With Strings Attached

Call your Congressional Reps and Senators This Week!

sydney — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:17:45 +0000

Despite President Barack Obama’s very clear position against Israel’s blockade on Gaza and continued settlement expansion, Israel continues to forbid humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza and expand its West Bank settlements. We are asking Congress, why is Israel being rewarded with almost 3 billion dollars in aid when it ignores American policies and continues to use our money to build settlements and maintain the blockade of Gaza? Shouldn’t our aid come with strings attached?

That’s where you can help. We are trying to get as many phone calls as possible before the end of the month - calls to your U.S. Senators and Representatives to keep this issue fresh in their minds. Click here to find your representatives’ contact information and give them a call! It’s fast, easy, and will make a difference.

A statement from New Profile

sydney — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:43:02 +0000

New Profile – Movement for the Civil-ization of Israeli Society, is a growing group of people working for Israel’s de-militarization. We believe that we need not go on living in a soldiers’ state; that Israel is capable of a determined and true peace politics; that it need not be a militarized society; that we ourselves, our children, our partners, need not go on being endlessly mobilized. It is our understanding that the state of war in Israel is maintained by decisions made by our politicians – not by external forces to which we are passively subject. While taught to believe that the country faces threats beyond its control, we now realize that the words “national security” have often masked calculated decisions to choose military action for the achievement of political goals. We are no longer willing to take part in such choices. We will not go on enabling them by obediently, uncritically supplying soldiers to the military which implements them.

The members of New Profile firmly support the call for the suspension of US (military) aid to Israel, pending Israeli compliance with international human rights law, and its discontinuation of wholesale human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We are predominantly Jewish Israeli citizens. We believe that the steady incoming flow into Israel of US arms, financed by US military aid, and shored up by US civilian aid, is playing a major role in escalating the present “low intensity war” in our area. The state of Israel is committing severe and large scale violations of the human rights of an entire civilian population. These acts, which cannot reasonably be characterized as acts of defense, are
facilitated and funded by US aid and US manufactured arms.

Maya Wind: Please help your government understand

sydney — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:15:35 +0000

“I know that the US is financing some of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories. I also know that many Americans believe that they are helping establish security in Israel. But this is not true, for real security will not be achieved by military means. Please help your government understand that by supplying weapons it is not helping the Israelis or the Palestinians. I would like to ask you to support those that are seeking peace for both Palestinian and Israelis.

–Maya Yechieli Wind

Hear her full testimony.

Maya Yechieli Wind, 19, grew up in Jerusalem during the second Intifada. Her first experience with conflict resolution was at age fifteen in “Face to Face”- a dialogue group for Israeli and Palestinian youth. Later she became involved in various co-existence initiatives in the West Bank. She joined the Shministim in December 2008 and refused to serve in the Israeli army. She spent forty days in military prison and was exempted in March 2009. Today she works for the Jerusalem organization Rabbis for Human Rights.

Maya Yechieli Wind testified in front of a Citizen Hearings on the Impact of US Weapons on Civilians in Gaza. The hearing took place in San Francisco on April 26, 2009.

A statement from the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

sydney — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:33:35 +0000

Beyond the killing and maiming of innocent civilians, beyond clear violations of both American and international law, beyond questions of fundamental morality, Israel’s use of American-supplied arms against Palestinian civilians harms America’s own interests by portraying it to the world – and the Muslim world in particular – as an accomplice in Israel’s 43-year Occupation with little regard to human rights. This perception, easily proven by the record, undermines American credibility and its ability to withdraw its forces from the Middle East and stabilize this crucial geo-political region.

Israel’s use of weapons supplied by the US is in clear and continuing violation of American law, particularly the Arms Export Control Act. Section 4 of the AECA stipulates that arms may be sold to allies “solely for” their internal security or legitimate self-defense. Israel’s use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in 2006 (at least a million unexploded pods remain on the ground); its use of flechettes – finned inch-long darts, thousands of which are packed into tank shells and released at high speed with devastating results – have been used in densely populated Gaza, causing significant civilian harm with no “defensive” element on the part of Israel; its use of F-16 aricraft and Apache helicopters for “targeted assassinations” in Gaza and the West Bank, frequently resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians; the use of Caterpillar bulldozers sold to Israel as military hardware and specifically designed to demolish Palestinian homes (24,000 of which have been demolished in the Occupied Territories since 1967); the firing of precision Hellfire missiles at civilian targets; the illegal dropping of hundreds of white phosphorous bombs which generate heat so intense it can melt glass on heavily populated areas of Gaza; the use of a new type of missile which explodes large numbers of tiny sharp-edged metal cubes capable of penetrating thick metal doors; plus the extensive dropping of DIME bomblets made of a tungsten-base Dense Inert Metals Explosive which destroys a victim’s inner organs and has no military value outside of killing civilians – none of these acts and myriad others can be justified under the provisions of the AECA.

ICAHD, an Israeli peace and human rights organization, strongly supports the call of the Jewish Voice for Peace to investigate whether US-supplied weapons were used by Israel to target civilians in the latest attacks on Gaza, and if they were to suspend arms sales to Israel in accordance with American law.

The billions of dollars in arms sent by the US to Israel (and billions more to surrounding Arab states) cannot possibly contribute to efforts to achieve a just peace and bring stability to the region. We believe they are actually antithetical to American interests in the region. Given the harm done to Palestinian civilian populations by Israel’s indiscriminate use of American-supplied weaponry and the collateral harm done to America’s name the world over, we hope that such an investigation will mark an end to American involvement in violence and war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

Uri Avnery: Strings attached

sydney — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:01:47 +0000

It’s time to ask questions

sydney — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:53:07 +0000

Dorothy Naor

I write to you as a Jewish woman who is both American and Israeli. I have lived in Israel for over 50 years, and I can tell you that I have had enough of wars and insecurity.

America keeps on sending us billions of dollars in weapons every year. And yet, Israel has become the least safe country for Jews to live in (except for war zones such as Afghanistan, where no one is safe).

Nowhere else in the world since WWII have we Jews lived through 12 wars/battles/campaigns–all in less that 61 years.
Nowhere else in the world since WWII have so many Jews been killed in violence–over 23,000 since Israel came into being.
Nowhere else in the world have so many Jews been injured.

And yet, we have no security. 61 years of the use of force have not brought us Israelis one iota of security.

To make matters worse, those of us who are seeking peace find ourselves harassed by the Israeli police. A number of my colleagues have had their computers confiscated, been called to interrogations, or have been made to sign declarations forbidding them to talk with one another. To add insult to injury, the police actions were carried out on Israel’s Memorial Day to send a subtle message to the public that our activism may compromise Israel’s security.

Our crime? We dared to ask questions. We dared to ask whether militarism was the only way. We are undeterred. We will continue asking.

It is your time to ask too.

If you are an American, please take a moment right now to call on Congress to ask the question: what happened with your US tax dollars in Gaza?

If you live in another country, ask yourself whether your government is involved in this trade of weapons and destruction.

Here in Israel, we do not need more US weapons. We need you to help us achieve peace-lasting peace.

There can be no peace, however, until the Palestinians have justice. The Palestinian catastrophe since 1948 has included expulsion from their homes and lands, and for those who remained in the West Bank and Gaza, extra-judicial executions, land confiscations, no freedom of movement, nor the freedom to build homes and communities, Palestinians live always with the fear of Israeli military incursions. Since September 29, 2000 Israel has killed 6,248 Palestinians. 1,487 of these have been children.

Israel’s Memorial Day is the saddest day in the year for me, not only because of those who are already buried, but because of all those who might be killed for generations to come unless you help us achieve a just peace.

Sincerely,

Now it’s your turn

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 06:52:14 +0000

Sameh Akram Habeeb

For months now I have been trying to make sense of what happened in Gaza. And yet I never know where to start or how to find the one story that says everything that needs to be said about what happened—and still is happening—to us.

I have many accounts to choose from and pictures as well. I am a photojournalist, you see, and I have been documenting in words and pictures the shortages of food and electricity that preceded the attack and continue to this day, and the many civilians who were killed, maimed, or made homeless during those terrible 22 days in late December and early January.

I have collected many accounts of bravery and despair under extremely trying circumstances. My house was exposed to shrapnel from Israeli rockets. Without power, I had to walk around four kilometers (about two and a half miles) in the middle of this cruel attack, simply to charge my laptop in order to get the truth out. Now it’s your turn. I am asking you now to carry my story forward.

The US government is planning to pour more money—billions of dollars—to continue this madness. Tell them what happened in Gaza and ask them to investigate. Ask them to find out for themselves what happened with the money they sent. Our streets are littered with “made-in-the-US” ammunitions; our schools with “made-in-the-US” phosphorus.

Ask them to make sure that the story of Louay does not repeat itself. I met him in a hospital. His grandmother was beside him trying to make him feel better. When I spoke with him, he did not know that that he had lost his eyesight and that his brother was killed in an attack on his father’s car. He told me what had happened to him, then he concluded, “I need you to help me recover quickly so I can go to school again and play with some of my friends. I don’t know if they are alive or not.” These are the words and the courage of an eight-year old.

We can do better than this.

Sameh Akram Habeeb

PS. PS. Want to read more about my work and see the world with the eyes of a Palestinian in Gaza?
Go to http://www.paltelegraph.com/. I started The Palestine Telegraph/PT as a professionally driven online newspaper envisioned by a few thoughtful Palestinian youths in Gaza. They were inspired to do something to change their world. Check it out.