chmiel

Here is the last paragraph of Dahr Jamail’s book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq:

If the people of the United States had the real story about what their government has done in Iraq, the occupation would already have ended. As a journalist, I continue to hold out hope that if people have knowledge of what is happening, they will act accordingly. If people in my country could hear the stories of life under occupation and put themselves into the Iraqis’ stories, they would understand. I hold that hope because the stories of Iraq are our story now. Whether we accept that or not, it is the truth. The water from the Euphrates runs through all our veins. [291]

An American horrified at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to see the occupation from the point of view of the Iraqi people. Unlike the patriotic journalists embedded with U.S. troops, Jamail embedded himself amidst the Iraqi people.

With great bravery, what he attempted to do was to listen, transcribe, and relay these Iraqis’ stories and perceptions to us. In the United States, given the ubiquity of the slogan “support the troops,” people tend to focus overwhelmingly on our soldiers, their fate, their well-being, their PTSD, and their families. In his book, Jamail gives us an opportunity, in less than three hundred gut-wrenching pages, to listen to and take in the voices of Iraqis under U.S. military occupation.

To give you a small taste, I have culled a number of quotations from men and women Dahr Jamail spoke with in Iraq. Ask yourself, how often have you heard such voices and questions in the New York Times or Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, heard them on NPR, or seen them on ABC?

“Do you think all these people, these innocent people being killed by the Americans, don’t have families that are now joining the resistance?” [21]

“So what are the people to do? It [the attack] is not an action, what you have seen is a reaction. If the occupation power continues to hurt and humiliate the people here, every man will become a bomb.” [25]

[Another man approached me with the two children of his brother, killed by U.S. gunfire, by his side.] “This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the Americans. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch over these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That’s it? This is the reason? Why didn’t anyone talk to me and tell me why they have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening every day? This is our future? This is the future that the United States promised Iraq?” [29]

“The largest tragedy of the invasion and occupation is the devastation of the people of Iraq. We were hoping for relief, but so far it has only been more suffering.” [39]

“The Americans are the ones who create the terrorists. They say they will kill all the terrorists in the world, but they are actually creating more terrorists.” [42]

“The Americans are creating the terrorists here by hurting people and causing their relatives to fight against them. Even this little boy will grow up hating the Americans because of their policy here.” [78]

“Why are we called terrorists? This is our country. These are foreign army tanks in our streets killing our people. We fight against this and we are called terrorists? They are the terrorists.” [116]


[The stream of patients slowed to a sporadic influx as night fell. Maki sat with me as she shared cigarettes in a small office in the rear of the clinic.] “For all my life, I believed in American democracy,” he told me with an exhausted voice. “For forty-seven years, I had accepted the illusion of Europe and the United States being good for the world, the carriers of democracy and freedom. Now I see that it took me forty-seven years to wake up to the horrible truth. They are not here to bring anything like democracy and freedom. Now I see it has been all lies. The Americans don’t give a damn about democracy or human rights. They are worse even than Saddam.” [I asked him if he minded if I quoted him with his name.] “What are they going to do to me that they haven’t already done here,” he said. [139]

“I was against Saddam. I was jailed by his regime in 1996 for making pastries because at the time sugar was being rationed due to the sanctions. But the U.S. policy now in Iraq will fail 100 percent. No people here support them now.” [147]

“Of course the Americans are bombing civilians, along with the revolutionaries. One year ago there was no revolution in Fallujah. But they began searching houses and humiliating people, and this upset people. The people became angry and demonstrated, then the Americans shot the demonstrators, and this started the revolution in Fallujah. It’s the same in Sadr City.” [150]

“The Americans don’t care what happens to Iraqis.” [151]

“Here, one would have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance. Terror was unseen here before the invasion. In Fallujah, it is not terrorism, it is resistance.” [152]

“The crimes against humanity in Palestine are shown daily on television. This does not indicate that the current U.S. administration is committed to democracy of human rights. How can the United States, a war criminal in Palestine, be accepted as a state-builder in Iraq?” [152]

“This is the way the Americans are freeing Iraq? America’s freedom is killing Iraqis. Fallujah is becoming another Palestine! How long will we have to live like this?” [161]

“When the Americans start patrolling on Monday, even more people will fight them this time because there are many who seek revenge now.” [164]

“When we tried to go to our mosque, the snipers shot at us.” [165]

[He asserted with justifiable pride that Fallujah was the first city in Iraq that the U.S. military had left because of the resistance rather than through negotiations.] “We hope all cities in Iraq become as liberated as Fallujah is.” [193]

“Abu Ghraib attacked the dignity of the Iraqi people. Did America not become barbarians from killing Indians, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Afganis, and bombing us and our young chidrlen. Who now have psychological scars? If these did not reveal the true barbarian nature of America, then Abu Ghraib certainly did. I never liked Saddam, nor did I support him, but at least under the dictator there was order and some basic services. Now there is no order, no electricity, no fundamental stability.” [195]

“The mujahadeen are fighting for their country against the Americans, who are the occupiers. We all accept this resistance.” [204]

“How can we live like this, we are trapped in our own country. You know, Daher, everyone is praying to God to take revenge on the Americans. Everyone.” [230]

“We need electricity to run our pumps to be able to irrigate our farms. At the moment we are having to carry water in buckets form the river instead and this is very difficult for us. They say they are going to make things better for us, but things are worse. Saddam was better than this, even though he executed three of my relatives.” [261]

“I watched American soldiers force naked Iraqi women into a cell. I heard the screams as the soldiers raped the women.” [261]

“We don’t want this freedom of the Americans. They are raiding our homes and terrorizing us all the time. We are living in terror. They shoot and bomb us everyday. We have sent our families to live elsewhere.” [261]

“The high commissioner for elections was appointed by Bremer, so how can we have a legitimate election under these circumstances? This election only serves the interests of the occupier, not Iraqis. This is only propaganda for Bush.” [267]

Dahr Jamail’s book should be widely read and meditated upon. It ought to be discussed at mosques and churches, in high schools and universities. And it ought to lead more of us to take deliberate and daring action to speak the truth about the occupation, interfere with its functioning, and highlight the immorality of the corporations benefiting from its lethal effect on the ordinary Iraqis with whom Dahr Jamail shared so many precious, exhausting, and frightful months.

Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie

by Mark Chmiel

I am thinking of Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie, in how they are quite similar. Not on the surface, for who could more dissimilar: A young college student and an august former statesman. But I can think of two ways, and the first way leads to the second way of similarity.

I am fond of quoting Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s 4th precept from his 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."

What Corrie and Carter have in common is that they both chose to go to Palestine and opened their eyes, and hearts to the suffering of the Palestinian people, Corrie only once, Carter many times (I saw him when I was there in 1990, we went to a service at St. George’s in East Jerusalem).

Here’s a long excerpt from one of Corrie’s emails: I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say, "Bush Majnoon", "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: "Bush mish Majnoon" ... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done.

Corrie wasn’t there very long, several weeks, and yet, she was able to see a small part of the reality (as my Ramallah friends told me after our detention: “Now you have a very small taste of what we go through all the time”).

Here’s are a few passages from Carter’s book, Palestine Peace not Apartheid, which, I believe, were able to be written because of his “contact” with Palestinians in Palestine:

When we arrived there in January 1996, it was obvious that the Israelis had almost complete control over every aspect of political, military, and economic existence of the Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza. [141]

This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable… [151]

Utilizing their political and military dominance, [Israeli leaders] are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples in unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers form Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commune from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming into contact with any facet of Arab life. [189-190]

In addition to cutting off about 200,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem from their relatives, property, schools, and businesses, the wall is designed to complete the enclosure of a severely truncated Palestine, a small portion of its original size, compartmentalized, divided into cantons, occupied by Israeli security forces, and isolated from the outside world. [195]

For all those who lambaste the Palestinians as terrorists, as fanatic Islamists, and scum unworthy of a state, I can’t help but wonder: Ever been there? Ever tried to get from point A to B? Ever talked with someone who’d been jailed for being a young Palestinian male? Even see the wounds of a victim of collateral damage? Ever look into the eyes of a father whose home has just been demolished?

Corrie and Carter took the initiative to go to Palestine, to see it for themselves, and try to communicate to others what their seeing meant to them.

The second similarity stems from this first: Both of them have been defamed, Corrie posthumously (she asked for it, she supported the terrorists, she was stupid, deranged, etc.), Carter currently (he’s anti-Semitic, he’s Hamas’s representative in the U.S., he’s a Nazi).

But really, all what I am writing here is something that was summarized some time ago, I don’t even know the name of the person who coined the expression, so characteristic of the prophets of ancient times: to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.

To comfort the afflicted, you have to see them, hear their tears, listen to their heart-rending stories, and offer your presence. You have to connect.

And when you speak on behalf of the afflicted, and criticize their oppressors, it’s to be expected that flak and obloquy will be coming in your direction.

Yes, it takes courage to take on the Establishment. And it takes courage to stand before an Israeli bulldozer. I hope that at some point, Jimmy Carter can see a performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie. Like the Palestinian people, she, too, will find a place in his heart.

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I'm Tired of Debating

by Nina Lotfi

Nina sends this to us from Philadelphia. She graduated from SLU in 2003. Born in Iran, she has memories of what war is like.

For a moment close your eyes and think of an event…happy or sad. An event that shaped who you are today…An event that was so powerful that it was forever frozen in your memory…Think of the psychological power this event had on you…did it influence your personality….your view of the world, your cynicism or optimism? More...

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A Letter to Sister Helen Prejean

by Megan Heeney

Dear Sr. Helen,

My name is Megan Heeney, I am a senior studying theology at St. Louis University. I am writing to you because I have heard you speak many times, but most recently I heard you at the School of Americas Vigil in Georgia. I attended a break-out session you held on about helping you write your next book. More...

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A Letter To Donnie Jones

by Megan Heeney

April 2006
El Salvador

“And that my veins don’t end in me,
but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life.”
--Roque Dalton, Como Tu.

Dear Donny,

I am writing this letter to say thank you for all that your life, your friendship taught. I need to express what your experience has resurrected within me this past year.

A year ago we were saying our goodbyes. We stood outside where they issued your injections, three in a row, real quick so that people would forget that a man is being crucified. Another human being is being systematically executed inside that room while his mother watches behind glass walls, she couldn’t touch her son, I think Mary was there, she too watched her son die. I could do nothing at the site of your crucifixion except to hold your uncles hand, I am still sorry. I pray it could’ve been different.

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A Semester at Karen House

by Gabrielle Stolwyk

A sophomore at Saint Louis University, Gabrielle volunteered at Karen House in the fall of 2006 when she was taking Social Justice class. In spring of 2007, she will be studying in Mexico.


My time spent at the Karen House was scheduled through the visits of Saint Louis University’s volunteer organization SLUCAP (Saint Louis University Christian Action Program) on Saturday mornings. Instead of sleeping in and savoring the first full day of the weekend like most college students, I awoke each morning at 8:00 a.m. Along with a handful of other bleary-eyed SLU students, I took a seat in the main room of Campus Ministry. While perking up over a cup of coffee, Megan Heeney, director of the SLUCAP program, would share different spiritual reflections and thoughts with us so as to enhance our awareness of the activities we would perform at our volunteer sites later in the day. More...

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Nunca Mas

by Liz Toecker

Liz wrote the following essay for her Social Justice class at Saint Louis University in fall 2006.

Before coming to Saint Louis University and really before Social Justice class, I didn’t know about the School of the Americas. Through being educated by Social Justice class, Pax Christi, and a few select individuals, I expanded my knowledge of the SOA. Through knowledge expansion, my opinion became stronger and I decided that I would go to Georgia. I wanted to see what it was all about. I wanted the true information. I wished to see the 20,000 strong crowd. But most of all, I wanted to lend my voice to the voiceless, something I had been learning about all semester. I figured this was the best way to start- at what some call the protest of all protests. More...

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From Darfur to Palestine

by Mark Chmiel

Recently the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC sponsored an unusual exhibit, "Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?" Photographic images of the genocide in Darfur are flashed to incredible size at night outside on the wall of the Museum. More...

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Remembering the Palestinian Catastrophe

by Mark Chmiel

Wednesday 29 November marks the passage of the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181. As the result of the deliberations of this body, historic Palestine, which had most recently been under a British Mandate, was divided into three parts. Two states were created, an Arab one comprising 42% of the land, and a Jewish one, receiving 56%; the third part, the remaining 2% centered around Jerusalem and was to come under international governance.

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