reed writes

In my early visits to the Middle East, I met people, who remembered the days when Jews and Arabs were friends.

An old Palestinian once told me that when he was a boy, a Jewish family lived next door. They were devout and couldn’t work on the Sabbath, so his father would visit the neighbour every week and light the Sabbath lamps. In return, the head of the Jewish family would light his family’s lamps on the Muslim Holy Day. He said he missed those times. But unfortunately wars mess up peoples’ lives. These days Jews and Palestinians seldom come into personal contact. So it’s heart-warming to find a story that provides a glimmer of hope that perhaps peace could come when a new generation grows up.

Orel is an Israeli Jewish boy who is in the ALYN hospital in Jerusalem. Marya is a Muslim girl in the same hospital. They are the same age; they met during their treatment. They have lived next door to each other for a year now and have become friends. The Jewish boy was wounded by a rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza.

The Muslim girl was paralysed by an Israeli missile, which killed her mother and injured her father and brother. Neither child has any idea why they were almost killed. Neither understands the long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians over lost lands, homes and identities. But they are both in the ALYN hospital, which was founded by an American in 1932, before the Jewish state was created.

Its first building was an old Christian Church, donated as a polio treatment centre, open to all children of all faiths. It still operates on that principle.

“Canadians assume that there are no dead in peacekeeping and that is why they like it.” - Jack Granatstein

Jack Granatstein is a self-proclaimed military historian who seems to think he can read the minds of Canadians.

He recently passed along the above gratuitous insult to the people of this country by purporting to explain why Canadians favour peacekeeping over war.

Granatsein stated – or mistated – that Canadians prefer peacekeeping because they think that there are fewer casualties. He implies the Canadian people…from whom our soldiers are drawn, by the way…are a lot of cowardly shirkers with their heads in the sand.

Granatstein ought to know better and the Canadian public deserve an apology.

Granatstein should understand that we’re not stupid. We know that there are casualties associated with the business of peacekeeping.

It could just be, however, that we recognize…as a People…that problems are not solved by fighting wars.

It could just be, Mr. Granatstein, that on the whole…Canadians are people of conscience.

The Granatstein quote appeared in a piece published yesterday on the CBC website… www.cbc.ca The title of the piece was itself a slap at peacekeeping:

“Lest we forget the cost of peacekeeping”

The article appears at a time of increased Canadian casualties in Afghanistan and increased public skepticism about that war. It makes a subtle effort to compare the process of peacekeeping, to what we have been doing in South Asia. It’s a kind of advertisement for the military industrial community.

Right off the bat – in the first 4 paragraphs – we get the point that the author a Mr. Robert Smol is attempting to make.

Smol compares apples with oranges by making the point that peacekeeping is every bit as dangerous as a full-scale, aggressive combat war. There is not even a nod to the higher moral values involved in peacekeeping.

When read carefully, it becomes crystal clear that both Granatstein and Smol are apologists for war and CBC is complicit by not publishing the other side of the story.

Smol closes his article with the following…

Looking at the larger picture, at least 122 Canadian peacekeepers have died while on UN assignment somewhere since 1956. The number would be much higher, of course, if we counted those who died during training or related exercises.

By comparison, 124 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan between April 2002 and July 2009 (an average of 1.4 deaths a month).

Inexplicably Smol reduces the loss of lives of our soldiers to cold hard statistics.

Also, Smol fails to point out that at least four of our soldiers in Afghanistan were killed by American planes and that at least one Canadian Peacekeeper was murdered by the military of a close ally.

And of course he doesn’t mention the death of a Canadian diplomat in the Afghan war. The full article is available at the link below.

Shame.

Stefan Zweig was a mild-mannered Austrian writer, political philosopher and literary historian. He was also a lifelong pacifist.

In the spring of 1914, Zweig, who was visiting France, sat in a movie theatre in Tours. A newsreel was shown and there was a brief image of Wilhelm ll of Germany. "Everybody yelled and whistled – men, women and children, as if they had been personally insulted," Zweig wrote.

"The good-natured people of Tours, who knew no more about the world and politics than what they read in their newspapers had gone mad for an instant."

It frightened Zweig.

"The incident lasted only a few seconds but it showed me how easily people anywhere could be aroused in a time of crisis, despite all attempts at understanding."

Zweig lived through that war and then lived through the first years of the scourge of Nazism. He fled the naziification of Austria and Germany in 1934. He went first to England, then to the United States and finally to Brazil, carrying his pacifist views with him.

Zweig and his wife despaired of the future of Europe and its culture. They both felt the world was more inclined toward war than peace.

In 1942, they committed suicide together.

The suicide note contained the following statement:

"I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy – and personal freedom the highest good on Earth"

This Weekend: The International Day of Peace: Reflecting On Human Rights and Peacekeeping

The International Day of Peace was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981, to commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace amongst all peoples.

Twenty years later, the General Assembly set 21 September as the annual date to observe the the day as one of global ceasefire and non-violence. No citizen of the world is holding his/her breath, however.

This year, the world commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the 60th anniversary of UN peacekeeping.

In the aftermath of World War II, world leaders acknowledged that disregard and contempt for human rights resulted in barbarous acts and have for decades now, prevented us from having a world in which all human beings can enjoy…freedom from fear and persecution.

Sadly, we are still struggling to achieve this vision.

Today’s many conflicts, from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to conflicts in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, Darfur, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of  Congo, cause unnecessary loss of life; the violence has a devastating impact on social structures such as education, health and justice systems, and the maintenance of law and order.

All conflicts are deeply rooted in grievances caused by systematic human rights violations, discrimination, marginalization and an absence of accountability, that often manifest themselves long before the actual violence begins. The conflicts themselves result in profound and shocking cases of abuse.

Millions of people have crossed borders as refugees, or have been forced to live as internally-displaced persons within their own countries. Thousands have been victims of sexually-based violence, a consequence of the lawlessness that prevails during wartime and, increasingly, a tactic used by warring factions.

Hundreds of thousands of children who live in war zones are denied the right to education. They lose basic social services such as shelter, sanitation, access to clean drinking water, health care and even food. When the rule of law collapses, other rights, such as the right to a fair trial, are lost, giving rise to abuses such as torture. Freedom of movement is curtailed as checkpoints, roadblocks and walls are set up by State and non-State parties to a conflict. Worst of all, people are killed in violation of their fundamental right to life.

We know that the protection of human rights by State and non-State actors is essential if we are to achieve a lasting peace. The return and reintegration of displaced populations and refugees, accountability for past atrocities, the rebuilding of the judiciary and other fundamentals of a democratic society are an indispensable part of peace efforts and post-conflict reconstruction.

Our hope must be for a stronger United Nations, determined to help the victims of conflict.

We need a tougher U.N. that will prick the conscience of world leaders and issue warnings to all states and groups, engaged in terror.

We need a more determined U.N. to help ease suffering and restore the basic rights of normal life. A U.N. that is more compassionate and more tolerant and more understanding.

The UN does its best to advance the cause of peace and to protect the human rights of the world’s people.

Unfortunately the United Nations is failing in its duty. Ideals are turned to dust by leaders who care more for their own power than for the rights of people. The rights of millions turn to smoke as leaders concentrate on narrow, selfish goals.

The U.N. tries but the U.N. fails. And it fails because its member states fail.

Right now, more than 100,000 troops, police and civilians are deployed with 17 peacekeeping operations around the world, in hot spots such as Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Middle East. But the U.N. can only achieve as much as world leaders wish it to achieve. Despite the United Nations’ best efforts, those who could bring these conflicts to an end, refuse to do so.

The UN cannot achieve its goals without the unstinting support of all the nations and all the leaders of the world. Hundreds of U.N. missions will waste their efforts, if they continue to be undermined by headstrong member states, bent on imposing their will on others.

The United Nations takes its strength from the support of all of its members. Sadly, that support is not always forthcoming. In fact it is hardly ever forthcoming.

The United Nations is suffering as the people of the world are suffering and the criminal leaders and terrorists of the world are responsible.

On the occasion of this International Day of Peace, we must send a powerful signal for peace that will be read, heard and felt around the world – not just by all the people of the world, but by the leaders of the world.

What the yellow ribbon really means

Some time, somewhere- in America – someone started a campaign and made the colour yellow a symbol for supporting their soldiers at war. One interesting aspect of this is that yellow is the official colour of the U.S. cavalry.

It’s also used in a popular American marching song. The first version copyrighted was in 1917 by George A. Norton, which he
titled ‘Round Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon (For Her Lover Who Is Fur,
Fur Away). While he tells in the song about the love between Susie Simpkins
and her soldier lover Silas Hubbard, his chorus goes:

• ‘Round her neck she wears a yeller ribbon,
  She wears it in winter and
  the summer so they say,
  If you ask her "Why the decoration?"
  She’ll say
  "It’s fur my lover who is fur, fur away.                                                                                        
  

The colour and the ribbon (which was really a cavalry neckerchief), came to symbolize support for soldiers at war and men in prison.

Following the invasion of Iraq, Americans adopted the yellow ribbon as a symbol of support for the men and women, who were fighting and dying there. War supporters wore them on their lapels, created bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons for their cars.

During the war in Afghanistan many Canadians fell into lockstep with their American sisters and brothers. They went out and bought these yellow magnetic ribbons and stuck them on their SUV’s and other places.

About a year ago I wrote a short column on the subject, questioning the practice…particularly when it came to mounting these ribbons on taxpayer-owned vehicles. I wrote the piece because – the ribbons seemed to symbolize support for our participation in the war in Afghanistan and the fact is that more than half of all Canadians oppose the war.

One of the comments on the piece came from a gentleman – Roger Ryan – who pointed out that the yellow ribbon is in fact, also a symbol for suicide prevention.

I checked – and he was absolutely right.

Here’s what I found: 

One of the Yellow ribbon sites has this message:

"You don’t need to say much and there are no magic words. Your concern
and your caring will show in your voice and in your mannerisms.
Demonstrate patience and caring. Avoid argument and advice-giving -
these will only serve to belittle the person already crushed under
unbearable emotional pain. All you need to do is STAY-LISTEN-GET HELP!"

So the next time you see a yellow ribbon on an SUV, remember…it means "HELP"!

Another interpretation could mean War is Suicide. Help!

I -  on the other hand – see war as murder. Help!

For a society, read Murder/Suicide. Help!

A useful look at the yellow ribbon syndrome can be found in this video by a Texas Group.

Want to really shed a tear? Watch this…being trapped in a war is like being imprisoned. We sent them, condemned them to hell.

And when they come home…they need acceptance.

They fight because our leaders sent them; the soldiers don’t know why. And nor do we.

But we support them because they are part of us and we love them. We want them back. We want them back alive.
And we do accept them back with love and open arms.

For God’s sake…bring them home.