Post by Paddy by Grace on Nov 3, 2009 15:33:22 GMT -7
By ELENA BONNER
Elena Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, speech before a
conference in Oslo .
In his invitation to this conference, the president of the forum,
Thor Halvorssen, asked me to talk about my life, the suffering I have
endured and how I was able to bear it all. But today all that seems
to me quite unnecessary.
So I will say only a few words about myself.
At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was
executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My
grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir
Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: "And it felt that in
those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers." There were
hundreds of thousands of such children. Ilya Ehrenburg called us "the
strange orphans of 1937."
Then came the war. My generation was cut off nearly at the roots by
the war, but I was lucky. I came back from the war. I came back to an
empty house. My grandmother had died of starvation in the siege of
Leningrad . Then came a communal apartment, six half-hungry years of
medical school, falling in love, two children and the poverty of a
Soviet doctor. But I was not alone in this. Everyone lived this way.
Then there was my dissident period followed by exile. But Andrei
[Sakharov] and I were together! And that was true happiness.
Today, summing up my life (at age 86, I try to sum up my life every
day I am still alive), I can do so in three words. My life was
typical, tragic and beautiful. Whoever needs the details - read my
two books, Alone Together and Mothers and Daughters. They have been
translated into many languages. Read Sakharov's Memoirs. It's a pity
his diaries haven't been translated; they were published in Russia in
2006. Apparently, the West isn't interested now in Sakharov.
THE WEST isn't very interested in Russia either, a country that no
longer has real elections, independent courts or freedom of the
press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists
and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme
corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier
in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss
mainly? Gas and oil - of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only
political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure
and blackmail. And there's another topic that never disappears from
the newspapers - who rules Russia ? [ Vladimir ] Putin or [Dimitry]
Medvedev? But what difference does it make, if Russia has completely
lost the impulse for democratic development that we thought we saw in
the early 1990s. Russia will remain the way it is now for decades,
unless there is some violent upheaval.
During the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has
experienced incredible changes in an exceptionally short period. But
has the world become better, or more prosperous for the 6 billion 800
million people who live on our small planet? No one can answer that
question unambiguously, despite all the achievements of science and
technology and that process which we customarily call "progress." It
seems to me that the world has become more alarming, more
unpredictable and more fragile. This alarm, unpredictability and
fragility are felt to some extent by all countries and all
individuals. And civic and political life becomes more and more
virtual, like a picture on a computer screen.
Even so, the picture of life, formed by television, newspaper or
radio remains the same - there is no end to the conferences, summits,
forums and competitions from beauty contests to sandwich-eating ones.
They say people are coming together - but in reality, they are
growing apart.
And that isn't because an economic depression suddenly burst forth,
and swine flu to boot. This began on September 11, 2001. At first,
anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in
London , Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers
who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding
parties whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.
Later, [George W.] Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the
Jews - that is, Israel . An example was the first Durban Conference,
and the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe , noted several years ago in
a speech by Romano Prodi. Then there was Durban-2; the main speaker
was [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad proposing to annihilate Israel .
SO IT IS about Israel and the Jews that I will speak. And not only
because I am Jewish, but above all because the Middle Eastern
conflict since the end of World War II has been a platform for
political games and gambling by the great powers, the Arab countries
and individual politicians, striving, through the so-called "peace
process," to make a name for themselves, and perhaps win a Nobel
Peace Prize. At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral
award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser
Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was
undermined. I haven't always greeted each selection of the Nobel
Committee of the Storting [Norwegian parliament] with joy, but that
one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the
fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasser Arafat, now posthumously, share
membership in the club of Nobel laureates.
In many of Sakharov's publications (in his books Progress,
Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom and My Country and the World, in
his articles and in his interviews), Andrei Dmitrievich wrote and
spoke about Israel . I have a collection of citations of his writing
on this topic. If it were published in Norway , then many Norwegians
would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel
differs from the view of Sakharov.
Here are several citations from Sakharov: " Israel has an
indisputable right to exist"; " Israel has a right to existence within
safe borders"; "All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced
upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders"; "With all the money
that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have
been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good
lives in Arab countries."
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS of Israel 's existence there has been war.
Victorious wars, and also wars which Israel was not allowed to win.
Each and every day - literally every day - there is the expectation
of a terrorist act or a new war. We have seen the Oslo peace
initiatives and the Camp David handshake and the road map and land
for peace (there is not much land - from one side of Israel on a
clear day you can see the other side with your naked eye).
Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it's an old one): "Two
states for two peoples." It sounds good. And there is no controversy
in the peacemaking Quartet, made up of the US , the UN, the EU and
Russia (some great peacemaker, with its Chechen war and its
Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries,
and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional
demands to Israel . I will speak only of one demand: that Israel
accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and
demography are needed.
According to the UN's official definition, refugees are considered
those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who
are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and
the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number -
about 700,000-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews
(about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by UN
Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance.
Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first
generation, but in the second, third and now even in the fourth
generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency's report, the
number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in
1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to
natural population growth. All these people have the rights of
Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.
The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there
are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
Imagine Israel then, if another 5 million Arabs flood into it; Arabs
would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus created
next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because
in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel ,
there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews
and turned over to Palestinians - while in Gaza today there is not a
single Jew already.
The result is both strange and terrifying, because Israel will
essentially be destroyed. It is terrifying to see the short memory of
the august peacemaking Quartet, their leaders and their citizens if
they let this happen. Because the plan "two states for two peoples"
is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a
second one with the potential to do the same. A Judenfrei Holy Land -
the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those
who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?
AND ANOTHER question that has been a thorn for me for a long time.
It's a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn't the fate
of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit trouble you in the same way as
does the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?
You fought for and won the opportunity for the International
Committee of the Red Cross, journalists and lawyers to visit
Guantanamo . You know prison conditions, the prisoners' everyday
routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to
torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a
law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days
of his coming to the White House. And although he, just like
president Bush before him, does not know what to do with the
Guantanamo prisoners, there is hope that the new administration will
think up something.
But during the two years Schalit has been held by terrorists, the
world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why?
He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the
Geneva Conventions. The conventions say clearly that hostage-taking
is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed
to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is
much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Schalit's rights.
The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations
with the people who are holding Schalit in an unknown location, in
unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international
rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights
activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights
documents?
And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first
tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Schalit.
Release, and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in
Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.
Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I
can find no answer except that Schalit is an Israeli soldier, Schalit
is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism.
Again, it is fascism.
THIRTY-FOUR YEARS have passed since the day when I came to this city
to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize
ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received
filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov
used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel
Committee).
Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment
growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope
that countries, their leaders and people everywhere will recall and
adopt Sakharov's ethical credo: "In the end, the moral choice turns
out to be also the most pragmatic choice."
From a speech to the Freedom Forum in Oslo on May 19.
--
Ketubah by Karny
www.ketubahbykarny.com
Elena Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, speech before a
conference in Oslo .
In his invitation to this conference, the president of the forum,
Thor Halvorssen, asked me to talk about my life, the suffering I have
endured and how I was able to bear it all. But today all that seems
to me quite unnecessary.
So I will say only a few words about myself.
At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was
executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My
grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir
Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: "And it felt that in
those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers." There were
hundreds of thousands of such children. Ilya Ehrenburg called us "the
strange orphans of 1937."
Then came the war. My generation was cut off nearly at the roots by
the war, but I was lucky. I came back from the war. I came back to an
empty house. My grandmother had died of starvation in the siege of
Leningrad . Then came a communal apartment, six half-hungry years of
medical school, falling in love, two children and the poverty of a
Soviet doctor. But I was not alone in this. Everyone lived this way.
Then there was my dissident period followed by exile. But Andrei
[Sakharov] and I were together! And that was true happiness.
Today, summing up my life (at age 86, I try to sum up my life every
day I am still alive), I can do so in three words. My life was
typical, tragic and beautiful. Whoever needs the details - read my
two books, Alone Together and Mothers and Daughters. They have been
translated into many languages. Read Sakharov's Memoirs. It's a pity
his diaries haven't been translated; they were published in Russia in
2006. Apparently, the West isn't interested now in Sakharov.
THE WEST isn't very interested in Russia either, a country that no
longer has real elections, independent courts or freedom of the
press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists
and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme
corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier
in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss
mainly? Gas and oil - of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only
political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure
and blackmail. And there's another topic that never disappears from
the newspapers - who rules Russia ? [ Vladimir ] Putin or [Dimitry]
Medvedev? But what difference does it make, if Russia has completely
lost the impulse for democratic development that we thought we saw in
the early 1990s. Russia will remain the way it is now for decades,
unless there is some violent upheaval.
During the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has
experienced incredible changes in an exceptionally short period. But
has the world become better, or more prosperous for the 6 billion 800
million people who live on our small planet? No one can answer that
question unambiguously, despite all the achievements of science and
technology and that process which we customarily call "progress." It
seems to me that the world has become more alarming, more
unpredictable and more fragile. This alarm, unpredictability and
fragility are felt to some extent by all countries and all
individuals. And civic and political life becomes more and more
virtual, like a picture on a computer screen.
Even so, the picture of life, formed by television, newspaper or
radio remains the same - there is no end to the conferences, summits,
forums and competitions from beauty contests to sandwich-eating ones.
They say people are coming together - but in reality, they are
growing apart.
And that isn't because an economic depression suddenly burst forth,
and swine flu to boot. This began on September 11, 2001. At first,
anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in
London , Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers
who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding
parties whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.
Later, [George W.] Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the
Jews - that is, Israel . An example was the first Durban Conference,
and the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe , noted several years ago in
a speech by Romano Prodi. Then there was Durban-2; the main speaker
was [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad proposing to annihilate Israel .
SO IT IS about Israel and the Jews that I will speak. And not only
because I am Jewish, but above all because the Middle Eastern
conflict since the end of World War II has been a platform for
political games and gambling by the great powers, the Arab countries
and individual politicians, striving, through the so-called "peace
process," to make a name for themselves, and perhaps win a Nobel
Peace Prize. At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral
award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser
Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was
undermined. I haven't always greeted each selection of the Nobel
Committee of the Storting [Norwegian parliament] with joy, but that
one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the
fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasser Arafat, now posthumously, share
membership in the club of Nobel laureates.
In many of Sakharov's publications (in his books Progress,
Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom and My Country and the World, in
his articles and in his interviews), Andrei Dmitrievich wrote and
spoke about Israel . I have a collection of citations of his writing
on this topic. If it were published in Norway , then many Norwegians
would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel
differs from the view of Sakharov.
Here are several citations from Sakharov: " Israel has an
indisputable right to exist"; " Israel has a right to existence within
safe borders"; "All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced
upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders"; "With all the money
that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have
been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good
lives in Arab countries."
THROUGHOUT THE YEARS of Israel 's existence there has been war.
Victorious wars, and also wars which Israel was not allowed to win.
Each and every day - literally every day - there is the expectation
of a terrorist act or a new war. We have seen the Oslo peace
initiatives and the Camp David handshake and the road map and land
for peace (there is not much land - from one side of Israel on a
clear day you can see the other side with your naked eye).
Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it's an old one): "Two
states for two peoples." It sounds good. And there is no controversy
in the peacemaking Quartet, made up of the US , the UN, the EU and
Russia (some great peacemaker, with its Chechen war and its
Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries,
and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional
demands to Israel . I will speak only of one demand: that Israel
accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and
demography are needed.
According to the UN's official definition, refugees are considered
those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who
are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and
the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number -
about 700,000-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews
(about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by UN
Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance.
Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first
generation, but in the second, third and now even in the fourth
generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency's report, the
number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in
1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to
natural population growth. All these people have the rights of
Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.
The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there
are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
Imagine Israel then, if another 5 million Arabs flood into it; Arabs
would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus created
next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because
in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel ,
there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews
and turned over to Palestinians - while in Gaza today there is not a
single Jew already.
The result is both strange and terrifying, because Israel will
essentially be destroyed. It is terrifying to see the short memory of
the august peacemaking Quartet, their leaders and their citizens if
they let this happen. Because the plan "two states for two peoples"
is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a
second one with the potential to do the same. A Judenfrei Holy Land -
the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those
who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?
AND ANOTHER question that has been a thorn for me for a long time.
It's a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn't the fate
of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit trouble you in the same way as
does the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?
You fought for and won the opportunity for the International
Committee of the Red Cross, journalists and lawyers to visit
Guantanamo . You know prison conditions, the prisoners' everyday
routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to
torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a
law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days
of his coming to the White House. And although he, just like
president Bush before him, does not know what to do with the
Guantanamo prisoners, there is hope that the new administration will
think up something.
But during the two years Schalit has been held by terrorists, the
world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why?
He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the
Geneva Conventions. The conventions say clearly that hostage-taking
is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed
to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is
much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Schalit's rights.
The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations
with the people who are holding Schalit in an unknown location, in
unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international
rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights
activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights
documents?
And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first
tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Schalit.
Release, and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in
Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.
Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I
can find no answer except that Schalit is an Israeli soldier, Schalit
is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism.
Again, it is fascism.
THIRTY-FOUR YEARS have passed since the day when I came to this city
to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize
ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received
filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov
used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel
Committee).
Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment
growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope
that countries, their leaders and people everywhere will recall and
adopt Sakharov's ethical credo: "In the end, the moral choice turns
out to be also the most pragmatic choice."
From a speech to the Freedom Forum in Oslo on May 19.
--
Ketubah by Karny
www.ketubahbykarny.com