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June 11, 2002
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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Reviews of Gore:
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June 11,
2002
The Donkeys of the
Holy Land
by Minerva Wright
Forced to live in tents and ghetto slums, the
Palestinian people, including more than 6 million homeless refugees,
live a constant, daily struggle to survive and resist losing
human dignity as they endure Israel's grueling apartheid rule.
According to Amnesty International, Palestinian homes are being
demolished within a few minutes or no warning at all by Israeli
Defense Forces, causing material loss and trauma to thousands
of men, women, and children.
But, oh, to be an Israeli donkey!
New home for
Israel's rescued donkeys
According to a report earlier this year
from the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA),
Israel relocated its home for the country's neglected and abused
donkeys to a spacious new five-acre site at the foot of Israel's
Gilboa mountains. The sanctuary, Safe Haven For Donkeys in the
Holy Land, had originally been located on a kibbutz near Ramla
until conditions became overcrowded.
WSPA campaigns director, Jonathan Pearce,
commended the home's founder, Lucy Fensom, for her dedication
to improving the lives of Israel's suffering donkeys. The WSPA
2001 newsletter states that all of the donkeys at the sanctuary
have "terrible histories of suffering and distress, but
with Lucy's help they are assured of living out their lives in
peace."
If only the shell-shocked children of
Palestine -- with eternal nightmares from watching mothers murdered
senselessly in cold-blood, from hearing the ominous roar of bulldozers
razing homes still filled with family pets and grandfathers --
could be so fortunate. If only the generation of Palestine not
yet born could be assured of living their lives in peace.
No such haven for Palestine's donkeys
Documented reports over the last seven
years have shown that Palestinian animals have not fared as well
as their Israeli counterparts. Animals in Palestine have increasingly
become the victims of Israeli aggression.
The New York Times in April 14, 1995
reported that Israeli patrols placed one Arab town under curfew
and then hunted down and killed 90 dogs that Palestinians claim
barked to alert them of the whereabouts of the Israeli army controls.
Israel's Environmental Minister called the shootings "unacceptable"
and Hebron's Palestinian health official pointed out that many
of the dogs were pets and working shepherd dogs.
Neither are Palestine's animals immune
to violence from Israeli settlers. Using syringes filled with
poison, Israeli settlers living in the colony of Itimar, which
was built on the Israeli government's confiscated indigenous
villagers' land, systematically poisoned and slaughtered a pasture
full of Palestinian sheep on August 2001 in the Valley Yanun
located 3.5 km north west of Aqraba village. The village has
a population of 10,000 inhabitants who mostly work in agriculture,
especially olive cultivation and animal breeding. Since the colony's
establishment, Palestinian shepherds and farmers have been the
victims for years of the Israeli settlers' attacks using either
trained dogs or weapons to prevent them from tending their land
and livestock.
In an August 14, 2001 Capital Times,
Madison, Wisconsin article calling national attention to "Palestine's
lively peace movement that has been working at a grass-roots
level in every Palestinian community throughout the occupied
territories," reporter Kathryn Kingsbury warned that by
our silence, we condone Israel's own atrocities against the Palestinians.
Only two weeks before her visit to a
desert community of about 75 cave-dwelling shepherds near the
West Bank town of Yatta, the Israeli Defense Forces had bulldozed
every one of the community's centuries-old caves, burying clothing,
cars and even live sheep under tons of rock. When the Red Cross
supplied emergency tents to the families, the Israelis returned
with their heavy machinery and buried those as well. The Israeli
government justified the cave demolitions by saying that they
were built without the required construction permits.
"Bambi"
of Palestine
Last April, two Palestinian children
rode their pet horses when, without warning, Israeli soldiers
began shooting at them from a military base on a nearby hill.
The two boys, along with other children playing in the area,
ran for cover and escaped but both of their horses were killed
by Israeli fire.
One of the horses was pregnant and after
the motherless "Bambi" of Palestine was born, witnesses
reported that the young colt, too young to understand what murder
is, was still trying to nurse from his mother's bloodied corpse.
The market value of these horses was approximately $5,000 U.S.
dollars, a substantial sum for a Palestinian farmer.
A European Union funded report prepared
by The Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ) and the Arab
Studies Society Land Research Center (LRC) - Jerusalem in May
2001found that Palestinian farmers have lost livestock to Israeli
attacks in increased proportions since the Aqsa intifada, the
latest civil rights movement to end the Israeli occupation of
Palestine. This has resulted in great financial losses, loss
of transportation, and loss of jobs because animals are large
investments to Palestinians because they gain cumulative value
over the years as they produce offspring.
"Such attacks on animals",
as stated in the report, "are not motivated by military
needs at all but are meant to punish the Palestinian people,
destroy their livelihoods, and strike fear in every Palestinian
household".
During the May 15, 2001 demonstration
march commemorating the Al Nakba ("great Palestinian Catastrophe"),
Palestinian Bambi, the orphan horse, participated alongside the
children -- a symbol of hope and survival against the odds for
the occupied people and animals of Palestine who aren't quite
as fortunate as newly settled Israeli donkeys, who, safely nestled
in their new haven, have been assured of living out the rest
of their lives in peace.
Minerva Wright
can be reached at: MinervaWright@yahoo.com
For more
information:
World Society for the Protection of Animals
(WSPA) http://www.wspa.org.uk/
Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem
(ARIJ) http://www.arij.org
Arab Studies Society, Land Research Center
(LRC) - Jerusalem
Today's
Features
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys
of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping a Nuclear War
in South Asia
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