human call
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:22:32 +0200

dear mrs

Number of Palestinian families in deferent area facing terrible living circumstances which making their life some times inconceivable and increasingly miserable and on going tragedy’s u know what make situation worst is heavy financial commitment such as electricity ..water invoices also teaching ..food expenses and others they went medicine…milk powder ..clothes

but sources is so lack.

indeed i wittiness with great sorrow their condition during my filed work as facilitator for Palestinian NGOs in varying actives amide at women empowerment and raising awareness of civic education ,,democracy… especially in RAMAllA..NABLUSE ..SELFEETTALKURAM villages

at first meeting and during discussion about this issues i sensed deep sigh of sadness because of their case but lately they informed me frankly its difficult to deal with you and to concentrate on civic education workshops under heavy financial problems.

after long discussion for this problems .complement we together reach this idea

the most active way to solve part of this problems is to soled their product of olive oil. worth to mention they lost many olive trees in building separating wall upon their lands

so i decide to turn to Israeli friends who i know to cooperate with them to help in this human crisis by buying olive oil produced by these poor ..needy families.

I wish you cane help in drown smile over faces in al adha fest which going to be at coming Wednesday 19.

families ready to buy 1 kg of olive oil by 35 new sh.

plase distribut this email for freinds

transferring olive oil cane be arrange by calling me on following numbers :

0545893146 or

0599798319

be well

thanks in advance

abed

ed suffering i addressed this petition

I think Palestinians and everybody else have the right to self-determination, political as well as spiritual. To food, to medicine, to art, to all the potential that human life offers us. To a garden, to have a family or not, to practice a religion or not.

As far as the concrete steps to bring about a political entity which provides these things, I’m afraid I have little to contribute.
Perhaps someone could link to Jeff’s piece, I didn’t find it.

My point is that if the boot of Israeli oppression over every facet of Palestinian life is lifted, than the Palestinian people can decide how they should be organized. I don’t really have an opinion about that.

In general I think that the nation-state needs to go the way of the dinosaur. It has outlived it’s usefulness, if it ever had any.
Considering that the human race faces the possible end of its reign on this earth, Is it not advantageous to us to stress cooperativeness rather than nationalism?

regards,
ellen

But in the end I think that major elements of the vision of the former group will have to be incorporated into whatever state does emerge when there is a final peace.

I can’t give a ‘yes or no’ answer to your question - do I think there should a Palestinian state.

Should there be bantustans, where the “state” is fragmented, where the Palestinians have no control over their air space, where they have no access to water, where they can’t build up their economy, where they can’t interact with the international community?
No, of course I am not in favor of this. [Unfortunately, most Americans do not realize that when so-called peace negotiators say 'state' this is what they envision.]

To me the question of a Palestinian state is very abstract. Right now I call what is going on in Gaza genocide. Consider that several years ago the UN Food Specialist described starvation in certain parts of Gaza as “worse than in the worst areas of Africa”.

Every year since then conditions worsen. There is no disagreement about this. The discussion on the media when it touches on the area, talks about Hamas-Fatah fighting, talks about rockets into Israel, never about the conditions in Gaza. How do the people manage to survive?

The media never talk about the cancer patient who died because she couldn’t get her medicine. Or the city-wide lock-downs in which people cannot leave their house, no matter if they are in extreme medical circumstance.

Nobody denies these facts, they are undeniable. So they just don’t talk about them.
How can Jews in particular let this happen?
Aren’t we the ones who said - how did the world let the Holocaust happen and pretend they didn’t smell the burning flesh
?
BBC, which occasionally does a good job, once had a reporter inside a Gaza hospital. The camera focuses on two children hooked up to some electrical machines. The reporter asks the doctor, what happens if Israel shuts off the electricity? The doctors answers, they die.

So, to return to your question, I’ll leave that discussion to others. My job is to let people in America know what is going on in Palestine, and to refute the extraordinary media and cultural bias. Can’t say I’m having a big effect [grin], but I keep trying.

best,
ellen

It seems pretty idealistic (unrealistic?) these days to imagine a state in Palestine/Israel in which all citizens’ rights are respected. It sounds good. If I were directly involved, which I’m not, being neither Palestinian nor Israeli, I would advocate for a state which did not recognize ethnic, religious or national identities. I think we (all) need to identify ourselves as citizens of the world, as members of a common humanity. That sounds even more idealistic or unrealistic I realize. But I think as long as we identify ourselves by what divides us, the world will continue to be torn by strife.

Getting back to the point, I am reminded of some early Zionists who spoke about a national homeland, not a state. The issue of Zionism is so complicated. There are many different strands among Zionists. I have a quote somewhere by one early Zionist, pre-statehood, who beseeches his fellow Zionists - ‘We must share this land with our Arab brethren’. And in the early days there were attempts to form workers cooperatives of Jews and Arabs.

To think: if this type of thinking had prevailed, as opposed to exclusionary thinking, we might today have an entity in the Middle East of peoples of different faiths and nationalities living together in peace, serving as a model for the world.

ellen

You identify yourself as a Progressive Zionist, and obviously you have the right to identify yourself as you choose, altho to me that is an oxymoron.

First, Ellen let me apologize for not seeing yr first comment in this thread till just now. I don’t know how I missed it but I did.

Anyway, thanks for yr compliments about me and the blog & I appreciate them very much.

Perhaps I’m not a Zionist in quite the way you’re used to thinking. I support the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination. But how do you define this? By a sovereign Jewish state of current vintage which fails to fully recognize the rights of 20% of its citizens? No. But I think you can still be a Zionist and come up with a model for a state that recognizes, affirms and protects the rights of all citizens and gives none superiority over any other. My model is Switzerland or possibly Canada in which peoples with separate ethnic, linguistic and religious identities would live in a single state, but with their rights guaranteed.

ellen