At the time I became pregnant I had a good job with an international NGO in addition to my income as a freelance writer and translator, along with my husband’s salary. Yet three months before I gave birth, my contract was terminated. The U.S. funded project I was assigned to closed as a result of the Trump’s administration cut in aid to Gaza’s relief agencies.

Suddenly I found myself about to have a new baby without security for a decent future and life. When I thought of the coming year, I could not help but think of the UN report that warns my home in the Gaza Strip will be “uninhabitable” by 2020.

But I overcame some of my worries. When I hug my son I make a choice to be happy for him. I am thankful for the blessing of having him. Still, I can only stop my anxiety for a few days at a time. When the stress returns, I wonder how I will secure a future for my son? Will we be able to provide him all his needs–a good education, good healthcare, a clean and healthy environment, a safe place to live? All these questions kept popping up in my mind and so I reached out to other new parents. Some considered leaving Gaza.
 

My son’s first war

Sarah Algherbawi with her husband and son, Khalil. (Photo courtesy of the author)
 

Becoming a first-time mom may seem typical for a woman my age, but in Gaza nothing is typical anymore. When I decided to have a child I it was not a decision that I took lightly. I was afraid. I’m 27 and I’ve already witnessed three wars and I never want my child to experience what I’ve gone through. I live everyday in fear that a new war will take place.

Yet even with this fear, I never imagine that such a short time after giving birth my son would experience what war feels like. That is because I didn’t realistically think a war would break out when Khalil was only two weeks old when a short military escalation that took place between Israel and Hamas in mid-November. In the span of two days Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinians, and Hamas’ armed wing killed one Israeli officer. In this period Israeli soldiers bombed 150 sites in Gaza and 400 rockets were fired at Israel.

I was still recovering at my parents’ house from a caesarean delivery when the fire exchange started. It was November 11 and the first thing I did was ask my brother to move Khalil’s bed to the hallway, away from any windows in case the glass breaks in the event a building near the house is targeted.

In previous wars I was glued to my phone and laptop, writing and translating media reports. But this time I only hugged my child prayed to God to protect him from any harm. It was the first time I forgot about my own fear and only thought of him. With every incoming strike and outgoing rocket, I muffled out the sound by holding my hands over Khalil’s ears.
 

No stability

It’s not only the fear of war that dominates every parent in Gaza. We also lack stability. When I lost my job on July because of the punitive measures the Trump administration took against Palestinians I became like one-third of Gaza: unemployed.

My family’s ability to afford caring for our child is now in question, but it’s a question facing many parents around me.  

The World Bank reported in October,  “In Gaza, 54 percent of the labor force is unemployed, including 70 percent among youth,” where youth means anyone from age 15 to 29.

The potential to have a good job in Gaza seems impossible now; there’s no governmental recruitment programs because Gaza’s government already suffers from a deficit and doesn’t even pay full salaries to its employees. UNRWA is terminating employees left and right now that the Trump cuts to Palestinian refugees have hit Gaza. And, the Palestinian Authority, an employer in salary alone, is now scaling back the wages of its employees in Gaza as one of many punitive measures in the Hamas-Fatah power struggle.

I never thought of leaving Gaza before. I’m strongly committed to my family and friends here. But now, my husband and I are seriously considering leaving Gaza. We want to have a better and safer life for our child and we’ve lost trust in our politicians to do so.
 

Mahnoud Saqer and his wife Mayar in Gaza. (Photo courtesy of the author)
 

Huda and her three princesses

My colleagues another journalist couple, Huda Baroud and Mohammed Othman preceded us in taking this step. Huda works as a media editor for a local media website and Mohammed used to work in investigative journalist.

Two years ago, Othman emigrated from Gaza leaving behind his wife and three daughters as he searched for a better job and to establish some himself before the rest of the family would follow.

Until now, Mohammed is in Belgium separated from Baroud and his daughters because of paperwork holds. In the meantime Baroud is suffering here in Gaza playing the role of both mother and father. We recently talked about their divided family.

“Our children are the victims we brought into this life in Gaza. We need to do our best to protect them from wars, bad living and environmental conditions,” she told me.

Huda said she now perceives that women of Gaza have become weaker after having children. There are a myriad of safety issues to worry about as a parent and it takes a toll on our strength. “I think a thousand time before I take one of my daughters to a doctor; as medical mistakes killed people here many times,” Huda said.

“Besides, with every escalation with Israel I wish if I never had children,” she said, “Gaza is not a safe place for children to grow up in, this is why I welcomed my husband’s idea of travelling abroad to search for a better life for our daughters.”
About the latest escalation, Huda went on,

“I thought about many scenarios of how I’ll escape with my daughters if a bombardment took place near our house. I tried to explain to my daughters Lamia, 6, Alma, 4, and Tulien, 2, part of the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to understand violence impacts our lives. I wanted to make sure that if something bad happened they’re ready to face it.”

Huda tries to compensate for the absence of her husband by taking her daughters out from time to time, but the environmental pollution has made her picky and careful in her choices. She tells to me, “Going to the beach is totally forbidden because of the high pollution and wastewater.” Instead of the beach, “I brought a plastic pool for the girls to swim in inside the house.”

She’s also picky in regard to the type of food she feeds to her daughters, “I’m careful in choosing the source of vegetables and fruits the girls eat, I buy from one source that I’m sure they don’t use chemicals on plants.”

At the end of our conversation Huda told me, “I’m a journalist and I’m well aware of what’s happening here. Economic and environmental experts assured that the environmental reality of Gaza is very difficult and is about to collapse if no intervention takes place. This is why I’m always careful and picky with my daughters.”
 

Huda Baroud and Mohammed Othman’s three daughters. (Photo courtesy of the author)
 

A Crazy Step

Another couple I know, Mahmoud and Mayar Saqer, age 27 and 24, are experiencing the same emotional distress I’m having: the joy of becoming a parent along with the fear of being a parent in Gaza. The couple are about to have twins, yet instead of celebrating they are extremely worried because Mahmoud’s shoe store recently went out of business.  

They are preparing themselves now to emigrate from Gaza temporarily, at least until Mayar gives birth to the twins abroad.

Mahmoud, who supports ten other members of his family, said this: “Within months I’ll be a father of two and the only source of our income has now closed. I want to immigrate to a European country so that I can guarantee that my twins will get a foreign passport and security in their future, then I’ll return to Gaza.”

The couple plans to journey along smuggling routes of thousands of fleeing refugees. First go to Egypt, then they’ll travel to Turkey, and lastly travel across the sea to Greece.

“I know that this step is surrounded with a lot of risks, but the future of our children warrants taking this risk. I want to have a better life for them,” Mahmoud said

As Mahmoud spoke I thought Malak Abu Jazar, 9, from Gaza who drowned to death off the shores of Turkey when the boat that was smuggling her family and her to Greece sunk.  Mahmoud and Mayar followed the news when it broke a few weeks ago. It’s given Mayar reservations, but not enough to change her strategy. “Since I agreed to do this step, I have become very nervous,” she tells me, “I hope it goes well. The bad reality of Gaza pushed us to take this risk.”

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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Genocidal intent has been present in Zionist thought and practice. Like Jabotinsky’s fantasy of the iron wall, the early Zionists’ dreams of removing Palestinians physically and discursively have realized to a certain extent and continue to threaten Palestinian survival.

As the fulfillment of Zionism and the survival of Israeli ethnocracy necessitate the removal of the indigenous population, Palestinians are experiencing a confluence of settler-colonial inscription and indigenous erasure. These dynamics are evident in the ever-evolving methods and realizations of violence that are manifest in manifold -cides, i.e. the intentional destruction and/or theft of everything Palestinian, including Palestinian geography, landscape, history, culture, cuisine, flora, and Palestinians as a people. Thus, Israel’s policies, which are encouraged – or at least accepted – by the majority of the international community, can be subsumed as Palestinicides.

Zionists have constantly refashioned their dehumanizing rhetoric for rationalizing the extermination of Palestinians. The indigenous population has been constructed as invisible subjects in the myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land” and transformed into non-human natives, an Oriental plague, a Communist threat, security problems, terrorists, “Islamists,” and anti-Semites.

Israeli political and military leaders have traditionally referred to Palestinians as a disease, plague, or insects, with “cancerous manifestation” that necessitates “chemotherapy”, “drugged cockroaches in a bottle,” “beasts walking on two legs,” and “the biggest failure in the history of the human race” being only some examples.

As a demographic threat or ethnic timebomb, Palestinians have been criminalized for merely existing and standing in the way of the colonizer. Their collective removal is thus always-already justified.

Israeli minister Lieberman intended to combine the next war against Gazans with a complete destruction of its population. “Justice” minister Shaked called for genocide through Facebook in 2014, proclaiming that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy,” encouraging the extermination of the Palestinian people, their geography, and infrastructure. Rabbi Noam Perel asked for bloody revenge “that will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins.” Religious-nationalist IDF commander Ofer Winter declared a “Holy War” against Palestinians, justifying his genocidal plans with the bible. Dov Lior, from the illegal settlement Kiryat Arba, justified an extermination of Palestinians through Jewish law. Deputy-speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, asked for the “annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters” and the subsequent shelling of Gaza “with maximum fire power[.]”

In Israeli political language, “fighting forces,” “Hamas,” and “terrorists” are synonymous with “Palestinians,” as the victims are retrospectively transformed into “terrorists,” i.e. legitimate targets. Israel has rationalized genocide into an inevitable means for securing its own survival.

While these examples illustrate the normalcy of genocidal rhetoric in Israeli discourse nowadays, Palestinian reality has long been shaped by the presence of genocide. Like in 1948, Palestinians are today threatened to be gassed to death by Zionists. Like in 1948, Palestinians are killed in genocidal massacres today.

The uncanny political and legal implications of the word genocide limit academic discussions on Palestine as a possible case of genocide. Israel’s supporters rarely hesitate to label human rights advocates as “genocidal” anti-Semites – with the smear campaign against Marc Lamont Hill being only the latest example. But, if extending universal human rights onto Palestinians would constitute a “genocide” according to the Zionist lexicon, where do we even begin to debate the multidimensional –cides committed against Palestinians?

The omission of the Nakba from Western historiography and Genocide studies continues to marginalize Palestinians. Rashed, Short, and Docker argue that the field of Genocide studies has been characterized by the lack of a substantial debate of Israel as a possible example of a nation founded on genocide and a simultaneous fear of becoming victim of Zionist intimidation. The authors claim that through the omission of Palestine/Israel as a possible case study, major publications within Genocide studies “represent an archive of Nakba denial.”
The term genocide, coined by Raphael Lemkin, stems from the Greek genes, meaning “tribe” or “race,” and the Latin –cide, meaning “killing.” According to Lemkin, “genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation,” but should rather “signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” Lemkin defines the objectives of genocide as “disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948, criminalizes genocide under international law, defining it as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group[.]” The extensive definition of genocide also includes the conspiracy and incitement to commit genocide.

This definition itself refutes Zionist claims that Israel could not be committing a genocide as it was not systematically physically exterminating each and every Palestinian.

Referencing Lemkin’s definition, Rashed, Short, and Docker claim that there is a very strong argument that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Human rights lawyer Michael Ratner concluded there is “no doubt” that Israel’s policies since 1947 have amounted to what Ilan Pappé described as “incremental genocide.” Professor and lawyer Francis Boyle concluded that Zionist terror groups and later Israel have committed a continuing genocide that began in 1948 and that includes a ruthless implementation of “a systematic and comprehensive military, political, religious, economic, and cultural campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious group (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) constituting the Palestinian people.”

The perpetration of genocide is accompanied by its denial. Israel tends to paradoxically fantasize about and simultaneously deny genocide against Palestinians. The terms genocide, Holocaust, or Shoa have been used by Israeli politicians as characterizations of attacks against Palestinians, while the Palestinians are blamed in advance for the genocide which should exterminate them. Naftali Bennett proudly announced that Palestinians would commit a “self-genocide.”

Adhering to this rhetoric, Western media has long blamed Palestinians for their own death, justifying Israel’s massacres in the Great Return March, alleging that Palestinians were harming themselves on purpose in their backward culture of victimhood and violence, or that they were, as Bari Weiss claimed, going on suicide missions to die for a photo op.

Palestinians are blamed for their existence, as they would need to disappear and vacate Palestine in order for Zionism to fulfill.

The refusal to discuss Israel as potentially genocidal is another documentation of the academic, political, and legal dehumanization of Palestinians, since acknowledging, or even elaborating on, the exercise of a genocide against a people presupposes the inclusion of this people into the category of humanity. The disregard for Palestinian lives, however, is not an event, but a structure deeply embedded in Euro-American cultures, in which Palestinians cannot be considered victims, or, being worthy of genocidal extermination.

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Image Courtesy: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

The present United Nations Charter
After the unspeakable horrors of World War II, delegates from 50 Allied nations met in San Francisco California. The purpose of the conference, which took place between 25 April and 26 June, 1945, was to set up an international organization that would be able to abolish the institution of war. However, the Charter which the delegates produced was too weak to achieve this goal.

In many respects the United Nations has been highly successful. During the 73 years that have passed since its establishment, a world war has been avoided. The agencies of the United Nations, such as the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, UNESCO and the IPCC, have provided urgently-needed services to the international community. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals have set up norms towards which we can and should aim. Further-more, the UN has provided a place where representatives from many nations can meet for informal diplomacy, through which many dangerous conflicts have been avoided.

Nevertheless, the United Nations, with its present Charter, has proved to be too weak to achieve the purpose for which it was established – the complete abolition of the institution of war. If civil wars are included, there are, on any given day, averages of 12 wars somewhere in the world. The task of abolishing war has become extremely urgent since the advent of thermonuclear weapons. The danger that these weapons will be used, through accident, technical or human error, or through uncontrollable escalation of a war with conventional weapons, poses an existential threat to human civilization and the biosphere.

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 described our present situation in the following words:
“Here then is the problem that we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war? There lies before us, if we choose continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

Why Call War An “Institution”?
Because the world spends almost two thousand billion dollars each year on armaments, it follows that very many people make their living from war. This is the reason why it is correct to speak of war as a social institution, and also the reason why war persists, although everyone realizes that it is the cause of much of the suffering that inflicts humanity. We know that war is madness, but it persists. We know that it threatens the future survival of our species, but it persists, entrenched in the attitudes of historians, newspaper editors and television producers, entrenched in the methods by which politicians finance their campaigns, and entrenched in the financial power of arms manufacturers, entrenched also in the ponderous and costly hardware of war, the fleets of warships, bombers, tanks, nuclear missiles and so on.

Military-industrial complexes, throughout the world, drive and perpetuate the institution of war. Each military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The money flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians to vote for obscenely bloated military budgets, which further enrich the corporate oligarchs, and the circular flow continues.

A World Federation
In order to save the world from destruction in a thermonuclear World War III, the United Nations Charter must be reformed and strengthened. At present, the UN is a confederation of absolutely sovereign nation-states. But in a world of all-destroying modern weapons, instantaneous global communication, and economic interdependence, the absolutely sovereign nation-state has become a dangerous anachronism.

Furthermore, history has shown confederations to be fatally weak. For example, the original United States Constitution was a confederation; but it soon became apparent that this form of governance was too weak. Instead, a federation was needed. In his Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “To coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised… Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself, a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. The single consideration should be enough to dispose every peaceable citizen against such government… What is the cure for this great evil? Nothing, but to enable the… laws to operate on individuals, in the same manner as those of states do.”

George Mason, one of the drafters of the Federal Constitution, believed that “such a government was necessary as could directly operate on individuals, and would punish those only whose guilt required it”, while another drafter, James Madison, wrote that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted “the practicality, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively, and not individually.”

At present, the United Nations attempts to coerce states through sanctions; but sanctions are a form of collective punishment, and collective punishment is expressly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. The worst effects of sanctions are usually felt by the weakest and least guilty of the citizens, while the guilty leaders are usually unaffected. Besides being a violation of the Geneva Conventions, sanctions are ineffective, their only effect being to unite the people of a country behind its guilty leaders.

The Success of Federations
A federation is a union of organizations to which specific powers are granted, all other powers being retained by the subunits. Historically, federations have proved to be highly successful and durable.

Besides political federations, many other kinds exist, examples being Universal Postal Union, established by the Treaty of Bern in 1874, and the International Tennis Federation (ITF), founded in 1913.

Examples of political federations include the European Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Swiss Federation, the Russian Federation, the Federal Government of the United States, and the governments of Australia and Brazil.

Laws Binding On Individuals
In general, political federations have the power to make laws which are binding on individuals, thus avoiding the need to coerce their member states. An effective World Federation would need to have the power to make laws that act on individuals. The International Criminal Court is an important step towards the establishment of a system of international law that acts on individuals rather than on states, and the ICC deserves our wholehearted support.

Greatly Increased Financial Support for the UN
A very important step towards strengthening the United Nations would be to give it at least 50 times the financial support that it has today. At present the entire yearly budget of the UN is only 2.7 billion US dollars, a ridiculously low figure, considering the organization’s duty to ensure peace, law, human rights, social justice, respect for the environment, human health, and a safe food supply for the entire world. If the financial support of the United Nations could be greatly increased, its agencies could perform their vitally important duties much more effectively. This would give the UN increased prestige and authority, and the UN would thus be better able to resolve political disputes.

Various methods for increasing the money available to the UN have been proposed. For example, James Tobin, who was Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, and Nobel Laureate in Economics, proposed that international currency transactions be taxed at a small fraction of a percent. He believed that even this extremely small tax would make exchange rates much more stable. When asked what should be done with the proceeds of the tax, Tobin added, almost as an afterthought, “Give it to the United Nations”. In fact, the volume of international currency transactions is so enormous that even the tiny tax proposed by Tobin would be sufficient to solve all the UN’s financial problems.

A Standing UN Emergency Force
The United Nations is often called on to act quickly in emergency situations, an example being the call for the UN to stop the Rwandan genocide. It would be helpful if the UN had a standing armed force which could act quickly in such emergency situations. The force could consist of volunteers from around the world, pledged to loyalty to humanity as a whole, rather than loyalty to any nation.

A Reformed Voting System
In the present UN General Assembly, each nation is given one vote regardless of size. This means that Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta and Andorra have as much voting power as China, India, the United States and Russia combined. For this reason, UN resolutions are often ignored.

The voting system of the General Assembly should be reformed. One possible plan would be for final votes to be cast by regional blocks, each block having one vote. The blocks might be. 1) Latin America 2) Africa 3) Europe 4) North America 5) Russia and Central Asia 6) China 7) India and Southeast Asia 8) The Middle East and 9) Japan, Korea and Oceania.

In a reformed, democratized and possibly renamed Security Council, the veto power would be absent, and final votes would be taken between regions of roughly equal populations.

Hope for the Future
Can we abolish the institution of war? Can we hope and work for a time when the terrible suffering inflicted by wars will exist only as a dark memory fading into the past? I believe that this is really possible. The problem of achieving internal peace over a large geographical area is not insoluble. It has already been solved. There exist today many nations or regions within each of which there is internal peace and some of these are so large that they are almost worlds in themselves. One thinks of China, India, Brazil, the Russian Federation, the United States, and the European Union. Many of these enormous societies contain a variety of ethnic groups, a variety of religions and a variety of languages, as well as striking contrasts between wealth and poverty. If these great land areas have been forged into peaceful and cooperative societies, cannot the same methods of government be applied globally?

Today, there is a pressing need to enlarge the size of the political unit from the nation-state to the entire world. The need to do so results from the terrible dangers of modern weapons and from global economic interdependence. The progress of science has created this need, but science has also given us the means to enlarge the political unit: Our almost miraculous modern communications media, if properly used, have the power to weld all of humankind into a single supportive and cooperative society.

We live at a critical time for human civilization, a time of crisis. Each of us must accept his or her individual responsibility for solving the problems that are facing the world today. We cannot leave this to the politicians. That is what we have been doing until now, and the results have been disastrous. Nor can we trust the mass media to give us adequate public discussion of the challenges that we are facing. We have a responsibility towards future generations to take matters into our own hands, to join hands and make our own alternative media, to work actively and fearlessly for better government and for a better society.

We, the people of the world, not only have the facts on our side; we also have numbers on our side. The vast majority of the worlds peoples long for peace. The vast majority longs for abolition of nuclear weapons, and for a world of kindness and cooperation, a world of respect for the environment.

No one can make these changes alone, but together we can do it. Together, we have the power to choose a future where international anarchy, chronic war and institutionalized injustice will be replaced by democratic and humane global governance, a future where the madness and immorality of war will be replaced by the rule of law.

We need a sense of the unity of all mankind to save the future, a new global ethic for a united world. We need politeness and kindness to save the future, politeness and kindness not only within nations but also between nations.

To save the future, we need a just and democratic system of international law; for with law shall our land be built up, but with lawlessness laid waste.

A freely downloadable book
A new 418-page book entitled “A World Federation” may be downloaded and circulated gratis from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/A-World-Federation-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Courtesy: New Age Islam
 

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The “caterwaul” on Capitol Hill reflects years of determined effort by grassroots groups to end U.S. involvement in war on Yemen, fed by mounting international outrage at the last three years of war that have caused the deaths of an estimated 85,000 Yemeni children under age five.
How might we understand what it would mean in the United States for fourteen million people in our country to starve? You would have to combine the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and imagine these cities empty of all but the painfully and slowly dying, to get a glimpse into the suffering in Yemen, where one of every two persons faces starvation.

Antiwar activists have persistently challenged elected representatives to acknowledge and end the horrible consequences of modern warfare in Yemen where entire neighborhoods have been bombed, displacing millions of people; daily aerial attacks have directly targeted Yemen’s infrastructure, preventing delivery of food, safe water, fuel, and funds. The war crushes people through aerial bombing and on-the-ground fighting as well as an insidious economic war.

Yemenis are strangled by import restrictions and blockades, causing non-payment of government salaries, inflation, job losses, and declining or disappearing incomes. Even when food is available, ordinary Yemenis cannot afford it.

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war—by Saudi Arabia, by the United Arab Emirates, and by the superpower patrons including the United States that arm and manipulate both countries.

During the thirteen years of economic sanctions against Iraq— those years between the Gulf War and the devastating U.S.-led “Shock and Awe” war that followed—I joined U.S. and U.K. activists traveling to Iraq in public defiance of the economic sanctions.

We aimed to resist U.S.- and U.K.-driven policies that weakened the Iraqi regime’s opposition more than they weakened Saddam Hussein. Ostensibly democratic leaders were ready to achieve their aims by brutally sacrificing children under age five. The children died first by the hundreds, then by the thousands and eventually by the hundreds of thousands. Sitting in a Baghdad pediatric ward, I heard a delegation member, a young nurse from the U.K., begin to absorb the cruelty inflicted on mothers and children.

“I think I understand,” murmured Martin Thomas, “It’s a death row for infants.” Children gasped their last breaths while their parents suffered a pile-up of anguish, wave after wave. We should remain haunted by those children’s short lives.

Iraq’s children died amid an eerie and menacing silence on the part of mainstream media and most elected U.S. officials. No caterwauling was heard on Capitol Hill. But, worldwide, people began to know that children were paying the price of abysmally failed policies, and millions of people opposed the 2003 Shock and Awe war.

Still the abusive and greedy policies continue. The U.S. and its allies built up permanent warfare states to secure consistent exploitation of resources outside their own territories.

During and after the Arab Spring, numerous Yemenis resisted dangerously unfair austerity measures that the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. insisted they must accept. Professor Isa Blumi, who notes that generations of Yemeni fighters have refused to acquiesce to foreign invasion and intervention, presents evidence that Saudi Arabia and the UAE now orchestrate war on Yemen to advance their own financial interests.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, Blumi states that although Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman wants to author an IPO (International Public Offering), for the Saudi state oil company, Aramco, no major investors would likely participate. Investment firms know the Saudis pay cash for their imports, including billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, because they are depleting resources within their own territory. This, in part, explains the desperate efforts to take over Yemen’s offshore oil reserves and other strategic assets.

Recent polls indicate that most Americans don’t favor U.S. war on Yemen. Surely, our security is not enhanced if the U.S. continues to structure its foreign policy on fear, prejudice, greed, and overwhelming military force. The movements that pressured the U.S. Senate to reject current U.S. foreign policy regarding Saudi Arabia and its war on Yemen will continue raising voices. Collectively, we’ll work toward raising the lament, pressuring the media and civil society to insist that slaughtering children will never solve problems.

Kathy Kelly is a peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence http://vcnv.org/ . Kathy Kelly’s email is kathy@vcnv.org

This article first appeared on the website of The Progressive magazine.
 

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Doughboys fighting in France, 1917. Associated Press

Aging doughboys who had fought on the Western Front in 1917 and 1918 still marched on Veterans Day. These World War I enlisted men often referred to this holiday by its original name, Armistice Day.

My mother invariably bought and wore an artificial red poppy on Veterans Day. I learned much later the poppy signified the blood and sacrifice of those who died on Flanders Field, a Belgian battle site that was the subject of the war’s most famous poem.

With the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War on Nov. 11, 2018, as a scholar who has spent my career studying war in 20th-century America, I am struck by the degree to which World War I has faded from popular memory.

Few Americans can name a single battle from this conflict. Heroes such as “Ace of Aces” fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and “the greatest civilian soldier of the war” Alvin York are no longer household names.

Even fewer Americans remember the distinguished record of the Harlem Hell Fighters and other black regiments attached to the French army.

The fact that World War I is the forgotten war for Americans serves as a cautionary tale that some important memories can fade despite sustained efforts to foster them.

On Nov. 11, 1921, the official first unknown soldier is buried in this tomb in Arlington National Cemetery. U.S. Army
 

Memorials proliferated

World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, eventually pitting Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria against Belgium, France and its empire, Great Britain and its empire, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Italy, Japan, China, Portugal and a number of smaller nations.

The U.S. was officially neutral at the beginning of the war. Most Americans saw no compelling argument to send American troops to fight Europe’s war abroad. Late in the war, and only after a divisive debate and German submarine attacks that caused the death of Americans, did the United States enter the conflict in 1917.

The United States’ entry into the war ensured the European balance of war and avoided German dominance on the continent. The victory achieved on Nov. 11, 1918 at 11:00 a.m. would be commemorated by Americans as the “war to end all wars.”

In its aftermath, the war was publicly acknowledged in a variety of ways. The generation that went to war in 1917 transmitted its memory through the thousands of memorials they built, the Memorial Day holiday, and in their memoirs of war as a glorious endeavor.

Under the auspices of the American Battle Monuments Commission, they established overseas national cemeteries for the war’s dead and erected monuments in France and the United Kingdom.

They created a new way of mourning the war dead with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the unidentified dead received a state funeral and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Indeed, World War I marked the first time that many countries systematically created graves for all soldiers, whether they could be identified or not.

And in Paris in 1919, American veterans of World War I founded the American Legion, which is still the nation’s largest veterans organization.

Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial, in Waregem, Belgium, where 411 American soldiers who died in WWI are buried. Library of Congress
 

Bitter debates

What has been lost along with the memory of the war is the memory of the bitter debates that engulfed the United States in the decades after the war, in the 1920s and 1930s. When researching my dissertation and first book, “Remembering War the American Way,” I was stunned by how virtually every aspect of commemorating the war engendered debate during the interwar period.

For instance, the decision to build overseas cemeteries for the war dead faced challenges from parents of many of the fallen who wanted to bury their sons in hometown cemeteries. In the end, the federal government retreated from keeping all the war dead in cemeteries abroad and allowed families to decide whether a doughboy who died for his country would be buried at home or in one of the overseas cemeteries.

During my eighth-grade class trip to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1974, I remember how impressed we were at the spit and polish of the ceremony marking the changing of the guard. In fact, the origins of this ceremony and even the need for a guard in the first place stems from complaints of the American Legion in the 1920s that tourists were picnicking on the unfinished tomb and, even worse, that juvenile delinquents were playing games on them.
 

Memorials and division

Those who build memorials are often implicitly aiming to accomplish something other than memorializing.

In the case of World War I, the memorials were intended to heal and mask regional, ethnic and ideological divisions. For instance, the Unknown Soldier was hailed as an everyman because he could be rich and poor, native born or foreign born, a city dweller or a farmer.
The paradox of these efforts to forge memories in stone, marble and copper is that memorials are often overshadowed by the controversies they are intended to heal.

Although memorials to World War I proclaimed that Americans had fought a “war to end all wars,” the post-war world remained perilous. Many elements contributed to the growing danger: a return of American isolationism, the war debt owed to the U.S. by European allies, the crushing of “Prussian militarism” that led to the birth of communist Russia, and the fascism that took hold of Italy in the early 1920s.

Memorials sought to display the unity of all Americans, but the terrible legacy of World War I was the fear it engendered. During the war, German Americans were persecuted by vigilantes because of their ancestry. Despite the patriotic service of scores of new Americans from southern and eastern Europe, the U.S. Congress passed legislation restricting immigration of what were deemed undesirable immigrants from these regions.

Why have Americans forgotten World War I?

Perhaps the answer is that World War II reshaped the memory of the First World War. The fact that another world war broke out in less than a generation discredited the notion that World War I was a “war to end all wars.” As World War I faded into oblivion, it became easier to simply forget all the deep divisions engendered by this war for the more comforting narrative of World War II as the “good war.”

Gabriela Baláž Maduro contributed to this story.

G. Kurt Piehler, Associate Professor of History, Florida State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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One pattern characterises every war that’s ever been fought. Frontline fighting in warfare is primarily and often almost exclusively a male activity. From a numbers perspective, bigger armies obviously have greater chances of success in battles. Why then, are half of a community’s potential warriors (the women) usually absent from the battlefield?

Shutterstock

Previous hypotheses have suggested that this is the result of fundamental biological differences between the sexes. But our new study, published in Proceedings B, finds that none of these differences fully explain why women have almost never gone to war, and nor are they needed to do so. Instead, this state of affairs might have more to do with chance.

Some researchers have proposed that since men are on average stronger, taller, and faster than women, they are simply more effective in winning battles. Others have suggested that this pattern occurs because the costs of warfare are lower for men, as the risks of dying or being injured are offset by the opportunity to obtain more sexual partners in case of victory. This isn’t true for women because they can only produce a limited number of offspring and so there’s little or no evolutionary advantage to obtaining more partners.
Others still have argued the answer can be found in the fact that females in groups of ancestral great apes and humans were more likely to migrate. This supposedly means that women are less genetically related to their social group than men, and so are less keen to risk their lives for their communities.

Granted, these hypotheses all suggest plausible reasons why more men than women participate in wars. But they fall short on explaining why the fighting is almost always done by men. We set out to answer this question, developing a mathematical model of the evolution of male and female participation in warfare, building on some of our previous work in this area. Our model looks at the consequences of going to war on a person’s fitness, and for the fitness of their genetic relatives, to work out the probability that a person will join in the fighting.

Modelling the evolution of warfare

Before investigating each of the proposed explanations in detail, we decided we should better understand the simplest case where there are no sex differences. We designed a model that looked at men and women as two identical groups, and didn’t take account of the sexes’ different characteristics when working out the probability of an individual joining in a war. To our surprise, we found that exclusively male warfare could still evolve in this case.

Instead, our model showed that what was important was how many members of a person’s sex were already taking part in warfare at any given point, and how that affected sexual competition for mates with other people of the same sex. For example, if lots of men are already fighting, then the risks to an individual man would be lower and the potential rewards higher, but the there would be much less incentive for a woman to take part.

This evolutionary pressure means that, if there was then even a small reason why men might be more likely to fight, over many generations the incentives for men to join in would grow until warfare became an almost exclusively male practice.

But as our hypothetical model worked on the basis that men and women were identical, for every potential evolutionary trajectory that led to exclusively male warfare, there would be another that led to exclusively female warfare. Whether male-only war or female-only war evolved in our model depended only on the initial question of which sex was more likely to go to war to start with.

So, if both outcomes are equally plausible, why is warfare in fact almost exclusively male? Our study also suggests that male competition over mates and resources – an aspect of what biologists call sexual selection – might have caused men to evolve to be generally more aggressive than women. This was probably enough to make men more likely to go to war from the outset. And our model explains why this would ultimately lead to male-only war parties. Greater physical strength, together with lower costs and higher genetic links to the rest of the group, may have then helped reinforce this pattern.

But initial conditions could have – in theory – been different. Had women been naturally more aggressive, they would have become the warring sex and we would now live in a world of Amazon-like female-only wars. Interestingly, this is the case in some other animal societies that engage in inter-group conflicts. In spotted hyenas, for example, only females attack other packs.

Women in combat roles are increasingly common. Shutterstock
 

The past and the future of war

One implication of our study is that past ecological conditions can have very long-lasting effects. The evolution of men as the more aggressive of the sexes led to a pattern of male-dominated warfare that was unlikely to be altered by changing technological or ecological forces.

Consider the role of weapons, for example. When warfare initially evolved, men were likely more aggressive and might have been more effective at fighting, because primitive weapons relied on brute force. As a result, they went on to become the warring sex. Later, inventions such as the bow and arrow made physical sex differences in strength less important. In more recent times, further technological advances have effectively equalised men and women in their ability to fight opponents. But, as male-only war has already evolved, these technological changes have little or no impact. Only initial conditions matter.

As such, this long-lasting effect of ancestral behavioural differences might help explain why women’s presence in the armed forces today is still limited. Yet, perhaps culture is now having a greater role, at least partially overriding the biological basis for exclusively male warfare. The countries that have opened military combat roles to women in response to changing attitudes, and the recent reports of Kurdish women fighting Islamic State are testaments to that.
 

Alberto Micheletti, PhD Candidate in Evolutionary Biology, University of St Andrews

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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On June 11, Italy’s new Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, blocked the Aquarius rescue ship, carrying 629 refugees and economic migrants, from docking at its ports.

A statement by Doctors without Borders (MSF) stated that the boat was carrying 123 unaccompanied minors and seven pregnant women.

“From now on, Italy begins to say NO to the traffic of human beings, NO to the business of illegal immigration,” said Salvini, who also heads the far-right League Party.

The number of refugees was repeated in news broadcasts time and again, as a mere statistic. In reality, it is 629 precious lives at stake, each with a compelling reason why she/he has undertaken the deadly journey.

While the cruelty of refusing entry to a boat laden with desperate refugees is obvious, it has to be viewed within a larger narrative pertaining to the rapidly changing political landscape in Europe and the crises under way in the Middle East and North Africa.

Italy’s new government, a coalition of the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement and the far-right League party, seems intent on stopping the flow of refugees into the country, as promised on the campaign trail.

However, if politicians continue to ignore the root causes of the problem, the refugee crisis will not go away on its own.

The disturbing truth is this: Europe is accountable for much of the mayhem under way in the Middle East. Right-wing pundits may wish to omit that part of the debate altogether, but facts will not simply disappear when ignored.

European politicians should honestly confront the question: what are the reasons that lead millions of people to leave their homes? And fashion equally honest and humane solutions.

In 2017, an uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria led to the exodus of millions of Syrian refugees.

Ahmed is a 55-year old Syrian refugee, who fled the country with his wife and two children. His reason for leaving was no other than the grinding, deadly war.

He told the UN Refugees Agency: “I was born in Homs and I wanted to live there until the end, but this vicious war left us no other choice but to leave all behind. For the sake of my children’s future we had to take the risk.”

“I had to pay the smuggler eight thousand US dollars for each member of my family. I’ve never done anything illegal in my whole life, but there was no other solution.”

Saving his family meant breaking the rules; millions would do the same thing if confronted with the same grim dilemma. In fact, millions have.

African immigrants are often blamed for ‘taking advantage’ of the porous Libyan coastline to ‘sneak’ into Europe. Yet, many of those refugees had lived peacefully in Libya and were forced to flee following the NATO-led war on that country in March 2011.

“I’m originally from Nigeria and I had been living in Libya for five years when the war broke out,” wrote Hakim Bello in the Guardian.

“I had a good life: I was working as a tailor and I earned enough to send money home to loved ones. But after the fighting started, people like us – black people – became very vulnerable. If you went out for something to eat, a gang would stop you and ask if you supported them. They might be rebels, they might be government, you didn’t know.”

The security mayhem in Libya led not only to the persecution of many Libyans, but also millions of African workers, like Bello, as well. Many of those workers could neither go home nor stay in Libya. They, too, joined the dangerous mass escapes to Europe.
War-torn Afghanistan has served as the tragic model of the same story.

Ajmal Sadiqi escaped Afghanistan, which has been in a constant state of war for many years, a war that took a much deadlier turn since the US invasion in 2001.

Sadiqi told CNN that the vast majority of those who joined him on his journey from Afghanistan, through other countries to Turkey, Greece and other EU countries, died along the way. But, like many in his situation, he had few alternatives.

“Afghanistan has been at war for 50 years and things are never going to change,” he said.

“Here, I have nothing, but I feel safe. I can walk on the street without being afraid.”

Alas, that sense of safety is, perhaps, temporary. Many in Europe are refusing to examine their own responsibility in creating or feeding conflicts around the world, while perceiving the refugees as a threat.

Despite the obvious correlation between western-sustained wars and the EU’s refugee crisis, no moral awakening is yet to be realized. Worse still, France and Italy are now involved in exploiting the current warring factions in Libya for their own interests.

Syria is not an entirely different story. There, too, the EU is hardly innocent.

The Syria war has resulted in a massive influx of refugees, most of whom are hosted by neighboring Middle Eastern countries, but many have sailed the sea to seek safety in Europe.

“All of Europe has a responsibility to stop people from drowning. It’s partly due to their actions in Africa that people have had to leave their homes,” said Bello.

“Countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Germany think they are far away and not responsible, but they all took part in colonizing Africa. NATO took part in the war in Libya. They’re all part of the problem.”

Expectedly, Italy’s Salvini and other like-minded politicians refuse to frame the crisis that way.

They use whichever discourse needed to guarantee votes, while ignoring the obvious fact that, without military interventions, economic exploitation and political meddling, a refugee crisis – at least one of this magnitude – could exist in the first place.

Until this fact is recognized by EU governments, the flow of refugees will continue, raising political tension and contributing to the tragic loss of lives of innocent people, whose only hope is merely to survive.

(Romana Rubeo, an Italian writer contributed to this article.) 

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

https://countercurrents.org/

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he Iraq War memorial in Santa Monica, California (Photo: Kevin Dooley / Flickr)

Millions of Americans will spend Memorial Day at community picnics, family barbecues or local parades. “Thank you for your service” will be a ubiquitous phrase.

Despite that annual refrain, we’re very far from honoring our veterans. Though drone strikes and bombing campaigns have reduced casualty figures (in fact, more people have died in school shootings this year than in the military), too many of our young women and men still come home from our wars destroyed physically and devastated emotionally.

In addition to grievous bodily injuries, many come home suffering from trauma, addiction and moral injury — the sense, as Veterans for Peace Director Michael McPhearson explains, that “you’re not really standing on stable moral ground” after you’ve been ordered to kill people. At home they confront an overburdened veterans’ health system, which the administration wants to make worse by privatizing.

The numbers are staggering. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops — 100,000 or more at time — have served in Afghanistan alone. At almost 17 years on, it’s our nation’s longest war. Some 15,000 troops are still deployed there.

Yet does anyone other than their families even think about them?

Numerous military and political leaders have acknowledged that the Afghan war is unwinnable, yet the deployments continue. Meanwhile, Afghans — children, old people, journalists, wedding parties — continue to die. Some are killed by U.S. airstrikes, others by Afghan government or opposition forces. The killing goes on because we help perpetuate a permanent war that almost everyone agrees cannot be won.

But it’s not just U.S. troops and Afghans who pay for this folly. The rest of us do, too — more dearly than many realize.

The Pentagon says the war in Afghanistan will cost us $45 billion this year alone. If we didn’t spend that money on an unwinnable war thousands of miles away, what could we do with it instead?

For starters, we could hire 556,779 well-paid elementary school teachers in struggling states like Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia, where teachers have protested abysmal conditions. Or create 809,999 new well-paid jobs to rebuild infrastructure like the broken water system in Flint, Michigan.

Or provide 4.36 million veterans with health care. Now that would be something.

And that’s just for one year of one war. All told, our full $700 billion-plus military budget sucks up 53 cents out of every discretionary dollar in the federal budget — compared to just 15 cents for poverty alleviation. Our troops and Afghan civilians pay the price, but so do the 140 million Americans living in poverty or with very low incomes.

When people talk about universal health care, education, infrastructure and debt-free college, the conversation usually ends with “too bad we can’t afford it, we don’t have the money.”

But that’s not true. We have plenty of money — the United States is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. What we don’t have is a moral compass that recognizes that spending more than half of the available funds on a giant military mired in wars that don’t keep us safe is wrong.

Remember those school kids who said “no more thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings? They’re demanding action. So let’s take a page from their book. For next Memorial Day, let’s say “No more thank you for your service.”

Instead, we need action, and a new moral compass — one that recognizes that the best way to honor our veterans, keep people safe, end poverty, and fund jobs, education and health care for veterans and everybody else is to end the wars.

This spring, we helped launch a new Poor People’s Campaign to revive the movement against what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years ago called the “evil triplets” of racism, materialism and militarism. And for the next few weeks, people are holding actions in at least 30 state capitals and the District of Columbia to start bringing our war dollars home to build a just new economy. Check out poorpeoplescampaign.org to find out about events happening near you.

The cost of our military is creating a national moral crisis, where our priorities are skewed, vulnerable communities are threatened, and our veterans aren’t being honored. This year, let’s honor them with action. Let’s end the wars.
 

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Ceramic poppies from the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red artwork installed at St George’s Hall, Liverpool, for Remembrance Services in 2015. Peter Byrne/PA Archive/Press Association. It seems to be business as usual in the worldwide “war on terror”. The United States military is currently embroiled in many hotspots where violence, fear, and the ever present reality or threat of high explosive are the order of the day. Those conditions mean, for people at the sharp end, multiple distress. But for suppliers of weapons and military equipment, the good times – which never really went away – are back.

Consider, for a moment, just a few of the international conflicts stretching from Africa to east Asia where the US is a major player. It is increasing the use of armed drones in Syria as the war against ISIS accelerates. It remains active in Iraq’s evolving combat. Its military chiefs are working out how to persuade Trump to expand operations in Afghanistan, even as a resurgent Taliban tell him in an open letter to withdraw all American forces from the country.  

It is also about to conduct a major “wargame” in South Korea, where Trump and his ally, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, seek to counter North Korea’s missile ambitions. It is providing heavy military assistance to the Philippines government as a much less comfortable ally, Rodrigo Duterte, takes on a local ISIS-affiliated movement in the southern city of Marawi. It is called on to deploy more resources in eastern Europe in face of Russia’s power, and to address the rise in paramilitary violence in the Sahel.

Such wars and rumours of wars require constant supplies, and this is where that perennial of human activity, the arms bazaar, comes in. The informative journal Defense News sums it up neatly with a report on military industries under the headline “A return to prosperity? Defense revenues climb for the first time in 5 years”.

The report lists the top hundred military companies, and in a helpful way. While highlighting businesses that may have many other interests, Defense News in this case focuses solely on their military-related activities. The results are most revealing. Take, for example, the top seven corporations with their country of origin and their defence revenues in 2016:

1. Lockheed Martin, United States: $43,468 billion
2. Boeing, United States: $29,500bn
3. BAE Systems, United Kingdom: $23,621bn
4. Raytheon, United States: $22,394bn
5. Northrop Grumman, United States: $20,200bn
6. General Dynamics, United States: $19,696bn
7. Airbus, Netherlands/France: $12,321bn

Even from such bare details, several important truths can be extracted or inferred. The first is the American dominance of the field, which is even more pronounced in that much of BAE Systems’s revenue comes from the company’s US-based activities. This leads to a second point, that all seven are transnational to varying extents. Airbus, for example, is active across western Europe, which allows it to use its clout with more governments. A third element is that these are very large outfits. Lockheed and Boeing each has annual military revenues larger than the entire GDP of Uganda, whose population is 39 million.

A fourth point is that this sheer wealth enables huge operations. These are often aided by the “revolving door” whereby senior civil servants and military chiefs who are concerned in any way with weapons development and procurement can secure very good post-retirement consultancies or even board memberships.

A fifth factor is that these companies, where their activity in relation to international arms sales is concerned, can rely on a favourable attitude from the states where their production is based. This positive outlook may extend to direct government encouragement and aid. A clear indication is a ruling which found against the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). The group had challenged the legality of the UK government’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia, where weaponry exported to Riyadh were being used in repeated bombing of targets in Yemen that had caused substantial loss of life among civilians.

**

A sixth and yet larger truth emerges, as obvious as the others yet all too frequently ignored. Major military companies actually need wars – or at least, they need very high states of tension and fear, of the kind which will guarantee increased sales potential.  

The ideal in such situations, whatever the company’s apparent national status, is to sell to both sides. Just before Nato’s air-war against the Gaddafi regime in 2011, for example, French and Italian arms companies were working for the Libyan government to upgrade its aircraft and armoured vehicles. Within days these were being destroyed by Nato forces, bringing a potential double benefit: supplying Nato states with more bombs and missiles to replace those used, and replenishing the Libyan hardware after the war.

In this case, only the first part worked out well, for Libya came apart at the seams and its arms market has not so far been open to the big company deals of the good old days. But there are compensations: the condition of Libya, with its radical Islamist groups, migration pressures and other insecurities all make for an atmosphere of tension and fear. This is felt sharply across the Mediterranean, which improves the chances of higher military budgets in European states looking to protect themselves from the fruits of their own policies (see “Libya: victory, tragedy, legacy“, 3 November 2011).

Shakespeare’s line in Henry V, “now thrive the armourers”, relates to the battle of Agincourt in 1415. But it is ever topical, and in more ways than one: for armourers also thrive by flinging accusations of lack of patriotism against people who question their operations, connections, and practical consequences. The biggest difference today is scale. These huge conglomerates are protected by their colossal turnovers, formidable power, and absolute belief in the legitimacy of what they do.

It will take a great deal to change this culture. A single example makes the point. Two of the three largest military corporations, Lockheed and BAE Systems, sponsor Britain’s annual Red Poppy Appeal run by the British Legion (see “Red poppies and the arms trade“, 12 November 2014). Thus an organisation dedicated to helping the casualties of war and their families actually gets financial support from companies making money out of producing and selling weapons. Such stark contradictions need to be aired, as a step on the road to being able to say “now thrive the peacemakers”. 

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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‘Why’? Is the one question that is uppermost in one’s heart and mind? Why the violence and war? the death and destruction that has ravaged Syria for more than six years now? A conflict which has left millions displaced, desperately seeking security in safer parts of the country or fleeing as refugees to neighbouring countries after braving many odds. Why? Why? Why?  Why is Syria in the doldrums today? Why have millions of children become a lost generation? Why is the economy in a shambles? And numerous without a livelihood? There are no easy, black-and-white answers. Most are aware that there are powerful vested interests who would like the conflict to continue. The tragedy however, is that the ordinary Syrian citizen is the one who continues to suffer. But as one journeys in the midst of devastation, one cannot but pinpoint some other dimensions:
 
Beauty
Syria is a country of amazing beauty! As one traverses the hilly slopes of the Al-Khafroun one is struck by the sheer grandeur of the region. At a distance is the picturesque and historic town of Safita: a city on a hill. Beautiful orchards with fruit-laden orange and apricot trees and vast expanses of olive trees dot the country-side. The road to Damascus from Homs has a world of difference: rugged, barren hills, with large tracts of desert-land. Syria is rich in flora: flowers everywhere are in full bloom. The Syrians consider the Jasmine as their national flower; but there are a variety of others including rare orchids. Syria has it all: just beautiful!
 
Faith
Faith is palpable among the Syrians. The muezzin’s call to pray is loud and clear. Most cars and taxis have either a masbaha or a rosary dangling from the front rear-view mirrors. It is quite normal to find a Syrian fingering a masbaha whilst doing business or just walking down the street. Old Damascus has several Churches and mosques alongside. The main street displays several vinyl banners welcoming the new Melkite Catholic Patriarch. At the House of Ananias (where St Paul was converted and baptized) on Straight Street a group of people are in deep prayer. On the Feast of St. Thomas, the Apostle of India at Bab Tuma (the Gate of Thomas) one cannot help but feel an aura of the place, from where it is believed that St. Thomas left for the shores of India.
                                                                  
Inspiration
Fr. Frans Van der Lugt, the Dutch Jesuit was killed in Homs on April 7th 2014.An iconic figure he was a source of inspiration and strength to many. Today he continues to live on, in their hearts and lives. He was deeply spiritual; a real bridge between persons, touching and impacting on their lives in a very profound way Frans loved nature; his hikes are still very much talked about. 

He ensured that everyone: Muslim and Christian; old and young were welcome at the Jesuit Centre in Homs. This continues today. He lived among his people; took a visible and vocal stand for them and ultimately he had to pay the price! At his graveside one only experiences a serene peace and the inspiration to do much more.
 
 
Resilience
Sunday 2^nd July was one of those violent days in Syria. The people woke up to three explosions that rocked Damascus City; the one in the Tahrir Square area of the city was particularly severe: leaving about 19 dead, several others injured and with much destruction in the vicinity. It was the first working day after the holidays for the Eid festival. By early afternoon however, there was an apparent air of ‘normalcy’ in several parts of the city. The well-known Shaalan Street was bustling with activity late evening: with the eateries rather crowded and the shoppers on a spree. People from all walks of life: children, women and men; young and old, visibly from different cultural and religious backgrounds thronged the street. The resilience of the people is remarkable, inspite of a reality which make their lives consistently insecure and unsafe.
 
Hope
There are numerous stories of hope in Syria. Ordinary people who want to live in peace and harmony; who want the war and violence to stop immediately. The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Syria is one such organisation that enkindles hope in the lives of thousands who are affected.JRS does phenomenal work especially in education, child protection, livelihood training, medical support and being in the midst of the most affected. The field kitchen in Aleppo provides nutritional food to thousands of the most needy. The JRS team reaches out to those affected at great risk. The Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s Sisters) care for the destitute: those who have nowhere to go. Beacons of hope everywhere!
 
Joy
The children who frequent the JRS Centre in Homs have brought their parents along for an afternoon of fun and games! It is a delight to watch the expressions of joy on their faces. At another JRS Centre ninth graders celebrate their accomplishment. An elderly lady, who has suffered from the trauma of displacement, insists that we listen to her reading and to see that she can now write. She is effusive about the programme which has been providing her the necessary literacy skills. A ten year girl comes running up just to say how happy she is to come to a place (the Albert Hurtado Centre in Jaramana, Rural Damascus) which is like a second home for her.
 
Rebuild
To ‘rebuild’ is like a catch word in Syria today- and urgently needed. As one leaves the country towards Lebanon, the billboards along the way speak about the need to rebuild Syria and of a forthcoming Exhibition to be held in September (www.re-buildsyria.com) the regularization of commercial activity is perhaps an important step in helping restore Syria’s multi-cultural and pluralistic society.
 
So as the world still pursues the elusive answer to the tragedy of Syria today and the lack of political will to ensure peace and stability in the region, one can certainly take consolation from the fact that there is a wealth of values that still thrive in the hearts and lives of the people.
                                                                                                                               
* (Fr Cedric Prakash sj is a human rights activist and is currently based in Lebanon and engaged with the Jesuit Refugee Service(JRS) in the Middle East on advocacy and   communications. He can be contacted on cedricprakash@gmail.com)             
 

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