ZGram - 2/10/2002 - "The Colonels' trials are coming"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 10, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

What is remarkable about the keynote below is that the kids stood up and
gave the speaker a standing ovation.  It means that our young people are
much more aware of what plays in the world politically than general
audiences.  It also means that they are more courageous.  I think that an
adult audience, listening to such a speech, would have looked over their
shoulder.

[START]

In Chicago the evening  of 31 January 2002 Mark Bruzonsky, Publisher of
MER, gave the keynote address at  the University of Chicago Model United
Nations.    The Palmer  House Hilton Ballroom was full with more than 2500
persons for the opening  session - standing room only.   For the first time
in the history of  the keynote talks at this annual event the speaker
received a prolonged standing  ovation.

"This has never happened before" said the conference  organizer.   The
speech by Mark Bruzonsky  follows:

University of Chicago  Model United Nations

Keynote Address - Palmer House Hilton  Ballroom

31 January 2002

Remarks by Mark  Bruzonsky

You young people in this room are about to inherit a very dangerous,
potentially chaotic world.

Most of you are Americans, citizens of  the most advanced, the most
privileged country.

And those privileges, coupled with  your own interest in world affairs and
the United Nations, bring with them new  and extraordinary
responsibilities.

Thank you sincerely for this  invitation to speak with you this evening as
you begin what I am sure will be a  tremendously educational experience at
this very special University of Chicago  Model United Nations.

Thank you especially as I am well  aware my name is not Mary Robinson, or
Ramsey Clark, or Ralph Nader, and that  few of you may have heard my name
before this evening.

Indeed, in past years usually persons  working for or with the U.N. in one
way or another have spoken to this forum.  And they have usually focused on
the U.N. system itself, human rights issues,  and very frankly matters not
very controversial; some might even say  "safe".

But in many ways, including  psychologically, the world of the roaring 90s
-- which is all most of you have  directly experienced in your own lives
until lately - also crashed on 11 Sept.  And I expect there are other
crashes of various kinds now ahead of us all -  political and economic, as
well as military.

There are real and serious reasons our  world is in such turmoil and danger
today.

There are real and serious reasons  there are "suicide bombers" in that
great city which represents the focal point  of most of our religious
faiths - Jerusalem, a marvelous and unique city where I  have spent much
time.

There are real and serious reasons  young people your age in other places
are choosing to become what Americans call  "terrorists" and what they
themselves call "martyrs" and "freedom  fighters".

And there are real reasons, real  grievances, real and profound struggles,
which lie behind 911. For we are not in  a new war at all. Rather we are in
a new phase of an ongoing war in which  millions of people in far away
countries have already been killed, in many cases  by policies and forces
and allies of our own country.

And so, it is with these  responsibilities and this new situation in mind
that I have chosen to diverge  from the "safe" subjects and deal with
issues that will be crucial for your  futures, and for our country's
future, and for our entire world's  future.

This evening I want to speak with you  not about general human rights but
about specific political and economic rights;  not about the successes of
the United Nations but about its failures and the  great challenges it now
faces.

And most of all I want to speak with  you about the subject I personally
know best and first-hand from over 150 visits  to the Middle East region
and 30 years of conferences and relationships since I  was a student like
you - about the "Middle East Peace Process" and why it has  exploded in an
orgy of even greater violence and despair than when it  began.

Most of the human rights problems in  our world really have deep political,
economic and territorial roots. Basic  issues of power and wealth are
involved, both at the national and international  level. How we structure
our society, and who is really in control and why, are  the truly crucial
issues too often not truly discussed.

The most challenging and basic issue  of all is how our world's resources
are owned and controlled and distributed,  because this is what determines
crucial things like how people are fed and  clothed and housed; how people
receive, and in most cases do not receive, health  care; how people are
able, or unable, to provide for themselves and their  families and their
futures.

And sadly, unlike for us who are so  privileged, the majority of humans on
planet earth 21st century are in miserable  and desperate circumstances.

In the wake of World War II the  victorious powers created the United
Nations, just as they had created the  League of Nations after the previous
"War To End All Wars", then renamed World  War I. The U.N. quickly became a
world forum that in one way or another had to  be. But it did not have to
evolve as it has.

For today's U.N. has not lived up to  either the dream or the promise of
its founders. Most of all it has not  fulfilled its primary responsibility
to achieve the kind of independence,  credibility, and assertiveness on
behalf of all of the people on Planet Earth,  rather than on behalf of
those most powerful and wealthy.

There have been far too many major Security Council and General Assembly
resolutions that have gone    unheeded, unenforced, in many cases
unremembered.

The major powers, especially the United States, have manipulated and
cowered the U.N. far more than should have    been either allowed or
tolerated.

There is a terrible misdistribution of wealth on our planet leaving the
majority of human beings    in poverty and despair - the U.N. should by now
have far more seriously    addressed this major dilemma in far more
assertive and potent    ways.

There is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe looming. Projections
from U.N. bodies warn that in    the lifetime of most in this room our
planet could experience unprecedented    environmental change including as
much as a 10 degree temperature rise leading    to calamity on a tremendous
scale.

The international arms race is   terribly out of control, propelled in fact
by the very powers in charge of the    U.N. through the Security Council -
an international military-industrial    complex is fueling future warfare
and potential Armageddon.

 And even if these terrible  weapons of mass annihilation are controlled
and never actually used human kind    is squandering the best of its talent
and wealth building ever new generations    of ever more frightful weapons;
rather than schools and hospitals and food for    all.

 Nor has the U.N. and its many  agencies properly prepared to seriously
fight international disease and    starvation - two plaques now ravaging
the African continent and threatening    much of humanity.

By now you may have realized that I have not included any jokes or
one-liners to enliven my talk with you this evening. Frankly, the situation
we  are all now in is simply too dangerous and too tragic for jokes or for
pointing  fingers at individual political personalities.

What we need urgently to do is to  focus our greatest attention on the big
political and economic issues and  institutions - and to find ways to
restructure and manage them for the common  good. That in fact was the
original United Nations vision and dream. That is  what you are challenged
to be discussing, debating, and learning from each other  about for the
next three very intense days.

We need to focus on resuscitating a  United Nations which itself is in a
difficult predicament desperately needing to  find a way to be independent
and potent. Though it is an organization of member  states it is urgently
important it also become a far more democratic forum, and  thus a far more
respected forum, representing the peoples of our world, not just  their
often corrupt and self-serving, repressive and deceptive  governments.

Very frankly, the world's only  superpower has done far too much
controlling, manipulating, and badgering. And  when it doesn't get its way
far too much vetoing.

Just a few months ago, before 911, the  U.S. was nearly totally isolated at
the important U.N. gathering in Durban South  Africa - blustering and
bullying everyone nearly about everything relating to  history, racism, and
basic economic and political rights.

And since 911 the U.S. has once again  vetoed a Security Council resolution
rightly seeking to provide some protection  for the Palestinian people,
whom it declared way back in 1947 should have a  state of their own
immediately.

Indeed, let me turn directly now to  that most controversial of issues, the
one the U.N. itself midwifed, and the one  the U.N. has spent more time and
energy and anguish dealing with than any  other.

Of course I am referring to the  situation in what many still call "The
Holy Land", the area that was Palestine  until 1947, the area now called
Israel and the "occupied  territories".

It is this very region which also has  given birth to modern-day
"terrorism", to airplane hijackings, suicide bombings,  truck bombs, and
political kidnapping. And today, because of the past wrongs for  which the
United Nations and the United States are considerably responsible, it  is
now more fractured and divided and blood-soaked than it has been since
Biblical days and then the period of the Crusades.

But that was a world of swords and  crucifixions. Ours is a world of
nuclear and biological bombs.

Your own schedule of sessions and  debates at this Model United Nations has
this situation in the Middle East more  prominent than any other. And
rightly so.

Many of you may find what I will now  outline troubling. Many of you, young
Americans, will wonder how can what he is  saying be true in view of what
is usually said about these issues in the popular  mass media in our
country.

Indeed, I still remember when I was in  graduate school how upset and
disbelieving I was when Professor Richard Falk at  Princeton first used
such concepts as "racism", "war crimes", and "apartheid"  when discussing
the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Then I was a student like you are  today. Then I had not yet had a chance
to travel the world, meet so many new  people, hear so many new views, and
ponder these great issues for  myself.

Now, more than 25 years later, when I  have personally been so lucky to
have had such opportunities, what I have to try  to do is squeeze these 25
years into less than 25 minutes - now half gone  already!

All I can realistically do in the next  few moments is share with you my
own conclusions; and then encourage you to  start reaching your own. And in
fact in just a few minutes when I have finished,  I encourage you to start
with the most difficult and important questions you can  come up with to
ask of me.

Today the situation in the Middle East  is immensely worse than when I
represented the International Student Movement  for the United Nations at
U.N. Headquarters for three years. It has been made  worse precisely by the
"Middle East Peace Process". And the basic reason is that  all along rather
than a true peace process it has been, and it is, a domination  and
subjugation and repression process - and we have all been taken for a
ride!  
Let me try to explain in the following  way: If you had invited any of the
following much more distinguished speakers,  most of whom I am fortunate to
have as personal friends, here is what they would  have told you about the
realities of the "Middle East 'Peace  Process':

If you had invited Professor NOAM  CHOMSKY:

"The agreements incorporate the extremist version of U.S.-Israeli
rejectionism - and are closest to the Sharon Plan of the early 1980s - ..
[They]  should be compared to the institution of that monstrous system of
Apartheid in  the former South Africa - (upon the Palestinian people)."

If you had invited Professor EDWARD  SAID:

"There is a wanton murder of language evident in the phrase 'peace
process' -  At a time when people are suffering and shabby leaders are
reaping  Nobel Prizes that only enable more exploitation, it is crucial to
bear witness  to the truth -  Far from bringing peace [the agreement] will
bring greater  suffering for Palestinians and an assured threat to the
Israeli people - . Every  leader involved with the Oslo peace process -
Palestinian, Israeli, American or  European - has acted without principles
and without anything remotely resembling  vision and truthfulness. Worse,
large droves of intellectuals, scholars and  experts have betrayed their
vocations, to say nothing of their expertise and  knowledge, and this
betrayal has contributed to the amazingly compliant attitude  of the
American media in particular, who have celebrated, extolled, saluted and
rejoiced, where there has been neither occasion nor cause to justify such
excessive handclapping and jubilation."

If you had invited DR. EYAD SARRAJ -  Dr. Sarraj, a distinguished
Palestinian, who has his Ph.D. in psychology from  Harvard by the way, made
these remarks at a Georgetown University  forum:

" We are not against the rule of law,  in fact we want the rule of law. We
want fairness and equality before the law.  We want to feel that the people
have rights, and they are dignified; after so  many years of brutality and
repression and humiliation at the hands of the  Israelis. This is what the
people here are longing for - dignity, and  pride -

Dr. Sarraj wrote an important essay  titled "Why We Have All Become Suicide
Bombers" five years ago now. It was  widely published throughout the world,
except in the US. In it Dr. Sarraj wrote:  "the struggle of Palestinians
today is how not to become a bomb and the amazing  thing is not the
occurrence of the suicide bombing, rather the rarity of  them."

If you had invited ROBERT FISK - the  Western correspondent longest in the
Middle East region, writing for The  Independent in London for the past
quarter century: He made these remarks in an  interview with me also five
years ago now, long before recent events proved him  right:

"I put 'peace process' in quotation  marks when I write about it in my
newspaper, it is an American expression, it is  definitely not a Middle
Eastern expression -  All one can say about the 'Peace  Process' now is
that it is dead, it is finished, it is over, and the most  remarkable thing
I find in coming now to the States is the degree to which  people do not
realize that. I have to live the reality of the Middle East and I  have not
met anyone in the past two to three months including those who  originally,
wrongly in my view, believed it would work who does not now believe  that
it is dead, and finished completely."

If you had invited HAIDAR ABDUL-SHAFI  - a most distinguished secular
Palestinian who was Chairman of the Palestinian  Delegation at the Madrid
Conference and all subsequent international  negotiations until Oslo - and
by the way, he refused to attend the White House  ceremony in 1993
predicting what was to come:

"How do we view the acts of resistance  by Hamas and the Islamists?
Palestinians are entitled to resort to all sorts of  measures including
legitimate armed struggle to try to rid themselves of  occupation. The
Israeli position, which is based on Israeli military power and  with
heedlessness toward legality, and legitimacy, and United Nations
resolutions, is actually a cause for violence... Israel in the recent time
killed so many Palestinians in cold blood, Palestinians that it apprehended
and  could have arrested, but it preferred to kill them -  The world is
going to  realize that this peace process is not really a peace process, it
is  hopeless - ."

If you had invited PROFESSOR CHARLES  BLACK* - one of America's most
respected scholars of Constitution and  International law who taught his
entire career at the Yale University Law  School. And yes, here too, no one
would publish these views in the USA, the  first time in his life Professor
Black could not find a publisher for his essay  about the U.S., Israel, and
the Palestinians:

"They are imprisoned under obscene  conditions, after kangaroo trials, or
no trials at all. They are regularly shot  at; enough of them are killed to
make death ever-present -  Many are maimed; many  are disfigured for life.
Yet they come out in the streets again and again, these  young people -
What name shall we give to the trait of character that produces  conduct
like that? Why do you hesitate? You know what the word is. Do you  hesitate
because that word just never happens to be spoken in American in
application to these young Palestinians people? Or is it because you fear
that a  revolution in your thought and feeling will have to follow your
pronouncing the  word? Well, you're very likely right about that last. That
makes you nervous? So  let me help you. I'll start things off by saying the
word for you the first  time. The word is 'courage'"

And finally, though I could go on and  on in this vein, had you invited
ARUNDHATI ROY - Winner of India's most  prestigious literary prize - and
again published throughout the world, except in  the US. Here she is
writing about the World Trade Tower/Pentagon  attacks:

"Could it be that the anger that led  to the attacks has its taproot not in
American freedom and democracy, but in the  US government's record of
commitment and support to exactly the opposite things  -- to military and
economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship,  religious bigotry
and unimaginable genocide (outside America)?"

"Now Bush and Bin Laden have even  begun to borrow each other's rhetoric.
Each refers to the other as 'the head of  the snake'. Both invoke God and
use the loose millenarian currency of good and  evil as their terms of
reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political  crimes. Both are
dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the  obscenely
powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the
utterly hopeless -  The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is
an  acceptable alternative to the other."

"With all due respect to President  Bush, the people of the world do not
have to choose between the Taliban and the  U.S. government. All the beauty
of human civilisation - our art, our music, our  literature - lies beyond
these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is  as little chance
that the people of the world can all become middle-class  consumers as
there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion.  The issue
is not about good v. evil or Islam v. Christianity as much as it is  about
space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse
towards hegemony - every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic,
religious and cultural."

Please let me conclude with a  startling poem, one which contains the seeds
of possible salvation rather than  future cataclysm.

For if you had invited Israel's very  well-known and respected Israeli
playwright and television host DAN ALMAGOR he  might have recited this poem
to you. He wrote it during the first Intifada after  visiting the
Palestinian city of Nablus for the first time. Before writing it he  went
back a second time to make sure, this time accompanied by his close friend,
then the Defense Minister of Israel, none other than General Yitzhak Rabin,
with  whom he then parted ways.

And this poem is not just about  Israelis and Palestinians, it's about all
of us, especially now.

WE SHOOT CHILDREN TOO,  DON'T WE

   Most of these people truly  desire

   To  harvest their olive trees

   As they have for hundreds of years.

   Most of these people truly  desire

   To raise  their kids

   Not  to throw stones

    Or Molotov cocktails;

   But to study in peace

   To play in peace


   And raise a  flag.

   A  flag.

   Their own  flag.

   And  facing that flag, to cry,

   As we did, that night, then, excited as we  were.

   And we  have no, have no, have no

   Right in the world

   To rob them of this  desire,

   This  flag, these tears,

   These tears which always, always

   Come after all the  others.


   Let us start preparing our  defence.

   We  will need it soon enough;

   Those who actually did it.

   And those who still do.

   And those who hushed it  up

   And those  who still do.

    And those who said nothing

   And those who clucked their tongue, saying

   "Something must be done  really;

   (But  not tonight, I have a concert.

   A gala event.

   A birthday!)

   Indeed, we'll all get our summons one day

   For the Colonels'  Trials.


   The Colonels' trials are  coming.

   Their  time will come, it must be so.

   The trials of the generals, the colonels,

   And the division, the  battalion,

   And  the platoon commanders.

   There is no escaping it.

   This is how history  works.

   What  shall we say then?

   What will the colonels, the captains, the corporals  say?

   What will  they say -

   Of  those terrible beatings, The Brutality.

   Of houses blown up.

   And most of all, the  humiliation, That humiliation.


   Of patients forced to wipe off  the writing on the walls.

   Of old men forced to take down a flag

   From an electric  pole

   Who got  electroducted, or fell

   And broke their legs.

   Of the old water carrier

   Whom soldiers ordered off his  donkey

   And role  [rode?]  on his back, just for fun.


   We turned a deaf  ear.

   We turned  a deaf heart.

    Mean, arrogant, and dumb.

   Who do we think we are

   To be so deaf, so dumb?

   Ignoring the obvious: They  are as human

   As  we are, as we are.

   At least as we used to be.

   Only forty one years ago.

   No less diligent, no less  smart

   As  sensitive, as full of hope.

   They love their wives and children

   As we do, no less.


   And our children now shoot  theirs

   With  lead, plastic bullets, and gas.

   The Palestinians State will come to pass, it  will.

   Not a  poet wrote this.  History will.

   And seasons will come and seasons will go

   And life goes on as we very  well know.

    Weddings and birth and death all the same.

   But just the shame of it.  The  shame.

  Thank you again so very much for  inviting me and for so politely
listening to me. Now it is your  turn.

(Source:  http://www.MiddleEast.org)

 =====

Thought for the Day:

"The so called Christians of this world are like dog lovers whose pets can
do no wrong. They talk to them, they get advice from them. Jews are the
pets of the false Christians."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)