Justice Forgotten
Whatever Happened to Palestine?
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
A group of anti-war leaders held a conference call at the end of August under the sponsorship of Michael Lerner's Network of Spiritual Progressives to do some long-term strategic planning for the anti-war movement. The discussants included leaders of the country's best known peace groups -- United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Pax Christi, the Department of Peace, and others -- as well as Lerner himself and Democratic Congressmen Lynn Woolsey and Jim Moran. They talked about Iraq, of course, but of virtually nothing else. There was a bit about "peace and justice" in general, one passing mention of trying to stop an attack on Iran, and a whole lot of talk about avoiding action on all issues, including even Iraq, until Woolsey and a couple of progressive colleagues try their hands at manipulating weak-kneed congressional Democrats into "showing some backbone" on a withdrawal from Iraq. This must be a new concept in opposing war: do nothing.
You would think there was nothing else wrong in the world. There was no talk of the U.S. aggression in Afghanistan (which is assumed even by the anti-war movement to be a "good" war, despite the excessive number of innocent civilians -- never remembered -- who have been killed there). There was nothing about safeguarding Lebanon from frequent Israeli attack and nothing, of course, about supporting Palestinian human and national rights or opposing Israel's gross violation of these rights. There was nothing, in short, about any of the massive injustices perpetrated around the world by the United States, primarily as part of the so-called war on terror, and ignored by the anti-war/peace movement. This is a peace movement but apparently not a justice movement. LINK