June 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Open Letters:
Palestine, Human Rights, Missiles, Energy

Dear people,

Perhaps you've heard from television and newspaper reports already. On the evening of April 30, 2001, in Ramallah, and as part of the ongoing Israeli policy to assassinate Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza, in order to quell the current uprising, bombs were planted under the building where my brother Jamal and his family used to live. The aim was to kill a 24-year-old man named Hassan Al-Qadi who used to live in a room in the first floor of the building.

At 9:35 p.m., only five minutes after my brother went out to buy ice cream for his children, and at the request of his wife took the youngest child with him, bombs went off and leveled the building. That killed my niece and nephew, Malak and Shahid Barakat who were playing with a toy on their bed. They were 4 and 7 years old, respectively. Waed, my second niece, had arm and pelvis injuries and was caught under heavy rubble when she was found. Abeer, my sister-in-law, also got injured when the house fell down.

My brother returned after 15 minutes and did not find his home. His family members were either dead or injured, and mingled with the dark. He pulled them out. Shahid and Malak were buried on May 1, 2001. Abeer and Waed are currently in the hospital in Ramallah. The bombing also killed Hassan Al-Qadi who happened to be in his room when the explosion took place.

As you know, I have been calling people in Palestine and writing stories under the title "One Voice At A Time." I wanted to give a voice to the people who are facing progressive genocide, to the silence or indifference of the world. It has been seven days though, and I am unable to write this story except in fragments. I know what happened, and the knowing keeps me up at night. But until this point, I am unable to find either my words or the ability to put my attention on the details. When I am able to do so, I will write the full story.

If you would like to send a message or send aid to this family to start again, you can send it to me: Ibtisam Barakat, PO Box 89, Columbia, Missouri 65205 (ibarakat@coin.org). I think it would be most useful for him to know that many people care about him. That's my best thinking at this time.

Roger Nomad, Executive Director, Center for Economic and Social Rights, Brooklyn, NY <cesr-mideast@topica.com> (Letter to the Editor, New York Times, 5/7/01)

**In the full text version below, the first sentence in the final paragraph (placed in parantheses) was deleted from the published version

Re "For First Time, US Is Excluded From UN Human Rights Panel": This was not an example of anti-American bias by so-called rogue states like Sudan. That the United States finished last in a competition with France, Austria, and Sweden for three seats on the United Nations human rights panel can only mean that many supposed allies in Europe and the developing world voted against it.

One of the major reasons is that Washington simply does not support international human rights, despite loud rhetoric on the subject. Alone among Western countries, it has refused to ratify three of the major international treaties concerning women's rights, children's rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights.

At a meeting of the United Nations commission in Geneva last month, I watched with dismay as American delegates, sometimes acting alone against overwhelming consensus, sought to undermine resolutions on housing rights and women's rights to property and inheritance.

(The Bush Administration has acted in an aggressive and unilateral manner to undermine international treaties on important areas such as global warming and arms control in addition to human rights.) Is it any wonder that the rest of the world acted to send our government a message that its rogue behavior cannot be tolerated?

Alan Charles Pogue, photojournalist, Austin, TX

I should explain that I have returned from another trip to the Middle East, two weeks in Iraq and ten days in Bethlehem (March 12th to April 4th). I witnessed the siege of Bethlehem. It is as bad as you think it is. Sharon is moving for the "Final Solution" to the Palestinian Problem. Veterans for Peace rebuilt one water treatment plant and is working on three more, south of Basrah. The Israeli Army shelled the Paradise Hotel in Bethlehem while I was in the area, but not in the hotel. Sharon wants to provoke the Palestinians into a confrontation they cannot win. Reminds me of Spain during the 1930s in that while this happens, America and Westren Europe look the other way. But the Palestinians don't even have the army that the Republicans had. More like the Africans under aparthied, and "we" back aparthied. Like the Warsaw Ghetto... I think it is time to start wearing triangular patches with "Palestinian" written on them. I am going to have my Arab friends write "Palestinian" in Arabic and I will add the English and then put it together on a triangle. Might make a good cover.

James K. Galbraith, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin; chairman of the Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (Boston Globe, 5/16/2001)

National missile defense is, in short, an unlimited budget drain aimed at a deeply immoral objective: the nuclear blackmail of other states. It repudiates diplomacy. It puts hair-trigger systems back onto forward stations. It signals, and reflects, contempt for the interests, concerns, and perspectives of allied powers. It is a highway back to the days when thermonuclear death threatened. From one minute to the next, in any form, it threatens the fragile stability of the nuclear peace.

As the US government announces its irrevocable commitment to this program, it is past time for the world's great antinuclear communities to wake up to the danger.

Sean Donahue, New Hampshire Peace Action, PO Box 771, Concord, NH 03302; www.nhpeaceaction.org

Our growing reliance on fossil fuels will exacerbate conflicts in Latin America and the Middle East and new nuclear power plants will lead to further nuclear weapons proliferation. Too much of our foreign policy is already based on protecting our access to oil. A war over oil in the Middle East evolved into a policy of economic sanctions against Iraq that has killed more than 250 children under the age of five every day. In Colombia, we are arming a military that collaborates with right wing death squads to protect big corporations' access to oil by brutally repressing labor unions and indigenous people. Our addiction to oil is killing innocent people in the Third World.

Building new nuclear power plants would mean creating new sources of fissile material which could be stolen by terrorists and used to produce crude but deadly nuclear bombs. Just a fraction of the billions of dollars we spent on defending our access to oil in the Persian Gulf would go a long way toward promoting energy conservation and safe, clean alternative energy policies like solar and wind power. Our continued reliance on nuclear power and fossil fuels not only threatens the environment, it also threatens global security.

Roy Morrison, PO Box 114, Warner, NH 03278; rmjsc@conknet.com www.essentialbooks.com   

George W. Bush's proposed energy plan is a design by an oil man and his handlers for maximum production and maximum profit as long as the party and the planet lasts. The doctrine is clear. Produce more, consume more, pollute more, be happy. Remember,  global warming isn't a problem, oil drilling and oil spills are not an ecological menace, the Clean Air Act an unreasonable impediment to energy security and prosperity, nuclear power will again be too cheap to meter, nuclear waste is merely an industrial by-product, not the most deadly toxic waste without any means of safe disposal. W. will do his best to stay on message, to calm the voters while the big corporate money flows to the craven Congressional lapdogs, and a brave new era of record energy industry  profits struggles to be born. Profits to be paid for by accelerating environmental degradation that is inviting ecological catastrophe and collapse. This is a sad truth that almost any fool now knows, except apparently the biggest ones in Washington.

Marty Jezer, from the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer, 5/18/2001; <mjez@sover.net>

...the Administration's hostility to conservation is well known. In explaining the need to mine and drill for more coal and oil, Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer explained, "The president believes that it's an American way of life, and it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country."

   What's lacking at this time is common sense, not fossil fuels or nuclear power. The current spike in gas prices is the result of inadequate refining capacity, not crude oil. Instead of investing in refining capacity, industry executives invested in politicians. The politicians responded by exempting light trucks and SUVs from federal gas-efficiency standards...

Conservation is the way to go, as the California energy crisis shows. The crisis in California is confined to the private utility system. Communities like Los Angeles and Sacramento that have publicly-owned electric facilities have not felt the crunch. Years ago they invested in conservation, and their prudence is paying off....Certainly, there is a need for some new generating capacity. Old polluting coal and oil generating plants should be phased out and nuclear plants shut down. Natural gas, which pollutes less than gas and oil, is seen by some environmentalists as an interim solution, as a means of buying time until clean energy solutions are brought on line, and there is merit to this. But the future of electricity includes such generating options as solar, geothermal, fuel cells, and harnessing winds and tides. It also includes high-tech energy-efficient lighting, heating, transportation, and industrial applications. The economic future belongs to those economies that invest in clean and efficient power sources. European countries are making public investments in this area. Bush/Cheney, with their fossilized free market views, threaten to throw the ballgame to the Europeans. Without a public policy focused on smart energy solutions, the American economy will lose the energy race--if global warming doesn't first put us all under water.

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