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by Mark Chmiel
Wednesday 31 December 2008
How many nanoseconds did it take your hasbara specialists to transform the “Gaza Massacre” into a heroic tale of self-defense against the Hamas terrorists?
How many percentage points will this operation in Gaza gain your side in the up-coming election?
This week how many pairs of terrified Arab eyes do you think looked upon the substantial results—outside the morgues, on the streets, in the hospitals—of the opening salvos from the IDF?
This week how many of your Jewish citizens will have good night’s sleep, as they feel more secure due to your bold and lucid leadership?
How many individual pieces of shrapnel do you estimate your F-16s and Apache gunships have skillfully generated since the 2005 disengagement from Gaza?
How many Palestinian bodies (subcategories including head, torso, limbs, etc.) have the aforementioned shrapnel penetrated?
More...
But the Middle East situation has told me that my life as usual can’t continue when such massive bloodshed is being planned, discussed, prepared for! It makes me sick. There is not a moral indignation, but a moral revulsion, nearly physical, that impels me to move, to do, to deepen my reflection, to put my body out there on the line. Enough. Stop the bloodshed. Repent. God have mercy. God, empower us to strive and struggle with integrity, love and humility for a better world, to strive and struggle courageously, willing to risk, willing to be inaccommodated, placing our freedom on behalf of others’ unfreedom — empower and inspire us to act creatively and justly and lovingly and disruptingly. Life as usual cannot go on, as it grinds the poor into the dust and sand – sick, sick, sick. God, heal this sick world and let us be your hands. Condemning no one and afraid of no one. Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine that crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, PWAs, elderly, children, orphans, strangers, Jews, Palestinians, Latin Americans, Iraqis, U.S. soldiers – no more. No more. No more.
Imagine reaction in the United States to the following scenario: An ambitious, tough-talking Russian politician is vying for greater political power and influence. Twenty years ago, he served his country as a pilot in the air force during the Soviet Union’s occupation in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, for his sake, his aircraft was shot down by the Afghan resistance (think of some of those scenes of Russian pilots and the mujahedeen in Charlie Wilson’s War). He was taken prisoner, tortured, but ultimately found his way back to freedom and his homeland. Now many years later, his popularity in ascendency, his ardent aspiration is to “serve the Russian people” and restore “pride” in Russia as a “world power.” His supporters, intellectuals and ordinary Russians on the street, gush with rapt devotion over their “war hero.”
This year there has been a lot of reflection and retrospection, 40 years after the pivotal 1968, which included the Tet Offensive, assassinations (King and Kennedy), student uprisings, and protest and police violence outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
A while back, I read a memoir by U.S. radical writer Michael Albert, Remembering Tomorrow. Albert’s political awakening came in the mid-1960s when he was a student at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Inspired and challenged by the civil rights movement, a new wave of feminism, and the antiwar movement, Albert reached the fork in the road: one path led to pursuing an upper-middle-class lifestyle and the other path to throwing his lot in with social change movements. He chose the latter, and has, since that time, embraced the need for revolution, meaning, a radical change in our society’s fundamental structures.
Recalling his youthful passionate opposition to the war, Albert writes candidly, “And I sure as hell hated Washington. And I sure as hell loved the spirit of the Vietnamese resistance. Vietnam was for me a parent, a brother, a sister, a life guide. Vietnam was and still is everything for me.”
I wished he had elaborated on the latter sentiment of his love for Vietnam. He says that the love and Vietnam’s meaning were not just then, 1967 and 1968, but it is still. I take this to mean, that, unlike many people who were active then in the antiwar movement, he has not forgotten Vietnam. But what, then?
I wonder: How exactly has Vietnam served for him a “life guide”? Who have been the most influential Vietnamese writers, intellectuals, activists, and artists for him? Did he ever learn Vietnamese? Did he become friends with Vietnamese refugees in the greater Boston area? Has he ever visited Vietnam since the 1975 unification? Has he been aware of the work of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, particularly his retreats for Vietnam Veterans? Does his Znet web site focus on contemporary issues and struggles in Vietnam? What does he think of the society the Vietnamese created after the horrific brutality and destruction inflicted by our own country? How has he been a brother to Vietnam, past and present? To younger generations of activists, how would he encourage solidarity with Vietnamese people, given their centrality in his own path of revolutionary activity?
I was seven at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. It wasn’t until 1982 when I began reading about the Catholic anti-war movement (Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton) that I began to learn about the event that was so life-changing for millions of Americans fifteen years earlier. While working at the Church of Epiphany in Louisville, my first direct contact with Vietnam was as a tutor to a Vietnamese family, the Huynh’s, who had been sponsored by our church in the late 1970s. My political awakening occurred in the 1980s via the church-based Central American solidarity movements. It was during that time that I was exposed to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. For many years, I have assigned Cao Ngoc Phuong’s inspiring autobiography, Learning True Love, to my students at Saint Louis University. In recent years I have had Vietnamese-American students who teach me about their and my history.
I am curious about Michael Albert’s avowal, because I think there is tremendous work we have to do in reckoning—still—with our role in Vietnam. Not enough of us in the United States have faced what our government did in Indochina from the 1950s to the 1970s. Thinking of Vietnam, I remember something German theologian Johann Baptist Metz once stated, “We Christians can never go back behind Auschwitz; to go beyond Auschwitz is impossible for us by ourselves. It is possible only with the victims of Auschwitz.” If there is to be a future for Christianity, the German theologian contended, it could only be with the Jewish people.
Although Michael Albert isn’t religious, I think, given his comment on the centrality of Vietnam, he would adapt Metz in this way: “We Americans can never go back before the destruction we caused in Vietnam; to go beyond that destruction is impossible for us by ourselves. It is possible only with the Vietnamese who were our enemies and victims.”
Friends in the liberationist Brazilian Catholic Church told me about three essential themes of their ministry and activism: memory, resistance, and utopia.
So be it, for us, too.
I’m going because in a dream Rachel Corrie whispered in my ear and said, “Come, follow me.”
I’m going to behold the dignity of Umm Mahmoud.
I’m going to experience the varieties and vagaries of insomnia in Rafah.
I’ve been reading Ali Abunimah’s book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He quotes an Israeli Arnon Soffer who in 2004 bluntly stated in an interview: “We will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire ten in response….when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”
I was reminded of something my teacher, Jewish theologian Marc Ellis wrote a few years ago: “Rather than discovering this inclusive liturgy of destruction, what amazes me is how we have repressed it, as if the suffering of Palestinians at our hands can be repressed forever and the liturgies of our synagogues and the work of our artists can survive this violation of another people without change.” (from Practicing Exile)
And last, the famous words of Rabbi Hillel: “Whatever is hateful unto thee, do not do unto they fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is explanation.” (Sayings of the Fathers [or Pirke Aboth], translated by Jospeh Hertz)
One of the reasons I do the student profile at the beginning of Social Justice class is so I can get some clues, hints, and guesses about the people I am going to be learning with for 16 weeks. Sometimes, it’s illuminating to me to learn what a particular student reads, which musical artists she likes, or how he defines his religion or ethnicity.
So I was a little intrigued in late August of last year when I saw that I had one Tina Azzam in class. I’d had her brother, Mark, in my class in spring 2004. I remember how he identified himself as Lebanese-German American, but then I read on Tina’s profile that she was Lebanese (Palestinian)-German.
Very interesting.
She talked early in the class, in the context of 9.11, how sometimes people will say disparaging things about Arabs, and she’ll say, “uh, I’m Arab.” Which caught those people off guard.
Late in the semester, I invited her to lunch at Vito’s to chat, and it was quite an eye-opening discussion. The next night, November 29, Magan Wiles gave her report back at SLU on her three months of working in Palestine. I was happy to see Tina at the event.
It does happen that, on occasion, I will be moved to tears by a student’s writing. Such was the case when reading the following reflection paper from Tina …
After attending the talk and hearing Megan and Sebastian’s experiences, as well as getting up-to-date information, there is only one word to describe how I’m feeling: lost. When I was much younger and people asked me what culture my last name, Azzam, is, I would say Lebanese. That’s what my family identified itself as (my mother’s side is German). I distinctly remember being in 6th grade social studies class and learning about the PLO. My mom and I were sitting in the living room and I asked her a question about something in that paragraph. Apparently, as most history does, this textbook only presented one side. She then explained to me that the depiction of Palestinians in my history book was unfair. My mom, a traditionally “white” woman, then proceeded to tell me what my dad’s mother told her about where that side of the family comes from. I was so confused.
My grandparents lived in Haifa, where my grandfather was a successful tailor with his own shop. When Israel was made a state, they were given two weeks to leave and were giving receipts for their land to come back and claim it. My grandfather bought Lebanese citizenship for them in Beirut, and that’s where my father was born. (The wealthier people did not need to go into the refugee camps). They weren’t allowed back into Palestine, and the Israeli government then claimed that they had abandoned their land. I guess we’re not the only government to use loopholes to get what we want.
As I said, this information was all given to my mom by Teta (an Arabic word for “grandmother”). It is a difficult subject for my dad to talk about. Aside from Middle Eastern food and music being at home, I did not identify much with the Palestinian part of my heritage. Lebanese yes, Palestinian no. I think part of this was also my parents’ choice. My dad is Lebanese by nation of birth, and they didn’t want their kids to be labeled “Palestinian,” as “Lebanese” is more acceptable in this country.
For so long I had closed myself off to this. The issue always caught my eye, but even when I tried to attend the SLU Solidarity meeting, I felt out of place. I didn’t want to be part of a movement simply because of my DNA or because I thought it was expected of me. But tonight, hearing Megan speak and seeing the pictures, I felt my guard come down. As I saw the pictures of the Palestinian children, I saw my dad, my uncles, and my brothers when they were young. I even saw myself. It broke my heart. I’ve been looking and searching for something to feel passionate about, and maybe it’s been here the whole time. Something is building inside me, and I’m not sure what it is yet.
This week at Saint Louis University, it was Palestine Awareness Week, thanks to the creative and tireless labors of SLU Solidarity with Palestine. This evening was the first performance of Magan Wiles’ a beautiful resistance: confessions of a human rights hoosier in palestine. Joined by Sara Wall, Magan used photos, recitation, music, chant, anecdote, and dialogue to tell of her three months last year in Palestine. I hope she does it again, but in all likelihood, the work will evolve as a project ever in progress and process. About 100 people showed up at Carlo Auditorium in Tegeler Hall to be mesmerized by this dramatic, funny, and heart-breaking piece de resistance.
I recently read a book of interviews and manifestos by poet Anne Waldman, called Outrider. In one passage, Waldman writes about the “Outrider,” which makes me think immediately of Magan and what she does in a beautiful resistance:”The OUTRIDER holds a premise of imaginative consciousness. The OUTRIDER rides the edge—parallel to the mainstream, is the shadow to the mainstream, is the consciousness or soul of the mainstream, whether it recognizes its existence or not. It cannot be co-opted, it cannot be bought. Or rides through the chaos, maintaining a stance of ‘negative capability,’ but also does not give up that projective drive, or its original identity that demands that it intervene on the culture. This is not about being an Outsider. The OUTRIDER might be an outlaw, but not an outsider. Rather, the OUTRIDER is a kind of shaman, the true spiritual “insider.” The shaman travels to zones of light and shadow. The shaman travels to edges of madness and death and comes back to tell the stories.”
Indeed, Magan told us such stories about her dear friend Fayrouz in Balata Refugee Camp and her own struggles back in the United States of Amnesia.
After seeing the performance, a former student in tears came up to me, saying “I didn’t know, I should have known, what can I do?”
With this 50 minute performance about her travel to those “zones of light and shadow,” Magan changed this young woman’s life.
And once again changed mine.
I'm one of the fortunate ones who receive a weekly "Sunday Letter" from Edna Pauly. Edna's weekly communications come through sleet, rain, or snow, and she doesn't lay expectations on me about responding. In fact, during 2006 I realized that I looked forward to Edna's letters, but almost never mentioned this to her and never took the bait when she asked for reader response. But in weeks that were bad for me, it was a shelter in the storm to know that Edna's unconditional love and concern would prevail. At times I envied her chutzpah, world smarts, and equilibrium in a crazy mixed-up world and a morally puny (rather than courageously prophetic) hierarchical church. Edna Pauly and one of my other favorite women have strong guts I say. More...
Some years back, I met a wonderful woman in Waco, Texas: Keren Batiyov. At the time, she was one of the few people I'vdmet who had actually read my book on Elie Wiesel, and she offered an appreciative response. A faithful Jew, she worked with ISM in the fall of 2004 and plans on returning this summer. She recently sent this apt letter to the editor of the Washington Post...
Dear Editor:
Deborah Lipstadt's op-ed piece villifying former President Jimmy Carter and his new book was disgusting. Whenever Zionism is exposed for what it is play the Holocaust card and charge "anti-Semitism;" more often than not those cudgels will effectively silence criticism and dissent. And to use the name of plagiarism-and-torture-is-ok Allen Dershowitz as an example of one who levels legitimate criticism at Carter is beyond the pale.
One cannot have the 4th largest nuclear arsenal in the world, maintain the 4th strongest army in the world, and be the recipient of more US foreign aid and military support than any other country in the world and at the same time continue to claim victimhood. And unfortunately, like so many former victims, Israel has become the victimizer. I would charge Ms. Lipstadt to go to the West Bank and Gaza and see for herself.
As an American Jew of Conscience I am delighted to see a person of such political consequence finally utter the "A" word and break the taboo of calling Israel to account, despite the fact that he neither goes far enough with his conclusions - slow genocide and ethnic cleansing are more appropriate terms - nor does he recognize the government-sanctioned discriminations suffered by Israeli Palestinians. Hopefully, former President Carter will maintain his principled stand despite the scurrilous onslaughts. Like all truth-tellers he will suffer mightily for daring to call power to account.
Cordially,
Keren Batiyov
2814 S Wakefield Street
Unit C
Arlington, VA
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And other poems featured recently:
The CTSA Core Community is pleased to announce Mark Chmiel's newly published work, The Book of Mev, about his late wife, St. Louis native, photojournalist and activist, Mev Puleo.
Listen now to Mark reading a passage.
Read a review of the book.
The book is available for purchase directly from Mark, at Left Bank Books, and online at Amazon.
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Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America