Join the petition for an independent investigation into the raid, accountability for those responsible, and an immediate end to the blockade in Gaza

The Avaaz Team

___

Dear friends,

Israel's deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships headed for Gaza has shocked the world.

Israel, like any other state, has the right to self-defence, but this was an outrageous use of lethal force to defend an outrageous and lethal policy -- Israel's blockade of Gaza, where two thirds of families don't know where they'll find their next meal.

The UN, EU, and nearly every other government and multilateral organization have called on Israel to lift the blockade and, now, launch a full investigation of the flotilla raid. But without massive pressure from their citizens, world leaders might limit their response to mere words -- as they have so many times before.

Let's make the world's outcry too loud to ignore. Join the petition for an independent investigation into the raid, accountability for those responsible, and an immediate end to the blockade in Gaza -- click to sign the petition, and then forward this message to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_6/97.php?cl_tta_sign=b5535e1bee5f6bf1145e51f7806f95d5
The petition will be delivered to the UN and world leaders, as soon as it reaches 200,000 names -- and again at every opportunity as it grows and leaders choose their responses. A massive petition at a moment of crisis like this one can demonstrate to those in power that sound bites and press releases aren't enough -- that citizens are paying attention and demanding action.

As the EU decides whether to expand its special trade relationship with Israel, as Obama and the US Congress set next year's budget for Israeli military aid, and as neighbours like Turkey and Egypt decide their next diplomatic steps -- let's make the world's voice unignorable: it's time for truth and accountability on the flotilla raid, and it's time for Israel to comply with international law and end the siege of Gaza. Sign now and pass this message along:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_6/97.php?cl_tta_sign=b5535e1bee5f6bf1145e51f7806f95d5
Most people everywhere still share the same dream: for two free and viable states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side. But the blockade, and the violence used to defend it, poisons that dream. As a columnist wrote to his fellow Israelis today in the newspaper Ha'aretz, "We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam."

Thousands of pro-peace activists in Israel today protested the raid and the blockade in demonstrations from Haifa, to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem -- joining demonstrations around the world. Regardless of which side threw the first punch or fired the first shot (the Israeli military claims it did not initiate the violence), Israel's leaders sent helicopters of armed storm-troopers to raid a convoy of ships in international waters bringing medicine and supplies to Gaza, and some now lay dead.

Their lives cannot be brought back. But perhaps, together, we can make this dark moment a turning point -- if we arise with an unshakable call for justice, and an unbreakable dream of peace.

With hope, Ricken, Alice, Raluca, Paul, and the rest of the Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Live coverage from Al Jazeera:
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/05/31/live-coverage-israels-flotilla-raid
Live coverage from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/may/31/israel-troops-gaza-ships

"The Second Gaza War: Israel lost at sea" - Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/a-special-place-in-hell-the-second-gaza-war-israel-lost-at-sea-1.293246

Analysis of violence from IDF's perspective from Debka, reporters with ties to Israeli intelligence:
http://debka.com/article/8824/
70% of Gazans suffer from food insecurity - 2008 ICRC report, cited by al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/20105319333613851.html

Analysis of possible political consequences of the flotilla attack:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gtowfFjiFD4HYdHuYgxydKNwVRDwD9G2B3880

Israeli Butchery at Sea

Dissident Voice, May 31, 2010



As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured. Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.

For days the Israeli government prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters. Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible

consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along. What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.

Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters. At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.

Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead. We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.

The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’ expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.

It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli should be considered as a suspicious war criminal unless proved different.

Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO members and EU countries must immediately cease their relationships with Israel and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.

Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely. Israel is now officially mad and deadly. The Jewish State is not just careless about human life, as we have been following the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter, Israel actually seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk. Read other articles by Gilad.

Israeli Butchery at Sea

Dissident Voice, May 31, 2010



As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured. Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.

For days the Israeli government prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters. Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible

consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along. What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.

Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters. At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.

Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead. We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.

The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’ expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.

It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli should be considered as a suspicious war criminal unless proved different.

Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO members and EU countries must immediately cease their relationships with Israel and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.

Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely. Israel is now officially mad and deadly. The Jewish State is not just careless about human life, as we have been following the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter, Israel actually seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk. Read other articles by Gilad.

Daniel Berrigan at 89

John Dear SJ

On the Road to Peace
National Catholic Reporter, May. 04, 2010

I'm in New York City this week, attending some of the peace events around the opening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference at the United Nations, and staying with Fr. Daniel Berrigan and the Jesuit Community. This past Good Friday, Dan was arrested at the U.S. Intrepid War Museum; he goes to court in June. May 9 is his 89th birthday.

To celebrate this friend and peacemaker, I offer this week excerpts from my long introduction to a great new anthology which I just published with Orbis Books, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings. In honor of Dan, let's keep going, following the nonviolent Jesus, working for justice and disarmament, and trusting the God of peace.

* * * * * *

Daniel Berrigan exemplifies a Christianity that works for peace, speaks for peace, and welcomes Christ's resurrection gift of peace, first of all to the poor and the enemy. Through word and deed, he has spent his life shedding new light on the Gospel of Jesus, pointing us toward a new world of nonviolence, a new future of peace if we but welcome the gift. His life work, he would say, is modest, but the cumulative effect of his writings and actions, I suggest, show us what the church might look like, what a Christian looks like in such times, indeed, what a human response looks like in an inhuman world.

Dan knows by heart that God does not bless war, justify war, or create war. He points to a nonviolent Jesus who blesses peacemakers, not warmakers; who calls us to love enemies, not kill them; who commands us to take up the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire -- not put others on the cross …

To my mind, Dan's writings are best understood as the fruit of his nonviolent actions and resistance, and as such, they stand within the tradition of resistance literature. But more, they join a legacy of spiritual writing that stretches from the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul through the poetry of St. Francis to the sermons of Archbishop Romero and Dr. King. Dan's writings fit in both categories: as resistance literature and spiritual writing. The genius of Daniel Berrigan is that for him, they are one and the same. All spiritual writing is political for it resists the culture of war and injustice by its very nature. All political writing for peace and justice is therefore quintessentially spiritual, for it points us toward the reign of God. This, I suggest, is the mark of a true spiritual master.

* * * * * *

Dan's contemplative rhythm of listening and going public puts him in the tradition of the towering prophets -- Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel -- who notwithstanding the vast distance in time, have become Dan's mentors and models. Like them, he denounces war, weapons, arms races, corrupt regimes, miscarriages of justice, assaults on human rights, and threats to widows and orphans, the unborn and prisoners. What makes Dan's critique so unique, according to one of his biographers, Francine du Plessix Gray, is his ‘startling’ use of language. Even his opponents sit up and take note.

For Dan, the spiritual life demands our encounter with the world, and thus, nonviolent resistance to its violence, in the tradition of the peacemaking Jesus. His early poems were, in his words, ‘sacramental,’ but his later poems took on the world and its wars and suffering, he says, because he himself began to taste some of its suffering. And so, Dan teaches not a comfortable spirituality -- with its private relationship to God -- but an uncomfortable spirituality that finds God in the poor, in the marginalized, and in the enemy and evokes loving action on their behalf.

‘Some people today argue that equanimity achieved through inner spiritual work is a necessary condition for sustaining one's ethical and political commitments,’ Dan writes. ‘But to the prophets of the Bible, this would have been an absolutely foreign language and a foreign view of the human. The notion that one has to achieve peace of mind before stretching out one's hand to one's neighbor is a distortion of our human experience, and ultimately a dodge of our responsibility. Life is a rollercoaster and one had better buckle one's belt and take the trip. This focus on equanimity is actually a narrow-minded, selfish approach to reality dressed up within the language of spirituality.’

‘I know that the prophetic vision is not popular today in some spiritual circles,’ he continues. ‘But our task is not to be popular or to be seen as having an impact, but to speak the deepest truths that we know. We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if doing so does not produce immediate results in the world.’

Dan finds the wherewithal to set his face against the tide of war in large part because of his daily Bible study. Indeed, like his brother Philip, Dan is a rare biblical person, one who wrestles with the Word of God day and night. ‘Open up the book of Jeremiah and you do not find a person looking for inner peace,’ Dan notes. Jeremiah cries out against injustice, then rejoices in the fulfillment of God's justice, he observes. ‘Jeremiah goes through mountains and valleys. That kind of richness I find very appealing, whereas the kind of spirituality that looks for a flat emotional landscape brought on by the endless search for inner peace and equanimity I find disturbing, a quest that goes nowhere.’

‘I draw from the prophets a very strong bias in favor of the victim and a very strong sense of judgment of evil structures and those who run them,’ Dan writes in his latest book, The Kings and Their Gods. The prophets and Christ, he writes, talk ‘about the God who stands at the bottom with the victims and with the ‘widows and orphans' and witnesses with them in the world, from that terrifying vantage point which is like the bottom of the dry well that Jeremiah was thrown in. That vantage point defines the crime and sin; that point of view of the victim indicts the unjust, the oppressor, the killer, the warmaker. And the message is very clear. It's a very clear indictment of every superpower from Babylon to Washington.’

Dan reaches such unlikely conclusions because he is thoroughly immersed in the text. He dares think that God can be taken at God‘s Word, most notably, in the Gospel message of Jesus. ‘I've been maintaining a new discipline,’ he told me casually a few years ago, at the height of Bush's war on Iraq. ‘First, I get as little of the bad news as possible. I only look at The New York Times once a week, if that, and occasionally the BBC. Second, I spend more time than ever with the good news, reading and meditating on the Gospel every morning, to be with Jesus.’

That, to my mind, is the job description of the modern day biblical prophet -- aware of the world, immersed in the Word of God, a kind of Barthian recipe for readying oneself to announce the Gospel in word and deed. Deed especially. It is Dan's nonviolent direct action which gives Dan's words such vigor and power. But it is his words that unpack his deeds and vision and inspire so many others.

‘The Word of God is spoken for the sake of today,’ Dan writes, ‘for ourselves. If not, it lies dead on the page. Lift the Word from the page, then -- take it to heart. Make of it the very beat of the heart. Then the Word comes alive -- it speaks to commonality and praxis. Do it -- do the Word.’ This is the advice of a post-modern spiritual master. And it rings true because its ancient wisdom was first tested by the early saints and martyrs.

His message is a consistent Gospel word -- ‘Do not kill. Do not support the culture of killing. Do all you can to stop the killing.’ He put it succinctly in an influential open letter to the Weathermen: ‘The death of a single human being is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.’

Over the decades, Dan has stayed faithful to the Gospel journey of peace. He keeps on walking the road to peace, one mindful step at a time, whether others do or not. ‘We walk our hope and that's the only way of keeping it going,’ he says. ‘We've got faith, we've got one another, we've got religious discipline and we've got some access that goes beyond the official wall.’

‘Peacemaking is tough, unfinished, blood-ridden,’ he told one interviewer. ‘Everything is worse now than when I started, but I'm at peace. I don't have to prove my life. I just have to live.’ The point for Dan is to be faithful to the God of peace and the Gospel of Jesus.

‘Nobody can sustain him or herself in the struggle for a nonviolent world on the basis of the criterion of immediate success,’ Dan writes. ‘The Bible gives us a long view rather than the expectation of a quick fix. All of us are in grave danger of being infected by this American ethos that good work brings quick change, rather than the older spiritual notion that good work is its own justification and that the outcome is in other hands besides ours.’

‘The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere,’ he says. ‘I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goes, what direction. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go.’

Daniel Berrigan remains faithful to his vocation and the vision of peace, calling us to do the same -- whether we're successful or not. The focus, he teaches, is on the God of peace, and so, ‘the outcome is in better hands than ours.’ With that, he insists, we can live in hope.

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 3 - 28 May 2010 Stay in touch - Join our list by April 29!

Dear ICAN Australia partners and friends

Want to stay in touch with the NPT? Join our list by April 29!


As you know the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will begin in New York at the United Nations in just under a fortnight.

From 3 – 28 May, our government and nearly every other in the world will be working on nuclear weapons disarmament and non-proliferation issues in the United Nations. But civil society has a huge and important role to play both there and back home too.

If you would like to be kept up-to-date about the events, discussion and our Governments behaviour at the NPT this year, please send a return email to this email address and I will add you to the list. Updates will come at least twice weekly (action alerts may be more often depending on what happens there).

ICAN Australia will have unique access to the conference through our project based in New York staffed by Tim Wright. This means we expect to have regular access and meetings with the Australian delegation, and a pair of good eyes on the spot to help us not miss a trick. In addition, we can all access the daily reports and the freshest analysis through the work of our dear friends and colleagues at WILPF’s Reaching Critical Will project. Our updates from the ICAN Australia office will keep you in the loop on what is important to know.

We will also confirm dates for a follow-up/debriefing meeting between NGOs and DFAT following the NPT (mid-late June) in both Sydney and Melbourne through this list.

Please note: ICAN partners will NOT automatically receive these updates if they haven’t signed on to the list! So reply directly to me by April 29 to join this NPT update list for May 2010.

Thanks
Dimity

PS: check out the wonderful ANF petition on our website now! http://icanw.org/node/5138

Dimity Hawkins
Campaign Director
ICAN Australia

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN)
ph: +61 (0)3 9347 4795
f: +61 (0)3 9347 4995
m: 0422 612 702
e: dimity@icanw.org
w: www.icanw.org
skype: Dimity_iCAN

Northern Territory intervention

Incarceration rates among Australia’s indigenous people bear comparison with the jailing of blacks in minority-ruled South Africa. Aborigines make up just 2.5% of the country’s population, but they account for nearly a quarter of all prisoners. In the Northern Territory, the ‘outback Australia’ made famous in the Crocodile Dundee films of comedian Paul Hogan, the proportion of those held under lock and key who are Aboriginal is a staggering 83%.

Under the ‘Northern Territory National Emergency Response’ – known to everyone else as ‘the Intervention’ – government ‘business managers’ have assumed draconian powers over Aboriginal communities, and acquired compulsory leases over Aboriginal township land.

Assumptions still run through government policies, imposed from Territory and federal authorities alike, as the wording through a stick of rock, that Aboriginal people need to be assimilated into the way of life, and forms of political organization, brought by westerners.

But a creative resistance movement to the Intervention is now taking shape.

Read more at: http://www.transcend.org/tms/2010/04/apartheid-is-alive-and-well/

And come to the International Peace Research Association conference, in Sydney, July 6-10, to be opened by Patrick Dodson, the ‘father of Aboriginal reconciliation’, and addressed by Professor Larissa Behrendt, the eminent Aboriginal legal scholar.

More details at www.iprasydney2010.org

Register and pay to attend the whole event at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/peace_conflict/news/ipra2010.shtmlOr pay on the door: $95 daily rate; $50 for students.
--
Jake

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, BA, Dip Journalism Studies, PhD
Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Chair of Organizing Committee, IPRA conference 2010
Executive Member, Sydney Peace Foundation
Room 121 | Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
AUSTRALIA

p 61 2 9351 5440 | f 61 2 9660 0862
w www.arts.usyd.edu.au/cpacs
e jake.lynch@usyd.edu.au

Asylum seekers are not political footballs

© AFP Photo/Roslan RahmanI’ve just heard the most appalling news - the Australian Government has announced a blanket suspension on processing new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals.

Over 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrive here by boat are found to have genuine claims for protection.

The situation remains desperate for many people in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Activists, journalists, women and minority groups among others face real threats to their lives.

We cannot allow our politicians to use men, women and children fleeing persecution as political footballs. Join me and tell our Government to immediately reverse its freeze on applications by Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

As a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, we made a commitment to protect people at risk of torture, persecution and death. It's time to live up to our promises and show leadership on asylum and refugee issues.

Claire Mallinson
National Director
Amnesty International Australia

Tell our government to reverse this appalling policy move