A short introduction:  I am a founder member of Women in Media & Entertainment, affiliated to the National Women's Council of Ireland (which on Saturday at their A.G.M. will have a resolution asking for links with women's groups in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq; I am confident it will be passed.  Also we are putting in an emergency resolution asking for a day/days of action in solidarity with the women of those countries: Invest in Caring not Killing!  End all wars!  War without End? -- Not in our Name!). 

I was brought up as an Irish Catholic, but I had a Jewish mother.  Her brother went to Palestine in 1925 and was part of Berit Shalom, asking for a bi-national state for Jews and Arabs.  My aunt, a doctor, retired to Caesarea, where she opened up a clinic for mothers and their babies. All were included, Jewish and Palestinian women.  I have never been to Israel, because I regard the present regime as similar in some aspects to a part of my own divided country where nationalists in the North were treated as second-class citizens, and to the apartheid regime in South Africa.  Tonight for the first time I feel that my voice is being heard by my sisters, to mingle with the thousands and thousands, including in Israel, who are protesting against the destruction of Palestine.  I can raise my voice with yours to condemn this US-led war against terrorism with its horrendous consequence of murder and devastation.

Even though my country is supposedly neutral and was one of the first to recognize the Palestinian state and its representative in Dublin (and we are currently receiving one of the Palestinians from the Bethlehem church), our government is supporting Bush and allowing our airports to be used by the US Military for refueling. Yesterday we were at Shannon airport to monitor and protest against these military planes.  Four of them landed within 24 hours -- where were they going? Kashmir?  Nepal?  Afghanistan?  Israel? 

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago stating the amount of military aid given by the US to the Israel to put down the Intifada, between January 2001 and March 2002.  It amounts to the value of $ 5.4 billion or more.  More and more is pouring in every day and every day we see more and more images on the TV of dead women, wounded women, pregnant mothers and slaughtered children lying in the rubble, no medicine, ruined hospitals, no water, no heat or light.  U.S. money, to pay for this, has been taken from mothers on welfare in the United States, money needed by them for the necessities of life.  Is there a plan to kill us off, except for the worker bees who keep the war machine going in the armament industry?  Even in "neutral" Ireland we now have 600 companies engaged in production for the war machine. 

Yet we women know we are the prime life-givers, the prime carers; we know it is in the end our strength and determination, our solidarity and love for our planet and for each other, that will defeat this madness and greed.  Let us join our voices and never stop shouting it out wherever we are, "Invest in caring not killing!  End all wars!"  If, through advertising, the multi-nationals can get half the world frying its brains with mobile phones, it should not be impossible for US to change the world's priorities, if we do it together.  We are the living proof of our own advertisement! 

Signed: 

Margaretta D'Arcy.

P.S.  Breakdown of the arms transfer, US to Israel, Jan 2001 -- Mar 2002.

24/1/01:  24 UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters:  $212 million.

24/1/01:  60 MK46 MOD 5 Torpedoes:  $3.4.

24/1/01:  15 AH-1F Cobra Helicopters:  $5.2 million.

6/2/01:  miscellaneous tools & supplies:  $21 million.

19/2/01:  9 AH-64D Apache Longbow attack Helicopters & 1 Helicopter upgrade:  $500 million.

6/6/01:  160 F100-PW-229 engines:  $300 million

7/6/01:  AIMM-120B AMRAAM missiles:  $27 million.

19/6/01:  50 F-161 two-seat Fighters:  $2 billion.

24/8/01:  48 AIMMMM-120C-5 missiles, etc.  $ not listed.

21/12/01:  50 F-16 Aircraft:  $1.3 billion.

23/1/02:  30,000 excess M16 rifles:  $ not listed.

13/3/02:  102 M51A1 20mm Gatling guns for F-15's:  $5.2  million.

(compiled by Antifa Info-Bulletin from data collected by the Federation of American Scientists.  Some of the prices are obviously below cost.)

Global Women's Strike Speech at the A20 (20 April) 
anti-war mobilization, Washington DC, USA 

Strike against the war