To the Editor:
Nothing has brought me closer to canceling our subscription to the Intelligencer than reading the venomous, error-filled hate speech you chose to publish entitled "No guilty feelings for treatment of Muslims." What were you thinking? You owe the Muslim community and your readers an apology.
Barbara Glassman
Philly Against War forum with Vijay Prashad
The Parents Circle – Families Forum is an organization of bereaved families on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle who are becoming a powerful force for peace there. Ali Abu Awwad is a Palestinian nonviolence activist who knows about loss: shot in the leg by an Israeli settler, he returned from a lengthy treatment to find that his brother Yusef had been killed by an Israeli soldier. So too has the life of Yuval Rahamim been touched by tragedy: His father was killed fighting for Israel in 1967’s Six Day War, and his desire for revenge led him up the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, until his subsequent life and family convinced him that the tragedies, killings, and hate on both sides must stop and that he needed to play an active role in it. Together they are part of a group of 500 Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost close family members and who work together for reconciliation and a just resolution to the conflict. They spoke at Villanova yesterday on a Catholic Relief Services-sponsored tour, and they're our guests today in our studio.
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish lost three of his daughters and his niece to a shell launched at his apartment in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces in January 2009, while another daughter was critically injured. Moments later, Israeli TV viewers heard the desperate wails of Dr. Abuelaish live, as he called his TV correspondent friend for help finding an ambulance. Dr. Abuelaish had been providing frequent reports about the Gaza war for Israeli TV, as he was one of the few Hebrew speakers in Gaza. His Hebrew enabled him to work as an obstetrician and gynecologist specializing in infertility in Israeli hospitals, crossing checkpoints every day to go to work. And Dr. Abuelaish, despite his tragic loss, continues to cross barriers, overcoming grief to become an inspiring advocate for peace for people of many faiths. He created Daughters for Life in his daughters’ memory, a foundation dedicated to providing education and health services to women and girls throughout the Middle East. His new book is I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity.
Goldstone’s contribution to building South Africa’s first multiracial democracy eventually took him to the international arena, where he sought justice for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide as chief prosecutor of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. It was here that Goldstone began to dedicate his life to the post-Holocaust pledge of “never again”—never again to anyone. “If future perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes are brought to justice and appropriately punished,” he wrote in a 2001 essay, “then the millions of innocent victims who perished in the Holocaust will not have died in vain. Their memory will remain alive and they will be remembered when future war criminals are brought to justice. And, it is certainly not too much to hope that efficient justice will also serve to deter war crimes in the future and so protect the untold numbers of potential victims.” The judge was always clear that this quest for justice was deeply informed by his Jewishness. “Because of our history, I find it difficult to understand how any Jew wouldn’t instinctively be against any form of discrimination,” he told the Jerusalem Report in 2000.
Al Krass from Michael Krass on Vimeo.
From the BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action:
Alfred C. Krass, born in Brooklyn, NY, lived in Levittown, died at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne on October 26, 2010, from complications from pneumonia. He was 74.
Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and one of the leading voices on global warming, joins Marty to discuss his research, advocacy and his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren. It tells the story of why Hansen boycotted the Copenhagen climate talks and has turned to a new degree of advocacy in the race to alleviate the effects of global climate change. Dr. Hansen will also discuss the new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill and what he thinks it will take for the United States and the world to align our carbon output with the Earth’s ability to absorb it without devastating disruptions.
Starring Aasif Mandvi, Kate Mulgrew, and Peter Riegert; directed by Adam Rodgers; written and produced by Sig Libowitz.The Response is a courtroom drama based on the actual transcripts of the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals [officially known as the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, or CSRTs]. . . .
The Response was researched and fully vetted in conjunction with the University of Maryland School of Law.
