John Ging in Cleveland, on the Suffering in Gaza

"U.N. relief official tells of suffering in Gaza Strip"
Posted by Robert L. Smith/Plain Dealer Reporter March 31, 2009 03:00AM

John Ging, the closest thing to a referee in the seething and suffering Gaza Strip, told a Cleveland audience he knows a way to end the humanitarian crisis that created his job.

But peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to see the humanity in the other side, the United Nations' relief worker said at the City Club of Cleveland on Monday. The crowd's response indicated his solution faces skepticism even a world away from the troubles.

Still, the Irishman would not be dissuaded by either affirming applause or murmurs of dissent from a largely Arab-American crowd.


"No civilians should be at the receiving end of a rocket," Ging declared in a soft brogue laden with emotion. "Until we get there and rehumanize everyone in this conflict, then we are not going to move forward."

Ging, a veteran of world catastrophes, is the director of operations for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency. The agency was created in 1949 to respond to the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Sixty years later, it's the largest U.N. agency on the planet, with 10,000 employees trying to provide jobs, health care and education to 750,000 refugees in Gaza, a crowded Mediterranean enclave of 1.4 million Palestinians.

Ging stopped in Cleveland on a brief visit to the United States at the invitation of the local Arab-American community.

He has been harshly critical of Israel in the aftermath of its December attack on the Islamic Hamas movement, which rules Gaza. On Monday, he accused the Israeli Defense Forces of pointlessly destroying Gaza homes and schools and dehumanizing innocent civilians.

Ging said Israel is now thwarting Gaza's recovery by restricting the flow of goods and supplies into the territory.

"Lifting the siege in Gaza is an urgent, urgent first step" to restoring human dignity, Ging said to applause.

But he also spread the blame around, at times to the consternation of his audience.

An Israeli mother who does not know if her child will be picked off by a rocket fired aimlessly from Gaza is a victim of terrorism, Ging said. She is the victim of a crime that destroys chances for peace.

During the question-and-answer period, a woman in the audience suggested Israelis are not victims if they are living on Palestinian lands. She likened settlers to scared bank robbers running from their crime.

"You can't shoot someone in the back because they are running away," Ging responded. "Force is not the answer. It's just not the answer. The path to peace lies in the rule of law."

Ging, a lawyer by trade, has directed humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts in Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon. He said international law and accountability need to be reintroduced into the Gaza conflict. He stressed that peace requires another human quality -- empathy.

Ging urged supporters of Palestinians in Gaza to visit Israeli communities in range of Hamas rockets. He urged supporters of Israel to go to see the ruins of Gaza.

"Then go back to your friends and be good friends, really," he said. "Tell them you understand what it is like on the other side."

Mahmoud Darwish's "A Ready Script"/one of his last poems...

"A Ready Script" by Mahmoud Darwish, trans. Fady Joudah


Let's presume now that we,
the enemy and I,
fell from the air
into a hole . . .
what might happen?

A ready script:
In the beginning we wait for luck,
the rescuers might find us here
and toss a safety rope our way,
and he'd say: me first
and I'd say: me first
and in vain we'd curse
each other out
before the rope reaches us

The script says
I, a selfish optimist, will
whisper to myself without wondering
what my enemy whispers to himself

He and I
are partners in one trap
and in the probability game,
we wait for the rescue rope
so we can part ways

by the edge of the hole - the chasm,
and go to what remains
for us of life
and war... if we
are able to survive

He and I
are frightened
and don't exchange any words
about fear, or other than fear
since we are foes . . .

What might happen if a snake
were to appear to us here
out of one of the scenes and hiss
before swallowing the two
frightened ones, he and I?

The script says:
We will partner up in killing the snake
to survive together
or alone . . .

Yet we will share a phrase of gratitude
and congratulations on what
we have accomplished together
even if it was instinct, and not us,
that defended itself, and instinct
has no ideology

And we did not converse:
I remembered the law of communication
over mutual frivolity
when he once told me:
What has become mine is mine
and what is yours
is yours
and mine . . .

And with time, and time is sand and soap bubbles,
boredom and silence
broke what's between us, and he asked me: What now?
I said: Not much, let's drain the possibilities
He said: Where will hope come from?
I said: From the air
He said: Did you forget I buried you in a hole like this?
I said: I almost did, because an alluring worn out
tomorrow pulled me by the hand . . .
He said: Will you negotiate with me now?
I said: Over what now in this hole, this grave?
He said: Over your share and mine
of our void and our mutual grave
I said: What's the use? Time has run away
from us, and destiny doesn't follow the rule,
the murdered and his murderer sleep in this hole,
and another poet must see this script through
to its end!

[published by The American Poetry Review, Nov/Dec 2008]

New Letters Guest Edited Issue on War

Call for Submissions

Mia Leonin is guest editing a selection of poetry for an upcoming issue of New Letters and would like to focus on poems about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers and veterans are especially welcome to submit.


Send unpublished poems to Mia Leonin at Mleonin@yahoo.com

Please write “War Poetry” in the subject heading and include your contact info.



Deadline: May 1, 2009.

"My Enemy": Mohammad and Tom

Johnny Cash's "Hurt"/A Poetics of Agency and Suffering

Dear Johnny Cash, thanks for the chills. If only to write one thing as moving as this.

Encountering the Other, The Music Between Them

Palestinian children sing for Holocaust survivors

By The Associated Press


The Palestinian youths from a tough West Bank refugee camp stood facing the elderly Holocaust survivors on Wednesday, appearing somewhat defiant in a teenage sort of way. Then they began to sing.

The choir burst into songs for peace, bringing surprised smiles from the audience. But the event had another twist: Most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide - or even what the Holocaust was.

"I feel sympathy for them," said Ali Zeid, an 18-year-old keyboard player, who added that he was shocked by what he learned about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in their campaign to wipe out European Jewry.
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"Only people who have been through suffering understand each other," said Zeid, who said his grandparents were Palestinian refugees forced to flee the northern city of Haifa during the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948.

The 13 musicians, aged 11 to 18, belong to Strings of Freedom, a modest orchestra from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the scene of a deadly 2002 battle between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers.

The event, held at the Holocaust Survivors Center in this tree-lined central Israeli town, was part of Good Deeds Day, an annual event run by an organization connected to billionaire Shari Arison, Israel's richest woman.

The two-hour meeting starkly highlighted how distant Palestinians and Israelis have become after more than eight years of bloody Palestinian militant attacks and deadly Israeli military reprisals.

Most of the Palestinian youths had not seen an Israeli civilian before - only gun-toting soldiers in military uniforms manning checkpoints, conducting arrest raids of wanted Palestinians or during army operations.

"They don't look like us," said Ahed Salameh, 12, who wore a black head scarf woven with silver.

Most of the elderly Israelis wore pants and T-shirts, with women sporting a smear of lipstick.

"Old people look different where we come from," Salameh said.

She said she was shocked to hear about the Nazi genocide against Jews. Ignorance and even denial of the Holocaust is widespread in Palestinian society.

Amnon Beeri of the Abraham Fund, which supports coexistence between Jews and Arabs, said most of the region's residents have no real idea about the other.

The youths said their feisty conductor, Wafa Younis, 50, tried to explain to them who the elderly people were, but chaos on the bus prevented them from listening.

The elderly audience said they assumed Arab children were from a nearby village - not from the refugee camp where 23 Israeli soldiers were killed, alongside 53 Palestinian militants and civilians, in several days of battle in April 2002.

Some 30 elderly survivors gathered in the center's hall as teenage boys and girls filed in 30 minutes late - delayed at an Israeli military checkpoint outside their town, they later explained.

Some of the young women wore Muslim head scarves - but also sunglasses and school ties.

As a host announced in Hebrew that the youths were from the Jenin refugee camp, there were gasps and muttering from the crowd. "Jenin?" one woman asked in jaw-dropped surprise.

Younis, from the Arab village of Ara in Israel, then explained in fluent Hebrew that the youths would sing for peace, prompting the audience to burst into applause.

"Inshallah," said Sarah Glickman, 68, using the Arabic term for God willing.

The encounter began with an Arabic song, "We sing for peace," and was followed by two musical pieces with violins and Arabic drums, as well as an impromptu song in Hebrew by two in the audience.

Glickman, whose family moved to the newly created Jewish state in 1949 after fleeing to Siberia to escape the Nazis, said she had no illusions the encounter would make the children understand the Holocaust. But she said it might make a small difference.

"They think we are strangers, because we came from abroad," Glickman said. "I agree: It's their land, also. But there was no other option for us after the Holocaust."

Later, she tapped her feet in tune as the teenagers played a catchy Mideast drum beat. After the event, some of the elderly Israelis chatted with students and took pictures together.

The encounter was not absent of politics. Younis dedicated a song to an Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip - and also criticized Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

But she said the main mission of the orchestra, formed seven years ago to help Palestinian children overcome war trauma, was to bring people together.

"I'm here to raise spirits," Younis said. "These are poor, old people."

Yoga, Basketball, and Poetry

I'm crazy about yoga, partly because it's made my basketball game better (my apologies to the true yogis, who would find such thinking counter to the principles. Sorry, guys). Turns out I'm not the only one--our Cleveland Demigod, LeBron James, is also a yoga nut. Any poets out there who are yoga mad?

LeBron's extra edge: Cavaliers star's devotion to yoga training helps keep James healthy
Posted by jturner March 23, 2009 22:11PM

CLEVELAND -- Over the last year, hotel guests in various NBA cities have likely been a little jolted to see the Cavaliers' LeBron James out by the pool in the mornings. Not so much because he's a celebrity, but because he just might be standing on his head.

When James first came into the NBA at the age of 18 he didn't even tape his ankles, sometimes ate McDonald's an hour before tipoff and his main use for ice was cooling beverages.

As he's matured, part out of necessity and part out of pride, he's serious about preparing and maintaining his body for the rigors of an NBA season. That includes a wide range of measures from diet and recovery techniques to the Vajrasana, Virasana and the particularly stunning Salamba Sarvangasana.

They are yoga poses and they are also an essential part of James' routine every week.

"Yoga isn't just about the body, it's also about the mind and it's a technique that has really helped me," James said. "You do have to focus because there's some positions that can really hurt you at times if you aren't focused and breathing right."

From the "thunderbolt pose" to the "hero pose" to even "downward facing dog," James has become a devout believer in the benefits of yoga. He and assistant athletic trainer Mike Mancias have been developing a regimen over the last two years.

James got serious last summer when Mancias was with him for much of the Team USA events in Las Vegas and China. During the season, they carve out time at least once a week and sometimes more for the practice. Often it happens at team hotels on the road and the two prefer to do it outside if possible. The two also do some pilates exercises.

"He tries to focus on things that will help him and that the body needs, especially for balance and to strengthen his core," said Mancias, who is in his fifth year with the Cavs.

Dana Bail/Cavaliers photoIt can be a topsy-turvy world in the NBA, but James has plenty of practice at keeping his balance, regardless of where he finds himself.

"Yoga is an activity that encompasses all that. It's total body and it helps him mentally, too. Flexibility is important to him and we've tried to incorporate all of that into a routine."

Basketball players have been experimenting with yoga for decades. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was perhaps the first high-profile player to embrace it. In recent years, Shaquille O'Neal has used it at times to increase flexibility in his legs. Phil Jackson, who is famous for his alternative techniques, used it as a player to help with back problems and had the Bulls go through a series of yoga classes throughout the 1997-98 championship season.

The theory is that basketball players tend to be strong in certain areas, such as the legs and arms, due to the nature of the game. But all the repetitive motion can build up tension and limit flexibility in some joints and large muscles.

James started getting into the importance of stretching during his third season. Partially inspired by then-teammate Alan Henderson -- who extended his 12-year career by using elastic bands and a large inflatable ball in a stretching routine -- James began to devote himself to making sure he was limber.

At the time he was also bothered by some lower back spasms, which nearly forced him out of a playoff game against the Wizards in 2006. That and a couple of nasty ankle sprains got James focused on doing things to maximize his physical tools. Stretching with bands after practices and games slowly developed into using yoga.

The positions increase flexibility in areas athletes don't always pay attention to but basketball players need. Such as ankles, shoulders and hips. Fans can surely remember times when James appeared to have suffered serious ankle injuries only to shake them off. Some of that may be due to the freakish size of James' joints, but some of it may be from those targeted workouts.

Two weeks ago, for example, he flipped backwards over his neck chasing a loose ball in Phoenix. It looked like he may have hurt himself doing it, but in reality it was sort of like the Salamba Sarvangasana, or shoulder stand, he'd worked on a day before.

"It is something that really can help your balance," James said. "I had some lower back problems a few years ago and once I started to do the yoga, it has helped them go away for now. Of course we can stretch but stretching only goes so far."

It's part of a package James now employs. He gets massages on most game days, gets his ankles heavily taped and wears a padded vest under his jersey to protect his ribs, and ices his feet and lower back after every game and contact workout. It includes an overall better series of eating habits and weight training, which James is now more devoted to than ever.

"People don't see everything that he does, he's focused on doing everything for his body that will help him succeed," Mancias said. "The proof is what he's been showing on the court."

Recently James held a special event for some students from Holy Cross Elementary in Euclid at the Cleveland Clinic Courts to promote yoga and its benefits. At first he seemed a little shy in talking about yoga; brute athletes in the past have not always been lauded for work with such finesse arts.

But as James has experienced the benefits, he's become an advocate of yoga, pilates and massage therapy that he does with the Cavs and their support staff.

"I've been blessed with a lot of physical talent and a strong body," James said. "I have focused on working hard to maximize those gifts."

Come Together reading and fundraiser for the Peace Show tonight!

COME TOGETHER:
IMAGINE PEACE
Join us for a coffeehouse
book release party, reading, food & fundraiser
for THE PEACE SHOW
the annual festival alternative to the Air Show

featuring Bree, John Burroughs (Jesus Crisis), Alice Cone, Daja Crawford, Michael Fiala, Sarah Gridley, Stephen Haven, Jennifer Karmin, Jack McGuane, Ray McNiece, Philip Metres, Robert Miltner, Michael Salinger, Leonard Shelton, Ann Smith, Larry Smith, Andrew Summerson, Joanna Trecziak, & more!

at The Lit: 2570 Superior Ave, Suite 203,Cleveland
Friday, March 20th, 7-10 pm

Free & open to the public
Donations welcome ($20 includes signed poetry anthology!)

Contact Philip Metres at 397-4528 or pmetres@jcu.edu

David Bromwich's "Thoughts on the Death of Rachel Corrie"

"Thoughts on the Death of Rachel Corrie" by David Bromwich (Huffington Post, March 19,2009)

Today is the sixth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, she was run over by an armor-plated Caterpillar bulldozer, a machine sold by the U.S. to Israel, the armor put in place for the purpose of knocking down homes without damage to the machine. Rachel Corrie was 23 years old, from Olympia; a sane, articulate, and dedicated American who had studied with care the methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. At the time that she was run over, and then backed over again, she was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and holding a megaphone. There is a photograph of her talking to the soldier of the Israel Defense Forces, in the cabin of his bulldozer, not long before he did it. None of the eyewitnesses believed that the killing was accidental. Perhaps the soldier was tired of the peace workers; it was that kind of day. Perhaps, in some part of himself, he guessed that he was living at the beginning of a period of impunity.


The Israeli government never produced the investigation it promised into the death of Rachel Corrie (as her parents indicate in a statement published today). The inquiry urged by her congressional representative, Adam Smith, brought no result from the American state department under Condoleezza Rice. Her story was lost for a while in the grand narrative of the American launching of the war against Iraq. Thoroughly lost, and for a reason. The rules of engagement America employed in Iraq were taught to our soldiers, as Dexter Filkins revealed, by officers of the IDF; the U.S. owed a debt to Israel for knowledge of the methods of destruction; and we were using the same Caterpillar machines against Iraqi homes. An inquiry into the killing of Rachel Corrie was hardly likely, given the burden of that debt and that association.

Less than a month later, on April 5, 2003, the American peace worker Brian Avery was shot in the face and seriously disfigured by IDF soldiers in Jenin. The group he was with were wearing red reflector vests with the word "doctor" written in English and Arabic. As Avery later described it, they "weren't two blocks from our apartment when an Israeli convoy of two vehicles, a tank and an armored personnel carrier, drove up the street from the direction that we were walking from. And so as we heard them coming closer, we stepped off to the side of the road to let them pass by....We stood to the side of the road, we put our hands out to show we didn't have any weapons and weren't, you know, threatening them in any way....And once they drove within about 30 meters of where we were standing, they opened fire with their machine guns and continued shooting for a very long time, probably shooting about, you know, 30 rounds of ammunition, which is quite a lot when you see them in action. And I was struck in the face with one of the bullets."

Three days ago another American peace worker, Tristan Anderson, who was protesting the new security fence in the West Bank town of Ni'lin, was shot by another Israeli soldier. It now appears that Tristan Anderson will live; if so, it will be the life that follows having a portion of his right frontal lobe cut out, and a major trauma to the bone surrounding his right eye. The hole in his face was blasted by a tear-gas canister that struck him face-on. The canister was fired into the crowd by an IDF soldier from an emplacement high above. There had been sporadic rock-throwing earlier, but at the time of the incident, as more than one witness attests, the crowd was doing nothing; the canister could not have been fired in self-defense. But whether by reckless whim or premeditation, it came from a soldier in the knowledge that it does not greatly matter now if you kill a Palestinian or the occasional European or American who was working to defend the Palestinians. IDF soldiers who commit arbitrary acts of violence enjoy a presumption of innocence that approaches official immunity granted by the state. Where all of the violence performed by the state is justified by self-defense, everything is permitted.

What drives these Americans to risk their lives against Israeli soldiers on behalf of a subject people half the world away? The answer is a passion for justice, and a commitment to civil rights. Why should any of this be of interest to Americans? For a general reason and a particular one. The general: this is a passion and a commitment that we Americans at our best have been supposed to share; it is the largest single reason we have received the admiration of other people around the world. The particular reason is as obvious but more immediate. Barack Obama, our first black president, and a man who has identified himself as a beneficiary and successor of the tradition of Martin Luther King, has promised $30 billion of military aid to Israel over the next ten years -- with no conditions, no budget-items specified, no limitations spoken of. Barack Obama is known to be a moderate politician, and so we may deduce that the moderate plan, with Israel, is to keep increasing the leviathan-bulk of the American subsidy and not to ask questions.

We ought to know a good deal about a country to which we give such large continuous donations. But Americans who care for public discussion of this subject are obliged to conduct it ourselves, since, if recent history is a guide, we will get no help from the leading American newspapers. Even the appointment today of Avigdor Lieberman, an avowed racist and a believer in the feasibility of the expulsion of all Palestinians, as foreign minister in the new Israeli government under Binyamin Netanyahu -- even this predicted and extraordinary news is not likely to provoke the New York Times or the Washington Post to report with honesty who this Lieberman is, and what he signifies. Nor will the Obama administration do it. They will be as hesitant and mixed and occasionally contradictory in their signals on Israel as they have been on many other subjects; more so, because in this case an organized body of censors and guardians attends to the reputation and support of Israel in the U.S. Let us nonetheless open the discussion by admitting that the Israel we think we know is the Israel of books written sixty and forty years ago, and of movies made from those books.

It is a different Israel one comes to know in a recent book, Lords of the Land, by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.

The authors of Lords of the Land are both Israelis, a scrupulous historian and a respected journalist, and the book, scarcely noticed in the U.S., was the center of a controversy when it first appeared in Israel in 2005. It deals with the settlements, or colonies, in the West Bank. One discovers in Lords of the Land that the IDF, which assists in the illegal administration of those occupied lands, has in fact changed enormously in recent years. Its new moral complexion, witnessed with astonishment by the world in the recent assault on Gaza, is a consequence of the presence of settlers in the army and of political allies of the settlers in the army's high command. The restraint for which the IDF was once admired has dissipated under a regime in which orthodox rabbis, hungry for the re-possession of a land they believe was theirs from eternity, are able to override officers and to tell individual soldiers by no means to miss a chance to kill anyone who blocks the way to an expanded Israel.

So enthralled are some minds in the grip of this religious state discipline that they refer to the 1967 borders of Israel -- the boundaries to which a secular government must largely return if there is to be a two-state settlement -- as the "Auschwitz borders." This mad slogan has been taken up by American admirers of the settlements, keen to be known as victims even when they serve as executioners. Stripped of the savage hyperbole, the sense of that statement is merely that these people want to hold onto the Israeli colonies on the West Bank at all costs. They are defending the confiscation of Palestinian lands and the gradual expulsion and transfer of the Palestinian people.

No person fearful of being a victim can be rewarded with special rights or special powers. If we -- Americans, Israelis, everyone -- want to deserve our freedom, we must agree to live in a moral world where people are responsible for themselves. And just as we cannot be punished for the things that our parents did, so the crimes we commit can never be justified by the things our parents suffered.

This is a moment to study the life and death of Rachel Corrie. She left letters of great interest which show her to have been a kind of young American that many of us have known and admired. Thoughtless protectors of the status quo will say that this is Israel's cause after all; that we have no right to ask questions, as Rachel Corrie did; that Israel, like the U.S., is a democracy under siege. This will not do. The U.S. and Israel are not helpless "survivor" countries, trying to work off the trauma of recent victimhood. We are vastly powerful modern states, both of which dominate our regions, and one of which could dream of dominating the world in the year 2000. Both have recently engaged, under the eyes of the world, in exorbitant, brutal, and unjustifiable wars that have tarnished our fame. In both countries, there is no sign of the militarism ending.

Yet in both countries -- though the U.S. lacks a newspaper even close to being as serious and candid as Haaretz -- there is a citizenry capable of being educated and roused to punctual action in its own long-term interest. The truth about this has never altered. The commandment governing the long-term good of a country is the same as that for an individual -- in the dry and accurate words of Thomas Hobbes, "Seek peace." And in memory of Rachel Corrie, let us say also: the addiction to war and indefinite expansion is no longer an Israeli problem. How did we ever dare to suppose that it was? When Americans are shot by a gun or mauled by a bulldozer, it is as much an American problem as when James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were beaten, shot, and burned, and their bodies left in a swamp, in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964.

The Latest from Amira Hass

The recent article by Israeli journalist Amira Hass, known for her knowledge of Arabic language and intrepid muckraking reporting. If journalists could be called "prophets" in the traditional sense--those passionate excoriators of moral lassitude and protestors of spiritual indifference--I'd say Hass qualifies.

Last update - 02:50 17/03/2009

The writing on the wall
By Amira Hass

We came to annihilate you; Death to the Arabs; Kahane was right; No tolerance, we came to liquidate. This is a selection of graffiti Israeli soldiers left on the walls of Palestinians' homes in Gaza, which they turned into bivouacs and firing positions during Operation Cast Lead. Here and there, a soldier scribbled a line of mock poetry or biblical quote in the same sentiment. There were also curses on the Prophet Mohammed and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, along with shift schedules and favorite soccer teams.

When the homes' owners returned, they usually found widespread devastation - whether from the first shells the Israel Defense Forces fired to chase away the inhabitants, or from break-ins and the destruction of furniture, clothing, walls, computers and appliances. Frequently the breached homes remained standing in a neighborhood whose other houses were turned into rubble by bulldozers. The residents also found the trash the soldiers left behind.

In Israel, research institutes count every abusive slogan scrawled on Jewish cemeteries abroad and document every problematic article, to monitor the upsurge in anti-Semitism. The media attributes importance to every piece of graffiti against assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the everyday racism - both institutionalized and popular, declarative and practical - against the Arabs of Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank are usually cautiously and frugally covered.
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No wonder the Hebrew graffiti, whose writers were also destructive, on walls in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods were not picked up by Israeli antennae, always so sensitive to racism against Jews.

The military spokespeople could dismiss the reports and testimony of the killing of many civilians at short or long range as fabricated or manipulative, or could answer generally that the terrorists were responsible because they were hiding nearby. Israeli society, from whose view Cast Lead has been buried in a closed archive, is always ready for any trick to explain how righteous and morally superior its army is.

But the photographic evidence of the Hebrew graffiti is hard to deny or call fabricated; all the more so when it appears alongside the names of army units and individual soldiers. Indeed, the military spokesman said the graffiti contravenes the values of the IDF, and the IDF views it gravely.

Not all the soldiers wrote graffiti, but the comrades and commanders of those who did neither stopped them nor erased what they scrawled. So this is where we can praise the soldiers' sincerity and integrity. They felt free to write what they did because they - like the pilots and operators of the missile-bearing drones - knew they had received from their government and commanders a free hand to attack a civilian population. Why then should there be a problem with the words they chose? What they wrote on the walls reflects their understanding of the spirit of their mission.

Unlike the older commanders, who are permitted to speak to certain journalists acceptable to the army, and who recite carefully what the IDF's legal advisers and the State Prosecutor's Office tell them to say, the writers of the graffiti - soldiers in the regular army who grew up with the occupation and Israel's military superiority - have not yet understood that the world makes more than weapons. It also makes laws, rules and human norms.

Their commanders permitted them to contravene norms they are obviously unaware of. Unlike those who formulate the IDF Spokesman's responses, the young, unsophisticated soldiers are inexperienced at covering up the army's actions and its mission, their mission, with words that blur the truth.