Our government stays quiet leaving one to wonder, where do our government's loyalties lie?  Obviously, not with the American people whom they are sworn to serve and protect. Rachel and Brian are evidence of this.  How is the US government serving their families by ignoring the event and not investigating it? Without understanding what has happened and why, how can they protect other Americans from suffering the same fate?  And why are they protecting a citizen from a foreign country before protecting their own? Why does the freedom and vanity of and Israeli soldier supercede the life of American citizens? TOP

Certainly our government is not protecting and defending US Constitution. Rachel was doing her duty as an American to see she exemplified our values thus encapsulated. That these principles are without borders: values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Constitutional guarantees like not allowing unlawful search, seizure or the confiscation and destruction of property without due process. In accordance US law, she was preventing US equipment from being used to persecute and attack civilians.  Our government certainly isn't.  They have been looking the other way, an immoral act showing a lack of ethics and patriotism for 30 years. Rachel was upholding international laws that forbid collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of family, livelihood and the property of civilians. These policies are known as Crimes Against Humanity and their practitioners face the gallows. Our government continues to fund them and provide the tools at taxpayer and the deprivation of social services expense.  Israel acts in its best interests, as they should. The question is, why does the US Government continue to act in Israel's best interests at the expense of its, or better stated, our own? TOP

Double Standards

On Oct. 15, 2003, three Americans died as they traveled through Gaza, presumably in an explosion allegedly set by Palestinians.  Within 24-hours the FBI arrived to investigate the deaths. It's been a year since Rachel was murdered and still no police agency of the US has bothered to investigate. Neither the FBI nor any other U.S.-led team has done anything to investigate the death of any American killed by an Israeli, including those of our own military, such is the case with the USS Liberty.  They've been waiting 38-years for an investigation. Our government chooses to protect Israeli citizens from prosecution rather than to protect the lives and needs of American citizens. Is this a policy in America's best interest?  Can you imagine any other country in the world getting away with murder when an American citizen is involved?

This past week, two American civilians found themselves the target of assassins at a security checkpoint, this time in Iraq.  Fern Holland, 33 of Oklahoma an attorney setting up women's rights conferences and assisting with the new constitution, and Robert J. Zangas, 44 of Pittsburgh, a former Marine and father of three working to set up the free press in Iraq. The civilians who were both assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority, based in Arlington, Va., died March 9 in Al-Hillah, Iraq.  With them also, an Iraqi national serving as a translator was killed. Within twenty-four hours the news was full of wonderful tributes to these two selfless individuals and the Department of Defense and FBI both committed to investigations.  They were not mocked for giving their lives to help others.  They were not vilified, ignored or swept under the rug.  Fern and Robert received the recognition, honor and admiration of the American people they deserved for giving their lives, honorably in service to others. 

February 7 2003

Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say, "Bush Majnoon", "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: "Bush mish Majnoon" ... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees - many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. And then waving and "What's your name?". Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously - occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving - many forced to be here, many just agressive - shooting into the houses as we wander away.

I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza". Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start.

My love to everyone. My love to my mom. My love to smooch. My love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and Lincoln School. My love to Olympia.

Rachel

MORE e-mails