You are currently browsing the Andy Alcock blog archives for January, 2012.

ISRAEL’S MERCY IS INHUMANELY STRAINED by Vacy Vlazna

January 12th, 2012
Israel’s Mercy is Inhumanely
Strained
By Vacy VlaznaThere is a growing campaign to urge the London
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to cancel Israel’s Habima Theatre’s performances of
‘The Merchant of Venice’ on 28-29th May 2012 at the Shakespeare Globe to Globe
Festival.

The Habima Theatre, the National Theatre of Israel, has
no moral qualms about performing in the illegal settlement colonies on stolen
Palestinian lands.

These colonies and their extremist residents have a
tragic daily and long-term impact on Palestinian lives with their rabid theft of
land, water, livelihood and homes that consequently have impoverished
Palestinian families…

You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth
sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.

OCHA reported that the weekly average racist attacks
resulting in Palestinian casualties and property damage has increased by 40% in
2011. Settler terrorism with its ‘strange apparent cruelty’ is sanctioned by the
Israeli state with the assistance of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Following Palestine’s bid for its right to membership in
the UN, in September 2011, Israel flagrantly announced plans to build 50,000
homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem in violation of international
law.

Habima has stated that “As a theater, this play allows
us to attack the hatred of Jews and fear of strangers,” Indisputably all racism
is contemptible and must be addressed and eliminated.

Still, Habima should be barred even though the court
scene (Act 4 Sc 1) is damning of Israel when interpreted from a perspective of
the Shylockian rapaciousness for Palestinian land, although, in the process of
theft, unlike Shylock, Israel doesn’t hesitate to draw Palestinian blood
including the blood of 352 children in Operation Cast Lead .

Also in the festival, the Palestinian Ashtar Theatre
(Ramallah and Jerusalem) is presenting the politically controversial Richard II.
The drama could bear analogy to the Nakba: the permanent exile of Mowbray, the
usurping of the weak King Richard ( British Mandate) by the Machiavellian
Bollingbroke who doomed England to decades of bloody civil
war.

The Ashtar theatre is famous for The Gaza Mono-Logues in
which 31 “Youth from Gaza Tell their Personal Stories about War and Siege.” It
was ‘performed simultaneously on October 17th 2010 by over 1500 youngsters in
more than 50 cities in 36 countries all over the world.’

The project is the inspiration of the Artistic Director,
Ms Iman Aoun, and is referred to as a Phoenix of life and truth rising from the
ashes of the 2008/9 Gaza war in which innocent civilians were mercilessly
trapped in the world’s most densely populated open prison with no escape by
land, air or sea,

Gaza’s fish ran away…but people were not able to.
Fateema Atallah, Born 1996

During the 22 days of Israel’s brutal high-tech military
assault, including the illegal use of phosphorus bombs on defenseless civilians,
1417 Palestinians including 352 children were killed. At least 5380 were wounded
and maimed including 1872 children. About 100,000 people lost their homes. For
young Gazans, these war crime facts remain mind, soul and
life-shattering:

• Yesterday I was sitting in school and I heard the
sound of planes. I got really scared, I wanted to run away from school. I felt I
was going to die because I remembered the war. The scenes of war won’t leave my
mind. Reem Afana , Born 1996

• Before the war I used to feel that Gaza was my second
mother. Its ground was the warm chest I could lay on, and its sky was my
dreams… without limits. The sea would wash away my worries. But today I feel
it’s an exile, I stopped feeling its the city of my dreams. Ahmad El Ruzzi, Born
1993

• In the future if I grow up, and in Gaza it’s an
achievement to grow up because death is standing on your doorstep, I want to be
a children’s caretaker and defend their rights.. Yasmeen Katbeh, Born
1996

Three years on, Israel’s quality of mercy is still
inhumanely strained by its Zionist apartheid policies and collective punishment
of Palestinians. It is….

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
uncapable of
pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy.

Cancelling Habima’s performance would be an ethical
stand of condemnation and a valuable awareness raising of the crimes against
humanity perpetrated by the state of Israel.

Western governments, as High Contracting Parties to the
Fourth Geneva Convention, have dishonorably relinquished their legal obligations
to secure a Palestinian state and protect the human rights of the indigenous
Palestinian people and that is why the Palestinians have called on all of to
join the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement as a non-violent means of
bringing justice and peace to both Palestine and Israel.

The Globe has a BDSt example close at hand. It has a
partnership with the Deutsche Bank which in 2010 divested from the Israeli
company, Elbit Systems when it was determined that Elbit significantly
participates in operating the illegal Apartheid Wall and protecting the illegal
West Bank colonies.

Cultural boycotts do have a far-reaching influence and
can inspire moral action, can be a vanguard for justice, can save
lives,

To do a great right, do a little wrong,
And curb this
cruel Israel of its will.

and, in this case, The Globe can offer Habima a
principled choice to join the movement to boycott the illegal colonies or remain
in Israel during the Shakespeare Globe to Globe Festival.

- Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for
Palestine Matters:
www.palestinematters.com. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second
round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 and was coordinator of
the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and
UNTAET from 1999-2001. She contributed this article to
PalestineChronicle.com.

If
you like this article, please consider making a contribution to the Palestine
Chronicle.
© Copyright
1999-2012 PalestineChronicle.com. All rights reserved

THE MAMMOTH TASK AHEAD FOR PEOPLE OF GOODWILL: A MESSAGE TO FRIENDS AT UNITED TO END GENOCIDE [A GROUP SUPPORTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOUTH SUDAN]

January 10th, 2012
Dear Friends at United to End
Genocide,
I very much appreciate the good work you do to
assist the human rights of the people of Sudan.
I would like to respectfully disagree with the
observation that Tom made in his report, however.
“We know that when the United States Government is
paying attention and exercising its influence, progress can be
achieved”.
The fact is that US administrations frequently support the very regimes that you and other good people around the world are trying to expose because of their inhumanity and gross human rights abuses.
In doing some reading on the situation in Southern Sudan, I came across a report by Susan Gordon of the Huffington Post, who wrote the following on 3 January 2012, :
“At 3 a.m., I received an email from my colleague
and dear friend, Mohamed. Usually calm and measured in his communication, Mohamed raged in his email against the Obama administration and its Sudan envoy, Princeton Lyman, for their complicity in supporting the brutal regime of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The subject line of the email was “U.S. Sudan policy is killing us.”
Many people had great hopes that the Obama Administration would make a difference for human rights, but this has not proved to be the case. He has done nothing to assist the plight of the Palestinians whose human and land rights are being violated every day by Israel.
In my region of the world, he has continued to assist the Indonesian military (TNI) despite the fact that it has committed genocide in East Timor, West Papua, Acheh and parts of Indonesia (eg Bali and Maliku provence).
In 1965, the CIA assisted Mahommed Suharto, the previous Indonesian dictator, to unseat the democratically elected government of President Sukarno. He remained in power for 33 long, corrupt and brutal years.
Amnesty International claimed that a half to one milion people were butchered by the TNI in the year afterwards with the full knowledge and blessing of the then US Administration and the CIA.
Some Indonesians inform me that the death toll was
nearer 3 million. Most of the victims were those supporting greater democracy and a fairer distribitution of resources. Ethnically, the Chinese and the Balinese suffered the most.
Barack Obama would know all of this as he spent a number of years living in Indonesia. He has done nothing to stop the support that the US gives to the TNI butchers.
Of course, Australian governments that endorse everything that US administrations do also support these people. Many in the SE Asian Pacific regions consider that the TNI is the worst terrorist organisation in our part of the world and that it can continue on its bloody way because the
US, Australia and some European governments allow it to do so.
US and Australian leaders continually preach about democracy, but continue to support dictatorships or get involved in unnecessary wars to get hold of resources of other nations, to increase the profits of their corporations or to install compliant regimes.
The fact is that the US is not a democracy as its governments are controlled by the Military/Industrial/Extreme Right Wing Complex (M/I/ERW/C). Dwight Eisenhower, before he retired as US President in 1961, warned the US people to beware of the Military Industrial complex because he had the foresight to see that this was going to be a very powerful and undemocratic force.
Since then, many extreme right wing organisations have worked to strengthen the power of this complex even further eg right wing
Republicans (and Democrats), the Tea Party, The Family, Moral Rearmament (some quite pro Nazi in outlook) etc and they provide an almost insurmountable force in relation to the decisions of US administrations.
However, to prevent US administrations (and the compliant governments like Australia) from bowing to the dictates of the M/I/ERW/C, more must be done to loosenthe strangle hold it has on decision-making processes.
The supreme war criminal Robert McNamara was never elected by the US people to high office. He was appointed by the Kennedy Administration from the Ford corporation and was given great powers to escalate the US War in Vietnam to an incredible extent. Three million Vietnamese died, their infrastructure was massively destroyed and their environment was greatly
contaminated because of this criminal megalomaniac and the US presidents (and other political leaders) who listened to him.
As we fight for the human rights of the victims of human rights abuses, we also need to confront the political forces that help to install the dictatorships that carry out the crimes against humanity.
And we need to look very critically look at our political structures that have given US and western politicians so much power to affect the politics of other
nations.
If we do not do this, certain individuals will always be able to get away with making more people suffer because of their greed and lust for power. And those of us who are struggling for social justice, human rights and a safer environment will be condemned to continue in this struggle forever.
Yours for peace, social justice, human rights and environmental responsibility
A La Lucha Continua!
Andrew (Andy) Alcock
Forestville
South
Australia
AUSTRALIA