Targeting civilians is immoral, no matter what the circumstances.

The cognitive dissonance is killing me!

Welcome to Bethlehem

Arik Sharon bellows something about how more civilian deaths on both sides will lead to greater security.

If we keep our voices down, they might not notice the stench of the bodies.

No, that’s not an anti-war radical crying out against the war on Afghanistan or the possible future attack of Iraq. It’s not some starry-eyed Nobel laureate peace organization. It’s Donald Rumsfeld, speaking with a completely straight face, on national television, asserting the United States’ position in support of the Israeli government’s war on Palestine. Irony is now officially dead.

Meanwhile, the tanks rolled into Bethlehem, with $2,400,000,000 of your and my tax dollars paying for gasoline. Assaults were launched against the Ayda and Dehaishe refugee camps, with massive tank fire, mortar fire, gun clashes, and F-16s flying overhead. The IDF has attacked Red Crescent and UN ambulances, television and communication stations, and journalists.

On the other side of the world, Our Fearless Leader sits back on his ass and opines that he’s doing enough already about this human rights catastrophe, that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Yasser Arafat should, somehow, be doing more to stop suicide bombing from his highly strategic position penned in his own basement and surrounded by tanks and barbed wire. Apparently the idea that Palestine might also have a right to defend itself from a brutal occupation and assault is lost on Bush. Lost on everyone in the mainstream political discourse, for that matter. This does not, of course, include a right to murder civilians in suicide bombings. But it does include a right to fight back against the brutal collective punishment assault being launched in the Occupied Territories as we speak.

Then again, perhaps I’m a bit late already for irony’s memorial service. After all, for a week now, Ariel Sharon has declared that he is out to defend the safety and lives of Israeli citizens… through a scorched-earth assault on Palestine which has driven Palestinians to commit 7 suicide bombings in 7 days. Since Sharon isn’t the one who has to bear the consequences of this blood-soaked war he’s launched, I suppose his safety is doing just fine. Meanwhile, however, a lot of people are dying on both sides precisely because of his actions.

For further reading:

• Jerusalem Independent Media Center for up-to-the-minute participatory media updates
• GT 3/16/2002: Occupation and Intifada: Oppression and Resistence, not "Violence"
• GT 2/14/2002: WAR IS PEACE
• GT 2/03/2002: He Thinks You’re An Idiot
• GT 1/31/2002: Sharon Threatens Arafat’s Life
• GT 3/07/2001: War Criminal Ariel Sharon Becomes Prime Minister

Paul Foot of the Guardian recently published a forceful article on the hypocrisy and irresponsibility of much coverage of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. As Foot argues, there is far, far too much white-washing of the conflict in terms of some mealy-mouthed "pox on both your houses" approach condemning "violence," full stop. Such an approach seems like the pacifist moral high road, but in fact merely amounts to an abdication of responsibility, an abandonment of the conflict under the assumption that "Tut tut, there they go again. Two enemy peoples in a far-off land, caught up in an age-old conflict, swapping atrocity for atrocity, and endlessly killing each other out of some primeval hatred. There is nothing civilised and humane observers can do about it, apparently, except perhaps to hope that sooner or later one side (the strong) will annihilate the other (the weak)."

I remember not too long ago I watched a news commentary show in which Arab and Israeli representatives spoke about the occupation of Palestine. Whenever the Arab representative would point out that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and Palestinians might just have a right to resist and defend themselves, the Israeli representative would snort and dismissively say that the Arab representative was "still fighting the old war." As if there were a statute of limitations on fundamental human rights. The whole idea that there might, just maybe, be a real distinction between oppressed and oppressors here is completely excluded from the mainstream discourse.

Foot points out an excellent example of the hypocrisy – in fact, an example I have commented on myself in these pages:

Remember the indignant hullabaloo when a shipment of arms, bound apparently for the Palestinians, was intercepted. Whoever complains about arms shipments a hundred times greater that pour regularly from our factories and those of the US into Israel? Anyone in the United States or Britain who opposes such sanctions is taking up an unequivocal stand on the side of illegal occupation, military conquest and economic oppression.

Or as I put it,

Meanwhile Israeli and US leaders condemn Yasser Arafat for attempting to import heavy weapons into the Palestinian Authority. Christ, they are being militarily assaulted by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships, and you act all surprised when they import weapons to defend themselves against invasion? If we started classifying all the weapons Israel buys and builds as “enhancing terror” (George W.’s words), then Israel would be considered one of the single biggest terrorist states in the world. Oh, but wait, Israel receives $2,040,000,000 every year from US tax dollars for direct military aid, and $720,000,000 more in economic aid. The Palestinian weapons, at least, were not purchased on your and my dime.

OK, now, I should step back for a second. One thing which Foot doesn’t do, and he is wrong not to do it, is to strongly condemn the acts of the deranged, self-styled jihadis of groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The use of force in direct self-defense is legitimate; the use of violent terror in order to kill civilians is not.

Unfortuantely, far too many people on both sides of the conflict assume that resistence fighters and fundamentalist terrorists are cut from the same cloth. I do not agree. These are two fundamentally different tactics and must be understood as fundamentally different ways. We can neither pass off terrorists who bomb innocent civilians as resistence fighters, nor condemn people legitimately defending themselves against tanks, heavily armed infantry, and helicopter gunships – as if the Palestinians resistors, who are being slaughtered left and right by Israeli military forces, were somehow the aggressors.

For further reading:

• GT 1/31/2002 Sharon Threatens Arafat’s Life
• GT 3/07/2001 War Criminal Ariel Sharon Becomes Prime Minister

Yesterday, Irish voters narrowly rejected a referendum that would have tightened Ireland’s constitutional restrictions against abortion, which are already among the harshest restrictions in Europe.

Ahem, I seem to have lost this one. – Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern

Abortion is already illegal under the Irish constitution, but the rejected amendment sought to tighten restrictions by overturning an Irish Supreme Court ruling which authorized therapeutic abortions when the mother threatened to commit suicide, and by imposing harsh criminal penalties for women who received abortions, and the doctors who performed the procedure. Currently, nearly 7,000 Irish women receive abortions each year, but nearly all must have them performed in legal clinics across the Irish Sea in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, EU immigration protections prevent the Irish government from stopping women from leaving the country.

629,041 Irish voters rejected the amendment, while 618,485 voted in favor of it. In urban centers, the vote was much more lopsided, with some 61% of Dublin voters rejecting the new restrictions. Anti-abortion proponents of the referendum urged that it be adopted because a rejection might lead down a slippery slope towards abortion-on-demand in Ireland.

I’m not holding my breath, but let’s hope they’re right.

For further reading:

• GT 2001-03-24: Victory: Abortion Legalized in Switzerland
• GT 2001-03-26: King George End-runs Congressional Review on Global Gag Rule

Vote.com recently put up an online vote on a local concern: the comments of our beloved Chief Justice Roy Moore and his most recent tirade on homosexuality. Vote.com has put up an online referendum on whether Roy Moore should be removed from office.

Vote.com puts out a huge number of up/down online votes, with the gimmick that every time someone votes, the message is sent by e-mail to relevant decision-makers. It has, for a variety of reasons, traditionally been dominated by Right-wingers, and so votes tend to come out wildly skewed to the Right. This vote is no exception. After my vote on the issue (Yes! Roy Moore should be removed from office), the vote totals came out to 918 for removal (34%) and 1,819 against removal (66%). This is despite the fact that this vote was put directly under Vote.com’s new Gay issue topic.

Let’s see if we can’t turn that vote around. These e-mails are going straight to Governor Siegelman and state legislators, so it would be excellent to [rally a voice of protest][1] for the removal of Chief Jackass Moore. And I think with some concentrated effort, we can definitely do it.

In a society where men sexually assault one out of every five women, where rape and the threat of rape keep women in a state of fear, what can we do to defend the fundamental human rights of women and girls?

What can we do today, for women and girls who do not have time to wait for things to be fixed? What can we do right now for women’s human rights in Alabama?

Right now, the Alabama legislature has a choice to make. Right now, Alabama is one of only four states where there is no law protecting prison inmates from custodial sexual misconduct. Right now, there are over 1,700 female inmates in Alabama prisons. Most of them are guarded by male corrections officers in violation of international correctional standards. Because there are no legal protections against custodial sexual misconduct, women in Alabama prisons have been subjected to sexual extortion, rape, and other abuse by members of the correctional staff to whom they are entrusted.

Rape is a crime of power. It happens when the rapist wants power over his victim, and uses power to force sex. More than any other institution, the prison is a place in which the agents of the state are entrusted with power over other people. With that power must come responsibility.

Most people who are entrusted with this power do not abuse it. Most men would never even consider committing a sexual assault. But we must create an environment in which those who do abuse their power are held responsible. Without legal protections against custodial sexual misconduct, those few who do choose to abuse their power over inmates inflict suffering on their victims that can only be described as a form of torture.

Young people, students such as myself, have been taking the initiative all across Alabama to work against sexual violence. We have volunteered to support rape crisis centers and peer education groups to raise awareness and support the survivors of sexual violence. Through student government and activist groups, we have put our energies into improving safety on our own campuses. And now it is time for the legislature to take up the struggle with us. Last month, Representative Barbara Boyd introduced House Bill 136, which would finally enforce legal accountability for officers who abuse their power over inmates through sexual violence. We are one of only four states without such a law. For Alabama to fully protect the human rights of women, the legislature must approve this bill, as one more step in the fight against sexual violence, one more step in the struggle for women’s fundamental human rights.