[Imc-bigmuddy] [Fwd: [starhawk] Four Years Ago--and Today!]

[Treesong]

Hello,

Here's the latest commentary from Starhawk. So much to talk about here 
that I wouldn't even know where to begin... :) Let me know what you 
think... and remember to live a magical life, because it's going to take 
some powerful magic to make the changes that we need to make.

Love and Healing,

Treesong

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[starhawk] Four Years Ago--and Today!
Date: 	Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:05:07 -0700
From: 	Starhawk <stella at mcn.org>
To: 	<Starhawk at lists.riseup.net>, To-EAT 
<earthactivist at yahoogroups.com>, LivRiv <livriv at yahoogroups.com>, pagan 
cluster <paganclu at lists.riseup.net>, spider <rspider at yahoogroups.com>, 
<BAReclaiming at yahoogroups.com>




Four Years Ago Today

By Starhawk




March 16, 2007



Four years ago today, I was in Nablus in the Occupied Territories of 
Palestine, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement that 
supports the nonviolent movement among the Palestinians. I was also 
supporting my friend Neta Golan, an Israeli woman and one of the 
founders of ISM, now married to a Palestinian, who was about to give 
birth. I had spent a strangely idyllic day in a small village outside 
Nablus, where a group of ISM volunteers had gone because we’d received a 
report that the Israeli army was harassing villagers. When we got there, 
the army had left, the cyclamen and blood-red anemones were in bloom 
underneath ancient olive trees, and the villagers insisted we stay for a 
barbecue.



We were just passing through the checkpoint on our way back to Nablus 
when we got a call from Rafah, in the Gaza strip. Rachel Corrie, a young 
ISM volunteer, had trying to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from 
demolishing a home near the border. The bulldozer operator saw her, and 
went forward anyway, crushing her to death.



Rachel’s death was a small preview of the horrific violence that the 
U.S. unleashed, three days later, with the invasion of Iraq. In Nablus, 
we were gearing up for a possible Israeli invasion when the war began. I 
was working with another volunteer, Brian Avery, to coordinate the team 
that would maintain a human rights witness in the Balata refugee camp on 
the outskirts of Nablus. I was also praying that Neta would not go into 
labor at some moment when the whole town would be under siege and we 
could not get to a hospital, and boning up on such midwifery knowledge 
as I possess. Perhaps I prayed too hard—she showed no signs of going 
into labor at all, and finally, in an act of great unselfishness, sent 
me down to Rafah to support the team there that had been with Rachel. I 
offered such comfort as I could to volunteers who were young enough that 
most had never before experienced the death of someone close to them.



It was a strange spring. I made it back to Nablus to support Neta’s 
birth—but the joy of that event was tinged with horror, for the night 
before, Brian was shot in the face in Jenin by the Israeli military in 
an unprovoked attack on a group of international volunteers. All during 
Neta’s labor, the nurses (yes, thank Goddess, we made it to the 
hospital!) kept turning on Al Jazeerah which was showing scenes of the 
U.S. bombardment of Iraq. I kept turning it off. Even in a world full of 
war, I wanted her child to be born in a small island of peace.



I went to Jenin to support the team that had been with Brian, and then 
to Haifa to visit him where he was awaiting surgery. I spent much of the 
next weeks traveling frenetically, often alone, through the one piece of 
ground on earth most difficult to travel in, where checkpoints truncate 
every route. The olive trees broke into leaf, and the almonds swelled 
into fuzzy green pods which the Palestinians eat young. They taste 
lemony, sharp and poignant, like the moment itself.



I visited with the Israeli Women in Black in Jerusalem, and trained ISM 
volunteers in Beit Sahour. A young British volunteer, Tom Hurndall, went 
down to Rafah straight from the training. Walking on the border, near 
where Rachel was killed, he saw a group of children under fire from an 
Israeli sniper tower. He ran beneath the rain of bullets, pulled a young 
boy to safety, went back again for another child. The sniper targeted 
him, shooting him in the head. So I went back to Rafah, that surreal 
town of rubble and barbed wire, ripe oranges and bullet holes, to 
support the team that had been with Tom



Everywhere I went, the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, and the army 
seemed to melt away, as if I carried some magic circle of protection. I 
was a long distance witness to death, a support for grief without 
suffering the searing personal pain that comes with the loss of a child, 
a parent, a lover. My own grief hit later, when I was home, and safe, 
and cried for weeks.



I cry now, every spring, here in California as the daffodils bloom and 
the plum trees flower. The beauty of spring is forever tinged, for me, 
with the grief and wonder and horror of that time: Neta sweating in 
labor while the TV news shows images of war, blood staining the 
wildflowers a deeper red.



I cry, and then I get I mad. Four years have gone by, and the killing 
still goes on—in Palestine, in Iraq, and if Bush has his way, in Iran. 
Ghosts haunt the green hills, shimmering like heat waves under an 
unnaturally hot sun: all the uncounted dead of this uncalled-for war, 
all those yet to die.



I’ve got a garden to plant, and a thousand things I’d rather do, but 
once again this spring, I’m gearing up for action. The peace marches 
have become boring, strident and predictable. To be absolutely honest, I 
hate marching around in the street chanting the same slogans I’ve been 
chanting for forty years. I’m going, anyway. I’m so tired of die-ins and 
sit-ins and predictable speeches shouted over bullhorns that I could 
scream if I weren’t hearing in my ears the far more bitter screams of 
the dying. I’m even tired of trying to drum and sing and make the 
protest into a creative act of magic. It’s not creative—it’s a damn 
protest, and I have real creative work to do: books to write, courses to 
teach, and rituals to plan. Nonetheless, Sunday will find me trudging 
along on the peace march and Monday will find me lying down on Market 
Street in some picturesque fashion with a group of friends and our 
requisite banners.



Why? So I can look myself in the mirror without flinching, and answer to 
those hundred thousand ghosts. But more than that, because it’s time, 
friends. Public opinion has turned—now we must make it mean something 
real. It’s time to send the Democrats back to their committee meetings 
saying, “Hell, I can’t even get into my office—the halls are blocked and 
the streets are choked with people angry about this war.” Time to send 
the Republicans off to their caucuses murmuring quietly “If we continue 
to support this disaster we’re going to lose every semblance of power or 
popular support we once possessed.” Time to let the rest of the world 
know that dissent is alive and well here in the U.S.A. Time to 
regenerate a movement as nature regenerates life in the spring, with the 
rising energy that alone can turn our interminable trudging into a dance 
of defiance.



You come, too. You can skip out on the boring speeches and make cynical 
remarks—but get your feet out on the street this weekend, somewhere. 
There’s a thousand different actions planned around the country—and if 
you don’t know where to go or what to do, check the websites below.



Act because hundreds of thousands who are now alive are marked for death 
if this war goes on or expands into Iran. Act because every perfumed 
flower and every bud that breaks into leaf this calls to us to cherish 
and safeguard life.

Starhawk

www.starhawk.org



For a listing of actions, check:

www.unitedforpeace.org <http://www.unitedforpeace.org/> .

or

http://declarationofpeace.org/march-16-19-nationwide-nonviolent-civil-disobedience



Starhawk’s many writings on her time in Palestine and other issues can 
be found on her website at:

_http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/activism-writings.html
_



-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: message-footer.txt
Url: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-bigmuddy/attachments/20070323/d3e027b8/attachment.txt