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Open Letter to President Obama from Nobel Peace Laureate
"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart"
Back from another visit to Palestine where she again joined in the non-violent protest at the Wall near Bil'in, where protestors were again attacked with tear gas and steel-coated rubber bullets, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire asks President Barack Obama to change US policy towards Israel and Palestine and stop supporting the State of Israel while it continues a policy of occupation, siege and injustice against the Palestinian people. 28 April, 2009
DEAR PRESIDENT OBAMA,
(1) "Dreams from my Father"
I found your book ‘Dreams from my Father’ a moving and inspiring story of your own struggle to find your identity and purpose in life. You found it for sure, and today you carry the hopes and dreams of so many people in our world. We pray for you and your family. We wish you all good health and happiness. You carry so much responsibility. We hope you will change the policies of the United States of America (both domestic and foreign) to people-centred policies, based on the values and ethics which you try to live out in your life.
Reading your book I was inspired by your involvement (during Sophomore year at University) in the South African anti-apartheid Divestment campaign. I quote your words: "I found myself drawn into a larger role – contacting representatives of the African National Congress to speak on campus, drafting strategy. I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions.".
These words have now encouraged me to share with you the following opinions and experiences of the many people I met during my most recent visit to Palestine/Israel.
(2) The Bil'in Conference on Nonviolent Resistance
Earlier this month, I attended the Fourth International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance held in Bil’in, near Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied Territory of Palestine. Here, President Obama, all that the Palestinian people are asking of you is to listen to their voices and use your powerful position to help end the racist, apartheid policies of Israel, which continue to cause so much pain and suffering to them. Each week, for the past four years, the villagers of Bil'in (after prayers in the Mosque) walk to the Wall which has annexed much of their land, the Wall that cuts them off from their farms and olive groves, and which destroys their ability to make a living for their families. As you know, under International Law Israel's Apartheid Wall is illegal but Israel continues to ignore International Laws (and some 62 UN resolutions) and continue to annex more and more land from the Palestinians. All the while they are demolishing Palestinian homes, building illegal settlements both in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and laying Siege to the Gaza Strip (where one and a half million people live). In this they are in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and they are committing crimes against humanity.
(3) The Palestinian People - Go Walk with them
To visit Palestine is to walk with a people whose lives are being made unbearable by Israeli Policies of ethnic cleansing. Each year when I visit I ask myself: "how can the Palestinians bear so much suffering and still have hope?" The Philosopher Karl Jung says: "Go into your grief for there your soul will grow". Being privileged to walk alongside the Palestinian people, one sees so much soul. Many are materially poor having been made refugees and often pauperised by the Israeli occupation and siege, but their dignity, courage, and persistent resistance to injustice is awesome to witness. It reminds me of the magnificence of the human spirit and, I feel humbled to be welcomed as a friend of the people of Bilin, Ramallah, Gaza, and Palestine. I wish that you President Obama would go and walk with them as you walked in spirit with the people of South Africa in their great and inspirational anti-apartheid struggle.
(4) Courage at the Wall
Walking every week in the peaceful protest to the Apartheid wall, are not just Palestinians but also Israeli activists and Internationals. It takes great courage to come from Israel to the Occupied Terrorities and oppose your own Government’s policies and I pay tribute to the Israeli peace activists who continue to do so, often at the cost of punishment by the Israeli Government. Yet, they come, and is it not a great hope for humanity that not all Israelis support their Government’s racist and apartheid policies of siege, occupation and militarization of both Israel and Palestinian villages and towns. I also pay tribute to the Internationals who put their lives daily on the line to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. Last month in the Village of Nilin, one brave young man from your own United States of America, Tristan Anderson, was targeted by Israeli soldiers, and hit in the head with a gas canister. He is currently in intensive care, and we all hope that he will recover.
(5) The killing of young Bassem Abu-Rahma.
On 17 April, 2009, on the Friday before I visited Palestine, at this Wall, one of the protesters, Bassem Abu-Rahma, was hit in the chest with a teargas metal container and killed. He was a young man from the village much loved by all and his death caused great pain and anger particularly amongst his peer group. I marvelled at the skill of the Village Leaders and Muslim women, who kept reminding the young men that they must keep their protest peaceful, but the atmosphere felt like a pressure cooker with the lid about to blow.
(6) Peaceful Protest met with tear gas and steel-tipped rubber bullets.
On 24 April 2009, I joined the peaceful protest to the Wall, and we were assaulted again by the Israeli soldiers with tear gas, and rubber bullets. Many of us were overcome with the tear gas and others, twenty five in all, seriously hurt with steel tipped rubber bullets. How much longer must this injustice to Palestinian people be allowed to continue unchallenged by your administration? If you do not insist upon Israel upholding its International responsibility immediately, the anger of a people will grow and the daily humiliation of Palestine, by Israeli injustice and soldiers will push more people towards retaliatory violence. As one of our great Irish poets W.B. Yeats wrote: "too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart".
(7) An Israeli's question to me
At the Bilin Conference an Israeli asked me "how can we touch the hearts of (our own) Israeli people so they can change their Government’s policies?" I believe there is much fear amongst the Israelis of ethnic annihilation but this fear can be dissolved by the politics of the heart. Israel should not be afraid of the Palestinians or Arab world. They are not the enemy and this can be borne witness to by the Israelis who come to stay in this village and who are taken care of, with such love, by the Bil'in villagers. The Israeli people must make friends with the Palestinians and indeed the whole Arab world, and take seriously the peace agreement offered by the Arab countries. There will never be a military or "armed struggle" solution to the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, as it is a political problem with a political solution. What is lacking is a real political will, on behalf of the Israeli Government, to enter seriously into all inclusive unconditional talks.
(8) Please change US policy towards Israel
I appeal to you President Obama, to change USA Policies and stop supporting through military aid and dollars, Israel's occupation of Palestine. I ask you to move immediately to help lift the siege of Gaza and say to Israel ‘Enough is Enough’.
In the meantime I support the Bilin committee’s strategy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in an attempt to get their freedom and rights. You, as a supporter and activist for South Africa’s BDS campaign know that it succeeded in ending Apartheid in South Africa as Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Tutu often reminds us. Such a strategy can work for Palestine too. Some South African Anti-Apartheid leaders when visiting Israel have said it is much worse than the days of Apartheid in their own country.
However, I believe President Obama, you can do so much more than those of us who support the BDS campaign. You can bring your experience in your own struggle for peace and freedom to help solve this problem. Love and hope gives us all courage and a belief that peace and freedom is possible.
God bless you and your family.
Mairead Maguire
Nobel Peace Laureate
www.peacepeople.com
24 April, 2009.
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Friday May 01, 2009 01:32
by Mairead Maguire
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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 3 2 1Obama is no Martin Luther King.
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger writes,
In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice.
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=530
...outlaw war worldwide. That is a real road to real peace.
Obama, a cleverer and more colourful version of Bill Clinton? Dust and broom, but but bin only some of the Bush bits.
Who's for the drawing board?
Thanks, Mairead.
Israel/Palestine is not the only area where Obama urgently needs to transform US foreign / defence policy.
In a recent feature article in the Irish Examiner, Matt Williams told us that US President Obama's decision to close the notorious prison camps at Guantánamo Bay had “helped repair some of the damage done to the US reputation overseas.”
(“Obama’s first 100 days”: http://tinyurl.com/cvl5oq )
But while many have been appeased, others may see his words and deeds as cosmetic.
One powerful indicator of the cosmetic nature of the new administration’s approach is the way it has made the T-word taboo, coining the new politically correct term “harsh interrogation techniques” as a euphemism to save embarrassment.
Presumably Obama will try to re-package again when he realises the embarrassment caused by the obvious acronym: “HIT”. But, of course, this approach has poor chances of success, because no re-packaging can ever make torture marketable.
Williams listed the abolition of HIT as one of Obama’s achievements. But in fact Obama has not promised to put a stop to HIT, as Siobhan Gorman warned in the Wall Street Journal last November:
“Upon review,” one government official said at the time, “Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”
Obama's new CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, has pointed out that closing Guantánamo does not mean that the CIA cannot go on sending prisoners to third countries, as Greg Miller reported in the Los Angeles Times in February:
“There is a second kind of rendition, where individuals are turned over to a country for purposes of questioning,” Panetta said. “… Using renditions, we may very well direct individuals to third countries.”
Of course, Panetta will seek assurances that such prisoners will not be subjected to HIT. So what’s new?
(“Panetta tells Senate panel he'll examine the effectiveness of coercive interrogation”: http://tinyurl.com/cjysz5 )
Finally, Obama's proposal to grant immunity to CIA HIT operatives who were just following orders undermines the achievements of the Nuremberg Trials, e.g. Nuremberg Principle IV:
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law ...”
As Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, noted in an interview in Salon magazine on 25 April, Obama's proposal to immunise CIA officials who tortured detainees would violate international law and US treaty obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.
(“Transcript: Interview with U.N. torture official Manfred Novak”:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/25/nowak/ )
While the previous president’s relatively modest educational achievements provide some mitigation for his failure to grasp the damage he has done to principles of international law, Obama, being a graduate of Harvard Law School magna cum laude, has no such excuse.
Please, Mr. Obama, stop playing with words and take every step to outlaw torture, in every jurisdiction and by whatever name you might like to call it.