Choice

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday December 10, 2002 12:06 by Cadre - Le resistance

Live or die

The future. In whose hands?

I think the world needs to know of how one woman, Caoimhe Butterly, is blocking tanks by her sheer will in protection of the children. Many more lives of children are imperiled by this impending war. (Dorinda Moreno, A Grand Mother for Peace in the World)

As the mainstream media shifts its narrow Mideast scope to the increasingly certain war in Iraq, Irish peace activist Caoimhe Butterly takes a bullet in Jenin and reminds us that in every war, the ultimate victims are children.

You might remember her as one of the foreign nationals trapped in Yassir Arafat's compound last April. But after her refusal to leave Jenin despite a gunshot wound to her thigh, Caoimhe Butterly has raised the stakes in what has become an all out battle to keep the world's attention focused on the plight of the Palestinian children. Speaking to the Guardian's Katie Barlow about her desire to stay on, Caoimhe said: "I'm going nowhere. I am staying until this occupation ends. I have the right to be here, a responsibility to be here. So does anyone who knows what is going on here."

Regardless of how you feel about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, few would deny that the kind of selfless courage displayed by the 23 year-old is a rare commodity in our new millennial world. Here is an excerpt of Caoimhe's first-person account of the incident and her perspective on the Palestinian conflict from CounterPunch, titled, I Was Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children:

In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces made the bottom section of the camp into a closed military zone in the morning, using about twelve tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache helicopter gunships. I had been trying to get between the unarmed children and the tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist, and we were immediately arrested, along with another international volunteer, and taken to a place where about twenty Palestinian men were being held. They were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped to their trousers or underwear, and beaten severely. After I was detained for two hours and interrogated briefly, the Israeli soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the soldiers refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave, I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to the area I would be shot.

I went back the way I had come, past the United Nations compound. There I spoke briefly with Iain Hook, Project Manager of UNRWA [United Nations Relief Works Agency] in Jenin, who said he was trying to negotiate with the soldiers for women and children to go home. He came out of the UN compound waving a blue UN flag, and the soldiers' only response was to broadcast with their microphone in English, "We don't care if you are the United Nations or who you are. Fuck off and go home!" They were trying to go home. Iain said that things were not going well. He insisted that he wanted to provide safe passage for his forty Palestinian workers and himself using legal means, i.e., official coordination with the Army. Some worried parents had begun to knock a hole in the wall at the back of the compound to evacuate children who were there for a vaccination programme. We accompanied some of the children home.

After this, I headed again to the sick girl's house. On the way I met a group of children who told me that a ten-year-old friend of mine, Muhammad Bilalo, had been killed and three children had been wounded by tank fire, one of whom sustained brain damage. So I went to where the children were gathered, and the tanks were firing on them erratically. I walked down the road between the children and the tanks until I was fifty meters from the tank, where I tried to dialogue with the soldiers. I implored them not to shoot live ammunition at unarmed children. At that point, they stopped their shooting. A few moments later, an APC drove up to the tank [an armed personnel carrier, like a tank with all the armour except a cannon]. I could see their faces very clearly and I imagine they could see mine also. I had seen both of these tanks earlier in the day. A soldier raised his upper body and his gun out of the hatch of the second vehicle and began shooting. At first he shot into the air, and most of the children dispersed, running into an alley on the left side of the street. About three small children remained, however, and I tried physically to get them to the alley, dragging and pushing them. I looked back over my shoulder and could see the soldier in the APC pointing his gun at me from about one hundred meters. Near the entrance to the alley, I was shot in the thigh. When I fell they continued shooting in my direction. I crawled part of the way up the alley, and then some of the youngsters dragged me up the rest of the way. No ambulances were allowed into the camp, so I was carried on a makeshift stretcher to where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me near the entrance of the camp. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin Hospital, Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later.

While this is going on the U.S. still sends billions of dollars of aid to Israel (who is daily violating U.N. treaties and even killing U.N. workers), and press a war against Iraq who comply.
Their only aim is to gain control over the richest oil reserves in the region and ulitmately a tighter grip on world supremacy. These people have no longing for peace and they are using the memories of innocent victims to further there own greed for power.
They do not care about my security or your security they will press for war until eventually we all become targets and victims whenever we step into the world.
The outbreak of World War 2 when the nazi armies invaded Poland is again on our doorsteps, only this time when the new Reichs armies invade Iraq, (and they will), there will be no allied force to stand against them, there is no army in the world that would dare, they bow to no rule no law, this is proven daily in the occupied territories.
The beginning of the second world war saw ordinary people standing against the spread of fascism and resisting. Ordinary people resisting, surviving. This will be our future. Your decision now to submit and join the fascist war machine become a collaborator, sacrifice your will, imagination, ideals, culture, and freedom,(real freedom not that freedom of the rich and powerful expounded daily by bush and all the other collaborators) or choose the alternative - resistance, struggle, integrity, freedom and almost certain death.
The fascist war machine has become so grossly powerful that any that stand will surely suffer greatly, and do every day in struggles all over the world, the choice is yours. The German people realised they had a choice too late. They succumbed to terrible propaganda and all became guilty accomplices to the same terrible crimes that are happening today and will excellerate once Iraq is invaded.
Choose today before it is too late,we have a second chance at history,choose today before the Reich marches on Iraq ( Poland). Resist anyway you can, or march in delusion under the Fuhrers watchful eye.