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http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/israel_and_gaza.html

GAZA - Samera Baalusha (34) (right) sits with her daughter Eman (15) and surviving son Mohamad (15 months) while waiting to see the body of her 4-year-old daughter Jawaher Baalusha during the funeral held for Jawher and her four other sisters who were all killed in an Israeli missile strike, on December 29, 2008 in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. Jawher Baalusha and her sisters were killed during an Israeli air raid while they were sleeping together in their bedroom. Medics stated that the raid had targeted a mosque near their home in Jabalia. (Abid Katib/Getty Images)

Women's Vision for a Culture of Peace

Bread. A clean sky. Active peace.
A woman's voice singing somewhere,
melody drifting like smoke from the cookfires.
The army disbanded, the harvest abundant.
The wound healed, the child wanted, the prisoner freed,
the body's integrity honored, the lover returned.
The magical skill that reads marks into meanings.
The labor equal, fair, and valued.
Delight in the challenge for consensus to solve problems.
No hand raised in any gesture but greeting.
Secure interiors - of heart, home, land - so firm
as to make secure borders irrelevant at last.
And everywhere laughter, care, celebration, dancing, contentment.
A humble, earthly paradise, in the now.

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Excerpt from "A Women's Creed", written in the Women's Global Strategies Meeting in New York 1994 by Robin Morgan together with Perdita Huston, Sunetra Puri, Mahnaz Afkhami, Diane Faulkner, Corinne Kumar, Sima Wali, and Paola Melchior and 140 other women from 50 countries.
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http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/F5307C1E012294F6C125752D005CD71F?opendocument

UN Human Rights Chief Expresses Her Grave Concern in the Escalating Violence in Gaza

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28 December 2008

GENEVA (OHCHR) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed her grave concern and distress at the enormous loss of life in the escalating violence in Gaza. While condemning the rocket attacks by Hamas that led to the death of one Israeli civilian, she also strongly condemned Israel's disproportionate use of force resulting in the reported death of more than 270, a large number of which were civilians, and the wounding of over 600 persons. She called on Israel 's leaders to uphold international humanitarian law principles, especially those relating to proportionality in the use of military force and the prevention of collective punishment and the targeting of civilians. She also called on Israel to lift the air, sea and ground blockade it is imposing on the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, and to allow humanitarian assistance and independent outside monitoring, including by the UN Special Rapportuer on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967. The High Commissioner voiced her strong support for the Secretary General and the UN Security Council's statements calling for an immediate halt to all violence by both sides, and urged all parties to promptly take steps to end the human suffering in Gaza.

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