Letters - 01 April 2011
From the peacemakers to humanists
Supporting both sides
Friends’ role in regard to Israel/Palestine should surely be as peacemakers. If we are to be accepted as peacemakers we must not only be even handed, but we must be seen by both sides as such.
No one doubts that the Israeli government has, and deploys, disproportionate power. We utterly deplore and are horrified by many of its actions. Nevertheless, we must recognise the effect of Israelis’ experience of being surrounded by nations that have long proclaimed, in the strongest and most violent terms, their hostility to the very existence of the Jewish state. And this is in the centuries-long context of anti-Semitic persecution.
However reasonable its intention, and however clearly a boycott might be labelled as aimed only at West Bank products, it will be perceived as hostile to Israel. The press and public opinion simply do not make these fine distinctions. Our primary aim to be peacemakers requires that we ensure, so far as possible, that we are not just open-minded, but perceived as such. In pursuing that aim a boycott would not just be ineffective, it would be counter-productive.
Philip Hills
Concerning Israel and Palestine, perhaps Friends should consider the Balfour Declaration drafted during the first world war by David Lloyd George under pressure from Chaim Weizmann.
‘Her Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine or the origins and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’
Each Friend must make their own decisions as to what the present situation requires of them as they feel guided.
Sheila Preston
The census
I was dismayed when I heard that Lockheed Martin were involved in the census, and considered carefully whether to boycott it. This is why I decided not to do so. My mother, Marjorie Tew, was a (largely self-taught) medical statistician working on maternal and infant mortality. In her book, Safer Childbirth?, she put forward strong statistical evidence against the prevailing medical opinion that home birth could never be safer than hospital birth. She made enemies and confronted the obstetric lobby with great courage. Much of her data came from the census. Her work may have saved infants’ lives and certainly contributed to the movement that has given women more choice about where and how they give birth.
I too work with statistics and know the value of good quality data. The government may not be using the data in the way we would like, but by arranging for the collection and publication of good quality data it is providing a great service to the community.
Eleanor Tew
The ageism that bedevils
May I correct Mary Brown’s statement in her article urging older Friends to live actively and adventurously. (25 March). The WI (Women’s Institute) does not ‘by law have to accept men’. Yes, according to the Employment Act, men have to be considered as employees and can and do work in federation and national offices. However, as an educational charity, whose constitution states that the WI is ‘an association of women’, UK charity law exempts us from accepting men as members. My information, as a past federation chairman, can be verified through our national office.
Dorothy Douse
The Quaker Letter about Libya
I believe that the open letter sent to the Prime Minister about Libya by Britain Yearly Meeting is lacking in integrity and should not have been sent. It makes no mention of the likely huge loss of lives and livelihoods had Gaddafi’s forces battered their way into Benghazi. Had the letter said that that such a loss was preferable to using military intervention to prevent it, the letter would then have had integrity. Quakers can help to prevent a conflict from being violent and they have helped to relieve suffering caused by the violence when it erupts. However, when a conflict becomes a civil war, and our government with UN authorisation helps militarily to protect the citizens of Benghazi, then I believe that Quakers should be prayerfully silent.
The letter affirms that people are not expendable: do we Quakers believe nevertheless that the citizens of Benghazi were expendable?
Peter Jarman
Libya
I wanted Friends around the world to be aware of this minute approved in our Monthly Meeting for Business on 27 March 2011:
‘The Moscow Meeting of Friends (Quakers) is following the development of the civil war in Libya with great concern.
‘Unfortunately, the intervention of Western powers in the course of the hostilities has led to an ever-increasing number of civilian casualties in Tripolitania, the part of Libya that is under the control of the Gaddafi government. Civilians have become victims of the bombing, shelling, and cruise missile strikes imposed by those who have undertaken to “restore order” in Libya. Such actions lead to the delegitimisation of international law and threaten to spread chaos in the entire Middle East region.
‘Moscow Quakers call on all parties involved in the conflict to cease hostilities immediately and begin peace talks without preconditions. Moscow Quakers pray for peace. We believe that every human being is a child of God and bears a spark of Divine Light within. Violence and war violate our relationship with God and do not lead to reconciliation and genuine peace.’
See http://religio.ru/news/21429.html or
www.newsru.com/religy/28mar2011/quakers.html for the original text.
Johan Maurer
Radiation
I’ve been following the radiation incident in Japan in the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and other scientific reports as well as the media. There may be some risk of plutonium poisoning as well as danger from radiation.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) operate Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It is reported that reactor 3 is fuelled with MOX a mixed uranium/ plutonium ‘fuel’.
Plutonium is a very poisonous metal with a melting point of just 640˚C. It is also highly radioactive with a half life – depending on the isotope – of from eighty million years to about 24,500 years. This contrasts with radioactive iodine that has a half life of just eight days or caesium127 that has a half life of about thirty years.
Reactor 3’s containment vessel is cracked and is emitting alternately white and black smoke or steam and radioactivity levels in the area have risen sharply. The containment vessel is the concrete box that surrounds the reactor core; it is this which is cracked.
Currently the prevailing wind is blowing away from Japan across the Pacific toward the West Coast of the Americas.
Reactor 1 is reported to have suffered a partial meltdown of seventy per cent of its fuel rods. Reactor 2 is reported to have various damage but currently to be shut down. Reactor 3 – see above. Reactor 4 is reported to have suffered various damage but also to have been shut down. The spent fuel rod pools are exposed and leaking radiation and generating around seven megawatts of heat. Reactors 5 and 6 are reported to be shut down but may also be damaged.
Instrumentation at all reactors is reported not to be working. Partial lighting at some of the reactors has been partially restored.
Julian Stargardt
Humanism
I recently spent a good weekend in a Brighton hotel as a guest of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) because my partner, Ted, had been invited to give a talk at their AGM. As I was writing something to a deadline that weekend I did not get very involved with their discussions, but there seemed to be lots of sneering at all religion. After the event they wrote to me asking if I would join GALHA. I replied that I was a Quaker, not an atheist as they all seemed to be, and could not endorse their dismissive attitude towards all religion but nevertheless I shared their humanistic ideals and had never regarded humanism as incompatible with my beliefs. I also told them I had been a convinced atheist before I had had a religious experience.
Having spent the first ten years of my adult life in fear, dishonestly hiding in the closet, I share GALHA’s rejection of homophobic religious attitudes. I find I still have to deal with many religious people who tell me I am damned because I am gay, though not gay by choice. GALHA replied they would welcome my membership (I might add: ‘if I can cope with all the sneering from them I am bound to encounter’
.)
Noel Glynn
Comments
The WI may not allow men to be members, but the Mothers’ Union does.
By John & Sally B on 31st March 2011 - 20:17
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