Author: Helena

CSM column criticizes war-crimes courts

Here’s the column I have in the CSM today. It’s a quick out-take from what I’ve been writing about the past couple of weeks.
It’s about (guess what) the dysfunctionality of war-crimes prosecutions as a way to help societies escape from legacies of atrocity-laden conflict.
I got a call from a producer at a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show called The Hour. She sounded pretty interested in the subject and they’re going to do a taped interview with me Monday. It’ll probably run Monday evening, but I’ll try to let JWN’s extensive Canadian readership know whether that is so, or not.
I feel I am s-o-o-o-o-o close to finishing this last chapter of my book. Well, maybe yes and maybe no. I’ll know it’s The End when I finally write those little magic words, “The End.”
I went down to the peace demonstration again this afternoon. Still a great cacophony of honks down there.

Africa book, chapter 11 (again)

So just in case any of you is sitting there thinking, “I wonder how Helena’s getting on with finishing her long-awaited (!) book on violence and conflict termination in Africa?”….
The answer today is “surely, but slowly.” Some days it’s “slowly, but surely.” Some days it’s just slowly. And then, some days it’s AAAAAAARGH!! Like the day back in– was it February?– when I realized that all the writing I’d done for the previous 5-6 weeks needed to be set aside.
So at least we haven’t had another of those recently. (She wipes metaphorical sweat off her brow, in relief.)
Actually, that was about three months ago. Those months have been, in general, pretty worthwhile for the project although the work has often felt like a hard slog… And meanwhile I’ve had to set so many other things aside!
But I do have a commitment to getting this book done in as timely a fashion as I can. I need to get this (pretty darn’ good) draft done before May 18, because that evening I’m heading over to Harrisonburg, VA, to spend ten days teaching a course at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.
This chapter I’ve been working on so hard all this year (also, last fall) is the one that draws together the lessons from all three of the “case-studies” that I have previously explained to the reader in such exquisite and compelling detail. That is: Rwanda, South Africa, and Mozambique. I have some really, really wonderful interview and other field-research material from all three countries. I really need to get the book out soon before it all becomes hopelessly out of date!
This present chapter is Chapter 11. So far, it’s already pretty long, at 11,600 or more words, and I’m probably around 70% of the way through it. That’s okay. Maybe once I’ve done a good draft of it I’ll find I can handily split it into two chapters. Or maybe it’ll just BE long. I think the longest single piece of sustained narrative I’ve ever written was my first draft of the first Rwanda piece I wrote for Boston Review. This one. I’m not sure how long the edited version of that turned out to be– it got quite majorly developed as a text along the way (cuttings, expansions, and revisions). Anyway, I think the first draft was 14,000 words and it was, imho, quite readable if not (perhaps) extraordinarily easily so.
Anyway, on the present draft of the present book, chapter 1-10 add up to 88,000 words. So I’m almost exactly at what I consider to be the ideal length for a book: 100,000 words.
Why am I putting all this on the blog? I don’t know. I just felt like doing something different here tonight; and worrying about finishing this book as well as I can is the main thing on my mind right now.
I also thought I’d share a little bit from near the top of Ch.11 with y’all. Feel free to comment or not on the following as you please:

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Lebanon: what goes around comes around

I ceased being surprised by any “startling” new political developments in Lebanon in, oh, around 1983, when Fateh’s bosses suddenly started aligning with the Phalange.
But still, this burgeoning Aoun-Hizbullah lovefest does give one that little scintilla of excitement to realize that once again, the country’s body politic is capable of yet another thrill, yet another twist of the political kaleidoscope.
I’m wondering what the terms of this new relationship are… Maybe I should head over to the Al-Intiqad website sometime, see how they’re reporting it over there.
Basically, though, I’m quite happy about this development, as it would seem to reduce the likelihood of sectarian violence erupting in Lebanon over the summer quite considerably.

French colonial violence remembered

Today is the 60th anniversary of the massacre of Sétif, a town in a remote area of eastern Algeria where in May 1945 the “Free French” colonial forces decided to enact a colonial massacre against the indigenes.
Here’s an account (in French) of an appeal that Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika launched to mark the occasion today.
Here’s the Babelfish translation of the lead to that piece (as improved by myself):

    ALGIERS (Reuters) – Abdelaziz Bouteflika called this weekend on France to recognize its responsibility forthe massacres for tens of thousands of Algerians who had gone out into the streets, May 8, 1945, to claim their independence at the time when Europe was celebrating the victory over the Nazi Germany.
    “The Algerian people await from France a gesture which would liberate the French conscience”, stated the Algerian president in a speech delivered Saturday evening in S

Our Palestinian embroidery sale

So, our Charlottesville-based group ‘Holy Land Treasures’ held its second annual pre-Mother’s Day sale of Palestinian Heritage Embroidery here in town. We sold more than $7,500-worth of these really lovely stitched goods (all proceeds go to the producer organizations), and 60 bottles of fine Palestinian olive oil.
It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. The University of Virginia Palestinian debkeh dancers sent along a small troupe to dance for us. We had poetry readings, super Palestinian food, music– and sold a lot of stuff!
Doing this helps send a bit of income in to the embroidery artists and the olive farmers. (Just a tiny trickle compared with the great gobs of money the US government sends to Israel every year, of course.) In addition it helps to keep the Palestinians’ rich heritage alive, and it’s a fun way to share information about that heritage with US citizens.
I used to feel quite torn, sometimes, between doing things that you could describe as “social work”, and engaging in the campaign to bring about about deep structural change. Then I figured, why not do both? Let each engagement inform the other.
It’s Mother’s Day today, here in the US. The occasion was originally founded as an anti-war action– but the Hallmark Cards Co. has been trying to hide that fact ever since.
Maybe next year we should all focus much harder on reclaiming Mother’s Day for the anti-war movement?
In the meantime, my wish for every mother around the world for the year ahead is that she, her children, and each of those she loves be assured the basics of a decent life including the oppportunity to participate in a secure community of her or his own choosing.

Approaching 1,600

Every Thursday, almost without fail, I join my friends from the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice in holding a one-hour “peace presence” on one of the busy corners in our town. (Right outside the local office building maintained by the federal government, actually.)
A few weeks ago I was making a few new signs to replace the ones that had become so tattered over the past three years. One I made says at the bottom “U.S. deaths in Iraq”. Above that there are spaces for four large single-digit numbers, and little velcro squares to which I attach the relevant digits each week. (This is all done with environment-hostile foamcore. Sorry ’bout that.)
Today the number was 1,591. I get the number out of the WaPo every Thursday. I realize it doesn’t mention the much great number of Iraqi deaths. One of our other signs says “We mourn all the victims.”
Preparing the digits each week is a horrible thing. Somehow it’s a very physical way of seeing how quickly that number rises.
In ‘Nam, the proportion of Vietnamese deaths to US military deaths was roughly 50 to 1. I believe something like the same proportion (or something even higher, given the US mil-tech “advances” since then) must apply today. But how, actually, do you count? What do you count? All the infants and sick people who died because of the war-caused degradation of what was once a fairly efficient modern safe-water system? All the sick people who died because of the war-caused chaos in the medical system in general, or because they couldn’t get to the hospital because of the rampant public insecurity?
… Anyway, my favorite sign to hold is still the one that says on one side, “Honk 4 peace” and on the other, “Rebuild our communities.” It’s a good intersection to stand at, since the lights are timed to allow only one of the four approaching streams of traffic to go through it at a time. So drivers in the other three approach roads all have to wait a while.
This means that all of us with the signs can focus on turning toward the approaching stream of traffic and trying to interact with those drivers. We wave and make peace signs to them.
You wouldn’t believe the number of honks we get.
In the past six weeks the number of honks has definitely been increasing– and also the intensity with which people do it. Several times today it felt like a veritable cacophony of different honkings, all competing with each other. Sometimes one or two of the drivers waiting at the light really feel they want to express themselves, and then that can set almost everyone else going as well.
The way I see it, it’s become not just an interactive thing– between us demonstrators and the drivers– but almost a community thing among the drivers themselves, as well.
Anyone who hates this war and who, sitting waiting in her or his car at the light, hears another driver “honking 4 peace” will know that she is not alone. That’s why, sometimes, the honking just seems to spiral almost out of control there.
To me, that’s incredibly valuable, to be able to “connect” all those people in a single symphony of honking, even if only just for a couple of minutes, in today’s unbelievably fractured US culture. (However, if you’re down on the pavement right in front of some of those big old honking pick-up trucks, it can really hurt your ears.)
About how to count all those war-related deaths of Iraqis, though…

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Israeli hawks worried by nonviolence now?

For many months now, the Palestinian villagers of Bil’in, west of Ramallah, have been organizing a variety of totally nonviolent mass actions to protest the devastating Separation Barrier that the Israelis have been building right up against their village, which cuts many of the villagers off from their families’ ancestral lands. They’ve faced various forms of brutality from the Israeli occupation forces along the way.
Last Thursday, April 28th, they had yet another action: a march toward bulldozers preparing the land for the Barrier. Some 1,000 Palestinians and 200 Israeli peace activists showed up. But that time, the Israelis launched a sinister new tactic: they had infiltrated some of their people, dressed as “Arabs”, into the body of protesters to act as agents provocateurs. These agents started throwing stones at the Israeli forces lined up in front of them– which then gave the Israelis “permission” to fire back…
According to the website of Uri Avnery’s “Gush Shalom” (Peace Bloc), the Israeli forces responded using “new means of riot control, such as specially painful plastic bullets covered with salt, pepper bombs and more.”
How did the participants in the peace action discover that the stone-throwers were agents? Easy. As soon as the guys started throwing stones, the organizers of the march moved toward them and reminded them that the rules of the action were “complete nonviolence; no stone-throwing!”
At which point the stone-throwers turned around and grabbed hold of the organizers who had approached them and dragged them across to the Israeli lines where they were arrested.
It is an outrage. In my book, a provocateur like that– and the commanders who organized the whole provocation maneuver– are entirely responsible for all the violence that they spark.
I’m not even sure if the men arrested last Thursday have been released yet.
On May 1, Electronic Intifada reported that they were still being held. Here’s what EI said about the April 24 action:

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Palestinian bazaar; Hip NYC performance space

Lots of interesting things happening in our family, culture-wise, this week.
If you’re in central Virginia this Saturday, come on by the sale of Palestinian heritage embroideries that some friends and I are organizing at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, 11 a.m. though 4 p.m.
We’ll have fine, hand-stitched products to fit every budget: shawls, cushion covers, purses, coin-purses, place-mats, etc.
Plus we’ll be selling Palestinian extra-virgin olive oil… Plus, there’ll be Mediterranean box-lunches with yummy Palestinian delicacies inside. Plus music, cultural events, and a good time for all the family.
A good opportunity to buy somethng special for Mother’s Day (which is on Sunday, here in the US) or for the truly far-sighted, Father’s Day in early June.
All proceeds from the sales go to the refugee and disabled embroidery artists, or (olive oil sales only) Palestinian farm families struggling to hold onto their land and tend their crops. We import our stitched goods from organizations like Atfaluna (Gaza) , Sunbula (West Bank), and the Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps in Lebanon (Lebanon)…
And on a different note…
My daughter Leila, her husband Greg, and their partners are this week opening their great new business in New York City, so if you’re there do stop on by and give them some support!
The place is called Cakeshop. This is a reference to something in popular culture that I’m not quite aware of. Leila assures me that they do, as a matter of fact, have a few cakes there for sale. But mainly the place is a coffee shop, plus record store (yes, that’s right, as in your old LPs, also known these days, more hiply, as “vinyl”), plus a performance space plus– I’m sorry to say– a bar.
Anyway, they’ve all been working their hearts out to get the place organized, up and running. It looked really good when I was there in January. It’s in a very happening part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Go by if you can! I think I ‘ll make the coffee-shop part of it JWN’s “official drop-by meeting-spot” whenever I go to NYC. (For some reason Leila turned down my suggestion that I might do some stand-up comedy for them on opening night. I’m not really upset at the rejection. But hey, boo-hoo all the same.)
You’ll find Cakeshop at 152 Ludlow St. The metro stop is Essex & Delancey on the F or J/M/Z lines.