A good day



Just some of the goodies on sale today



Today is International Human Rights Day. It's today because the UN Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on10 December 1948.   My student society wanted to take the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue at school and have arranged different ways of doing this.  Tonight the Debating Society will hold a debate with the motion "This house believes that torture can be justified" and two of my student society members are in opposition.  They also decided to hold a bake sale and rather than simply heading down to Tesco and reselling they decided to make the stuff.  Chaos.  Absolute chaos! But it was amazing.  They spent the whole afternoon yesterday and today baking goodies and sold them at the end of the school day.  The atmosphere while we were baking was great; really good fun with lots of jolly chatter and good will.  They really came together today. The picture shows some of the goodies on offer.  They're also going to sell them at the debate tonight too.  They have already raised £121 for the Red Crescent which they want to support given their connection with Palestine from the trip last year.  They did something today.  And I really couldn't be prouder.  Given that it's the dark end of term, we're all shattered (especially them) and how busy they are with work I am really impressed that they gave up so much time to help people who need it.

 

Yummy things for good causes

Have had a very lovely afternoon today.  We spent the day planning what my human rights youth group will do for International Human Rights day next Monday.  We have decided that, in order to raise awareness, we are going to do a bake sale and raise money as well. How lovely.  The kids are also hoping that it will create some discussion given everything that's been in the media recently about Gaza and also about the Mau Mau cases over here. So I get to spend next Monday afternoon in baking hell but it will all be in aid of a good cause. So, if you happen to be around school next Monday (10/12) at 5pm then please come and support us.  If not, send us happy thoughts as we will probably need them!  Yummy, yummy...

Waking up to good news

I was woken up in the night last night when my email pinged with a new message.  This normally annoys me; last night it was Ken de Bevoise’s “Continuing Education” email with breaking news;  Palestine had been granted non-member observer status at the UN.  This may not seem to be a major step but it is part of the process of membership – one day – and we no longer have to use “Palestine” (with the quote marks) as a title.  It will grant Palestine membership  of UN institutions and it will have the same diplomatic position as the Vatican. It exists.  Somewhat predictably Britain abstained; couldn’t quite bring ourselves to upset America enough to do the right thing.  It had been expected given comments made over the past few days by William Hague but it’s still disappointing to know that, when it came to the crunch, we didn’t have enough spine to do what was right.  I suppose the best we can say is that we didn’t, at least, vote against it as America did.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised with America either.  It has been fairly obvious that they weren’t going to elevate the status of Palestine.  One can only hope that this doesn’t lead to a slashing of the contributions that the USA makes to UN based aid agencies as has happened in the past.  One US Senator (Republican – predictably) even went so far as to suggest that the US cut off all funding to the General Assembly if that vote went against them. It did – overwhelmingly.

Does it surprise me that today Israel has announced that it going to build 3000 more settler homes in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem? On top of this 1000 more planning permissions are to be fast-tracked.   This will add to the 500,000 Israelis who already live in the West Bank.  This may sound like a more-or-less harmless case of sour grapes given yesterday’s vote.  However, the more that Israel carves up the West Bank by spreading settler communities the harder it will be to create a coherent contiguous Palestine that will exist as a viable state.  The Israelis seem to be hoping that the spread of settlements will prevent a fully independent Palestinian state from becoming a reality.  This also contravenes UN Resolution 446 which called upon Israel to cease expansion of settlement communities, in fact, there is rather a long list of UN Resolutions that Israel has ignored. If there is going to peace in the region it will come as a “two state solution”, however, allowing Israel to consistently ignore international law is not the way to achieve a way forward.

It may be that one of the new agencies/organisations that Palestine has access to is the ICC…if that is the case then Israel’s ongoing refusal to listen to the UN might be about to be tested in court. 

On an article from the Jerusalem Post

From the Jerusalem Post

“Indeed, there are a lot of intense emotions in the county right now: on the one hand there is the ever present thought of our fellow soldiers and civilians under fire, and the fear for their, and our, lives. And on the other hand there is the need to fight, to push back the threat, to repel the war machine that has surfaced against us, right next door.

So many of us Israelis are tired of allowing our people to be terrorised, and that is what motivates us to overcome the fear of the here and now, the fear of the loss of our lives today in the hopes of a better tomorrow. We are a nation that takes proclamations and efforts to kill us seriously. And we are tired of the fear.

We have come a long way to have our country, and we are not about to give it up.
We know it is time to destroy threats that we live with daily. And this is a message to Iran.

To Egypt. To Syria. Even to Saudi Arabia. We will survive and we will not be pushed around.”  By YISHAI FLEISHER

The rhetoric that Israel is using to defend its position here is terrifying and misleading.  By seeking to draw attention towards the shelling that they are suffering at present they are drawing attention away from the years of abuse that have backed the people of Palestine into such a desperate situation.   
For example; Israel claims to have no hold over Gaza since they withdrew in 2005.  However, they have sustained the blockade in such a way as to reduce the people who live there to  a state a dire poverty.  They have also sustained control over essentials such as the water supply. 
However, this attempted diversion is typical of Israel’s propaganda machine.  For example, when the aid flotilla was stopped by the Israeli military in 2010 the Israel press took steps to deflect attention away from the fact that they had boarded the ship illegally.  They stressed the fact that they met with resistance upon boarding in order to justify the killing of nine activists.  The fact remains that their action in boarding the vessel contravened international law.  The ship was in International Waters and as such was under the authority of the nation whose flag it was flying; in this case Turkey.  By stressing that they had met with resistance they were diverting attention from the very fact that they should not have been on board in the first place.

Gilad Sharon (son of Ariel) has published this op-ed in the Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?ID=292466&R=R1&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

“A strong opening isn’t enough, you also have to know how to finish – and finish decisively. If it isn’t clear whether the ball crossed the goal-line or not, the goal isn’t decisive. The ball needs to hit the net, visible to all. What does a decisive victory sound like? A Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated.

To accomplish this, you need to achieve what the other side can’t bear, can’t live with, and our initial bombing campaign isn’t it.

THE DESIRE (sic) to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza will ultimately lead to harming the truly innocent: the residents of southern Israel. The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.”

The level of denial required to publish an article like this terrifies me.  Israel cannot claim to be an innocent victim in this scenario when it is their policies and actions, really since 1948, that have bred the situation they are in.  You cannot abuse a people as Israel has abused the people of Palestine then claim to be the victim of a unprovoked attack.   As I’ve said before, shelling civilians is wrong, but there is more to story than Israel would like us to believe.

Things to give me hope

I met with my human rights group at school today.  For those of you that don't know, 10 December this year marks the UN sponsored International Human Rights day.  As a society my students are planning to do something to mark this.  The Debate Club is holding a debate on that evening on a human rights theme; the issue will be torture.  Students from that group are planning that event.
 
My society is holding a bake sale after last lesson on the Monday to sell baked yummies that they will spend their afternoon making.  They will then donate the money the bake sale makes to a human rights themed charity.  We were planning (roughly) to do something on the theme of asylum seekers but after the news this week they have changed their minds.  They want to raise money for, and awareness of, the people of Palestine in order to counter the bias contained in the information our students are receiving from the British media.  Many of these students were in Israel last year and saw first hand what life in the West Bank communties can be like. I have to say I'm a little bit proud right now! 

Any suggestions of charities that focus on the condition of the people living in Gaza and the West Bank more generally and that don't have any dodgy connections would be gratefully received...

Gaza

Before I start this I feel the need to qualify a few things.  A lot of this is based on my own experience in Israel last year and on what I saw & experienced in Bethlehem and Jericho.  The photos I've included are ones I took myself.  I would hope that I could never be accused of being anti-Semitic, indeed, most of my former students would agree that this would be far from the case.  Given all of this, I would like to comment on the situation as it seems to be at the moment in Gaza. I realise that I’m probably laying myself open to some serious verbal abuse here.

One thing I realised last October was the serious discrepancy between what is happening over there and the way things are reported in by European/British/American media outlets.   I feel that the same thing is happening again.  It is impossible in any situation to justify the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians by any side in a conflict.  Given the long standing treatment experienced in Gaza and the rest of Palestine at the hands of the Israeli government it does not surprise me that some resort to violence.  While I was in Bethlehem I saw firsthand the humiliating treatment of Palestinians at check points.  We were told a story by a Coptic Christian living in Bethlehem; he had lost his family olive grove because it was the wrong side when the wall went up.  His young daughter had leukaemia.  They were entirely dependent on hospitals in Israel but frequently found to impossible to access treatment because they could not get through the  checkpoints; they were at the whim of the staff manning the checkpoint that day. (The photo above shows the wall around Bethlehem).  This is daily life for many in Palestine.  I didn’t go to Gaza where the day-to-day situation is so much worse. 

(The picture shows the building of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank)

The ongoing mistreatment of the Palestinian people has led to the growing frustration within their community.  In 2005 Israel sealed off Gaza and in 2006 imposed a full blockade of the strip.  This was supported by the western powers.  In 2008/09 it was Israel that broke a six month cease fire with Hamas and in three weeks around 1400 Palestinians were killed in the shelling, around 300 of those were children.  13 Israelis were killed during this time period.  The UN report into this incident (the Goldstone Report) condemned the Israeli action as a war crime but Britain, America etc did nothing.  Amnesty also reported on this action, known as Operation “Cast Lead”  pointing to the use of F-16 bombers which “targeted and destroyed civilian homes without warning, killing and injuring scores of their inhabitants while they slept”.   A link to their report from December 2009 is below.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18552

In November 2009, President Obama appealed to the Israeli government to stop their settlement expansion in places like East Jerusalem.  This was ignored and America did nothing.  They also control the water supplies to West Bank communities.  Desmond Tutu has compared the daily situation for the Palestinian people to life under apartheid in South Africa.

Hamas as an organisation was really aggressive during the 1980s and Israel still quotes example of their rhetoric from this period to justify actions against them.  No doubt Hamas still has questionable people within its organisation that are prepared to resort to despicable tactics. However, since they became part of the political process in 2006 the language they use has mellowed significantly.  One thing Britain learned in Ireland was that, if you really want peace then you have to include people like Martin McGuiness & co who had clear and well proven connections to the IRA.  Although the situation in Ireland is far from resolved the inclusion of people like McGuiness did help lead to a way forward for both sides; it enabled them to step back from the brink.  Israel needs to learn from this.   In the words of the West Wing "you negotiate with the mail man if you have to". The deliberate targeting of civilians is wrong.  But until both sides step back then this will continue as both sides seek revenge.  Since 1948, when Britain infamously left “the key under the doormat” Israel have been carrying out a policy which has added up to a slow process of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. Perhaps membership of the UN will offer them some protection but this will not happen if the US continues to stand in the way as they publicly did in 2011 when they spoke out against the Palestinian request to join.

There are two sides to every story and Israel has been the victim of counter strikes and attacks.  However, they cannot continue to treat people in the way the Palestinians are treated on a daily basis and claim that their hands are clean.  There are two sides to every story and the British media mainly only shows the one. 

Let the accusations begin…

"Write for Rights" Campaign

On a happier note; today I will be posting nearly 100 Christmas/Holiday cards to people around the world who are victims of Human Rights abuses.  Provided by Amnesty International the details of some of these people so shocked the students in my youth group at school that they spent over an hour in silence writing their cards.  For only about 12 of them 100 cards was impressive going.  It's worth getting involved if you can, even if you only add one card to your own Christmas card pile; it'll really brighten the day of someone who needs to be given something to smile about. 

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10673

And who knows, it might even make a difference....

Worrying electoral turnout

So the voter turnout in North Yorkshire was 13%.  That’s scary!  I know that these elections may not have been the sexiest ever but the issue of who runs our police force is a really important one; especially in the days of drastic government cuts to the force.  I am sure people will be quick to complain when the police can’t respond quickly enough to 999 calls or when the, already limited, police presence on our streets is cut further.  Yet they didn’t go out to vote.  Maybe this was a political protest about the cost of these elections and the frustration felt with what many feel to be change-for-change’s-sake.  I wish I could believe that it was.  I always feel that, as a woman, I have a responsibility to use my vote, even if it means spoiling my ballot; women died so I could, the least I can do is drag myself to the polls.  Clearly other people don’t feel the same.  On a fundamental issue of the running of the police force though, surely it was worth the ten minutes out of people’s day to vote.   What does it say about the feeling we have as a nation towards politics when turnout is so low?  Are we really so disillusioned with the government that 87% of us didn't make the effort? Answers on a postcard please....