Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Rachel Corrie's Message Lives On


                                                                                               
 
 
August 28, 2012

Dear Craig and Cindy,

We were very saddened and angry to learn that Judge Oded Gershon in the Haifa court found Rachel’s death to be an accident, and not a killing, when she acted as a human shield against the demolition of a home in Gaza, and was run over by an army bulldozer.
 
We remain deeply touched by her courageous actions and her aspirations to defend human rights.  

We are members of Other Voice (www.othervoice.org ) – comprised of Israeli citizens from the Sderot region (adjacent to Gaza) – that calls for a non-violent end to the conflict between Israel and the Hamas. We believe in human dignity, peace, and the rights of all peoples of the Gaza-Sderot region to live lives of dignity and security. We have a number of contacts in Gaza and do what we can to spread the message that violence, killing, siege, and Occupation are no solutions, and they dehumanize us all.

Please accept our condolences; we believe that Rachel’s death was not in vain. Her actions have been a light for us all. We are hopeful that our work, which also reflects Rachel’s commitment to human dignity, will ring more loudly across this land.

 

In solidarity,

Members of Other Voice (We all either live and/or work in the Gaza-Sderot region)

Dr. Julia Chaitin – Kibbutz Urim, and Sapir College

Dr. Naomi Benbassat, Moshav Ein Habsor

Nomika Zion, Kibbutz Migvan, Sderot

Daniel Lazare, Kibbutz Sa’ad

Arnon Ronen, Moshav Sde Nitzan

Rafi Davidson, Beer Sheva

Eric Yellin, Kibbutz Migvan, Sderot

Dr. Eitan Shahar, Kibbutz Lahav, and Sapir College

Moran HarTuv, Sderot

Roni Keidar, Moshav Nativ Ha’asara

Dr. Tami Razi, Sapir College

Yirmi Patishi, Sderot

Zohar Avitan, Sderot and Sapir College

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

A few nights ago there was an attempt to lynch a young Palestinian in Jerusalem. The teens who beat this boy, Jamil Julani, who ended up in the hospital in intensive care, is a hate crime.
 
They beat him and tried to kill him because he is Palestinian. Just for that reason.
 
 
 
Unfortunately, this story is not unique. Unfortunately, this story is a (near) re-run.

Emmett Till was murdered in 1955 in Mississippi, when he was 14, for supposedly flirting with a white woman.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jamal Julani, who is 17, was brutally beaten in Jerusalem, in a lynch attempt for supposedly flirting with a Jewish woman.
 
 
Our children have grown up, learning from us, that just as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, hatred of the other is a given.
 
The teens (including girls who were involved) were not born hating anyone. They were not born with the belief that it is okay to violently harm someone because of his nationality/ ethnicity/religion/skin color. They were taught this along the way.
 
We taught them this.
 
This is a terrible education to be ashamed of, and to fight against
 What good is it if children can read, write and do basic math, but grow up in hatred and with the incentive to harm others, just because they are different from them?
Our children have grown up in a region where Occupation is okay, oppression is okay, trampling of human rights is okay, violence is okay.
 
.
It is not okay.