The Roots of the Côte d'Ivoire Crisis
James North
This tropical West African nation, once the most prosperous in the region, is sliding even deeper into civil war. At press time, after a weeklong street battle for Abidjan, the commercial capital of 5 million, there were reports of a fragile settlement. But the vicious violence could break out again at any time. Mainstream Western press accounts included depressingly familiar explanations: the stolen presidential election in November, rising ethnic conflict. The explanations were accurate, as far as they went.
Right now, Côte d’Ivoire’s 21.5 million people are living in a terrible human rights crisis, a catastrophe that is being downplayed partly because the uprisings in the Arab world are distracting attention. But several thousand people have already died here, and up to 1 million are refugees. The small United Nations peacekeeping force should be strengthened, and the world pressure to force the election’s loser, Laurent Gbagbo, to give way to Alassane Ouattara must continue. (Right now Gbagbo is still hanging on to power.) But a change in presidents will not end the danger—and the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is representative of deeply rooted structural problems in many other African nations.
You have to come here, to one of the forest regions where Côte d’Ivoire’s million-plus cocoa farmers live, to find the fundamental reason that fighting is breaking out again: a profoundly unjust international economic order that pays the people who supply our primary products a pittance and leaves their nations chronically ill with unemployment and poverty, and with people who will fight one another over scarce resources. Here, too, you will learn that the giant American agribusiness corporations Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are one part of the problem, even though their names do not appear in the grim dispatches about widespread killings and mass graves.
To read the full article,cut and paste the link below to your browser:
http://www.thenation.com/article/159707/roots-cote-divoire-crisis
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report on Japan
US Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant
Wednesday 6 April 2011
by: James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semi-molten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.
In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.
While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.
The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.
To view the complete article, please cut and paste the link below into your browser:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
Wednesday 6 April 2011
by: James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semi-molten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.
In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.
While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.
The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.
To view the complete article, please cut and paste the link below into your browser:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
1. Book review of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
A Different Gandhi
Anita Desai
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
by Joseph Lelyveld
Knopf, 425 pp., $28.95
Even in his lifetime the legend of Mahatma Gandhi had grown to such proportions that the man himself can be said to have disappeared as if into a dust storm. Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography sets out to find him. His subtitle alerts us that this is not a conventional biography in that he does not repeat the well-documented story of Gandhi’s struggle for India but rather his struggle with India, the country that exasperated, infuriated, and dismayed him, notwithstanding his love for it.
At the outset Lelyveld dispenses with the conventions of biography, leaving out Gandhi’s childhood and student years, a decision he made because he believed that the twenty-three-year-old law clerk who arrived in South Africa in 1893 had little in him of the man he was to become. Besides, his birth in a small town in Gujarat on the west coast of India, and childhood spent in the bosom of a very traditional family of the Modh bania (merchant) caste of Jains, then the three years in London studying law are dealt with in fine detail and with a disarming freshness and directness in Gandhi’s Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Lelyveld’s argument is that it was South Africa that made him the visionary and leader of legend. He is not the first or only historian to have pointed out such a progression but he brings to it an intimate knowledge based on his years as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in both South Africa and India and the exhaustive research he conducted with a rare and finely balanced sympathy.
To read the full review, cut and paste the link below in your browser :
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/different-gandhi/?pagination=false
Anita Desai
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
by Joseph Lelyveld
Knopf, 425 pp., $28.95
Even in his lifetime the legend of Mahatma Gandhi had grown to such proportions that the man himself can be said to have disappeared as if into a dust storm. Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography sets out to find him. His subtitle alerts us that this is not a conventional biography in that he does not repeat the well-documented story of Gandhi’s struggle for India but rather his struggle with India, the country that exasperated, infuriated, and dismayed him, notwithstanding his love for it.
At the outset Lelyveld dispenses with the conventions of biography, leaving out Gandhi’s childhood and student years, a decision he made because he believed that the twenty-three-year-old law clerk who arrived in South Africa in 1893 had little in him of the man he was to become. Besides, his birth in a small town in Gujarat on the west coast of India, and childhood spent in the bosom of a very traditional family of the Modh bania (merchant) caste of Jains, then the three years in London studying law are dealt with in fine detail and with a disarming freshness and directness in Gandhi’s Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Lelyveld’s argument is that it was South Africa that made him the visionary and leader of legend. He is not the first or only historian to have pointed out such a progression but he brings to it an intimate knowledge based on his years as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in both South Africa and India and the exhaustive research he conducted with a rare and finely balanced sympathy.
To read the full review, cut and paste the link below in your browser :
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/different-gandhi/?pagination=false
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Our Asylum Seeker Policy Is Brutal
Our Asylum Seeker Policy Is Brutal
Ben Eltham
New Matilda, March 23 2011
Australia's leaders continue to make political hay from the suffering of asylum seekers. Our system of mandatory detention is morally bankrupt, and must be abandoned, writes Ben Eltham
The asylum seekers at Christmas Island continue to be deprived of their liberty. The laws of our society have been explicitly rewritten against them, and they have been imprisoned against their will by an impersonal and callous bureaucracy that operates under a cloak of legal nicety. Not only do they lack access to justice or a safe environment, they suffer from a corrosive uncertainty, as men and women who have never met them decide their fate according to a set of rules that make no sense, as demagogues rail against them from the soap-boxes of talk radio shows.
And when those who were locked up and oppressed tried to escape, what happened? Squads of riot police shot tear gas and bean-bag bullets at them. Christmas Island looked suddenly like Bahrain, or any other country where an authoritarian regime needs to impose force on protesters.
But, being Australia, the concentration camp at Christmas Island is not even run by the government. It’s run by a private contractor called Serco. In the cosmic wonderland of Australian immigration policy, the incarceration and possible mistreatment of asylum seekers is now a legitimate profit-making activity. Serco is currently the beneficiary of a five-year, $370 million contract to manage seven detention centres.
Serco is not doing a very good job of it. It is under investigation for using unlicenced security guards and a leaked police dossier claims many of its staff have received ‘minimal or no training’. Despite the chronic overcrowding at the Christmas Island centre — thanks to the government’s policy of locking up each and every person who arrives on our shores in an ‘unauthorised’ manner — the centre was ‘typically 15 staff short per day’. Serco has been fined more than $4 million in contract breaches.
And why do our governments keep acting like this? The historical roots of mandatory detention of asylum seekers are complex and run all the way back to the Hawke-Keating government, but at its core, it’s simple: oppressing asylum seekers is popular. As in any society, there are plenty of Australians who are openly and confidently racist and xenophobic.
The harsh reality is that many of us are uncomfortable with people who are different to us. And we tell politicians and opinion pollsters this. Hard-line policies on asylum seekers are very popular in certain sections of the community; every time Labor tries to soften its policies, the Opposition attacks, and Labor’s support drops. As a result, we have absurdly oppressive immigration policies.
After all, politicians make policies which they hope will gain them re-election. It doesn’t matter that both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott immigrated to Australia by boat. What counts was Labor’s election loss in 2001, which the party continues to believe was the result of the Tampa affair. Hence we have a race to the bottom where ludicrous arguments about ‘queues’ and ‘border integrity’ are used to justify what is essentially a kind of exemplary cruelty. Australians seem to like the fact that our government locks up asylum seekers. There’s no getting around it: detention centres are popular.
I know this because every time I write an article about asylum seeker policy, out come the racists and the hate-mongers. Some of the them blame it all on the people smugglers, but most seem quite happy with hating asylum seekers themselves. One commenter on an article I wrote for the ABC even suggested the government shoot arriving boats with machine guns. That would surely deter illegal entries, he wrote.
Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison takes a frighteningly similar position. Doing anything to alleviate the cruel and unusual conditions at Christmas Island will only send a message that Australia is ‘putting the white flag up’, he said this week. According to Morrison, not detaining people offshore — where they are excised by a special part of the Migration Act from the due process of Australia’s legal system — effectively means ‘all you have to do is get to Australia and you won’t even be detained anymore’.
Can you imagine that? According to Scott Morrison, there is a grave risk that asylum seekers might escape injustice and oppression in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, travel thousands of kilometres in a leaky boat on the open ocean and legally claim refugee status in this country under a 60-year international treaty that Australia is a signatory to — and won’t even get locked up.
No wonder Immigration Minister Chris Bowen rushed to assure the media that ‘in all cases they are regarded and treated as offshore entry persons’.
Sometimes public policy is a difficult and complex thing to explain. Emissions trading, or tariff reductions, or the operation of the proposed mining tax are like this. In all of these cases, complex technical issues cloud the over-arching moral calculus we might bring to the rights and wrongs of pricing carbon, removing trade protections for local industry or asking mining companies to pay more tax.
Sometimes, however, public policy is easy to explain. Sometimes the technicalities of the issue are at heart quite simple, and the moral clarity of the issue stark. Asylum seeker policy in Australia is like this. The facts of the matter are simple: our government is locking up innocent people. The moral situation is just as clear. It is a great injustice.
The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote, ‘everything is what it is’. He meant that liberty was not equality or fairness or justice. It is liberty.
Let’s be just as frank about asylum seeker policy. It’s not ‘border protection’, it’s oppression. It’s not ‘processing’, it’s incarceration. Asylum seekers are not ‘illegal’ or ‘unauthorised’ — they have a legal right to claim asylum in Australia. It’s not about ‘stopping the boats’, it’s about inflicting great harm on innocent people to satisfy the vicious hatreds of racist and xenophobic voters in marginal seats.
Berlin was talking about liberty, and he distinguished two kinds. One was what he called ‘positive liberty’, in other words, the ability of a person to make her own life choices or to attain a kind of self-mastery. Berlin called the other kind ‘negative liberty’, and this is the sense in which most of us understand it today: freedom from coercion or interference by an external body. When Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he was talking about this kind of liberty: the liberty of individuals to be free from government control.
It’s seems like a long way from the philosophy textbooks to the situation inside razor wire at Christmas Island. But perhaps it shouldn’t be, because the situation there now resembles almost exactly the 20th century totalitarian societies about which Berlin and Hayek were writing. In the Cloudcuckooland of Australian asylum seeker policy, treating people decently and humanely according to international law is ‘putting the white flag up’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have found it all too familiar.
Ben Eltham
New Matilda, March 23 2011
Australia's leaders continue to make political hay from the suffering of asylum seekers. Our system of mandatory detention is morally bankrupt, and must be abandoned, writes Ben Eltham
The asylum seekers at Christmas Island continue to be deprived of their liberty. The laws of our society have been explicitly rewritten against them, and they have been imprisoned against their will by an impersonal and callous bureaucracy that operates under a cloak of legal nicety. Not only do they lack access to justice or a safe environment, they suffer from a corrosive uncertainty, as men and women who have never met them decide their fate according to a set of rules that make no sense, as demagogues rail against them from the soap-boxes of talk radio shows.
And when those who were locked up and oppressed tried to escape, what happened? Squads of riot police shot tear gas and bean-bag bullets at them. Christmas Island looked suddenly like Bahrain, or any other country where an authoritarian regime needs to impose force on protesters.
But, being Australia, the concentration camp at Christmas Island is not even run by the government. It’s run by a private contractor called Serco. In the cosmic wonderland of Australian immigration policy, the incarceration and possible mistreatment of asylum seekers is now a legitimate profit-making activity. Serco is currently the beneficiary of a five-year, $370 million contract to manage seven detention centres.
Serco is not doing a very good job of it. It is under investigation for using unlicenced security guards and a leaked police dossier claims many of its staff have received ‘minimal or no training’. Despite the chronic overcrowding at the Christmas Island centre — thanks to the government’s policy of locking up each and every person who arrives on our shores in an ‘unauthorised’ manner — the centre was ‘typically 15 staff short per day’. Serco has been fined more than $4 million in contract breaches.
And why do our governments keep acting like this? The historical roots of mandatory detention of asylum seekers are complex and run all the way back to the Hawke-Keating government, but at its core, it’s simple: oppressing asylum seekers is popular. As in any society, there are plenty of Australians who are openly and confidently racist and xenophobic.
The harsh reality is that many of us are uncomfortable with people who are different to us. And we tell politicians and opinion pollsters this. Hard-line policies on asylum seekers are very popular in certain sections of the community; every time Labor tries to soften its policies, the Opposition attacks, and Labor’s support drops. As a result, we have absurdly oppressive immigration policies.
After all, politicians make policies which they hope will gain them re-election. It doesn’t matter that both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott immigrated to Australia by boat. What counts was Labor’s election loss in 2001, which the party continues to believe was the result of the Tampa affair. Hence we have a race to the bottom where ludicrous arguments about ‘queues’ and ‘border integrity’ are used to justify what is essentially a kind of exemplary cruelty. Australians seem to like the fact that our government locks up asylum seekers. There’s no getting around it: detention centres are popular.
I know this because every time I write an article about asylum seeker policy, out come the racists and the hate-mongers. Some of the them blame it all on the people smugglers, but most seem quite happy with hating asylum seekers themselves. One commenter on an article I wrote for the ABC even suggested the government shoot arriving boats with machine guns. That would surely deter illegal entries, he wrote.
Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison takes a frighteningly similar position. Doing anything to alleviate the cruel and unusual conditions at Christmas Island will only send a message that Australia is ‘putting the white flag up’, he said this week. According to Morrison, not detaining people offshore — where they are excised by a special part of the Migration Act from the due process of Australia’s legal system — effectively means ‘all you have to do is get to Australia and you won’t even be detained anymore’.
Can you imagine that? According to Scott Morrison, there is a grave risk that asylum seekers might escape injustice and oppression in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, travel thousands of kilometres in a leaky boat on the open ocean and legally claim refugee status in this country under a 60-year international treaty that Australia is a signatory to — and won’t even get locked up.
No wonder Immigration Minister Chris Bowen rushed to assure the media that ‘in all cases they are regarded and treated as offshore entry persons’.
Sometimes public policy is a difficult and complex thing to explain. Emissions trading, or tariff reductions, or the operation of the proposed mining tax are like this. In all of these cases, complex technical issues cloud the over-arching moral calculus we might bring to the rights and wrongs of pricing carbon, removing trade protections for local industry or asking mining companies to pay more tax.
Sometimes, however, public policy is easy to explain. Sometimes the technicalities of the issue are at heart quite simple, and the moral clarity of the issue stark. Asylum seeker policy in Australia is like this. The facts of the matter are simple: our government is locking up innocent people. The moral situation is just as clear. It is a great injustice.
The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote, ‘everything is what it is’. He meant that liberty was not equality or fairness or justice. It is liberty.
Let’s be just as frank about asylum seeker policy. It’s not ‘border protection’, it’s oppression. It’s not ‘processing’, it’s incarceration. Asylum seekers are not ‘illegal’ or ‘unauthorised’ — they have a legal right to claim asylum in Australia. It’s not about ‘stopping the boats’, it’s about inflicting great harm on innocent people to satisfy the vicious hatreds of racist and xenophobic voters in marginal seats.
Berlin was talking about liberty, and he distinguished two kinds. One was what he called ‘positive liberty’, in other words, the ability of a person to make her own life choices or to attain a kind of self-mastery. Berlin called the other kind ‘negative liberty’, and this is the sense in which most of us understand it today: freedom from coercion or interference by an external body. When Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he was talking about this kind of liberty: the liberty of individuals to be free from government control.
It’s seems like a long way from the philosophy textbooks to the situation inside razor wire at Christmas Island. But perhaps it shouldn’t be, because the situation there now resembles almost exactly the 20th century totalitarian societies about which Berlin and Hayek were writing. In the Cloudcuckooland of Australian asylum seeker policy, treating people decently and humanely according to international law is ‘putting the white flag up’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have found it all too familiar.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
A PUBLIC STATEMENT by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Hindu faith organisations.
March 2011
Prison Reform in NSW
The twelve religious groups below join the many voices calling for prison reform in NSW in this important pre-election period. We seek to apply the values of compassion, healing and social justice to all members of society, including prisoners, who are often the forgotten ones - ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The measure of compassion and social justice we extend to prisoners reflects on the presence of those values in our society. We are actively involved in the pastoral care of prisoners through the prison chaplaincy programmes.
For too long, NSW has seen an increasing rate of imprisonment, and the highest rate in Australia of prisoners returning to prison after release (43%). These “prisoners” are children of the Australian society, we have a choice to support their rehabilitation and allow them to be constructive members of society, or keep them in this vicious cycle of relapse and recidivism. We believe that many prisoners can be reformed if there is the political will to do the work required. Prisoners should not be used for political gain with some political parties using the fear tactics around crime, and promising more harsh treatment to gain votes.
We recommend the incoming government consider the following measures to improve this situation.
1. To increase the focus on rehabilitation and education programmes and other measures to assist prisoners reintegrate into society, thus decreasing the rate of return to prison. To reduce the current rate of recidivism by 10% within the next 3 years.
2. To reform the bail laws that have been increasingly toughened, causing far too many to be imprisoned on remand. Restore the presumptions in favour of bail in all cases except where there is genuine evidence of harm, if the alleged offender is left in the community.
3. To create strong and independent oversight of the Corrective Services Department to ensure full transparency of their operations. In particular, official visitors should be able to report any concerns about prisoner management to an independent regulatory body without fear of being dismissed or locked out of prisons.
4. To provide a stronger pastoral care resource in the prison system. The government accepted a target of one chaplain per 200 inmates but this has not been met. If that ratio were implemented, pastoral care resources would be improved by 30%. Chaplains should also have better access to inmates in terms of longer visiting hours and better facilities for interviewing inmates and holding religious services.
5. To create a planning and review body to look at all of the ways that the performance of corrective services in NSW could be improved. NSW should be a model of best practice. This would benefit all citizens of NSW through lower rates of incarceration and crime.
It is our role as religious organisation to make a strong stand on these issues by upholding the values of compassion and social justice. We urge the people of NSW to expect and pressure the incoming new government to adopt policies to improve the rehabilitation of prisoners. This will create a more wholesome society for us all.
Supporting Organisations
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Justice and Peace Centre
Father Claude Mostowik msc
Director,
PO Box 146
Erskineville NSW 2043
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils
Ikebal Patel
President
PO Box 7185 SSBH,
Alexandria, NSW 2015
Justice and Peace Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
Dr Steven Lovell-Jones
Justice and Peace Promoter
133 Liverpool St Sydney 2000 Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils
Mr Kim Hollow
President
PO BOX 6479
Footscray West (Vic) 3012
UnitingCare NSW.ACT
Rev Harry J Herbert
Executive Director
Level 4
222 Pitt Street
Sydney
The Hindu Council of Australia
Prof. Nihal Singh Agar
Chairman
17 The Crescent
Homebush
NSW 2140
Islamic Council of NSW
Khaled Sukkarieh
Chairman
PO Box 423, Greenacre
NSW 2190
Australia Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes in NSW [CLRI(NSW)]
Sister Sharon Price rsm
Executive Director
PO Box 259
(72 Rosebery Ave)
Rosebery NSW 1445
Friends of Refugees Of Eastern Europe
Rabbi Yoram Ulman
Judge, Jewish Ecclesiastic Court of Sydney
Past President, Rabbinical Council of NSW
Chabad House Bondi
25 O'Brien St
Bondi NSW 2026 Council Of Imams NSW
(Affiliated with Australian National Imams Council)
Tarek El-Bikai
Secretary
PO Box 145 Lakemba 2195
NSW, Australia
Australian Sangha Association
(representative body for monks and nuns of all Buddhist traditions)
Sujato Bhikkhu
Secretary
P.O. Box 132
Bundanoon NSW 2578
Churches Together NSW.ACT
(NSW Ecumenical Council )
Rev. Paul Swadling
Acting General Secretary
379 Kent St
Sydney 2000
Prison Reform in NSW
The twelve religious groups below join the many voices calling for prison reform in NSW in this important pre-election period. We seek to apply the values of compassion, healing and social justice to all members of society, including prisoners, who are often the forgotten ones - ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The measure of compassion and social justice we extend to prisoners reflects on the presence of those values in our society. We are actively involved in the pastoral care of prisoners through the prison chaplaincy programmes.
For too long, NSW has seen an increasing rate of imprisonment, and the highest rate in Australia of prisoners returning to prison after release (43%). These “prisoners” are children of the Australian society, we have a choice to support their rehabilitation and allow them to be constructive members of society, or keep them in this vicious cycle of relapse and recidivism. We believe that many prisoners can be reformed if there is the political will to do the work required. Prisoners should not be used for political gain with some political parties using the fear tactics around crime, and promising more harsh treatment to gain votes.
We recommend the incoming government consider the following measures to improve this situation.
1. To increase the focus on rehabilitation and education programmes and other measures to assist prisoners reintegrate into society, thus decreasing the rate of return to prison. To reduce the current rate of recidivism by 10% within the next 3 years.
2. To reform the bail laws that have been increasingly toughened, causing far too many to be imprisoned on remand. Restore the presumptions in favour of bail in all cases except where there is genuine evidence of harm, if the alleged offender is left in the community.
3. To create strong and independent oversight of the Corrective Services Department to ensure full transparency of their operations. In particular, official visitors should be able to report any concerns about prisoner management to an independent regulatory body without fear of being dismissed or locked out of prisons.
4. To provide a stronger pastoral care resource in the prison system. The government accepted a target of one chaplain per 200 inmates but this has not been met. If that ratio were implemented, pastoral care resources would be improved by 30%. Chaplains should also have better access to inmates in terms of longer visiting hours and better facilities for interviewing inmates and holding religious services.
5. To create a planning and review body to look at all of the ways that the performance of corrective services in NSW could be improved. NSW should be a model of best practice. This would benefit all citizens of NSW through lower rates of incarceration and crime.
It is our role as religious organisation to make a strong stand on these issues by upholding the values of compassion and social justice. We urge the people of NSW to expect and pressure the incoming new government to adopt policies to improve the rehabilitation of prisoners. This will create a more wholesome society for us all.
Supporting Organisations
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Justice and Peace Centre
Father Claude Mostowik msc
Director,
PO Box 146
Erskineville NSW 2043
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils
Ikebal Patel
President
PO Box 7185 SSBH,
Alexandria, NSW 2015
Justice and Peace Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
Dr Steven Lovell-Jones
Justice and Peace Promoter
133 Liverpool St Sydney 2000 Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils
Mr Kim Hollow
President
PO BOX 6479
Footscray West (Vic) 3012
UnitingCare NSW.ACT
Rev Harry J Herbert
Executive Director
Level 4
222 Pitt Street
Sydney
The Hindu Council of Australia
Prof. Nihal Singh Agar
Chairman
17 The Crescent
Homebush
NSW 2140
Islamic Council of NSW
Khaled Sukkarieh
Chairman
PO Box 423, Greenacre
NSW 2190
Australia Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes in NSW [CLRI(NSW)]
Sister Sharon Price rsm
Executive Director
PO Box 259
(72 Rosebery Ave)
Rosebery NSW 1445
Friends of Refugees Of Eastern Europe
Rabbi Yoram Ulman
Judge, Jewish Ecclesiastic Court of Sydney
Past President, Rabbinical Council of NSW
Chabad House Bondi
25 O'Brien St
Bondi NSW 2026 Council Of Imams NSW
(Affiliated with Australian National Imams Council)
Tarek El-Bikai
Secretary
PO Box 145 Lakemba 2195
NSW, Australia
Australian Sangha Association
(representative body for monks and nuns of all Buddhist traditions)
Sujato Bhikkhu
Secretary
P.O. Box 132
Bundanoon NSW 2578
Churches Together NSW.ACT
(NSW Ecumenical Council )
Rev. Paul Swadling
Acting General Secretary
379 Kent St
Sydney 2000
Sunday, November 21, 2010
A personal note from Donna Mulhearn
Dear friends
It’s my birthday today (16th), and I would like to invite you to help me celebrate!
To be more specific there’s a gift I would love to receive above anything else: the chance to tell a story that urgently needs to be told, to give voice to those whose voices are rarely heard: the women and children of a dusty, war-torn Middle Eastern town struggling to survive a war that, for them, has never ended.
On the contrary, the war begins anew every day in the maternity ward of Fallujah City Hospital where gynaecologists say that on average three babies are born each day with severe deformities. That’s more than 1000 a year for what is now a relatively small town. Many babies are stillborn, others live a few hours, and the majority of those who survive will only live a few months such is the severity of their abnormalities. Fallujah cemetery is littered with tiny ‘baby’ graves. Others, who make it past their first birthday, will need intensive specialist care for the rest of their lives.
The medical recommendation of the gynaecologists to the women of Fallujah is simple: “just stop”. Stop having babies, stop falling pregnant because it is likely you will not give birth to a healthy baby.
These words carry a shocking implication: a whole generation of young women who will never be mothers, a whole generation of babies, little human beings, who will never see light, or laugh or feel love.
This is life now, in Fallujah - a once-thriving town the size of Newcastle or Wollongong. Once alive with growing families, bustling markets, ornate mosques, sporting fields, schools, industry and the famous ‘best falafel’ in all of Iraq.
Now the residents of this toxic, war-ravaged, virtual ghost-town are the ones who simply can’t afford to flee, or have nowhere else to go.
The dramatic rise in birth deformities in Fallujah began in 2005, a year after intense U.S military attacks on the city in April 2004 and again in November 2004. It is alleged that depleted uranium was used widely in the attacks as well as white phosphorous, and that the toxic nature of these substances and their subsequent contamination of the local eco-system, is the reason for the rise in birth abnormalities, as well as an increase in cancers and leukaemia amongst adults. This would seem a logical conclusion given the evidence we have on the impact of depleted uranium on human beings. But the U.S military has denied there is a problem, claiming there is no solid evidence of a link between its use of chemical weapons and the dramatic increase in birth deformities in Fallujah. It claims reports are anecdotal, that there are no accurate figures or research to respond to. So it refuses to respond - as does the World Health Organisation, despite pleading from Doctors, Iraqi and international human rights groups and medical NGOs around the world. At the same time, the military occupation makes it almost impossible for western researchers to go to Fallujah to do research. Despite this, one research team, led by UK scientist Prof Chris Busy, did get into the city and conducted a major survey, the results of which are confronting and demanding of a response by governments. The research, published this year in an international health journal, concluded that the birth defects and other health problems in Fallujah such as cancers and leukaemia are worse than in the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the use of atomic bombs there.
I repeat. The health problems in Fallujah are deemed worse than the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A copy of Prof Busby’s report can be found here:
www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf
News items and short docos on this issue can be found here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8549745.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFqyK8kB1Vk
You may have noticed this story has barely made it on to the radar of the Australian or U.S media. But I’m sure you agree it is a story that needs to be widely told and responded to with immediate action. The babies of Fallujah deserve justice and the women of Fallujah deserve hope.
That’s where you come into the picture. Dr Richard Hil, a semi-retired academic and author, and myself have decided to collaborate to tell the story of the babies of Fallujah from the point of view of the families themselves. We hope to produce a book, a documentary and resources to contribute to the world-wide campaign to ban depleted uranium weapons (DU) so that this can never happen again.
To do this we will need to go to Fallujah. The aim is to use the scientific data from Prof Busy and others, and humanise it through the stories of the children, the grief of the mothers, the struggle of the families and the views of the town elders. But, as you could imagine, getting into Fallujah will be a major logistical challenge, which is why we will need your help. The cost of the mission and the extra safety precautions we will need to take mean a very large budget that we cannot fund ourselves.
My first invitation to you is to help send Richard and I to Fallujah early next year to make this a reality. Together we can ensure this story is told. You are also invited to help with other needs for the campaign to ensure justice, accountability and an end to the use of DU weapons. We will need help with a website, lobbying of governments to achieve new U.N resolutions, distribution of information, graphic design, publicising the issues in your groups etc
More on that in due course, but first, for my birthday, you can give me the most useful present ever - please donate an amount that you can afford to an appeal that will support the logistics of this project: $20, $50 - if enough of you respond in a small way, it will be possible!
We believe this project can make an important contribution to the international campaign to ban depleted uranium. (We now have an international treaty banning cluster munitions; we can do the same for depleted uranium weapons). It can help ensure justice for Fallujah, and above all acknowledge the suffering of the people who are so often overlooked by our governments and corporate media. It will give us the chance, on behalf of all of you, to say “we are sorry, and we will work for change”.
For me this is personal. Many of you are aware of my intimate links with depleted uranium. My relationship with baby Noura, a DU baby I met in Baghdad in 2003 who was born with no arms and legs. She is just a torso and a head, but her smile and her energy has a profound effect on me. Then there was Arean: the girl from Basra I met in Baghdad Children’s hospital who was dying of leukaemia because of the use of depleted uranium in the 1991 Gulf War.
My interaction with her was powerful and sacred, something I will never forget. My book, Ordinary Courage, is dedicated to her memory because she helped me realise that all we have to do is what we can do. That will empower us when faced with shocking situations like this one.
I was present in Fallujah in April 2004 when the U.S attack was taking place and was an eye-witness to the massacre of civilians there.
And then there’s my exposure to depleted uranium during my time in Iraq which has affected my fertility options (explanation of this in the last section of my book).
The story of the Fallujah women is my story. Their babies are our babies.
Arean, a dying Iraqi girl, body riddled with leukaemia, gave me hope the day I met her because she taught me that although I could not save her, I should not cry for too long over what I cannot do. She encouraged me to think of what I can do....to think of who I am, and what I can actually do to contribute to change.
I am not a Doctor, but I have a notepad and camera. I am not a scientist but I can go to Fallujah, (I know the way), I can listen to the people there, I can help give them a voice. That’s what I can do.
And that’s just the start. With all of you, we’ll do much more than that.
Your pilgrim
Donna
PS: If you are able to contribute to my birthday wish, the bank account details are: Commonwealth Bank, a/c name: Donna Mulhearn – volunteer expenses, BSB: 062 181 a/c number: 1030 5704, or if you want to do the old fashioned cheque thing, reply to this email and I’ll send my address.
PPS: Dr Richard Hil is Honorary Associate in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. Richard has taught previously at Southern Cross University, Queensland University of Technology, University of the Sunshine Coast, James Cook University, and the University of York. He has published widely in the fields of criminology, child and family welfare, youth studies, and peace and conflict studies. He’s also a great guy with a big heart!
PPPS: More news soon on how to pressure the Australian government to support U.N resolutions which challenge the use of depleted uranium. At the last vote, they abstained, while 131 nations supported the resolution. The United States voted against the resolution. Why did we abstain?
PSx4: If you want to grab a copy of my book, you can now purchase one from me, so you don’t have to pay bookshop price ($32.95) rather my ‘mate’s’ price ($25). Just email back and I’ll post you out a copy, see www.ordinarycourage.org
PSx5: “When I saw her suffering it made me so depressed. I hated the world. I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown. She stopped sleeping recently and cries with anger.” Mother of Baby Tiba from Fallujah, born with two heads, who has now passed away.
It’s my birthday today (16th), and I would like to invite you to help me celebrate!
To be more specific there’s a gift I would love to receive above anything else: the chance to tell a story that urgently needs to be told, to give voice to those whose voices are rarely heard: the women and children of a dusty, war-torn Middle Eastern town struggling to survive a war that, for them, has never ended.
On the contrary, the war begins anew every day in the maternity ward of Fallujah City Hospital where gynaecologists say that on average three babies are born each day with severe deformities. That’s more than 1000 a year for what is now a relatively small town. Many babies are stillborn, others live a few hours, and the majority of those who survive will only live a few months such is the severity of their abnormalities. Fallujah cemetery is littered with tiny ‘baby’ graves. Others, who make it past their first birthday, will need intensive specialist care for the rest of their lives.
The medical recommendation of the gynaecologists to the women of Fallujah is simple: “just stop”. Stop having babies, stop falling pregnant because it is likely you will not give birth to a healthy baby.
These words carry a shocking implication: a whole generation of young women who will never be mothers, a whole generation of babies, little human beings, who will never see light, or laugh or feel love.
This is life now, in Fallujah - a once-thriving town the size of Newcastle or Wollongong. Once alive with growing families, bustling markets, ornate mosques, sporting fields, schools, industry and the famous ‘best falafel’ in all of Iraq.
Now the residents of this toxic, war-ravaged, virtual ghost-town are the ones who simply can’t afford to flee, or have nowhere else to go.
The dramatic rise in birth deformities in Fallujah began in 2005, a year after intense U.S military attacks on the city in April 2004 and again in November 2004. It is alleged that depleted uranium was used widely in the attacks as well as white phosphorous, and that the toxic nature of these substances and their subsequent contamination of the local eco-system, is the reason for the rise in birth abnormalities, as well as an increase in cancers and leukaemia amongst adults. This would seem a logical conclusion given the evidence we have on the impact of depleted uranium on human beings. But the U.S military has denied there is a problem, claiming there is no solid evidence of a link between its use of chemical weapons and the dramatic increase in birth deformities in Fallujah. It claims reports are anecdotal, that there are no accurate figures or research to respond to. So it refuses to respond - as does the World Health Organisation, despite pleading from Doctors, Iraqi and international human rights groups and medical NGOs around the world. At the same time, the military occupation makes it almost impossible for western researchers to go to Fallujah to do research. Despite this, one research team, led by UK scientist Prof Chris Busy, did get into the city and conducted a major survey, the results of which are confronting and demanding of a response by governments. The research, published this year in an international health journal, concluded that the birth defects and other health problems in Fallujah such as cancers and leukaemia are worse than in the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the use of atomic bombs there.
I repeat. The health problems in Fallujah are deemed worse than the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A copy of Prof Busby’s report can be found here:
www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf
News items and short docos on this issue can be found here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8549745.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFqyK8kB1Vk
You may have noticed this story has barely made it on to the radar of the Australian or U.S media. But I’m sure you agree it is a story that needs to be widely told and responded to with immediate action. The babies of Fallujah deserve justice and the women of Fallujah deserve hope.
That’s where you come into the picture. Dr Richard Hil, a semi-retired academic and author, and myself have decided to collaborate to tell the story of the babies of Fallujah from the point of view of the families themselves. We hope to produce a book, a documentary and resources to contribute to the world-wide campaign to ban depleted uranium weapons (DU) so that this can never happen again.
To do this we will need to go to Fallujah. The aim is to use the scientific data from Prof Busy and others, and humanise it through the stories of the children, the grief of the mothers, the struggle of the families and the views of the town elders. But, as you could imagine, getting into Fallujah will be a major logistical challenge, which is why we will need your help. The cost of the mission and the extra safety precautions we will need to take mean a very large budget that we cannot fund ourselves.
My first invitation to you is to help send Richard and I to Fallujah early next year to make this a reality. Together we can ensure this story is told. You are also invited to help with other needs for the campaign to ensure justice, accountability and an end to the use of DU weapons. We will need help with a website, lobbying of governments to achieve new U.N resolutions, distribution of information, graphic design, publicising the issues in your groups etc
More on that in due course, but first, for my birthday, you can give me the most useful present ever - please donate an amount that you can afford to an appeal that will support the logistics of this project: $20, $50 - if enough of you respond in a small way, it will be possible!
We believe this project can make an important contribution to the international campaign to ban depleted uranium. (We now have an international treaty banning cluster munitions; we can do the same for depleted uranium weapons). It can help ensure justice for Fallujah, and above all acknowledge the suffering of the people who are so often overlooked by our governments and corporate media. It will give us the chance, on behalf of all of you, to say “we are sorry, and we will work for change”.
For me this is personal. Many of you are aware of my intimate links with depleted uranium. My relationship with baby Noura, a DU baby I met in Baghdad in 2003 who was born with no arms and legs. She is just a torso and a head, but her smile and her energy has a profound effect on me. Then there was Arean: the girl from Basra I met in Baghdad Children’s hospital who was dying of leukaemia because of the use of depleted uranium in the 1991 Gulf War.
My interaction with her was powerful and sacred, something I will never forget. My book, Ordinary Courage, is dedicated to her memory because she helped me realise that all we have to do is what we can do. That will empower us when faced with shocking situations like this one.
I was present in Fallujah in April 2004 when the U.S attack was taking place and was an eye-witness to the massacre of civilians there.
And then there’s my exposure to depleted uranium during my time in Iraq which has affected my fertility options (explanation of this in the last section of my book).
The story of the Fallujah women is my story. Their babies are our babies.
Arean, a dying Iraqi girl, body riddled with leukaemia, gave me hope the day I met her because she taught me that although I could not save her, I should not cry for too long over what I cannot do. She encouraged me to think of what I can do....to think of who I am, and what I can actually do to contribute to change.
I am not a Doctor, but I have a notepad and camera. I am not a scientist but I can go to Fallujah, (I know the way), I can listen to the people there, I can help give them a voice. That’s what I can do.
And that’s just the start. With all of you, we’ll do much more than that.
Your pilgrim
Donna
PS: If you are able to contribute to my birthday wish, the bank account details are: Commonwealth Bank, a/c name: Donna Mulhearn – volunteer expenses, BSB: 062 181 a/c number: 1030 5704, or if you want to do the old fashioned cheque thing, reply to this email and I’ll send my address.
PPS: Dr Richard Hil is Honorary Associate in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. Richard has taught previously at Southern Cross University, Queensland University of Technology, University of the Sunshine Coast, James Cook University, and the University of York. He has published widely in the fields of criminology, child and family welfare, youth studies, and peace and conflict studies. He’s also a great guy with a big heart!
PPPS: More news soon on how to pressure the Australian government to support U.N resolutions which challenge the use of depleted uranium. At the last vote, they abstained, while 131 nations supported the resolution. The United States voted against the resolution. Why did we abstain?
PSx4: If you want to grab a copy of my book, you can now purchase one from me, so you don’t have to pay bookshop price ($32.95) rather my ‘mate’s’ price ($25). Just email back and I’ll post you out a copy, see www.ordinarycourage.org
PSx5: “When I saw her suffering it made me so depressed. I hated the world. I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown. She stopped sleeping recently and cries with anger.” Mother of Baby Tiba from Fallujah, born with two heads, who has now passed away.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Interfaith Dialogue and Rabbi Ron Kronish
Joshua Stanton
Co-editor, 'Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue'
Can Interfaith Dialogue Make a Difference in the Face of Middle East Setbacks?
For many, the end of the moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank feels devastating. Could it mean the end of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians? Could it lead to another round of violence?
But for one rabbi, it is just another day of work. He has been making peace longer than most diplomats -- and arguably with greater success.
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Executive Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), has been living in Israel for 31 years and carries himself with the assuredness of someone who has experienced a great deal and will find a way, somehow, to overcome new obstacles.
Having arrived in Israel in the euphoric wake of the '67 War, in which Israel assured its own survival and overnight found itself to be one of the region's strongest military powers, he has seen the hope for an enduring diplomatic peace evaporate time and time again between Israelis and Palestinians and many of the nationalistic ideals of both peoples undone by war.
As a "Post-Zionist Zionist" who acknowledges many of Israel's national myths but takes great pride in his adopted country nonetheless, Kronish's identity and vocation have been shaped by the idea that there are just two options in the current conflict: You can "be ensconced in despair and stop watching the news" or "avoid 100 years of war and don't let them [Israelis and Palestinians] be enemies" -- at least person-to-person.
It is of little surprise that Kronish has not cultivated a "can do" so much as a "must do" personality. The ICCI was founded in the midst of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the two dozen founding members met in one of Jerusalem's seminaries with great gusto and gas masks in hand to formally launch it. Not even the threat of scud missiles from Saddam Hussein could dissuade them.
In many ways, that gathering has been symbolic of ICCI's work and Ron Kronish's outlook as its leader: Peace can only be made through hard-nosed efforts to make it happen on the ground. The time for fluffy dialogue had long passed. The time for a political solution may stretch on into the future. Now is the time for transformational gatherings that produce results for citizens, not just politicians.
One of the ICCI's flagship programs is the "Face to Face/Faith to Faith" initiative, run in partnership with Auburn Theological Seminary for high school students in and around Jerusalem. I had the chance to meet up with the some of its participants just after the 2009 Gaza War. The room, full of about a dozen cheerful Israeli and Palestinian high school students, contrasted with the grim political scene. The group's conversations that day centered on outreach to houses of worship in order to involve them in inter-religious work and volunteer efforts that would assist both Israeli and Palestinian communities.
The underlying determination of the group gradually became apparent as I grew to know its participants. Lighthearted conversations gave way to more serious discussions about how their group managed to stay together in spite of the Gaza War -- and in contrast to nearly every other interfaith group for Israeli and Palestinian youth. "If we were able to get through those times without hating each other, nothing can keep us from being friends," one student told me, with an intense smile on her face. She then went on to tell me how the group had grappled with the toughest, most personal issues of the war.
Several students dropped out of the program; many cried, raised their voices, or had to take a few moments to themselves. A number had friends or relatives in Gaza, while others had loved ones in the Israeli army or the south of Israel, which was impacted by ongoing rocket fire. But the program's organizers refused to ignore the issues and pushed the group to confront them head-on.
By engaging directly with the toughest topics of the time -- life and death, injustice, bad politics, theology, the media's spin -- students managed to dialogue their way through the war and emerge from it ready to lead their communities and work together. They spent the remainder of the year leading volunteer programs and demonstrating that even in the most infuriating moments of diplomacy and war, interfaith engagement and leadership development can endure. They must.
As I reflect on the recent, unsettling news about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, I look to the example of Ron Kronish. Even when inspired to work for peace by the belief that "we are all part of God's creation," he has shown that it is the tough, up-front, determined dialogue among citizens that sustains the possibility of a lasting political accord. There is no choice but to continue on.
Co-editor, 'Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue'
Can Interfaith Dialogue Make a Difference in the Face of Middle East Setbacks?
For many, the end of the moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank feels devastating. Could it mean the end of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians? Could it lead to another round of violence?
But for one rabbi, it is just another day of work. He has been making peace longer than most diplomats -- and arguably with greater success.
Rabbi Ron Kronish, Executive Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), has been living in Israel for 31 years and carries himself with the assuredness of someone who has experienced a great deal and will find a way, somehow, to overcome new obstacles.
Having arrived in Israel in the euphoric wake of the '67 War, in which Israel assured its own survival and overnight found itself to be one of the region's strongest military powers, he has seen the hope for an enduring diplomatic peace evaporate time and time again between Israelis and Palestinians and many of the nationalistic ideals of both peoples undone by war.
As a "Post-Zionist Zionist" who acknowledges many of Israel's national myths but takes great pride in his adopted country nonetheless, Kronish's identity and vocation have been shaped by the idea that there are just two options in the current conflict: You can "be ensconced in despair and stop watching the news" or "avoid 100 years of war and don't let them [Israelis and Palestinians] be enemies" -- at least person-to-person.
It is of little surprise that Kronish has not cultivated a "can do" so much as a "must do" personality. The ICCI was founded in the midst of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the two dozen founding members met in one of Jerusalem's seminaries with great gusto and gas masks in hand to formally launch it. Not even the threat of scud missiles from Saddam Hussein could dissuade them.
In many ways, that gathering has been symbolic of ICCI's work and Ron Kronish's outlook as its leader: Peace can only be made through hard-nosed efforts to make it happen on the ground. The time for fluffy dialogue had long passed. The time for a political solution may stretch on into the future. Now is the time for transformational gatherings that produce results for citizens, not just politicians.
One of the ICCI's flagship programs is the "Face to Face/Faith to Faith" initiative, run in partnership with Auburn Theological Seminary for high school students in and around Jerusalem. I had the chance to meet up with the some of its participants just after the 2009 Gaza War. The room, full of about a dozen cheerful Israeli and Palestinian high school students, contrasted with the grim political scene. The group's conversations that day centered on outreach to houses of worship in order to involve them in inter-religious work and volunteer efforts that would assist both Israeli and Palestinian communities.
The underlying determination of the group gradually became apparent as I grew to know its participants. Lighthearted conversations gave way to more serious discussions about how their group managed to stay together in spite of the Gaza War -- and in contrast to nearly every other interfaith group for Israeli and Palestinian youth. "If we were able to get through those times without hating each other, nothing can keep us from being friends," one student told me, with an intense smile on her face. She then went on to tell me how the group had grappled with the toughest, most personal issues of the war.
Several students dropped out of the program; many cried, raised their voices, or had to take a few moments to themselves. A number had friends or relatives in Gaza, while others had loved ones in the Israeli army or the south of Israel, which was impacted by ongoing rocket fire. But the program's organizers refused to ignore the issues and pushed the group to confront them head-on.
By engaging directly with the toughest topics of the time -- life and death, injustice, bad politics, theology, the media's spin -- students managed to dialogue their way through the war and emerge from it ready to lead their communities and work together. They spent the remainder of the year leading volunteer programs and demonstrating that even in the most infuriating moments of diplomacy and war, interfaith engagement and leadership development can endure. They must.
As I reflect on the recent, unsettling news about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, I look to the example of Ron Kronish. Even when inspired to work for peace by the belief that "we are all part of God's creation," he has shown that it is the tough, up-front, determined dialogue among citizens that sustains the possibility of a lasting political accord. There is no choice but to continue on.
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