Israeli occupation takes terrible human toll, say Holy Land women
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories has separated families and cost people their homes, jobs and dignity, said three women from the Holy Land who visited Washington. They “threw me out like rubbish,” said Sharihan Hannoun, a Palestinian Muslim from East Jerusalem, referring to the day Israeli police kicked her family out of their home as part of a plan to create a new Jewish settlement in the area. The only thing she could take with her was the house key. The Israeli police “kicked us out on the second of August at 5 a.m.,” Hannoun said, noting that her family was left on the streets. Hannoun told participants in a conference on the Holy Land that Israeli police told her family the authorities were allowed to take their home “because you are Palestinian and we can take any houses we want ... without any papers ... because we are Israeli.” Hannoun was a student at the time, and police would not even let her into her house to get her books – she was forced to do her take-home finals on the street, she said. Jala Basil Andoni, a Christian Palestinian from Bethlehem, West Bank, echoed Hannoun’s story when she addressed participants in the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation conference in Washington Oct. 24. Andoni talked about being kicked out of her university dormitory in Amman, Jordan, in 1967 during the Six-Day War so the building could be used as a makeshift hospital. The Six-Day War was the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and Andoni was separated from her family for two years. She also spoke about the travel restrictions Palestinians currently are forced to deal with on a daily basis. ISRAELI OCCUPATION, page 13
(CNS PHOTO/DANIEL SONE)
By Sheila Archambault
Jala Basil Andoni holds up one of several documents Palestinians must have with them to pass through checkpoints in the Holy Land during the 11th International Conference of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington Oct. 24
Modern-day abolitionists battle global slave trade, human trafficking
(CNS PHOTO FROM REUTERS)
By Michael Vick
Victims of a global plague of sex trafficking, these Vietnamese girls, one as young as 8, sit on a bed in a Cambodian brothel near Phnom Penh in this file photo.
Slavery. For most Americans, the word evokes thoughts of an ancient institution abolished in this country in the 19th century. But while slaves are no longer found in the cotton and tobacco fields of the South, more insidious forms of modernday slavery continue unabated globally, even in the land of the free. An estimated 27 million people now are enslaved worldwide, half of them children under the age of 18. Roughly 80 percent are women. Tens of thousands labor daily in the United States with little or no pay under threat of violence, a threat all too often made real. Human trafficking generates $31 billion annually, making it the third-most lucrative criminal activity behind narcotics and weapons trade. And while they fight an uphill battle, a growing cadre of modern-day abolitionists fights to end slavery for good. Among them is the Not for Sale Campaign – an organization founded by University of San Francisco professor David Batstone. “This is a crisis that I didn’t go looking for,” Batstone said. “It found me.”
The professor and his family regularly dined at the Pasand Madras Indian restaurant in Berkeley for years until reading a series of reports in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000 exposing the owner as a labor and sex trafficker. “I’d been working in social justice and human rights ever since I was in college,” Batstone said. “But this idea of slavery, I thought that was in the history books. What do you do when you find slavery in your own backyard?” Batstone’s answer was to research the issue as thoroughly as possible, eventually enlisting the help of his students. From those humble beginnings, Not for Sale grew into an international organization with regional centers around the country and operations in South America, Asia and Africa. In his global quest for answers, Batstone encountered a wide variety of circumstances that lead to slavery. Impoverished families sell their children to be house servants, often with the promise of an education, a ruse many traffickers use to obtain child sex slaves. A guerrilla HUMAN TRAFFICKING, page 6
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION News in brief. . . . . . . . . . . 4-5 U.S. Bishops adamant . . . . . . 7 ‘Restorative Justice’ healing . 8 Scripture and reflection . . . 15 Commentary & letters . 16-17
St. Damien relic at Cathedral ~ Page 3 ~ October 30, 2009
Grieving & Healing ‘Where is God?’ ~ Pages 10-14 ~
High School Drama Roundup ~ Pages 18-19 ~
ONE DOLLAR
Media and Datebook. . . 20-21 Classified ads . . . . . . . . 22-23
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 11
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No. 33