BPNIC Memo, January 2009

Message from Deputy Pedro Wilson Guimarães (PT-GO).  The World Cannot be Silent: As Long as there is Arrogance between the Opposites, there will be no Peace.

On behalf of the living God, the right to full life, human rights, freedom, self-determination of people and the right to a Palestinian State, we call on all Christians to take a position against the insanity of war. It is necessary for the entire international community to search for moderation and constructive dialog to resume the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. There will be no peace, while there is arrogance of radicals, on both sides. Disproportionate wars violates all the parameters of human rights and repeats, brutally and inhumanely, the Zionist holocaust which struck the Palestinian people 60 years ago, remembered as "Al Nakba", the day on which Palestine wept.

The world cannot remain silent in the face of such unspeakable barbarism. We are seeing a horrendous episode of reprisal extermination of a race in the name of God. We have full conviction that God does not want this war in times of peace, especially when the whole world comes together to celebrate Universal Day, which is hope of a new year of prosperity for all humanity. The Brazilian Government, which follows with concern the intensification of limitless attacks of Israel on the occupied territory of Gaza, through a message from President Lula, proposed that the UN intermediate urgently for a truce and resumption of dialogue in accordance to what was agreed upon at the Annapolis Conference, held in the United States in November 2007.

Every war is insane and cruel. But it is unfair and disproportionate, the genocidal killing of more than 400 people, injuring more than two thousand, most of them civilians. Women and children are the innocent victims of this monstrous military power that acts so vile and savage, inhumanly, and without limits. We must stop it before a tragedy in which humanity would be ashamed in the increasing number of victims that is causing a holocaust, of which the Jews remind us always and forever.

We send this message through the new democratic space in the newspaper Diario da Manha, in resistance, to honor the Palestinian people and in memory of Yasser Arafat, which called the general free people to fight for peace and search for freedom for his people and the creation of the free homeland, a dream of all people. We stand in solidarity with Ambassador Ibrahim Al-Zeben, with the Arab Palestinian Federation and Brazilian Palestinian National Interest Committee, in this fateful hour, in which once again we witness the killing of innocent children and women of these people. Israel has no right to promote, under any pretext, genocide, the massacre, destruction and all sorts of humiliation against these people that, in addition to Hamas, have an ancient history, the history of the people of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, in Bethlehem, ultimately, Palestine.


Therefore, we repeat here: there will be no peace as long as there is oppression in the occupied territories. While Israel remains in the Gaza Strip. The UN initiative of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva along with the Brazilian message sent to the international community to hold an emergency meeting to negotiate peace is supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must seek, with determination, democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the government of Israel and all the leaders of the international community to mediate the peace, to stop the military attacks on the Gaza Strip, dismantle the military camps, demolish the wall and ensure free access of the Palestinian people to their cities.

Through the moment of Universal Declaration, we ask, dreaming high, with the urgency required, to find a Christian exist, the people of Jesus Christ, to end the genocide of women and children, the reign of peace between Palestinians and Jews and that every day they worship together a better humanity and worship the living God. The world cannot remain silent before this insane war. We need a firm position without hypocrisy, without neutrality, a large mobilization of goals in the pursuit of the peace we all want, and which is what president Lula wants.

2009 is for the people of Goiás, Brazil and for all peoples of the world - including Israelis and Palestinians - a year of peace and prosperity, free from the insanity of war, oppression, prejudice, intolerance and evil. For a year of brotherhood among people, human rights, the environment, full of life for all humanity.

Pedro Wilson Guimarães is a professor at the Federal University of Goiás, of the Catholic University of Goiás, and Deputy Federal of PT/GO.