Articles
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009, pages 60-61
Waging Peace
Kathy Kelly Relays Message From Gaza Doctors
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THREE-TIME Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly delivered the keynote address at the 14th Annual Bishop Maurice Dingman Peace Award Celebration in Ankeny, IA on April 4. Kelly, who spent time in Egypt and in Gaza in January during and after Israel’s genocidal attack on the captive civilian population of 1.5 million Palestinians, devoted much of her presentation to her experience in Gaza.
Kelly spoke of her conversations with doctors in Gaza, where many patients suffered wounds that are difficult if not impossible to treat, some caused by the banned weapon white phosphorous, and others caused by new, experimental munitions, for which treatment has not yet been developed.
“”˜All the world helps after an earthquake,’ a doctor at the Shifa hospital in Gaza told me,” Kelly recalled. “The doctor said, ”˜We feel very frustrated. The West, Europe and the U.S. watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.’”
Kelly continued: “I asked Dr. Saeed Abuhassan what I should tell people back in the United States, and he said, ”˜Well, you can see, just look around you. These patients, they have nothing. Say that people need prostheses; say that people need clinics; say that people need rehabilitation.’ Then he stopped and he said, ”˜No. You say this. You tell them that United States people paid for these weapons. That, also, is why this is worse than an earthquake.’
“My heart sank,” Kelly said. “It’s a very, very difficult message to try and bring back to the United States.”
About 200 peace and social justice activists gathered at Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart (OLIH) Catholic Church to see Chuck Day and Harold Wells receive the Catholic Peace Ministry (CPM)’s annual award.
Day, who has founded and led several Iowa peace organizations over the decades since he was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, devoted most of his acceptance speech to comments about the crisis in Palestine and the dangerous influence of Israel over U.S. foreign policy. Day recalled for the audience remarks by several Israeli leaders.
“One is Golda Meir. She said in 1969, ”˜There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist,’” said Day.
Day also founded Iowans Against the Death Penalty in 1962 and led efforts that succeeded in abolishing the death penalty in Iowa in 1965.
Wells, a Methodist campus minister in Little Rock, founded the Thoreau Center for Religion, the Arts, and the Environment in Des Moines some 35 years ago after he was invited to leave Arkansas at the request of a bishop opposed to Wells’s outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War.
Fr. Dave Polich welcomed the crowd. Frank Cordaro introduced Kelly. CPM Interim Director Mona Shaw, Rita Hohnshell, and Helen Oster also spoke. Greg Woolever and Deanna Snyders of OLIH led the inging. CPM board chair Rev. Bill LeMosy offered the benediction.
—Michael Gillespie
