"The Christian must discover in contemplation, and in the giving of his life, those symbolic actions which will ignite the people's faith to resist injustice with their whole lives, lives coming together as a united force of truth and thus releasing the liberating power of the God within them." - James Douglass, Contemplation and Resistance.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Naqba




"Dozens of marchers were injured, including women and children, and two Arab Knesset members, Mohammed Barakeh and Wassel Taha, were bloodied by police batons. Mounted police charged into the crowds, while stun grenades and tear gas were liberally fired into fields being crossed by families. Eight youths were arrested.

Shehadeh, who was close to the police when the trouble began, and many other marchers say they saw the Jewish rightwingers throwing stones at them from behind the police. A handful of Palestinian youngsters responded in kind. Others add that the police were provoked by a young woman waving a Palestinian flag.

"None of the police were interested in stopping the Jews throwing stones. And even if a few Palestinian youths were reacting, you chase after them and arrest them, you don’t send police on mounted horseback charging into a crowd of families and fire tear gas and stun grenades at them. It was totally indiscriminate and reckless."

"Clouds of gas enveloped the slowest families as they struggled with their children to take cover in the forest.

Therese Zbeidat, a Dutch national who was there with her Palestinian husband Ali and their two teenage daughters, Dina and Awda, called the experiences of her family and others at the hands of the police 'horrifying'.

'Until then it really was a family occasion. When the police fired the tear gas, there were a couple near us pushing a stroller down the stony track towards the road. A thick cloud of gas was coming towards us. I told the man to leave the stroller and run uphill as fast as he could with the baby.

'Later I found them with the baby retching, its eyes streaming and choking. It broke my heart. There were so many families with young children, and the police charge was just so unprovoked. It started from nothing.'"

This "nothing" is the violence empire requires in order to enforce its control of the world's populations. Discriminate deterrence is the pregnant phrase used by Jim Douglass to describe the moral logic of destruction, "The frame of reference for every nuclear threat, as for low-intensity conflict, has always been to deter our political and economic colonies from breaking free from control...Our security system needs low-intensity conflict and the threatened annihilation of cities to deter Third World peoples from revolution, just as Rome need crucifixion and the threatened annihilation of cities to deter its provincial rebels." - James W. Douglass, "The Nonviolent Coming of God"

Deterrence requires slow killing of the defenseless, the Palestinian, the Iraqi, the Native American, the Son of God.

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