Israeli Families Say Peace is Revenge
Editor's Note: In 1994, following the abduction and murder of his 19-year-old son Arik by the terrorist group Hamas, Yitzhak Frankenthal founded the Bereaved Families Forum -- an organization of 190 bereaved Israeli parents, Palestinian and Jews, who lost their children during army service or in an act of terrorism. The organization, also referred to as Parent's Circle, promotes peace and coexistence through educating for tolerance and compromise. The group recently set up a free service to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to talk on the telephone.
AlterNet: What motivated you to found the Bereaved Families Forum? What do you hope to achieve through this organization and its efforts?
Frankenthal: After I lost my son, Arik, I came to understand that he was not murdered because the murderers knew him. He was killed because there is no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This is why we are ready to make reconciliation and not ready to go for revenge. And if we can do it -- when we have lost members of our families -- everyone can and needs to do it. [read more]
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Of Occupation and Apartheid
Do I Divest?
The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure-- in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation. [read more]
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Focus / Why are children dying, U.S. wants to know
Among the list of charges against Israel presented by the Americans to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's entourage in Washington was one relating to the recent killings of numerous Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip as a result of excessive fire power used by the Israel Defense Forces.
The list, which was presented prior to yesterday's incident in Rafah, does not stop there. It includes, inter alia, repeated mention of complaints regarding lengthy delays of Palestinian ambulances bearing casualties and patients at IDF checkpoints.
The Americans are stressing that they have no complaints when it comes to legitimate acts of defense, or casualties involving individuals involved in terrorism. They are pointing their fingers at the large number of civilians, including children, who have been killed recently in both air and land- mounted IDF operations in the Strip. [read more]
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Diary
Despite its richness and long colonial tradition, English cannot keep up with the massive production of IDF Hebrew as it infiltrates our media along with the semi-official jargon emerging from military briefings. The assassination policy has several names, including 'focused interception', but unofficial military jargon prefers something more direct: 'liquidation'. The new language teaches us to distinguish between all sorts of curfews, closures, 'encirclements', and other (illegal) actions and prohibitions on movement. The latest example is the euphemism used by the state in response to an appeal by two Palestinians against expulsion from Nablus to Gaza. Each time their attorney used the word 'expulsion', the state attorney jumped to his feet to demand the 'proper usage', something that can be translated, carefully, as 're-zone-ification'. In Hebrew it might sound better, but no less grotesque. Israel's Supreme Court, famous at Columbia Law School for its progressiveness, accepted the state's position. The expulsions were allowed, and sooner or later the word 're-zone-ification' will become a familiar part of our vocabulary and legal life. Another veil will fall over what happens beyond the hills, ten minutes from my relatively safe home, while there, under the non-reported non-event of a curfew, a nation is incarcerated and preparing for the worst. [read more]
thanks to Ethel the Blog |
