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Not surprisingly, from the end of March 2020 till the end of March 2023, this HOPE section has remained silent.
It is not that we had lost Hope. Rather that we were simply too busy counting shots around us. Priorities had shifted altogether.
Such was the long nuclear winter of the coronavirus.
Water had become clear again in the canals of Venice...
Our brains were over-saturated with misinformation and misjudgments of all kinds.
Now we are out of it.
Looking for these nuggets of human gold again, and displaying them for you.
December 15, 2023
And then came October 7. Like the worst avalanche that could ever be imagined.
Remember the BaTaClan massacre, in Paris, on November 13, 2015 ?
Out of an audience of 1,500 mostly young people, ninety were killed in the first twenty minutes of the onslaught by three terrorists of ISIS, and hundreds were wounded.
At the Re'im rave party near Kissufim, out of some 2,500 revelers, 360 were massacred in a few moments, Saturday October 7 after dawn, dozens were taken hostages to Gaza, hundreds more were shot and maimed.
This is where we are now. The people of Gaza are paying a dreadful price for their leaders' folly. Two million have been displaced.
Over fifteen thousand have been killed. In Israel, North and South, three hundred thousand persons have been displaced.
The daily feeling is that we have nowhere to go, but deeper into the fog of war.
Hence the miracle that voices like Natan Sharansky's daughter could still be heard, in their own right and light.
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Fred Maroun, The Times of Israel, December 19, 2023
I’m a pacifist, atheist Arab and I’m praying for IDF soldiers
Rachel Sharansky Danziger, The Times of Israel, December 12, 2023
As we teeter between light and darkness, may we be a good ‘shamash’
Rachel Sharansky Danziger, The Times of Israel, December 7, 2023
Between the world and us, we place a light
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Amany Mahmoud, Al Monitor, July 3, 2021
Jerusalem bilingual school promotes coexistenceAkiva Eldar, Al Monitor, March 13, 2013
Bilingual School Teaches Lesson in Coexistence***************************************************************
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, YNet News, May 17, 2023
Itamar Eichner, YNet News, May 11, 2023
Unprecedented: EU body links textbook antisemitism to Palestinian attacks5 Gilad Meiri, YNet News, May 4, 2023
Hope and healing: Grieving Dee family meets organ recipients
Rina Bassist, Al Monitor, May 2, 2023
Israel, EU reconcile, agree to hold summit after Cohen-Borrell meeting
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4 Tal Giladi, Etti Abramov, YNet News, April 28, 2023
Life on the go: How this Israeli family found freedom in endless travel
Nitzi Yakov, YNet News, April 25, 2023
'One plus one equals far more': Arab and Jewish women learning microbusiness development together
Hadas Gold, CNN, April 24, 2023
Palestinian reporter breaks barriers by reporting in Hebrew on Israeli TV
Ilan Levinsohn, YNet News, April 16, 2023
'I simply love you': Bereaved father finds comfort with Palestinian neighborAlistair Bunkall, Sky News, April 16, 2023
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The Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2023
Defense Minister Gallant: Jewish attack on Huwara was 'mark of Cain'
3 Sue Surkes, The Times of Israel, March 11, 2023
Quietly, a stretch of the Jordan River is being cleaned up and transformed
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1 Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2019
Palestinians pay ‘shiva’ call to family of murdered Ori Ansbacher
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PEACE LINES
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Newsletter n°115
April 2023
1993-2023 Thirty Years Later
On the Mistakes of War
To think it all started thirty years ago, this continuous commitment to peace…. It was born in the summer of 1993, when it was reported that Sarajevo was besieged, and peace pilgrims were expected to reach the starving city. Sarajevo, where the first World War was triggered, on a fateful day of June 1914, when the Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated, at point-blank range. The assassins’ motive was to free Bosnia Herzegovine from the Austro-Hungarian rule, and establish a South Slav, Yugoslav, state. Instead, the shadowy game of alliances led to the first world conflagration with its horrific toll of 20 million killed, half of them civilians, and 20 million wounded, maimed.
This is where we come from. We the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Austrians, the British, the Italians, the Serbs, and so many more. It is easier to point to the European countries who were wise enough not to get involved into this mass butchery. Namely, the Swiss, in the very heart of Europe, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, the Spaniards, and few others.
Twenty-one years later, the Second World War was initiated among the very same belligerants, within the same vortex of European nations, this time with a toll of 50 to 70 million killed. Fewer peoples were strong enough not to get caught into this « civilized » inferno – the Swiss, always, the Spaniards to a large extent, the Portuguese.
Why reminisce ? As I write these lines, April 23, 2023, I have received a message from skydiving friends who inform me that our airfield is being occupied by troops for about three weeks, due to « military training inter-armies of great amplitude ».
« Ne remuez pas les bottes ! C’est mon principe. » Arthur Rimbaud, August 25, 1870
Reasons to worry : over thirteen thousand people have been killed since February 2022, and through the « jeu des alliances » more and more countries are implied, not only the U.S.A. but Germany and France, England, Poland, selling weapons of all kinds, a flourishing business if any – last year alone, Ukrainian imports of armament were multiplied by 60.
Now, if you take a look at the seven main world exporters of deadly devices, you will find the USA on top, with 40% of the lethal trade, followed by Russia, with 16%, little France with 11%, China with 5.2%, Germany with 4.2%, Italy with 3.8%, the United Kingdom with 3.2%, and Spain with 2.6%. Source : https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/l-ukraine-troisieme-importateur-mondial-les-ventes-d-armes-dans-le-monde-en-cinq-infographies-2001505 and SIPRI.
Not that we need any kind of moralistic finger-wagging at anyone in particular. Just delve into history, to get a better perspective at where we come from, where we’re going.
The major war the US were actors of, after WW II and Korea (1950-1953, over 4 million killed, most of them Korean), was Viet-Nam, for which Robert McNamara was the « architect », as Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. By many in his homeland, he was considered as the brain behind the three million Vietnamese killed that the US left behind, after their defeat and hasty retreat in 1975.
You should really listen to the same man, thirty years after he took office in Washington. When asked by Carl Bernstein, for TIME magazine, whether the war in Iraq was moving out of control in early 1991, he retorted :
« No military operation can be totally under control, especially one with high-tech weapons. »
« I tell you Jesus Christ himself can't keep one of these things under control. »
This was a man in his 75th year speaking, long considered a « falcon », and by no means a pacifist at any time of his life. I cannot even begin to say how moved I am by this confession, simple and straightforward as it is.
Ever since I first read it, thirty-two years ago, it has stayed with me.
Robert McNamara (whose middle name is Strange) passed away in 2009. Strange indeed. Bless his soul. I mean, the courage it has taken him, for such a coming out.
What was true then, is just as true, or truer today.
« It's not just events moving out of control. […] because of misinformation and misperceptions, there are misjudgments as to where a nation's interests lie and what can be accomplished. – [Take the missile crisis, for example, 1962] you cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation. Events were really out of the control of either party, though both the Russians and we were trying to maintain control. »
Don’t we feel like repeating the content of this expertise ! You cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation and misperceptions involved in the political processes leading to sending men to their untimely death and demise.
Please listen to Robert S. McNamara. He can be found online :
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,972307-5,00.html
« The consequences of military action are unpredictable. I learned this as Secretary [of Defense] time after time after time. »
And if you wonder why the heartbreaking horror inflicted to Ukrainians on both sides of the divide, has not spread even farther, take the case of Viet-Nam, China & Russia vs the US and their allies, when after a few years the commanders did not know what to do, and decided « one of the greatest bombing campaigns in the history of warfare » :
- Q. You thought the bombing would work at the time?
- A. No, I didn't think it would work at the time.
- Q. Why undertake it then?
- A. Because we had to try to prove it wouldn't work, number one, and other people thought it would work.
Isn’t just this exactly as they always do ?
I had read the Bernstein interview of Robert St. McNamara, when it was published, in February 1991 – just one week before the end of the Gulf War. Had he somehow whistled the end game ?
How we all forget fast… The toll : over one hundred thousand killed among the Iraqi people, less than 300 for the U.S. and its usual allies, the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Italy… Was war over in early March 1991 ? By the end of the same month of March 1991, it broke out in the Balkans, in Bosnia. First in Croatia, then Slovenia. Who remembers the bombings of Vukovar, Dubrovnik ?
The question, for me then, and for some others in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Belgium… was : We cannot let this happen, and look the other way !
If you take a closer look at Europe as a geographic entity, you realize that its center of gravity actually is in Switzerland. Between Zurich and Davos. You could also say it is in Austria, in Innsbruck. Checking upon the maps, you then realize that the distance from Davos to Dubrovnik is 800 km, to Sarajevo : 745. From Zürich to Sarajevo : 860 km. The dreadful fire of war was at our door.
The problem, though, was to find volunteers to go there. Guess what, nobody wants to go to war ! Even as a peace volunteer. You can’t blame them, can you ? Showing clearly that men get dragged into war, it doesn’t fall on them naturally.
Plus, what fleet, what means, did we have ? Was there a We only ?
The picture of four standing people shows our first volunteer, in the winter of 1993, with three British soldiers of the U.N.Protection Force, around a meagre fire of planks, on the Diamond Road, the only mountain track open, from Split on the coast to Sarajevo and the north of Bosnia. On the left you see a small Renault van, filled with solid food, milk, books, blankets, under the label HUMANITARNA POMOC (pronounced Pomotsh), our first two words in Serbo-Croat. Pomoc meaning Aid, Relief.
Such was our pass, across the sixty-some checkpoints on our way. To protect us, and all civilians, you had these men of the UNPROFOR, at the most dangerous spots. And protect us, they did, indeed, including a tank which fired a shell at a sniper who was taking aim at us. Praise be to these British and French soldiers of peace who paid a heavy price in casualties to contain the devastation. Over 60,000 people lost their life in this war. The lessons to us were many :
- You do need an efficient, reliable army to stem the rogue elements who behave as war profiteers, or terrormongers.
- You can’t feed hundreds of thousands of people. Food alone is not the issue.
- You won’t play Santa Klaus for a week and then disappear.
- You had better find ways of acting upstream, on the fabric of war.
- In this enterprise you need help from people of authority & prestige.
- It is a long struggle, that only ends with a « return to normal ».
- You will save countless numbers of unknown people on the way, and you may save your own soul, but you will lose some others that you thought you knew.
- Anyway, never expect anything in return.
- You need to be strong to sustain, and dedicated within to really pursue.
- There is no frontier between others and self. Empathy prevails.
You wonder where the astronaut comes into this picture.
His name is Edgar Mitchell, and he is one of the twelve men who walked on the moon. Also the author of books well worth reading, The way of the explorer, Earthrise, Reflections of the Moon, We Are One…
We, who were nobodies thirty years ago, who had nothing, who did not know anything either abour the Balkans, we needed support from bigger people. Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), with his space colleagues Russell Schweickart (Apollo 9), J-F Clervoy, Umberto Guidoni, came to our rescue in 2005, on our fourth campaign, Against Terror, For Common Sense (« Because we are all human beings »). We definitely had come to the conclusion that we needed a global view from above, to distanciate ourselves from exclusive, partisan sides. That will be another story.
Back to our beginning, we, who had nothing, borrowed combis from second-hand car dealers, obtained food from generous directors in malls, gas-oil from oil field prospectors… The support we needed on a « moral » ground, we fast received from none others than Coretta Scott King (Martin Luther King’s widow), Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Reverend Tutu, Pdts Gorbachev and de Klerk, Arafat, PM Rabin…
Such commanding voices were heard through the battlefields. It worked. The Sarajevo-Zenica Call was aired on the radios, on tv in Bosnia, and through the world.
« ENOUGH ! Enough blood ! Enough speeches ! Enough alibis ! »
As for the young man crouching with his hand on a friendly wild roe, he is our new Thoreau, and has lived seven years in the woods. His name is Geoffroy Delorme, and he has been lecturing to teenagers and adults about saving our environment. Looking at it from the moon, you’d say he is one of the best guardians actually fighting for peace through the true riches, preserving what is left around us.
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Jerusalem - Qalandya 2006PEACE LINES
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Belfast, Northern Ireland 2022Newsletter n° 114
January-May 2023
In April 2022, mid-April, the decision was taken to suspend updating this section, see what the passing of time would do. How different things would be after a while. We let the while last about the time of a pregnancy, some nine months. When we chose silence, there had been a "terror wave" in Israel, leaving a trail of shock and blood. Nine months later, what do we see ? A massacre of nine Palestinians by the Israeli army in Jenin, the Northernmost Palestinian city, followed by a massacre of seven Jews in a synagogue, and another two Jews elsewhere, a father and a son, shot down by an Arab teenager who is barely thirteen. Sadly, this feels like the umpteenth rerun of the same old feud, dating back to Kafka's days, when he wrote Jackals and Arabs, first published by Martin Buber, in 1917.
What was the Northern traveler's perception, after meeting talking jackals and Arabs in the Middle eastern desert, way back in the days of World War I ?
"I don't presume to pass judgment on matters so far removed from my own concerns; it seems to be a very ancient feud; a blood feud, probably; so it will probably take bloodshed to end it."
Don't these people know how to count corpses ? Nine to nine, and they will stop, until the next round.
As things were, the jackals of the time had some great expectations regarding the passing Northerner : "Master, you shall end the feud that divides the world." To which the Arab retorted : "They will continue to be with us until the end of time.(...) They cherish a quite absurd hope, these animals; they are fools, complete fools. (...) Wonderful animals, eh? And how they hate us!"
By the way, the pictures to start this Newsletter 114 : the « same » wall, expanding on some 500 km, to separate Israelis from Palestinians in the left image ; to separate Protestants from Catholics in the right one. You count 15 km of these walls in Belfast proper, coincidentally called Peace Lines. No, we did not pick our denomination in Northern Ireland, but still…
We all live in a world of barriers and borders. Where they are higher and thicker you have to wonder why. In Northern Ireland, people seem to « want » these walls, on both sides. Others, in Europe, and elsewhere, know nothing about this. The dirty little war between the British and the Irish – the British Irish and the Republican Irish – ended in April 1998, with the Good Friday Agreements. Do we have to recall some details ?
They, the IRA Provisional, murdered the present king’s great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, at the age of 79, in his fishing boat. 1979. Foul murder, you could say. 1984 : they devastated the Grand Hotel in Brighton, targeting the British Prime Minister, killing five, wounding more than thirty. How interesting, the bomber was identified, sentenced to eight life sentences, but was released after 14 years, in 1999, aged 48. He met the daughter of one of his victims in 2000, Jo Berry, and together they have participated in countless meetings organized by Building Bridges for Peace, in Rwanda, Lebanon, and… Israel, Palestine, as well as in Belfast.
In 2005, the IRA formally ended its armed struggle, and proceeded to decommission all its weapons – after killing one thousand armed British personnel and over 600 civilians, in the course of two generations (1969-2005), wounding, maiming thousands ignored.
A bloody forgotten civil war, in what was then the European Union, United Kingdom included. Likewise with the Basque in Spain and France. Euskadi ta Astakasuna (ETA) was formed in 1959, with its symbol of the Snake (the political way) around the Axe (violence), and its motto : « to pursue both ways », until it officially renounced violence and dissolved itself in 2018. Leaving over eight hundred killed and thousands wounded, maimed.
Again, think of another dirty little war, a civil war, within Europe, that lasted over half a century, and that everybody else chose to discount. Baptized Christians killing Christians.
Speaking of the twenty-first century. And then, you have a locked-down world, from 2020 until 2021-2022, immediately followed by war in Ukraine, ongoing. You look at it from space, and it makes you wonder : is this a rational place at all ? What is its rationale ? Its purpose, if any ?
Terror operations led by the IRA and the ETA had a political aim, they were supposed to bring « national liberation ». Yet, they did not achieve any. In 2023, things in Northern Ireland are pretty much the way they were before, the British flag is still flying high.
The Europa Hotel, in Belfast, once the « most bombed hotel in the world » (33 times) is still standing, hosting Van Morrison concerts – Van Morrison, the one, only outspoken poet and musician against lockdowns.
As for the Basque country, it is, in 2023, as far from independance as Catalunya is, on the opposite coast of Spain.
What has changed is the perception that people, in Europe and elsewhere, have developed of terror as a means, since September 11, 2001, in the US, and October 13, 2002, in Moscow ; March 11, 2004, in Madrid ; all « in the name of Allah ». You can add Paris, in January and November 2015 ; Brussels, in March 2016.
In Iraq, during the American intervention of 1990-1991, over fifty thousand people lost their life, in the name of « Operation Iraqi Freedom », and up to one million were killed, during the American invasion of Iraq from 2003 to 2011. 2011 being the year war broke out in Syria, with a toll of 600,000 killed, and Libya was destroyed in depth.
Look at it from above, the way space travellers will, and hear moonwalker Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) confess :
« It was clear that those tiny pinpoints of light, in brilliant profusion, were a part of the plan. They were linked together as part of the whole as they framed and formed a backdrop for this fragile planet Earth.
[…] However, as I continued to gaze at Earth, the euphoria, the sense of oneness, of wholeness, of participation, changed into a feeling of deep despair – the darkest, blackest despair. The most agonizing emotional pain I had ever felt, as I contemplated man and his condition on Earth, behaving like ancient warring tribes fighting over food and territorial rights… »
« We are universal beings. We are stewards and keepers of spaceship Earth. » Look at it, as it is. Parched and bleached from burning heat and drought.
Doesn’t it make your blood curdle ?
Make it a broader swath, including the North of Africa, down to the horn of Ethiopia-Somalia. What do you find there, more deserts, deeper misery in sweltering heat. The scorched arid earth prevails. Whereas tiny Israel could boast itself of having transformed the desert into an oasis.
May 8, 2023
A striking coincidence that this day « Victory » is being celebrated in ceremonies and fanfares, across much of Europe and the world. The victory against evil and destruction.
Is it such a victory, when you learn that over 600,000 people have been killed in Ethiopia, and close to 400,000 in Yemen, right across the Red Sea ? Predictably, local media, regional news, will not cover what is happening across the fences they establish.
Hence the need and power of the global view, from a vertical distance.
Praise be to the first man who ever went up into space, for a triple ride around us. 1961, April 12. The man who always smiled, kept his grin. Yuri Gagarin.
Followed in June 1963 by the first woman ever up in space, Valentina Tereshkova.
They did not go up in a spirit of territorial conquest. The vision clearly was to extend the comprehension of humankind and its sailing, drifting, fragile spaceship Earth.
The vertical dimension provides the lever needed to lift reality to higher grounds, not to get caught into quagmires of déjà vu, déjà entendu.
Take it back to the birth of the millenium. The famed year 2000. How did it start ? With the explosion of the Thermostat, at the hinge of the continents, blood on the Esplanade, in Jerusalem.
Passivity amounting to complicity was no option. What had worked in Bosnia, with the Zenica, Sarajevo Call to the fighters and leaders in former Yugoslavia had to be tried again.
It was published in Le Monde Diplomatique in December 2000, with the support of 33 Nobel laureates, reminding us of Einstein’s warning : « Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding ».
The Dalai Lama joined in this Call, with Joseph Rotblat (one of the signatories of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto), Roald Hoffmann, François Jacob, Werner Arber, and quite a few distinguished researchers, but to no avail. So that we reiterated with a more focused campaign in 2001, Peace through Justice, supported by 18 Nobel laureates this time (among them Ilya Prigogine, Desmond Tutu, Maurice Wilkins…). The focus was « the settlements recognized as sources of inequity and hatred », which « have to be evacuated non-violently ». It would take time to the Israeli leaders to heed this call though, as they had to face a raging campaign of suicide bombings in all public places, cafés, buses, restaurants…
To really understand what the feeling was like, by the end of 2000 and mid-2001, you should check upon a list of all the random attacks against civilians, going as far back as 1993-1994 actually. Mostly by Hamas, from the first one in October 1993 until November 1999, with five of them by members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
You have to double-check two lists, one in English, the other in French, to get the facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronologie_du_terrorisme_palestinien
An unprecedented breakthrough between archenemies, who agreed to meet face to face, listen to each other, after half a century of mayhem and bloodshed. The Jews had their Shoah in Europe, and then the exodus of hundreds of thousands from Arab countries in the sixties. The Arabs had their Nakba, in 1948. 1991-1993 : at last, their leaders could convene, for the sake of peace.
There had been the Madrid Conference in 1991, which paved the way to the Oslo Accords, signed in Washington on September 13, 1993. 
Except that some, in the Palestinian community, wanted no such thing, and the first reaction to Oslo came three weeks after Washington, when a boobytrapped car exploded in Beit El, leaving some thirty wounded, and then in the spring of 1994, two more bombs aimed at buses, leaving thirteen dead. October 1994, two more terror attacks, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, scores of maimed and killed. ember 1994 : Palestinian Islamic Jihad joined in the attacks, which were not to abate until the summer of 1999, the first car-ramming into a crowd, by Hamas. Malls, cafés, restaurants, markets, bus-stops, no place in Israel was safe. Violence was running out of control : in February 1994, at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron (where supposedly Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Lea are buried), an Israeli settler opened fire on a Friday, during prayer, on the worshippers at Ibrahim’s Mosque, and left 155 in their blood, 29 of them lifeless.
Hence the long bitterness, on one side, against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to this day ; on the other side, against such faceless individuals in the Israeli community, perceived as settlers, extremists, and deadly dangers on the way – one of those shooting at Prime Minister Rabin in his back, on November 4, 1995. Leaving Israel rudderless at the time.
You have to see that nothing was clear-cut, in terms of leadership. As for peace accords, not only do the leaders have to survive long enough, but they do not materialize on the ground as long as a real peace policy is not implemented, and institutionalized, from the kindergartens and schools to the mainstream media. The fact is that no such policy was ever organized, in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah or Gaza.
effects. The tenth Prime Minister of Israel had been on the job one year, he would stay in power eight more months only.Oslo redux, July 2000, in Camp David, Maryland, a military base sixty miles from Washington. Same causes, same 
After him came General Sharon, with possibly more personal and military prestige than his predecessors combined. The second Intifada, uprising, had broken out though, in October 2000, five months before his election. The extent of deadly terror attacks since October 2000 (making it blood-clear that no peace process could be in the works) was such in 2001 and 2002, rising from 4-5 a year in 1997-1998 to 12 in 2000, 65 in 2001, 63 in 2002, that the first priority of the Israeli side, during these hellish two years, was to protect itself, not only through counter-attack with tanks and missiles, but through the erection of a high wall, à la Belfast, to prevent terrorists from easily entering their territory.
To make things clear, people born after 1990-2000 should know that circulation was free and fluid, all through Israel and Gaza, before the fatal years 2001-2002.
Here is what the Qalandiya checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, looked like. All you had, in terms of military presence, was a small sentry-box and a sort of tent, on a slope, and a few large rocks along the road. A handful of soldiers manned it, less than five, sometimes no more than 3.
That was Qalandiya in the summer of 2001. Very little control of identity and car documents, far and in between. One soldier, or two, would stand in the midst of the passing crowd, without angst or any protection to really speak of.
The same applied to the Gaza Strip. During the First Intifada I had walked, and hitch-hiked, from the North, Beit Lahia, to Egypt, without any hindrance, whatsoever.
Now, this is what we got instead. All the way from Jenin up North to Ramallah and Gaza.
They started building the first segment of the « Security Fence » in the summer of 2003, also calling it « Separation Fence », Geder HaHafrada. A concept that Yitzhak Rabin, possibly, was the first to coin officially, as far back as 1994, declaring « We have to decide on separation as a philosophy », which he put in a famous nutshell « We must take Gaza out of Tel Aviv ». After a vision à la de Gaulle, regarding the French presence in Algeria. It was a simple demographic equation.
Now that the Security/Separation Wall was being built, General Sharon had freer hands to deal with the problem of the non-violent evacuation of what the Peace through Justice Campaign of 2001 called « the settlements recognized as sources of inequity and hatred ».
Except that he did not have a majority for that, his own party, the Likud, was opposed to it. On the grounds that it would lead to chaos in evacuated zones, once done. August 2004, he still lacked the support needed to act.
No matter what, he did it all the same, got it approved by the Knesset in February 2005, and sent troops to implement it in August 2005. It was done by September 12.
The all time hero, who had taken part in every war (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973) and been wounded twice (1948 & 1973) made it.
His main opponent, the present Prime Minister, however, had warned against the move, arguing that Gaza would become « a huge base for terror ».
The fact is, several hours only after the completion of the evacuation, the first two rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, at Sderot and Yad Mordechai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2002%E2%80%932006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2001
Not that rockets and mortars began in September 2005, as can be seen from the lists of rocket attacks prior to the evacuation, but they intensified continually, increasing in size, range, and power of destruction. We then launched our third Nobel campaign in 2005, the Nobel Call Against Terror, For Common Sense, « Because we are all human beings, Because we are horrified by this endless waste of human life in the name of nation or religion, Because we refuse the logics of blood pacts and any terror, We whole-heartedly praise[d] the courage of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and people who are taking bold steps on the way to justice and common sense. »
http://www.peacelines.org/israel-palestine-2000-2014-c24800090
« Be sure the world is watching, with deep expectations. We are at your side. »
May 10, 2023
The writing of this Newsletter was interrupted, on May 9th, by a new round of « armed dialogue » between the conflicting sides, when a wave of forty combat helicopters and jets raided into the Gaza skies, to decapitate the top echelon of Islamic Jihad, leaving three of their commanders dead, with their wives and children.
Predictably, hundreds of rockets were fired into Israel in that wake, 350 they say, half of them falling short, within the Gaza Strip. What a striking coincidence that the last item in this Newsletter has been a map about the Range of missiles launched from the Gaza Strip…
Living under the cleaver, under the gun. The sword of Damocleus always suspended above our heads. I have spent wonderful times with families both sides of the fence, in Gaza and Sderot. I love these people. When together, we talk about subjects in depth, the generation gap, the relations between parents and children, the shift from authority in excess to lack of credibility, the use of social media, artificial intelligence, and so on. They describe to me what their life feels like, under the permanent threat of missiles and rockets. These friends in Sderot recall the time the mother and daughter had retreated from the kitchen into a back room, just seconds before a rocket exploded in the kitchen. I can see all the remains of burst rockets on the metal shelves of the police station in Sderot.
I mean, please, don’t minimize the size and effect of these rockets from Gaza. I have had meetings with doctors and psychologists telling me what constant pre and post-trauma stress do to people’s minds, starting with infants, children. In Gaza, I have spent time with a teenager turned blind after a missile exploded in the street as he was going to buy bread at the baker’s. I also see all the wounded veterans gathered on a beach at night, with their amputated arms or legs, for recreation of some kind.
I don’t see any « Israelis », « Jews », « Palestinians », or « Muslims » there. I only see people. Hurting people, suffering people, built the same way, dressed the same way, eating the same way, aching the same way.
In 2005, we had hopes. Eleven Peace Nobel laureates supported our stand – South Africa’s President de Klerk among them, Shirin Ebadi from Tehran, Jody Williams (against landmines), Joseph Rotblat again, followed by 57 others, and as we thought this wouldn’t be enough, we addressed people who could make a difference, based on their courage too, and world vision : astronauts Edgar Mitchell, as a moonwalker, Russell Schweickart (who circled around the moon), Jean-François Clervoy, Umberto Guidoni ; Jean-Bernard Bonnet (for his world record in skydiving at 11.000 m) ; Loïc Leferme (world record in No-Limits apnoea at -171 m) ; and the sailor Maud Fontenoy,
who rowed 3700 km across the Atlantic ocean when she was 25, and then 6780 km across the Pacific ocean, two years later.
We thought these seven brave souls commanded absolute respect, from their experience of what our world is really made of, and how we can relate to it. People would look into their lives, and draw inspiration from them.
It did not matter that they were « American », « French », or « Italian ». All that mattered is that they had done it, they had been where no others had been, and brought another angle, to think outside the usual boxes.
As fellow journalists in Israel had warned us that Nobel laureates might not be enough, we added about a hundred Members of the European Parliament, among them General Morillon (for his role as UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia), ex-PM Michel Rocard, and more, from 22 other European countries. There was a real feeling of togetherness, of commitment, of care.
« Whatever obstacles may come now, everything you achieve for the sake of peace, justice, and non-violence, will benefit the whole human species. »
To understand the nature of the obstacles that came after the evacuation not only of Gaza, but of four settlements in the West Bank (notably Kadim and Ganim near Jenin in the North, but also Khomesh, a few kilometers above Nablus), one has to take a look at the whole context, between 2005 and 2007, from North to South – and face the bottom-line question : were our 2001 and 2005 hopes not founded in reality ? Was General Sharon wrong to push for the forcible evacuation of « the settlements recognized as sources of inequity and hatred » ?
Whenever things get that heavy, I suggest we take a double approach : distance ourselves from the conundrum, far enough, and then check out about the specifics on the ground, in terms of fairness.
On this picture, taken in February 1984, you see Bruce McCandless II, floating into space, the first human being to ever fly freely, untethered, into the black vacuum of cosmos.
Some twelves hours in all. A former naval aviator, he makes you think, well, it all is a matter of vision, understanding of possibilities, and training, isn’t it.
With the right people, at the right place and time. But basically, first a matter of personal, and collective, vision.
Whether you end up flying 286 km above Earth, or watch the world and things as they are from your watchtower, somewhere.
What do we see tonight, as of May 11, on the second day of rockets fired from Gaza (one thousand of them in two days) ? These deadly fireworks – the launchings from the South, the interceptions further North. Is this a way to live ? And still counting.
A popular Israeli singer held a concert before 40,000 people in Tel Aviv tonight, claiming « No one can silence us ! ». In the meantime, hospitals in Gaza are stuffed with blood-covered stretchers and wounded. The Islamic Jihad leaders rejoice at their few hits in Israel, and call for the people to climb on rooftops and celebrate the pain and loss of life in Israel.
« Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent ? » (Aragon).
Can’t they see we have other burning concerns ?
1 The rising global heat, with its countless tragedies worldwide.
2 The current threat of a world war, nuclear (the US vs Russia).
3 The appalling lack of personal purpose ; blind resignation all over.
4 The growing collapse of the birth rate in one hemisphere.
5 The damage done yet by Artificial Intelligence to the fabric of society (« AI has hacked the operating system of our civilization » Harari).
Last but alas not least, the incredible amount of misperceptions, miscalculations, among leaders.
And the unholy alliance of political and so-called religious views leading to the use of terror attacks against civilians, East and West, North and South. Seven scourges to deal with, most urgently.
« Our house is on fire ! » cried the young Greta Thunberg in Davos, the epicentre of Europe, at the World Economic Forum, in January 2019 – and what has changed since ? Do we see more firemen and firewomen than before ?
The very clear and simple question for each of us, whether we live in Gaza, Davos, Belfast, or Tunis, Montelimar, being : have we redefined our purpose and capacities, in the light of the global plagues burdening us all presently ?
The people who celebrate the loss of life and the pain on « the other side », thirsty for vengeance, don’t they realize how it is all intertwined, and that an eye for an eye will turn the world blinder yet than it already is, speaking of their own world ?
For « it is an easy thing to hear sounds of love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemies’ house … Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten (…) and the poor in the prison and the soldier in the field When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead ». (William Blake, The Price of Experience)
May 21, 2023
As this Letter is getting close to its end, dozens of us have their mind in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Kennedy Space center, where a team of four astronauts is due to take off shortly before midnight, to join the ISS, International Space Station, where seven others are expecting them, three Russians, three Americans, and an Emirati, Sultan Al Neyadi, who was the first Arab on a space walk in April 2023. Their names : Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher, from Saudi Arabia ; Ali Al-Qarni, also from Arabia ; Peggy Whitson, a Nasa astronaut, and John Schoffner, from Tennessee. A few years ago, women were not allowed to drive a car in the Saudi kingdom. Look what a few years will do… Did we not mention three Russians and three Americans manning the ISS together, with the first Arab spacewalker, whereas on the ground in Eurasia, other Americans are planning to send F-16 jet fighters to bomb Russian troops ? For thirty years now, Americans and Russians have been busy working for and in that visionary vessel flying above the Earth. Where’s the catch-22 ? 
In the meantime, back at the Hinge of Continents, named Palestine by some, Israel by others, since our mind is focused on rockets now, we’ve had some fifteen hundred rockets, loaded with explosive heads, sent from Gaza randomly towards Israeli territory. Their achievement was to kill an old lady, aged 80, wheeling her handicapped husband towards a shelter, and a Palestinian worker from Gaza. Whereas the counter-attack missiles from Israel decimated the leadership of the rocket launchers, murdered thirty people (half of them identified as terrorists) and wounded over one hundred fifty, from all walks of life.
What’s the sense ?
Thinking of Rayyanah Barnawi’s intent gaze into our reality, and her joy at the idea of sharing her experience through cameras with kids in the Middle East while aboard the ISS :
« Being able to see their faces when they see astronauts from their own region for the first time is so thrilling… »
This letter is intended, among others, for these kids. Thinking outside the boxes. Addressing the commanders on the field, « all these rather primitive rockets, what’s the point ? what do they achieve ? to kill an old lady pushing her husband in his wheelchair, and a countryman from the Strip, father of six, mutilating his brother by his side, was this what the Struggle is about ? Repetitive as it is, time after time after time… »
« Can’t you hear the commanders of the Others scoffing, ‘so you want to play R & M ? Rockets and Missiles ? Fine with us – you’re Islamic Jihad, by your own volition, we’re the Good Guys… let’s play ! »
This lack of sense, of personal purpose, whether we are in Kiev, Gaza, Davos, or Montelimar, drags us down, and blocks the issues, as can be seen in all situations of ongoing conflict and suffering. Blind to the context, the global view, the big picture.
Whereas we have highly qualified human beings, in their continuous quest for the precise decisions, the perfect gestures, out there, slowly dancing into space – and we’d keep rushing blindly, down here, to the next stumbling block, the next predictable obstacles ? Look at it all from the ISS. It may be pilot Sultan, or Rayyanah, the first woman from the Middle East into space.
And who cares that it was, indeed, the first spacewalk in Arab history ?
« We are locked in history » says Werner Herzog in his humble film, The Cave of Lost Dreams. If all it takes to get unlocked is to raise our eyes, and see what the stars owe to the night, then, as Greta puts it, « No one is too small to make a difference. »
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Newsletter 114 - January-May 2023
Newsletter 115 - 1993-2023 - Thirty Years Later
Newsletter 116 : the Dam... New York in Orange Smog
Newsletter 117 - Death of Terror Mastermind (July 2023)
Newsletter 119 - Qanta Ahmed's voice (October 2023)
Newsletter 120 - Islamic terror in France (en français)
Newsletter 121 - The hostages, two months of war
Newsletter 122 - December 23, 2023
Newsletter 123 - December 30, 2023 - Argumentaire for the Nobel Call of December 2023 Gaza/Israel
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