International Women's Day

Sunday, August 1, 2010


Israeli mother adresses European Parliament



Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997. Below is Nurit's speech made on International Women's Day in Strasbourg earlier this month. Please listen to the words of a bereaved mother,whose daughter fell victim to a vicious, indiscriminating terrorist attack.





The speech:



Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament). However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian woman in my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in my county are the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my speech to Miriam R`aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza strip, whose five small children were killed by



Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries at the family`s strawberry field. No one will ever stand trial for this murder. When I asked the people who invited me here why didn't they invite a Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion too localized.



I don't know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse, torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars. It is true, unfortunately, that the local violence inflicted on Palestinian women by the government of Israel and the Israeli army, has expanded around the globe, In fact, state violence and army violence, individual and collective violence, are the lot of Muslim womenUSA. This is because the so-called free world is afraid of the Muslim womb.



Great France of "la liberte egalite et la fraternite" is scared of little girls with head scarves. Great Jewish Israel is afraid of the Muslim womb which its ministers call a demographic threat. Almighty America and Great Britain are infecting their respective citizens with blind fear of the Muslims, who are depicted as vile, primitive and blood-thirsty, apart from their being non-democratic, chauvinistic and mass producers of future terrorists. This in spite of the fact that the people who are destroying the world today are not Muslim. One of them is a devout Christian, one is Anglican and one is a non-devout Jew.



I have never experienced the suffering Palestinian women undergo every day, every hour, I don't know the kind of violence that turns a woman's life into constant hell. This daily physical and mental torture of women who are deprived of their basic human rights and needs of privacy and dignity, women whose homes are broken into at any moment of day and night, who are ordered at a gun-point to strip naked in front of strangers and their own children, whose houses are demolished, who are deprived of their livelihood and of any normal family life. This is not part of my personal ordeal.



But I am a victim of violence against women insofar as violence against children is actually violence against mothers. Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan women are my sisters because we are all at the grip of the same unscrupulous criminals who call themselves leaders of the free enlightened world and in the name of this freedom and enlightenment rob us of our children. Furthermore, Israeli, American, Italian and British mothers have been for the most part violently blinded and brainwashed to such a degree that they cannot realize their only sisters, their only allies in the world are the Muslim Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghani mothers, whose children are killed by our children or who blow themselves to pieces with our sons and daughters. They are all mind-infected by the same viruses engendered by politicians. And the viruses , though they may have various illustrious names-such as Democracy, Patriotism, God, Homeland-are all the same. They are all part of false and fake ideologies that are meant to enrich the rich and to empower the powerful.



We are all the victims of mental, psychological and cultural violence that turn us to one homogenic group of bereaved or potentially bereaved mothers. Western mothers who are taught to believe their uterus is a national asset just like they are taught to believe that the Muslim uterus is an international threat. They are educated not to cry out: 'I gave him birth, I breast fed him, he is mine, and I will not let him be the one whose life is cheaper than oil, whose future is less worth than a piece of land.' All of us are terrorized by mind-infecting education to believe all we can do is either pray for our sons to come back home or be proud of their dead bodies. And all of us were brought up to bear all this silently, to contain our fear and frustration, to take Prozac for anxiety, but never hail Mama Courage in public. Never be real Jewish or Italian or Irish mothers.



I am a victim of state violence. My natural and civil rights as a mother have been violated and are violated because I have to fear the day my son would reach his 18th birthday and be taken away from me to be the game tool of criminals such as Sharon, Bush, Blair and their clan of blood-thirsty, oil-thirsty, land thirsty generals. Living in the world I live in, in the state I live in, in the regime I live in, I don't dare to offer Muslim women any ideas how to change their lives. I don't want them to take off their scarves, or educate their children differently, and I will not urge them to constitute Democracies in the image of Western democracies that despise them and their kind. I just want to ask them humbly to be my sisters, to express my admiration for their perseverance and for their courage to carry on, to have children and to maintain a dignified family life in spite of the impossible conditions my world is putting them in. I want to tell them we are all bonded by the same pain, we are all the victims of the same sort of violence even though they suffer much more, for they are the ones who are mistreated by my government and its army, sponsored by my taxes.



Islam in itself, like Judaism in itself and Christianity in itself, is not a threat to me or to anyone. American imperialism is, European indifference and co-operation is and Israeli racism and its cruel regime of occupation is. It is racism, educational propaganda and inculcated xenophobia that convince Israeli soldiers to order Palestinian women at gun-point, to strip in front of their children for security reasons, it is the deepest disrespect for the other that allow American soldiers to rape Iraqi women, that give license to Israeli jailers to keep young women in inhuman conditions, without necessary hygienic aids, without electricity in the winter, without clean water or clean mattresses and to separate them from their breast-fed babies and toddlers. To bar their way to hospitals, to block their way to education, to confiscate their lands, to uproot their trees and prevent them from cultivating their fields.



I cannot completely understand Palestinian women or their suffering. I don't know how I would have survived such humiliation, such disrespect from the whole world. All I know is that the voice of mothers has been suffocated for too long in this war-stricken planet. Mothers' cry is not heard because mothers are not invited to international forums such as this one. This I know and it is very little. But it is enough for me to remember these women are my sisters, and that they deserve that I should cry for them, and fight for them. And when they lose their children in strawberry fields or on filthy roads by the checkpoints, when their children are shot on their way to school by Israeli children who were educated to believe that love and compassion are race and religion dependent, the only thing I can do is stand by them and their betrayed babies, and ask what Anna Akhmatova - another mother who lived in a regime of violence against women and children - asked: Why does that streak of blood, rip the petal of your cheek?!

Hello World, Welcome to Africa

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

Touch the earth, revive your soul

Let your ears feel the resound of the roar

of your most feared animal

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

Blow a Vuvuzela, dance a jig, score a goal, 

sew a seam on the flag of unity

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

Dispel, transcend, expend...

Myths, fears, jeers

Catupult your embrace

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

Purchase hope, perseverance, true love, real happiness

Abandon Mistrust

Hello world, welcome to Africa

Return to your worlds in 

Awe, inspired, ashamed

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

Communicate, celebrate,

Similarities, differences, change

Obviate distance, distrust, despise

Hello world, Welcome to Africa

memorable moments

So, in a minute of being carried away by the "2 oh 1 oh" fever that has gripped the nation, I fell into a moment of reminiscing.


THE LAST SWC I was at a turning point in my life...deciding whether 2 continue with my degree or not. I remember tht world cup not because of Zedan or the countless goals saved by the german Goal keeper, but because of the sudden high status that the so-called Engineering "pansy" gained for offerring to organise DSTV.

The SWC before that was my matric year...and so the SWC's have played important roles in my life. The 1 before that I recall watching with my then 3yr old cuz who used to lurv soccer. He seems to have outgrown the game now though.

I cant wait for this World Cup to get underway. I'm hoping for more memorable moments :-)

Engineers bring home the cup

Thank you to the engineers(and engineering practitioners of whatever sort who worked on the projects) of the south Africa. if no1 else thanks you then, let it be noted, that I have taken notice.

In the past few years with stadiums being constructed , highways and roads being revamped, the GAUTRAIN being whispered of, our infrastructure being developed, power crises being dealt with, information transfer rates being challenged, and all in all our credibility being on the line...you have soldiered to make South Africans proud.

I guess that i am proud , because, when people say "I was there" , I can be part of the few who say " I made it happen"

Imports of FIFA items are being delivered on-time and to the right people on world class sea, rail and road transport systems, to destinations that are world class and are leaving the northern hemisphere in awe of our ability rather than our primitivity.

Thank you for inspiring me to aspire to be the best that I can be

soccer fever

I wont go there

Stereotyping is just an extension of the power of fears…well we stereotype when we want to ease our fears. I guess it’s sometimes alright because it brings around conformity of a good kind, but often breeds conformity of the bad kind.

In the apartheid government we were stereotyped by classing us according to race. If you had a lighter colour skin you were more important than if you had a darker colour skin.  As absurd as it sounds, propaganda played on people’s fears that they were/ would become lesser beings if they associated vertically down the food chain and so the story goes on.

In the freed society we live in our fears and most definitely mine still linger on this subject of “my worth”. Society has historically been classified as rich and poor; this is geographically true as well as embedded in our thinking. We have developed a society that yearns money and in doing so have idolised the previously disadvantaged that have managed to make money quickly. The “black diamond’s” seems to be what all working class “black” people aim to become. The “Indian” people have been revered for their ability to make wealth. When people see young Indian kids in smart cars, they simply assume that their families are rich. White people are known as the previously advantaged and South Africans expect them to already have everything.  The classifications and assumptions and expectations developed through the years have made us weary of being different lest someone questions us. We think as we have been taught to, we act as we have been taught to, we interact as we are taught to and if we do anything that’s not “as expected” we bashfully turn defensive.

There’s a place in South Africa called Laudium. For me, and I guess many others, it represents the most flippant contrast between the haves and the have-nots. Poor people living in squalid conditions juxtaposed by the most magnificent homes and the largest concentration of a certain brand of luxury vehicles in the world.

I have only ever visited this place twice; both times out of necessity but with a sense of curiosity aswell. I had heard of Laudium residents and their mansions.

 The residents of Laudium are mostly “Indian” having been moved there under the group areas act ages ago.  I had previously accepted that the expectations that non-indian people had of me being rich and owning many vehicles and buying my way through school stemmed from nothing other than the business mindedness that “Indian” people are known for. Indians were known for their enterprising nature to sustain themselves. In the past, bribes were made to make lives easier (not condoned).  Everything had some explanation. Then… I encountered Laudium in the day time! I saw the palaces, the  pomp and pride called Laudium (ironically pronounced Lord –ium) crusted by  the Itireleng informal settlement.

I don’t understand; I couldn’t interpret, I still can’t begin to imagine how this happened. My eye’s dilated, my jaw dropped and I took a deep breath. Whatever happened to loving thy neighbour? Wait a second, am I like this? My mind started racing through all the remarks I had ever heard. Rationality failed me…the questions wouldn’t stop

• ·         Do I live in a fort while my neighbour huddles under a tree unable to keep a roof over his head?
• Do I live expensively at the cost of others?
•  Do I drive flashy cars and flash my money to escape unsavoury situations?

Laudium represents even more of a parody to me. I have developed a fear of being classified “Indian” but in the process I am stereotyping the “Indian” whose values I disprove of. My visit to the little town was a colossal shock to my system. I won’t go there again, if not just because visually it imparts such dementia but also because my fear of interacting with Laudiumers may ignite a deep seated ugliness in me. 

What would you do?

Employee Motivation: Elements of Greatness