Countdown

Second-Class Citizens?

Volume VII, No. 26
Posted on Tuesday July 11, 2006

Second-Class Citizens?

For the first time since 1967, Israel is refusing US citizens of Palestinian descent entry into the West Bank. “The ban has so far affected several thousand American and European nationals, whom Israel has kept from returning to their homes and jobs, or from visiting their families in the West Bank. This could potentially impact many more thousands who live in the territories—including university instructors and researchers, employees working in various vital development programs and business owners—as well as thousands of foreign citizens who pay annual visits to relatives there,” reports Israel’s Haaretz. Response from the US Embassy has been muted with an Embassy spokesperson telling Haaretz, “the United States cannot intervene in sovereign decisions of another country.” During the recent Congressional debate on aid to Egypt, legislators repeatedly raised the issue of accountability for countries receiving billions of dollars in US aid. Surely the profiling and discrimination of American citizens by the leading recipient of American largesse is something the State Department can speak out on. Why the silence?

Support the Troops…Don’t Deport Their Families

With Congress headed for summer recess without an immigration compromise forthcoming, legislators are taking the debate on the road with hearings throughout the country to garner support for rival House and Senate measures. The Miami Herald reports on a Florida session sponsored by the Senate Armed Services Committee examining the contributions of immigrants to the military. West Point professor Margaret Stock warned of the negative impact on morale of the armed service’s 40,000 immigrants caused by threats to deport some of their relatives. “The US military members…may not want to contribute to serve in the United States military when his or her family has been banished to Mexico, the Philippines or some other far away place,” she said. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, choked back tears as he reflected on his own immigrant roots as well as those of his predecessors, “Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a Polish immigrant whose parents were originally from former Soviet Georgia and Gen. Colin Powell, son of Jamaican parents. ‘And now, Gen. Pace,’ he started, and paused for several seconds—his face turning a deep red. ‘This country gave me and my family an incredible opportunity.’”

Losing Hearts and Minds…

As with the Vietnam war, the conflict in Iraq has caused many Americans to face painful realities—among them the futility of war as a vehicle to project American values abroad as well as its devastating toll on innocent civilians. In the Washington Post, Boston University’s Andrew Bacevich tells the painful story of Nahiba Husayif Jassim, a young Iraqi woman who was shot to death when her brother sped through an American checkpoint because she was in labor. Jassim’s brother offers the troubling judgment that Americans, “have no regard for our lives.” “It’s not that we have no regard for Iraqi lives; it’s just that we have much less regard for them,” writes Bacevich. “The current reparations policy—the payment offered in those instances in which U.S. forces do own up to killing an Iraq civilian—makes the point. The insurance payout to the beneficiaries of an American soldier who dies in the line of duty is $400,000, while in the eyes of the U.S. government, a dead Iraqi civilian is reportedly worth up to $2,500 in condolence payments—about the price of a decent plasma-screen TV…And although President Bush has remarked in a different context that ‘every human life is a precious gift of matchless value,’ our actions in Iraq continue to convey the impression that civilian lives aren’t worth all that much. That impression urgently needs to change. To start, the Pentagon must get over its aversion to counting all bodies. It needs to measure in painstaking detail—and publicly—the mayhem we are causing as a byproduct of what we call liberation. To do otherwise, to shrug off the death of Nahiba Husayif Jassim as just one of those things that happens in war, only reinforces the impression that Americans view Iraqis as less than fully human. Unless we demonstrate by our actions that we value their lives as much as the lives of our own troops, our failure is certain.”

Heartbreak in Gaza

Often lost in news reports on the crisis in Gaza is the devastating impact of Israel’s incursions on innocent Palestinian civilians. Writing for the Boston Globe, Mona El-Farra offers a much-needed voice—that of a physician, human rights advocate, and mother. “As a physician, I fear for our patients. Twenty-two hospitals have no electricity. They have to rely on generators, but the generators need fuel. We have enough fuel to last a few days at most, because the borders are sealed so no fuel can get in. The shortage of power threatens the lives of patients on life-support machines and children in intensive care, as well as renal dialysis patients and others. Hundreds of operations have been postponed. The pharmacies were already nearly empty because of Israeli border closures and the cutoff of international aid…Food too is spoiling without refrigeration, and food supplies are low. West Bank farmers threw away truckloads of spoiled fruit after sitting for days and then being denied Israeli permission to enter Gaza. Children grow hungry as we watch the food that could nourish them thrown into the garbage instead. More than 30,000 children suffer from malnutrition, and this number will increase as diarrhea spreads because of the limited supply of clean water and food contamination…Though we do not now live with ease, we live with resolve. Until the world pressures Israel to recognize our rights in our land, and to pursue a peace that brings freedom and security to Israelis and Palestinians, we both will continue to pay the price.”