Meet Anna Baltzer: Life In Occupied Palestine, Parts One Thru Six

PART ONE:

PART TWO:



PART THREE:


PART FOUR:


PART FIVE:


PART SIX:


Meet Anna Baltzer, young, articulate, highly intelligent and committed to justice for Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East. She offers a new paradigm for the up and coming generation of American Jews (and Jews beyond America) who are shocked and bewildered by the brutality and racism of the Israeli State and are grasping for a way out of this dark cycle of violence that affects Jews all over the world at least indirectly. She offers a paradigm of compassion and understanding toward Palestinians, in a word, a strong step toward the path of Love. For the last six decades everyone has tried the opposite path, the path of FEAR, and we can see to what wretched point that has brought us now.

Here is the video sidebar for Part One:

Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories and Photos

Anna Baltzer, Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, author of "Witness in Palestine", and the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, shares her discovery of Israel's human rights violations in Palestine.

Anna's MySpace page: http://tinyurl.com/83mr7d

Anna's Eyewitness Reports from Palestine: http://annainpalestine.blogspot.com/

Guest Editorial from OpEdNews: Urgent Call for American Muslims by Edip Yuksel

Here is very encouraging piece posted today at OpEdnews.com. Any of you who are sincerely interested in peace, especially in the Middle East, whether you are Jewish, Christian or Moslem (or anything else), will find this worth your reading.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=11458

January 3, 2009

Urgent Call for American Muslims

By Edip Yuksel

It is time to unite our hearts, minds, and voices to promote peace, justice and progress. These are not just cliché words. It is time to leave aside sectarian divisions, irrational conflicts, nationalism, petty agendas, and come together and promote important universal values. It is time to sit down and reason: with each other, with our friends and with our enemies.

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Call for ACTION (Please Reply) MPJP

3:104 "Let there be a nation from amongst you that calls towards goodness, and orders recognized norms, and deters from evil. These are the successful ones."

3:200 "O you who acknowledge, be patient, call for patience, bond together, and be aware of God that you may succeed"

4:58 "God orders you to delegate the responsibilities to those who are qualified. If you judge between the people, then you shall judge with justice. It is always the best that God prescribes for you. God is Hearer, Seer."

This is not a article to be read and put aside. This is an invitation for action, an urgent call for change. If you consider yourself a muslim, that is, you have decided to peacefully surrender yourself to God alone, then this is about you, about your loved ones; about your present and future.

I am excited to inform you that a group of leading muslim activists residing in the USA have decided to establish a non-sectarian political organization to promote peace, justice and progress. Here and abroad.

We cannot be bystanders of a historical transformation. Humanity is in a stage of enormous crisis and global transformation. We cannot standby while warmongers of various religions and ideologies are hurling the world towards a possible annihilation. We cannot standby while the word "muslim" is associated with terrorism, backwardness, authoritarianism. Enough is enough. We cannot allow hatemonger define us, humiliate us or discriminate against us. We cannot allow being a candidate for the second holocaust in the history! We have to unveil and destroy the devil's plan.

It is time to unite our hearts, minds, and voices to promote peace, justice and progress. These are not just cliché words. It is time to leave aside sectarian divisions, irrational conflicts, nationalism, petty agendas, and come together and promote important universal values. It is time to sit down and reason: with each other, with our friends and with our enemies.

There are millions of muslims in the United States; there are more than a billion in the world. Yet, we are almost invisible in financial, social, and political arena. We consider ourselves muslims, yet, a great majority of us are not affiliated with any religious organization. Current religious organizations do not appeal to the diversity of muslim population in the USA. We need to create an umbrella organization that will promote:

1. Peace in the world

2. Justice for all people, regardless of their race, religion, or country of origin.

3. Progress by respecting liberty, individual rights, science, and by establishing governments of people, by people, for people.

"Muslims for Peace, Justice and Progress" is in the process of formation. We are currently creating a list of core group of activists and member organizations. The members of the core group will not live in ivory towers; we will be on streets, on university campuses, in soup kitchens, in parks, temples, courts, on TV programs, in mayor's or governor's office. We will be in the senate and congress. We will stand against aggression, oppression, discrimination, corruption, tyranny, jingoism, wars and division. We will change ourselves, our community, and the world we live in. Inshallah!

So, we invite you and all other muslims to unite. Here how you can participate in our grass-root movement and how you can contribute:

1. Send us and email with some information about you, such as your name, phone number, and city/state. The subject of the email may contain the following acronym: "MPJP"

2. Tell us in what capacities you can contribute. For instance, financial, establishing local chapters, establishing clubs in universities, website design, film making, fundraising, public relations, legal representation, lobbying, etc.

3. Suggest us the names of activists and organizations, and provide us with their contact addresses.

4. Be optimistic, be brave, work hard, and do not give up.

We will soon launch a website and invite you and others to apply for membership. We will collect signatures for a letter to the President Obama, and we will publish it.

The following mission statement is authored by sister Ruby Amatulla, the founder of the organization, Muslim for Peace, Justice and Progress (MPJP):

An American Muslim Leadership
to Spearhead an International Peace and Constructive Agenda

Vision

In this critical time when a massive shift in the mindset and the modus operandi of humanity is taking shape that would dictate the direction of human affairs for generations to come it is imperative that there is a good relationship and constructive engagements between the Muslim world and the West in general, and America in particular. Though both of these vital camps of humanity are enormously diverse themselves the overriding trend for the last several decades is that they are getting increasingly polarized and confrontational. Trust, goodwill and confidence between these two camps are absolutely indispensable for the interest and welfare of not only of themselves but of the rest of the world as well.

This should be the vision of American Muslims to provide an effective and vital leadership role in helping bringing about this outcome in our time. We have great opportunity and duty to play this critical role for peace, stability and progress in global stage. We are the common denominator between American -- the superpower of our time-- and the Muslim world— about one-fourth of humanity controlling 76% of the oil reserves of the world. We are conversant with and part of both camps. By virtue of this predisposition an enormous responsibility falls on our shoulder to be a leader in mediation, conflict resolution, reconciliation and constructive engagements. This should our vision to be a bridge and catalyst for a constructive and substantial change in the relationship between these two parties who are worlds apart.

Mission

To achieve these goals, the American Muslim Leadership suggests the following mission.

1. First we need to have an effective agenda.

2. We need to build a cohesive and agile organization which can build a grass root support among the American Muslims.

3. We need to create a national presence through our issues and involvements and help create the proper leverage to be effective in our work.

4. We also need to work closely and intensely with the leadership of civil society and the government working on similar agendas with the Muslim world.

5. Promote interfaith dialogue and civil discourse among different nations from the spectrum of these two different camps.

6. Remain objective, neutral and professional in all of its endeavors.

7. Our agenda should be multi-dimensional encompassing political, philosophical, educational, social and economic domains in order to be effective and the issues and conflicts are often multi-dimensional.

8. One of the goals should be to make a movement transnational even through it is spearheaded from America to gain an international support, legitimacy and leverage.

9. The above goals should be defined in the broadest terms while the strategies should be detailed and specific.

10. Among many issues and nations we need to set priority of focus in order to help bring about resolution in one critical area that would help solve others in the next phase.

11. The organization needs to be extremely cohesive and agile at the core decision making level and broad and diverse at the operative levels.

Authors Website: www.yuksel.org

Authors Bio: EDIP YUKSEL, J.D. is a progressive American-Turkish-Kurdish author/philosopher/lawyer/activist (too many hyphens and slashes, I know). His recent English books "Quran: a Reformist Translation", and "Manifesto for Islamic Reform" are available at http://www.brainbowpress.com. Since English is chronologically his fifth language, please ignore the mischievous "the" and other grammatical quirks in his articles.

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

An Open Letter to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker of the House

By Mac McKinney

Dear Congresswoman Pelosi,

Being a native of San Francisco myself who frequented the 8th District for years, even though I now live on the East Coast, I am very happy to see a fellow San Franciscan elevated to such a lofty position as Speaker of the House. Congratulations. I think it is more than happenstance that at this critical juncture in world and national history, you have arrived on the scene in such a pivotal position, pivotal in respect to the progression or regression of humanity.

You are fully aware that the country is beset with glaring problems, the worst of which are the festering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have already taken a horrific toll in human lives, resources and wealth, wars that are manifestations of deep fear and hatred between large sections of the human race, emotions that are being exacerbated daily by the ongoing carnage. Fear and hatred have also degraded our national character as we have watched, shocked and outraged, while torture and cruelty have been openly embraced as acceptable, if not legal practices, by our government abroad. Even worse, the politics of confrontation and preemption that the White House espouses threaten to widen warfare in the Middle East and Southwest Asia into regional conflagrations of devastating global consequence. We are now being drawn into a downward spiraling cycle of death and destruction that is quite aptly symbolized by the whirlpools of the sea monster Charybdis that nearly consumed Odysseus (Ulysses) in the Greek legends.

All of this is set against the backdrop of the looming threat of global warming, which, depending upon which scientist you interview, will either regress humanity, devastate humanity or destroy humanity, three very poor options indeed. It will take vast global resources to deal with this challenge successfully, resources that will never be available if the world is consumed with war. This then is our Scylla, global warming, the second monster that beset Odysseus in the Strait of Medina off the coast of Sicily.

The Ship of State is now sailing erratically, so to speak, between Scylla's rock and the whirlpool, with a helmsman more reminiscent of Captain Ahab in obsessive search for the White Whale, then of resourceful Odysseus, who eventually reached safety. It is not an exaggeration to say that the White House is consumed with a vision of permanent warfare against a perceived enemy whose presence half exists, specter-like in the realms of imagination and mythology, the worlds of nightmares and the Arabian Nights. It is ludicrous in the extreme to hear government and Pentagon officials seriously envisioning a one hundred year war against a phantom Caliphate of Hydra-like proportions extending across the continents. It all too easily flows into a fratricidal "clash of civilizations" with the Moslem world that protagonists such as Newt Gingrich are presently lobbying for. This is the stuff of psychosis.

Against this paranoid, dualistic vision of humanity at war with itself that the White House so fervently embraces, this dark vision and violent paradigm that paralyzes all progress toward resolving the world's real problems, enters the new Democratic Majority in the House of Representatives this January, led by you, fortunately led by you, because you have the perfect background to present the country, and the world, with a far more enlightened vision for all to embrace. It is the vision presented by Saint Francis, the patron saint of San Francisco, who said simply:

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy."

This timeless quote lies at the core of the collective soul of San Francisco and is what has made San Francisco what it is, a beacon of light and a Mecca of love and tolerance for all of humanity. In San Francisco, as in few places in this country, there is an evolved sense of community between Asian and African, Latino and Irishman, Italian and Pakistani, Buddhist and Catholic, Moslem and Jew, and Gay and Straight that you, Congresswoman, have certainly witnessed in the 8th District. And a tour of Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill brings it all home when one gazes upon the historical mural on the nave wall depicting the founding of the United Nations in 1945 in our city. So, even that preeminent organization of world unity is in our city's heritage. San Francisco's spirit is not about division and hostility between nations, but rather about their opposite, the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind.

San Francisco has also had a proud intellectual tradition of breaking down intellectual and social barriers, of confronting the Establishment, of speaking outside the box, graced with such shooting stars as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to name a few, who always seemed to return to that Buddhist theme of Enlightenment, of seeing beyond dualism, of grasping the oneness of Being. That is a part of San Francisco too. What America and the world need right now, Congresswoman Pelosi, is a vision of that oneness, a vision that you are now in a position to give them.

Finally, San Francisco has a progressive tradition of promoting equal rights for women and listening to their voices and perspectives. Senator Feinstein and you are both living proof of that. And the feminine perspective is sorely needed in the world today, a world catering all too much to the male ego and its proclivities. The brilliant author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker, recently wrote an article based on her newest book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness. In it she tells the story of the Swa people of the Amazon, who, although they consider men and women equals, have a traditional division of labor between them in one respect. The men are considered to be a destroying principle, the women a conserving principle, and when the men throw the world out of balance, the women are expected to step in and tell them to stop. To quote Alice Walker:

"It is the woman who says: Stop. We have enough firewood and canoes, don't cut down any more trees. Stop. We have enough meat; don't kill any more animals. Stop. This war is stupid and using up too many of our resources. Stop."
(http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2906/ )

So I humbly ask you, Congresswoman, to walk in the spirit of Saint Francis and with the soul of the Charter of the United Nations in your heart as you approach the Speaker's podium in the Capitol in January. Please speak and legislate from the core of your being for the good of humanity and the planet as you confront the mammoth challenges awaiting us all. Please uplift us with a positive vision of world peace and unity. We will strongly support you in such an endeavor.