JANE FONDA to Visit Israel on Peace Mission

THE TIMES OF INDIA ^ | MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2002 07:45:26 PM | AFP

[fight_truth_decay]

JERUSALEM: US Hollywood star Jane Fonda will arrive in Israel on Tuesday for a three-day visit aimed at promoting peace in the region, the Bat Shalom women's organisation announced.

Fonda will travel with a delegation of the New York-based international organisation V-Day (Vagina-Day) for the protection of women, said a spokeswoman for Bat Shalom, which describes itself as a feminist organisation working for a just peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

During her stay, the 65-year-old star will also meet with representatives of the Jerusalem Center for Women, Bat Shalom's Palestinian sister organisation, created in 1994, one year after the Oslo peace accords.

This will not be the first time the aerobics queen has become involved in world affairs.

Fonda saw her nickname change from "Barbarella" to "Hanoi Jane" after her Christmas visit to North Vietnam in 1972, where she fiercely criticised the US war.

Recently, Jane Fonda also joined another US Oscar-winner, Sean Penn, in condemning US President George W. Bush's threat to invade Iraq in a letter published in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

Penn last week visited Baghdad, on a trip organised by the California-based Institute of Public Accuracy.

[fight_truth_decay]

Have erased all my comments in regard to V-Day..is this a holiday I don't know about?

[Dallas]

Fonda and Penn should meet in Mecca, and have lunch.

[homeschool mama]

Vagina Day?! egads...

[Spruce]

GPS Coordinates would be appreciated...

[widowithfoursons]

I'm not sure Israel will accept her passport. The last time it was stamped was in North Korea.

[Balata]

Please let her be in Baghdad when the fireworks start.

[chnsmok]

Vagina Day? I won't tell my husband, he'll want the day off.

[Balata]

Jane Fonda seated at anti-aircraft gun in North Vietnam, 1972.

These guns were used to shoot down American airplanes and to kill American pilots and aircrew.

This photo shows Jane Fonda with about 12-13 Vietnamese, probably the regular gun crew surrounded by photographers and reporters and bystanders from the People's Army of Vietnam. Three bystanders are in civilian dress. The photograph was taken during Fonda's trip to Vietnam with Tom Hayden. During her visit Fonda spoke on Radio Hanoi and American POW were forced to listen. Fonda and Hayden married and had one child, Troi (Troy) named after a Vietnamese. Hayden is now a California politician. He received financial backing from Fonda after their marriage ended and Fonda was married to CNN/Time news executive Ted Turner.

[widowithfoursons]

Meant to say North Vietnam (but who can tell the difference these days?)

[widowithfoursons]

Dang, she even looks VC.

[freebilly]

Maybe she'll be near the next Palestinian suicide bombing.....

[fight_truth_decay]

"I tuned in to the Barbara Walters special to hear Jane's much publicized apology to Vietnam vets. Most of what Jane said sounded sincere but rehearsed. Tom's name was not mentioned, obviously by pre-arrangement with the interviewer. Jane reaffirmed her patriotism and her good intentions at the time she went to Vietnam. Then she added: "I just saw Good Morning Vietnam, and I thought, 'if only I'd had Robin Williams with me when I went to Vietnam to write my material.'" And watching this, I recalled the cameras always pointing at her and thought: if your life is a movie, then your identity really does depend on who's writing your script."(Fred Gardner
The FTA Show)http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative/Gardner_Hollywood_2.html

[Balata]

Ready, aim, bump!

[Balata]

This is Hanoi Janes message to American Servicemen that was broadcast from Hanoi and directed into South Vietnam on Aug. 22, 1972. I take this personal cause I was there.

This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life--workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam--these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created--being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools--the children learning, literacy--illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders--and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism--I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.

[Balata]

Dang, she even looks VC

She sounded like VC too, see post #14.

[Marauder]

Between Jane Fonda's and Sean Penn's valiant and intelligent efforts, all of our foreign relations problems ought to be solved by now, right? Nothing left for Powell and Rice to do but come on out of the house and maybe start their own acting careers. (hurl)

[American in Israel]

She said she converted to Christianity. The truth of that is easily shown by if she is listening to God. If she comes over here to align herself with the people of Israel this is a good sign, if she comes over to align herself against the people of Israel by backing leftists against Israel, it shows her Christianity is only in her script, not in her heart.

I wonder where Bat Shalom lies in the spectrum of Israeli politics? Is it a peace organisation of leftists willing to pay protection money by trading goods to buy off terrorists, or is it a "just" peace of "trade peace for peace". In leftist english, it all depends on what the meaning of "just" is. You know one of the signs of cults is when they redefine the meanings of words to new meanings. Is leftism really just a religious cult of the humanists?

[Lilly]

Good ole Hanoi Jane. The leopard never changes it's spots.

"A witch!" "A witch!"

"May we burn her?"

"How do you know she is a witch?"

"Well, she turned me into a newt!"..."I got better."

"But, she's a witch!"

[2sheep]

>If she comes over here to align herself with the people of Israel this is a good sign, if she comes over to align herself against the people of Israel by backing leftists against Israel, it shows her Christianity is only in her script, not in her heart.

Absolutely right.  If she goes for the lukewarm middle and thinks that the L~rd really meant to bring "peace on earth" and not "division," it means she has converted to apostate Christianity, that huge whacked off, unfruitful branch being gathered for the fire.  We will watch her "fruit" and she whom she chooses.  No man (nor woman) can serve two masters.

Mt 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Lu 12:51 Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:

[fightin kentuckian]

V-Day, I'll be Clinton would have signed the E.O. to make that a Paid Federal Holiday.

Can you just imagine the HallMark cards.

Any wordsmiths want to give it a try. Maybe we should have a FR contest for the the best V-Day Card.