Index: Peace Education
Peace Education Trivia
Welcome to the Peace Education Trivia page. This page contains some interesting, and sometimes sad and horrific bits of trivia about the quest for peace and the forces against it.
"If executing some suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically permissible. It is a policy born of necessity.'' Nathan Lewin, "Prominent" Washington Attorney and Jewish communal "leader"
Note. This vision by Mr. Lewis has been repudiated by leaders in the American Jewish community.
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Page Contents
2002/12/29: News Update
Working for Change, CA: 2002 media follies
   
30,000 young children die every day of preventable causes
Published on Tuesday, June 4, 2002 in the Boston Globe
The Graduation Message We Won't Hear
by Michael Borucke and Oren Weinrib
[excerpt]
About 30,000 children below the age of 5 die every day of preventable causes. While the basic social services required to end this suffering would cost only $80 billion, the United States is spending $344 billion for the military and ''Homeland Security.''
The United States is the richest nation on the planet, yet 31 million Americans live in poverty - what kind of security is that?
These data seem to undermine the hypotheses above: Surely a wealthy and democratic society would not tolerate the preventable deaths of 10 million children every year, would not allow 31 million of its members to live in poverty and the rest of the world to get by on pocket change.
History teaches us, however, that we hold certain truths to be self-evident and will do anything to protect them.
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An Extreme View of Zionism
"You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a murderer.... Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint.
"Even if you prove to me that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral war, I don't care. Even if Galilee is shelled again by Katyushas in a year's time, I don't really care. We shall start another war, kill and destroy more and more, until they will have had enough.
"Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy if one of our children is murdered, just one! If anyone even raises his hand against us we'll take away half his land and burn the other half, including the oil. We might use nuclear arms.
"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us.... And I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal.
"What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it."
-- "Z," pseudonym of an Israeli soldier, about 50 years of age at the time, heavyset, a prosperous farmer, and with a military history similar to Ariel Sharon (as quoted in the Israeli daily, Davar, by Amos Oz, a leading Israeli author, December 17, 1982)
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British versus Afghans
Did you know: The British and the Afghans have fought three wars in the period between 1842 until 1921. Afghans won two of the three. In the first, Britain's contingent of 16,000 soldiers and their dependents were routed from Kabul. Only Dr. William Brydon survived to describe the massacre.
Early man evolved by spreading love not war
Early man evolved by spreading love, not war
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
07 March 2002
The came, they saw and they made love, not war. This is the story of how our human ancestors spread across the world, according to the most detailed study of our genetic heritage attempted so far.
Alan Templeton, professor of biology at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has found convincing evidence to suggest that the history of human evolution is one of sexual interchange rather than the physical elimination of one group by another.
"Humans expanded again and again out of Africa, but these expansions resulted in interbreeding, not replacement, and thereby strengthened the genetic ties between human populations throughout the world," he said.
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Global poll finds most think America brought terror attacks on itself
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
21 December 2001
Did America somehow ask for the terrorist outrages in New York and Washington?
Not surprisingly, nearly all leading Americans think not. But most people of influence in the rest of the world, and nearly 80 per cent in the Middle East and Islamic world, believe that, to a certain extent, the US was asking for it.
This is the most striking finding of a poll exploring global attitudes to the United States and the events of 11 September, which brings out an important subtext of the tragedy and its aftermath – the difference between how Americans think they are seen, and the way the rest of the world sees them.
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Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys?
Confused?
[Source unknown at this time]
Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys?
Use this handy guide to tell the difference between Terrorists and the Bush Administration:
TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy construction family BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes God is on his side and that any means are justified.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes God is on his side and that any means are justified.
TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women and persecution of non-believers.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women and persecution of non-believers.
TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election.
TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings.
TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many countries; uses bombing and other terrorist tactics BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many countries; uses bombing and other terrorist tactics
TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
Iran-Contra figures get jobs in Bush Administration
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer
13 March 2002
In the 1980s it was the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration, a covert arms?for?hostages overture to Iran – more popularly known as "Iran?Contra."
Today, a half?dozen alumni of that episode have found prominent jobs in the Bush administration.
The most recent is former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, 65. The retired admiral took over a new Pentagon counterterrorism office last month.
Poindexter was convicted in 1990 on five felony charges of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress and obstructing congressional inquiries. He was sentenced to six months in prison, time he never served.
An appellate court overturned the convictions in 1991, as well as similar ones against former White House aide Oliver North, the Marine lieutenant colonel who ran the illegal operation. The court ruled that their testimony to Congress, for which they had been given immunity from prosecution, had been improperly used against them.
The Iran?Contra scandal is scarcely mentioned today. But it brought near political paralysis to the closing days of the Reagan presidency.
"It involved wrongdoing," said veteran Republican consultant Charles Black. "People didn't serve the president well, and a lot of them paid a price for that."
Another former Iran?Contra defendant is Elliott Abrams. He now serves as Bush's special White House assistant for democracy and human rights. An assistant secretary of state under Reagan, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress, then was pardoned by the first President George Bush.
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Is Israel a Democracy?
Historical Myths: Israel is a democracy
Written by Arjan El Fassed.
Edited by Laurie King-Irani.
Myth
Israel consistently describes itself as a bastion of Western democracy and as the only democratic state in the entire Middle East. To demonstrate that theirs is a "democratic" country, Israel emphasizes that Palestinians in Israel have the right to vote, that there are Palestinians in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), that Palestinian citizens enjoy a higher standard of living than Arabs in neighboring states, and that the only distinction Israel makes between Jews and Palestinians in Israel is that Palestinians are not required to serve in the Israeli army.
Facts
Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence defined Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state, committed both to the "ingathering of the [Jewish] exiles", and to guaranteeing equality to all its citizens regardless of race, religion, or gender. Yet, in defining the state as a specifically Jewish state, Israel effectively compromises the degree to which it can be truly democratic.
As a Jewish state, Israel rests on three minimum conditions: Jews form the majority, Jews are entitled to special treatment and preferential laws, and a reciprocal relationship exists between Israel and the Jewish people in the diaspora. The Palestinian minority inside Israel, now comprising one-fifth of the Israeli population, is excluded and therefore discriminated against: by privileging Jews, the state treats non-Jews, which is its official name for Palestinians (miyutim lo yehudim) as second-class citizens.
Constitutional equality
Lacking a formal constitution, Israel's Knesset has propounded a series of Basic Laws that form a constitution-in-evolution. Prior to 1992, none of these Basic Laws guaranteed any basic rights to Israeli citizens, Jews or non-Jews. However, in 1992 the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom was passed. It authorised courts to overturn Knesset laws that were contrary to the right to dignity, life, freedom, privacy, property and the right to leave and enter the country. It pointedly did not include the right to equality, however.
Further, section 1A of this Basic Law states that it aims to anchor "the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state". Given the lack of an explicit law that constitutionally protects equality for all citizens, an emphasis on the Jewishness of the State again compromises equal rights protection for the large and growing Palestinian minority.
"The Zionist dream is to construct a state which is as Jewish as England is English and France is French. At the same time, this state is to be a democracy on the Western model. Evidently, these goals are incompatible. Citizens of France are French, but citizens of the Jewish state may be non-Jews, either by ethnic or religious origin or simply by choice [...] To the extent that Israel is a Jewish State it cannot be a democratic state" -- Noam Chomsky, Forward to The Arabs in Israel (Adalah, Legal Violations of Arab Minority Rights in Israel, 1998, p. 9 --
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Israel: Confronting the past
Confronting the past
A thesis which alleges that Jewish militias slaughtered unarmed Arab fighters during the war of Independence is at the centre of a fierce debate about Israel's approach to its history, writes Suzanne Goldenberg
Monday December 10, 2001
He is a rather unlikely candidate for academic celebrity - or notoriety - depending on which way one looks at it.
But the debate over the MA thesis of Teddy Katz, a kibbutznik in his late 50s, has consumed Israeli academics for the best part of two years.
The saga of Mr Katz began unfolding in January last year when an Israeli newspaper published excerpts from a thesis submitted to Haifa University on the fate of the Palestinian village of Tantura, which was destroyed in the battle for Israel's independence in 1948.
In his research, Mr Katz collected testimony from Palestinians who alleged that Jewish pre-state militias slaughtered 200 Arab fighters who laid down their arms after the village surrendered in May 1948.
Researchers have unearthed other massacres in Israel's bloody war of independence in 1948 - most notably at Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, where some 120 unarmed villagers were killed in the event that came to symbolise the Nakba - literally the catastrophe of Palestinian flight, and dispossession when the Jewish state was created in 1948.
And there were earlier accounts in Arabic of the episode at Tantura. The coastal village was razed in June 1948 to make way for a kibbutz, and a swimming pool.
But the effect of Mr Katz's research was explosive. The Jewish veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade, the battalion Mr Katz alleged to have carried out the killings, sued for libel. The suit set off a train of events in the legal and academic arenas.
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Nobel Laureates Centennial Appeal (December 2001)
Nobel Laureates Centennial Appeal
We, the undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates gathered for the centennial of the Nobel Prizes, express our joy at this year's award to the United Nations and its Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
We hope that our message of peace and justice will reach the hearts and minds of those in and out of government who have the power to make a better world.
We look forward to a world in which we the peoples, working in cooperation with governments, with full respect for international law, will enable the UN to fulfil its mission to save this and succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
We call for the prompt establishment of the International Criminal Court and full implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including economic, social, and cultural as well as civil and political rights.
We offer our support for the unrelenting, patient, and non-violent pursuit of peace wherever conflicts may rage today or tomorrow, such as the Middle East, Colombia, or the Great Lakes of Africa.
We commit ourselves to work for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction and the reduction and control of small arms and other conventional weapons.
We call on the human family to address the root causes of violence and build a culture of peace and hope. We know that another world is possible, a world of justice and peace. Together we can make it a reality.
Oslo, December 10, 2001
Signed by:
Institute of International Law
1904
International Peace Bureau
Cora Weiss
1910
American Friends Service Committee
Mary Ellen McNish
1947
Norman E. Borlaug
1970
Máiread Corrigan Maguire
1976
Amnesty International
Colm Ó Cuanacháin
1977
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
1980
Lech Walesa
1983
Desmond Tutu
1984
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Bernard Lown
1985
Oscar Arias
1987
Rigoberta Menchu Tum
1992
Joseph Rotblat
1995
José Ramos-Horta
1996
Jody Williams
1997
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
Jerry White 1997
John Hume
1998
Pop Quiz on the Middle East
Published on Sunday, February 8, 1998 in the Orlando Sentinel
Pop Quiz on the Middle East
by Charlie Reese
Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons? Answer: Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections? A: Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions? A: Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire? A: Israel.
Q: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)? A: Israel.
Q: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed? A: Israel.
Q: What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war? A: Israel.
Q: What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses? A: Israel.
Q: What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated? A: Israel.
Q: In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated? A: Israel.
Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister? A: Israel.
Q: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors? A: Israel.
Q: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union? A: Israel.
Q: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon? A: Israel.
Q: What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders? A: Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes? A: Israel.
Q: What country is the United States threatening to bomb because "U.N. Security Council resolutions must be obeyed?" A: Iraq
Copyright 1998 Orlando Sentinel
Sharon's Pyrrhic Victory
Wednesday, April 10 2002 @ 06:08 PM GMT
By Jaffer Ali for the PalestineChronicle.com
Pyrrhus was the Greek king of Epirus. In 281 BC he invaded Italy with 25,000 men and 20 elephants. His was the most powerful army in the world at the time. But his victories against Rome were so costly that he had to totally withdraw from Italy. His now famous remark, "Another such victory and I shall be ruined" eventually gave name to the term 'Pyrrhic victory' for a victory obtained at too great a cost.
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The cost of inequality
18 March 2002
* 1.3 billion people live on less than $1 a day, a figure that is growing; 2.8 billion – almost half the world's population – live on less than $2 a day.
* The richest fifth of the world's population enjoys 80 per cent of global income, while the poorest fifth has just 1 per cent of it.
* Third World debt is in the region of $400bn.
Sub-Saharan Africa spends $40m a week on debt repayment.
* 130 million children are without access to education.
* 2 million people will die of HIV/Aids in the next year.
* 800 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are not getting enough food.
* 3 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation.
* The gap between the poorest fifth and richest fifth of the world's population has doubled between 1960 and 2000.
* A World Health Organisation plan to save the lives of 8 million people a year would require an increase in spending on health in poorer countries of about $50bn a year – about the same as the planned increase in the US defence budget in 2003.
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United Nations on Iraqi Children's Deaths
The United Nations claims that 5,000 Iraqi children perish each month because of a shortage of medicine, due to sanctions imposed by the United Nations themselves.
What is a terrorist?
Published on Wednesday, May 1, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
What Is A Terrorist?
by Jeff Cohen
ter·ror·ist (ter'er-ist) n. 1. One who engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
2. One who leads an armed group that kills civilians as a means of political intimidation -- unless he terrorizes Haitians while on the CIA-payroll, as did 1990s death squad leader Emmanuel Constant, in which case the U.S. refuses to extradite him to Haiti, even after Sept. 11, 2001.
3. One who targets civilian airliners and ships -- unless he blows up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people, and fires at a Polish freighter, like Orlando Bosch, in which case he is coddled and paroled by the Bush Justice Department in 1990, and his extradition is blocked.
4. One who leads a group that engages in kidnapping and murder -- unless the victims are Hondurans attacked by CIA-backed death squad Battalion 316, in which case Battalion architect Gustavo Alvarez becomes a Pentagon consultant, while the then-ambassador to Honduras who downplayed the terror, John Negroponte, is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations days after Sept. 11.
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