Lawrence of Cyberia

One Hundred Names You Won't Hear This Memorial Day

On Monday we will celebrate Memorial Day, the one day of the year when President Bush actually has to acknowledge our otherwise officially-invisible war dead.

We memorialize the names and faces of our dead to remind us that every one of them was an individual just like us, who valued his or her life no less than we do, and whose death is a tragedy for those left behind no less than ours would be for our loved ones. Recognizing our shared humanity brings home to us the size of the tragedy in every single life lost, and - ideally - teaches us that in a real "culture of life" the decision to go to war is never taken lightly. As Israeli Knesset Member Yossi Sarid put it, on contemplating the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis alike in the current intifada:

We are still trying to count, and to remember them as individuals, but with so many dead, it's hard to keep track. But we're making an effort, because to lose count is to lose one's humanity.

-- Yossi Sarid MK, We Cannot Let Death Have Dominion

It is precisely because Memorial Day brings home to us the uniqueness and value of every life that one group of war dead will be conspicuous by their absence from all our commemorations: and that is the many thousands of Iraqis we have killed since March 2003. Because who really wants to be reminded that at least 20,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqis - people just like us - are dead today because of a war we should never have started?

Their names will never be engraved on the Mall, and their faces will never warrant a spread in the Washington Post, but I will commemorate here 100 or so of those Iraqis who, thanks to us, made the "ultimate sacrifice" whether they wished it or not.

Twelve

Today is the four-year anniversary of the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura, who was "killed by Israeli security forces live gunfire to the abdomen and chest" (B'Tselem's description) . The death of 12-year-old Mohammed became an icon of the al-Aqsa intifada, after his last terrifying moments were captured by a French film crew.

In the intervening four years, Palestinian bombers have killed these Israeli 12-year-olds [Footnote 1]:

1. Lidor Ilan, of Rishon Lezion, one of eleven people killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem. Lidor was attending the bar mitvah of a family friend, with his parents, siblings and cousins. The dead included Lidor's sister Oriah (aged 18 months), his aunt, his uncle, and three cousins. (Date of death: 2 Mar 2002)

"My only consolation is that there is death at the end, [an end to] the suffering over their having gone. I sometimes ask myself whether it would have been better if I hadn't had them at all, if I hadn't enjoyed them. I have no answer."

-- Ronit Ilan, mother of Lidor and Oriah Ilan, Cited in Ha'aretz: Mothers Without Borders, 31 Mar 2004

2. Kamar Abu Hamed, of Daliat al-Carmel, killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bus in Haifa. (5 Mar 2003)

Eight of the 13 named victims of Wednesday's suicide bombing were of school age and three others were under 22. Sitting among them at the back of the bus was the bomber, Mahmoud Kawasme, 21, a student from the distant West Bank town of Hebron. Israeli police have no idea how he got from Hebron to Haifa but say he was sent by the Islamist militant group Hamas.

The force of the explosion ripped off the roof of the bus and sent body parts flying.

Two of the victims were father and son, Motti and Tom Hershko, 16. Tom's mother, Ruth, said she spoke to her only son, who had taken the day off school to spend time with his father, a few moments before the explosion.

Also sitting on the bus was Kamar Abu Hamad, 13 [sic], who was a Druse, a breakaway Muslim tribe found in Israel and Lebanon. Her cousin, Osama Abu Hamad, said she was the pride and joy of her family. "She was very bright and her parents invested all they had in sending her to a private school. This was a cruel tragedy. She was the future of her family. All this killing leads nowhere," he said.

-- The Guardian; Mother Tells Of Last Call As Families Mourn Bus Bomb Children.

3. Avraham Bar Or, of Jerusalem, one of 23 people killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bus returning from prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Avraham's parents and six of his siblings were wounded in the same blast. (19 August 2003)

And Israeli soldiers have killed these Palestinian 12-year-olds:

Tainted By Terror

Last week saw the third anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Today marks another sad anniversary, that will not even be mentioned on most of the mass media outlets that gave us such extensive coverage of the 9/11 commemorations. Exactly 22 years ago, at 5:00pm on the evening of 16 September 1982, Lebanese Christians of the Phalangist militia entered the undefended Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut. In the course of a 40-hour rampage, they shot, hacked, stomped, dragged, bulldozed and burned to death possibly as many as 3,500 civilians, and demolished hundreds of their homes. The Phalangists' intention was to so terrorize the 500,000 Palestinians in Lebanon - already refugees from Galilee in 1948 - that they would flee the country.


Umm Hussein lost her husband.

Umm Ali lost her daughter, Zeinab.

Mahmoud Younis lost two brothers.

He also lost his father, a third brother, his maternal uncle, his maternal cousin, two paternal cousins and other members of his extended family. He survived because his mother pretended that 11-year-old Mahmoud was a girl, and he escaped with his female relatives [Footnote 1].

It is of course natural that we should mourn our own dead more than others'. And, as Tom Gorman pointed out, in comparing US news coverage on the 30th anniversary of the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics with the total lack of coverage of the 20th anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, Palestinian victims in particular definitely fall on the wrong side of the line that Americans draw between worthy and unworthy victims. So it is no surprise that, in contrast to the extensive ceremonies for our 9/11 victims, the Palestinians massacred in 1982 will be quietly remembered in vigils in the Occupied Territories and in Palestinian refugee camps, and are commemorated by a small monument of whitewashed breezeblocks atop a mass grave in Shatila (left).

There are two more specific reasons why Sabra and Shatila have disappeared down the memory hole here in the US. Firstly, although this mass murder - the worst single atrocity in the Arab-Israeli conflict - was executed by Phalangists, it was planned and carried out with the collusion of our ally, Israel. (Specifically, senior members of the Israeli government and the IDF, who at that time were in control of West Beirut). Secondly, the safety of all the Palestinians murdered at Sabra and Shatila had actually been guaranteed by President Reagan's Middle East envoy, Ambassador Phillip Habib, only days before they were massacred.

For those who have forgotten, and for those who never knew, here is a timeline of events at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila:

Nakba Day

Look at this prickly pear plant. It's covering a mound of stones. This mound of stones was once a house, or a shed, or a sheep pen, or a school, or a stone fence. Once - until 56 years ago, a generation and a half ago - not that long ago. The cactus separated the houses and one lot from another, a living fence that is now also the only monument to the life that once was here.

Take a look at the grove of pines around the prickly pear as well. Beneath it there was once a village. All of its 405 houses were destroyed in one day in 1948 and its 2,350 inhabitants scattered all over. No one ever told us about this. The pines were planted right afterward by the Jewish National Fund, to which we contributed in our childhood, every Friday, in order to cover the ruins, to cover the possibility of return and maybe also a little of the shame and the guilt.

-- Social studies lesson: A visit to the ruins of the depopulated Palestinian villages of northern Israel. Ha'aretz, 31 March 2004.

The Other Side Of History

Left: An honor guard of Israeli soldiers observe a minute of silence at the beginning of Memorial Day for fallen soldiers (25 April); the following day the state will celebrate its 56th Independence Day. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)
Right: An Israeli boy plays with weapons during an army weapon display to mark the 56th anniversary of the Israel's Independence in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. (AFP/Pedro Ugarte)

Two weeks ago, Israel celebrated Independence Day, marking the 56th anniversary of its emergence as a independent nation.

Tomorrow, Palestinians will observe Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, when they commemorate the lesser-told side of the 1948 war of Israeli independence. Nakba Day commemorates the uprooting and exile of about 60% of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine who, along with their descendants, continue to be excluded from their ancestral home in order that Israel might remain a "Jewish democracy".

May 14, 2004. Palestinian refugee Hasna al-Jardat displays deeds to her land in the Safad area (now in northern Israel), issued by Palestinian authorities in 1946. Jardat fled to Syria in 1948, the year Israel was created. More than 350,000 Palestinian refugees live in Syria.
(REUTERS/ Khaled al-Hariri)

The failure of Israel, and the wider world community, to recognise the enormity of the catastrophe that befell Palestinian society when a Jewish state was created in its midst, has ensured that the refugee question remains an open wound that poisons Israeli-Palestinian relations perhaps more than any other. Without an honest recognition of how the Palestinians were made refugees, and a creative and empathetic approach to resolving their grievances, there will never be a peace settlement. I considered the main issues in the Palestinian refugee crisis, and how they might be resolved in final status talks, in a February 2004 post: The Right Of Return.

Today Is Mothers' Day

34-year-old Tali Khotel and her daughters Hadar (9), Roni (7), Hila (11) and Merav (2), were killed by Palestinian gunmen on 2 May 2004 near the Gush Khatif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo)

Left - Athena Roy visits the field of chairs at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, pausing to stop at the chair dedicated to her mother, Diane Althouse, killed in the Oklahoma City bombing of 19 April 1995. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Right - Raffaele Cataldi is greeted by his mother Lara as he arrives at Rome's Ciampino military airport. Cataldi is among the 12 Italians wounded during recent attacks in Nasiriyah, Iraq. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

Left - The mother and older brother of Ayman Faris weep as his body is taken for burial. Five-year-old Ayman was struck by an Israeli tank shell outside his home in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip. (Photo: Reinhard Krause)

Right - The mother of nineteen-year-old Zahara holds her hand while she lies in her hospital bed in Herat, Afghanistan. Zahara, trapped in an unhappy marriage, attempted to commit suicide by burning herself with petrol. (REUTERS/Farzana Wahidy)

Left - Jacqueline Todacheene with her sons Dylan and Cody, and her husband Lee, of the Navajo Nation in Lukachukai, Arizona. Lee Todacheene, a U.S. Army medic, was the first Navajo killed in the Iraq war. (AP Photo/Navajo Nation)

Right - The mother of Rashid Hussein Alwan cries during the funeral of her son at a cemetery in Baghdad, Iraq. Rashid was killed in a bombing raid by American forces.

Left - Relatives console the mother of Sanae Ben Salah, a Moroccan victim of the Madrid train bombings, during an ecumenical service of commemoration at Achoa Station. (Reuters/Andrea Comas)

Right - Monsignor Fabio Colindres consoles Erminia Ramos, center, during the arrival of her son's body at the air force base in Comalapa, El Salvador. Natividad Mendez Ramos was the first Salvadoran to be killed in Iraq since the country sent troops there. (AP Photo/Luis Romero)

Left - Hagar Jawad, 14, is comforted by her mother at the hospital in al-Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite neighborhood. Hagar and two of her sisters were severely burned by an explosion during clashes between US troops and followers of Moqtada al-Sadr. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Right - Debra Dunham embraces her son, Jason. US Marine Corporal Jason Dunham died without regaining consciousness on 22 April 2004, one week after sustaining a head injury from a shrapnel wound, in the Iraqi city of Karbala. (AP Photo/The Wellsville Daily Reporter, courtesy Dunham Family)

Left - Israeli police keep a group of Jewish settlers from heckling a Palestinian mother and her children as they walk near the West Bank city of Hebron. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)

Right - Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe (R) pledges to Fanny Gutierrez (L) that he will personally oversee an investigation into the killing of five members of her family - including three youths and a baby - who were shot by army soldiers hunting leftist rebels. (AP Photo/Miguel Solano, SNE)

Left - The brother and mother of Israeli soldier Tomer Ron mourn during his funeral in the northern Israeli village of Moledet. Ron was killed by a Palestinian gunman in Hebron.

Right - The mother and father (front row) of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Anthony S. Lagman, watch with other relatives as his body is carried from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Yonkers, New York. Lagman was killed while fighting in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ed Bailey)

Left - Alane Howard (centre) , marches to protest the violence that has taken the lives of more than 20 students in the Philadelphia School District since the start of the academic year, including Howard's son, Tyree. (AP Photo/Jessica Griffin)

Right - Moniah Abu Kaber, the wife of Mohammed Abu Kaber, holds their son Dorgham as he bursts into tears, during the funeral procession of his father in the northern West Bank village of Akraba, near the city of Nablus. (AP/Nasser Ishtayeh)

Left - Helga Gerhardt, mother of World Trade Center collapse victim Ralph Gerhardt, holds a picture of her son as she listens to the testimony of U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice before the 9-11 commission. (Reuters/Jim Bourg)

Right - Chinese human rights activist Ding Zilin, head of the Chinese human rights group "Tiananmen Mothers", which represents families of people killed when Chinese troops crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in June 1989. Ding was arrested by Chinese security agents along with two other prominent relatives of victims of the Tiananmen Square protests, on 28 March 2004. (Reuters/Guang Niu)

Left - Police officer Aziz Tursunov, who was killed in fighting with alleged terrorists in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is mourned by his father, Bokhodir, sisters Zulaikho and Zyoda, and mother Vazifa. (AP Photo/Anvar Ilyasov)

Right - A Bangladeshi mother faints on learning her child is missing after a devastating slum fire near Dhaka; at least four people including three children were killed. (REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman)

Left - Maha abu Shatat sits with her baby Zyad in their home in Rafah, Gaza Strip. It is 3:00am and her house is under fire from the Israeli "security zone" 40 metres away. (Photo: Electronic Intifada)

Right - An Iraqi mother carries her son, burned after a coalition bomb caused a house fire, to Umm Qasr for medical help.

Left - Rwandan refugee children plead with Zairean soldiers to allow them across a bridge separating Rwanda and Zaire where their mothers had crossed moments earlier before the soldiers closed the border. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju)

Right - North Korean Choi Jong-hoon enjoys a temporary reunion with his South Korean mother, from whom he has been separated since the Korean War of 1950-53. (REUTERS/Korea Pool)

Forty-one day-old Ali Sami Saad lies in arms of his Iraqi mother (not named), 28 March 2004. (REUTERS/Ananthakrishnan)

Two Years Ago In Jenin

Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis

An unidentified foreign aid worker bursts into tears as she views the magnitude of the damage done by Israeli Occupation Forces to the Jenin refugee camp, Wednesday April 17, 2002.

via The Use of Fiction

Armistice Day

In the US and the UK (I'm a British-American, so you will excuse my schizophrenia), we have just observed Veterans' Day / Remembrance Day; held on 11 November in commemoration of the Armistice which ended the Great War on 11 November 1918. In the US, Veterans' Day strikes me as a day of patriotism and military pride; in the UK, the commemoration of Remembrance Day is much more sombre, as befitting a nation (and perhaps a continent) still trying to come to terms with the scale of the losses we suffered in what is generally regarded as a pointless First World War.

For Americans, 1917-18 was a small war that happened a long time ago. For Britons of my generation, 1914-18 was the war in which all our Grandads fought (and died), on a scale that destroyed our old social order, radicalised our politics and unbalanced our demographics for generations to come. So in the UK, there is not much flag-waving on 11 November, but a lot of silence and reflection, in gratitude for those who survived, like my Grandad and great-uncles, and in sadness at the loss and unrealised potential of those, like Charlotte Wood's sons, who didn't.

In Israel, November 11th 2003 is a significant day for a different reason; it marks the last day of the court martial of five Israelis who refuse to bear arms to occupy another people's land. One of the five, Shimri Tzameret, writes:

This Tuesday, November the 11th, the last hearing in the trial of myself and my four friends - Noam Bahat, Adam Maor, Haggai Matar and Matan Kaminer. We all have been sitting in prison and in detention for a year because we refuse to enlist in the army out of a conscientious objection to taking part in the Occupation. If convicted, we might be imprisoned for three additional years.

One of the main hardships of refusing is that of departing from the consensus. Many people would make us feel that our refusal is illegitimate, that what we are doing harms society and does not benefit it. If they are right, and we are just five feeble-minded people performing an extreme and cheeky act that nobody supports, than it is quite possible that the Occupation will just go on.

I don't think this is the case. I know that there is no chance that the Occupation will simply go on. I know that there are many more people who think the Occupation is terrible, who think that what people like us,
refusing to be occupiers, deserve is not three more years in prison. Am I wrong?

- Shimri Tzameret.

Confident in the belief that Shimri Tzameret is not wrong, I am remembering this year not only those who died, and those who survived, but above all those who have the courage to refuse.

Yitzhak Rabin - Eight Years On

A crowd of Israelis attend a memorial ceremony marking the eighth anniversary of the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv, November 1, 2003. Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered Saturday night to mark the anniversary of the assassination, showing their continued support for the stalled peace process.
REUTERS/ Nir Elias

View image

I respected Rabin so much. When I sat before Rabin and his delegates, I saw Israelis whom I hoped one day to resemble. They were sure of themselves, could see where Israel's interests lay and envisioned what their country would look like three centuries from now. Rabin was a Prime Minister who was thinking of Israel's interests 200 years from today. Later Israeli Prime Ministers only cared about how they would look on the nine o'clock news.
- Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Saeb Erekat