HBO and NPR both excluded the prayer/speech by openly-gay New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson at the opening of Sunday’s pre-inaugural ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial.

It was a strong speech, and parts of it should

Theo of the radical British folk group Seize the Day (www.myspace.com/seizethedayfolk) just sent this suggestion, and while I’m still working up the courage to act on it, I thought it was so compelling that I ought to do my small part to make it go viral, so here goes!

__________

Today I phoned Israel

Calling Israel – pass it on

Today I called a randomly selected resident in Israel.

Not to issue threats or warnings. Not to unload my emotions on them. Not in any way to add to their feelings of isolation and victimhood.

Just to show them that, as much as the world loves them and respects their right to exist, we also love Palestinians and respect their right to exist.

I said “Hi, do you speak English? My name is _____ and I’m calling from England. I just wanted to say that I completely support your right to exist as an Israeli citizen, and to live without fear of attack.
I also wanted to say that I detest what your government is doing in Gaza, and I want you to demand an immediate end to the mass killing. The people of Gaza have an equal right to life.”
I listened respectfully to their response for a while, without entering into an arguement about Hamas etc. I ended by reaffirming that the killing of Palestinian children can NEVER be justified.

If thousands of us made 1 or 2 calls it might help start to shift public awareness in Israel.
I dialled 141 first to withold my number. It took a few tries to find a number that worked.

HOW TO CALL
To call random Israelis, you can use most eight-digit sequences following the country code 972.
The first of the eight digits is the area code (2 for Jerusalem, 3 for Tel Aviv, 4 for Haifa, 6 for the north, 8 for the south, and 9 for the center). The next digit should be between 5 and 9. Then any 6 digits.
So, a Tel Aviv number from UK could be 00 – 972 – 3 – 5 – 691120
(-but don’t dial that one, unless you want the office of the Israeli Army Chief of Staff!)

I dialled 141 first to withold my number.

TIME OF CALL: Sensible hours. Israel is 2 hours ahead of Britain. For other time conversions, see link below. Remember Saturday is Shabbat and it will finish at nightfall. If you call on Shabbat, you might want to say “Shabbat Shalom. My name is ..” If you call after nightfall its common to say “Shavua Tov. My name is…” Shavua Tov means “Good week.”
In general people don’t answer the phone on Shabbat, but they will definitely do so after nightfall.

NOTE: Some Israelis will have been personally hurt by Palestinian attacks, many will have loved ones in the army, and some already oppose the military operation. There is a mass demo against the war in Tel Aviv tonight (saturday 17th).

Links:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

http://www.seizetheday.org/music.cfm?trackID=52&albumID=4&alphabet

As a new president who symbolically embodies the hopes of the world for peace takes charge, multiple seemingly-eternal perennial problems are taking center stage as if to say a resounding NO to our hopes. At the front of the line of crises facing the new administration are the Gaza war, the threat of global warming and the collapse of the world economy. Obama is not going to be able to do anything to solve these problems, even assuming he has the best of intentions, without our help.

It gives me hope to see the residents of the British village of Sipson, threatened by the construction of the new Heathrow runway, getting ready to take nonviolent action in defense of their hometown and their cemetery (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/jan/16/heathrow-third-runway-sipson) . Britain has been in the process of seriously greening its infrastructure, and the proposed runway seemed to be all but defeated by anti-global-warming campaigners before the Labour party yesterday approved the airport expansion. The global-warming

My own most vivid image of spying and “intelligence operations” comes from the day, during the Vietnam War era, when I returned to the urban farm where I was living at the time and found a twisted cigarrette butt on a plate in the middle of the kitchen table. The man who ran the farm was a Christian draft resister, a non-smoker and vegetarian. When he returned home, he told me he’d seen these twisted butts before, and that they belonged to an FBI agent who was following him around. The agent apparently felt he had the right to “break in” to any place my friend was living, to harass and intimidate his friends and family and to violate anyone’s privacy and dignity at any time. The FBI is small-potatoes compared with the US’s international spying apparatus.

I was reminded of that incident again last week when the Maryland police admitted they had spied extensively on a varity of peaceful protest groups during the last few years (http://www.examiner.com/x-243-Progressive-Politics-Examiner~y2009m1d4-Maryland-police-surveillance-run-amok). This clearly is only coming out now because this particular agency was clumsy in protecting its files, but the pattern has almost certainly been followed by police and “intelligence” agencies all over the US in the years since 2001.

Whenever we learn of covert operations, such as Iran-Contra, we see that they have generally done profound damage to democracy and human rights and trust in the rule of law, but I have to admit that they can, at least theoretically, be less damaging than the out-and-out warfare, mass imprisonment, etc. that might be the alternative.

It was leaked yesterday that, last year, Israel asked the United States to drop bunker-busting bombs (nuclear?) on the main Iranian nuclear facility and that the Bush administration had rejected the request as too risky. I am heartened by this apparent show of sanity among Bush foreign policy advisors, since bombing Iran could have led to a much wider US war in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, Bush did not simply reject the Israeli proposal; he substituted a plan to increase covert actions against Iran and its suppliers worldwide, and news reports covering the leak are saying that these measures have been effective in delaying Iran’s ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. By the very nature of the covert situation, we don’t know what side effects these programs may be causing (could they be the indirect cause of Israel’s bloodthirsty invasion of Gaza? Of the world financial crisis? Of the appalling situations in the Sudan and the Congo?)

I have long been uncomfortable with spying and covert action, but this incident shows that, when implemented as part of a compromise, it may be able to decrease the use of actual warmaking.

Spycraft is inherently undemocratic, since it must operate secretly and provide politicians “deniability”. It is for this reason that I’m watching the formation of the Obama “security team” with some trepidation. Leon Panetta, the new CIA chief, seems to have been chosen because he is a shrewd political operator and publicist, rather than for any good judgement he may have shown in running security operations, and Admiral Dennis Blair, the new Director of National Security, is quite the opposite, having a long record of “intelligence activities” which include highly questionable activities in support of the Indonesian assault on East Timor. If the US is to avoid more “hot” wars, the alternatives will include open diplomacy and covert actions by spy agencies. Panetta’s nomination signals a strong concern to make the spy agencies look good in the press, whatever they actually do in secret. Blair’s appointment seems to signal that heavy-handed actions in support of “stability” rather than change in the world situation will be the rule.

I’d love to see the day when a US administration can act openly on behalf for peace and justice in the world without needing to resort to secret behind-the-scenes actions. As it stands, a few congressional representatives and senators on the “intelligence committees” will have to be our eyes and ears making sure that the secret power of spying is used for the good, and I hope we can trust them to speak out when the spy agencies plan to make us all complicit in evils such as torture, collective punishment and assassination.