Interfaith Peace Initiative
~January 6, 2009~
"Members of Congress are being urged to issue one-sided statements supporting "Israel's right to defend its citizens from terrorism" with no mention of the urgent need for a comprehensive cease-fire that will end the human suffering on both sides. Legislation making a similar point is expected in both the House and the Senate.
It is important that your Representative and Senators hear from you now on the need for U.S. diplomatic leadership to help achieve an immediate cease-fire that ends the violence, addresses the humanitarian situation and leads to concrete steps toward a two-state peace agreement.
Several Members have made constructive statements (click here to view these statements), but many more have not. They need to hear from American Christians that expressing sympathy for only one side of the conflict is not compassionate or smart policy. What is needed now is strong U.S. leadership that pulls Israelis and Palestinians back from the brink and puts them on to a path toward an agreement for creation of a viable Palestinian state that will enhance Israel's security....."
From Churches for Middle East Peace
http://www.cmep.org/Alerts/2009Jan6.htm\
Congressional Action on Appropriations for Israel in 2008.
President Bush proposed and Congress enacted $2.55 billion in FMF
for Israel in 2008. This is the first
of many anticipated increases under a ten-year Memorandum of
Understanding signed between the United States and Israel in 2007.
This agreement would provide $30 billion in FMF over the next
decade, a 25% increase over current levels of military aid to
Israel.
The Interfaith Peace Initiative challenges this increase, not
because we wish harm to Israel, but because Israel is using our tax
dollars to violate international law and human rights. Segregated
roadways, segregated housing built on stolen land, collective
punishment, theft and destruction of private property are not
activities US taxpayers should fund.
Please write a personal letter to your members of Congress. Fax and
mail it, as e-mails can be easily overlooked. Include articles found
at the web sites listed below on Israeli efforts to drive
Palestinians from the Holy Land. In the letter, express your dismay
that our tax dollars are going toward the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their homes. Stress that the
people who are being persecuted include families whose ancestors
have lived on this land for hundreds, and in some cases thousands,
of years.
Say that you do not want to be a party to violations of
international law that lead to the dispossession of people from
their homes. At a time when Americans are being forced from their
own homes by the ongoing financial crisis, our government should not
be using our tax dollars to support a regime of apartheid and racism
widely condemned around the world.
Tell your representatives that many of the most vocal critics of
Israel's policies are Jews, including Israeli Jews, but their voices
are not often heard in this country. We can no longer shut out
voices of reason acting to prevent further bloodshed in the region,
while listening only to those who advocate domination by one group
over another.
Remember, your Congressional delegation will only act on these
issues when enough constituents contact them and publicize the
impact of increasing military aid to Israel. They need to hear from
you now!
Below are excerpts from recent articles confirming Israel's goal of
removing Palestinians and Israeli Arabs from their homes. All are
direct quotes. As you read these, remember that one fifth (20%) of
Israel's citizens are of Arab descent. They have long been
discriminated against in areas ranging from employment to housing to
education. Now their fears of being driven out have been validated.
Israeli Arabs should live in Palestinian state: Livni
Agence France Presse, December 12, 2008
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni, a frontrunner in the race to become premier,
said on Thursday that Arab Israelis should move to a Palestinian
state when it is eventually created.
"My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic state of Israel
is to have two distinct national entities," she told a group of
secondary school students in Tel Aviv in remarks broadcast by army
radio. "And among other things I will also be able to approach the
Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Arab Israelis,
and tell them: 'your national aspirations lie elsewhere.'"
The remarks drew an angry rebuttal from Arab Israeli MP Ahmed Tibi
and from the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas. "She
must decide whether she means to leave a million Arabs without
political rights or a national identity, or whether she really
intends to transfer a million Arab citizens to the Palestinian state
that will be established," he said...."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hlcC1bkUCB_G_bS7f5_TRFpxonFQ
ANALYSIS / Hebron settler riots were out and out pogroms
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz
An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of
them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a
few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a
play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense
of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the
front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in
the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the
neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the
security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and
who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events
unfolding there.
The cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men
hurled at the Abu Sa'afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by
before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these
difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break
into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain
requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and
children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of
horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to
save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows
and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The
front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The
windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around,
as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish
witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering
suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way
to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the
army.
Ten minutes prior, while the security forces were preoccupied with
dispersing the rioters near the House of Contention, black smoke
billowed from the wadi separating Kiryat Arba and Hebron. For some
reason, none of the senior officers of the police or the army were
particularly disturbed by what was transpiring at the foot of Kiryat
Arba. Anyone standing hundreds of meters away could notice the
dozens of rioters climbing atop the roof of the Abu Sa'afan family
home, hurling stones. Only moments later did it become apparent that
there were people inside the home...."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1043795.html
Olmert condemns settler 'pogrom'
"Outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has compared the violence used by
Jewish settlers against Palestinians in Hebron to bygone
anti-Semitism in Europe.
He told Cabinet he was ashamed by recent scenes in the West Bank
city, which he said amounted to a pogrom. The settlers shot and
wounded three Palestinians and set fire to property after Israeli
security forces evicted a Jewish group from a disputed building.
Correspondents say Mr Olmert's use of "pogrom" has particular
resonance. It is usually associated with the anti-Semitic violence
Jewish people experienced in Europe and Russia in the 19th and 20th
centuries.
"As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at
innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term
'pogrom' to describe what I have seen," he told Cabinet members,
according to public radio. "We are the sons of a nation who know
what is meant by a pogrom, and I am using the word only after deep
reflection." ......"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7770384.stm
I am ashamed
By Hadassa Ben-Itto
Editor's note: This is an important article by a courageous
retired judge who is honorary president of the International
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.
".....I have watched on television as young Jews in Hebron assaulted
their neighbors, including defenseless families - vandalizing
property, destroying, burning and defacing sites holy to others. And
my words in Bern are ringing in my ears. I told myself: I, too, am
keeping silent. And I was ashamed.
Therefore, I am breaking my silence. Because I believe that the
individual is also obligated to make his voice heard - his personal
voice, not a political voice - in order to warn against
atrocity.....
I am ashamed of my silence. I saw the uprooting of olive trees, the
overturning of market stalls, the attacks on property, and sometimes
on innocent people, and I kept silent. I heard the words of
incitement, I identified the messages and I was ashamed, but I kept
silent...."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046520.html
Israeli blockade of Gaza amounts to occupation
Darlene Wallach, San Jose Mercury News, Dec 15, 2008
"On Nov. 18, the Israeli military kidnapped me - a Jewish American
leaving behind the comforts of San Jose - and 17 others from three
Palestinian fishing vessels plying Gaza's coastal waters. Two other
international human rights workers and I were accompanying 15
Palestinian fishermen to provide witness to and documentation of the
frequent harassment and attacks by the Israeli navy. Our seizure
belies Israel's claim that it no longer occupies Gaza and its 1.5
million people.
Israel's military occupation of Gaza did not end with the withdrawal
of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Israel still
controls access of people and goods into and out of the Strip. It
controls Gaza's airspace, borders and, as my capture attests,
territorial waters.
Last year, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, hoping to turn Gazans
against Hamas. In early November, it tightened the blockade and is
denying an entire population access to trucks laden with
humanitarian provisions, food and gas...."
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11228083?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
Israeli Settler Pogrom Against Palestinians; CFR/Brookings Report
Suggests Linking U.S. Aid to Settlement Freeze
by Daniel Levy
December 4, 2008
"A week of Israeli settler outrages against Palestinians and against
Israel's own security forces reached a crescendo over the last 24
hours with settlers opening fire on Palestinian civilians and
unleashing violent disturbances across the West Bank. Israel's
Justice Minister, Daniel Friedman, has just called the events a
"shocking pogrom", journalists have described how their presence
saved Palestinian residents of a home near Kiryat Arba from a
lynching, and IDF sources described how the right wing activists
"want to spark a religious war that would inflame the entire
region." The belated IDF action in upholding a court order to evict
settlers from a home that they illegally occupied in Hebron, led by
Defense Minister Barak, was at least effective, although the same
cannot be said of the limp-wristed measures taken in the face of
settler rampages against Palestinians, and of the general approach
to settler lawlessness.
While the Israeli press is full of graphic descriptions of the
settler outrages, there has been remarkably little coverage in the
American mainstream media..... Settler extremism has become a
strategic issue with implications for American policy, American
private funding of settlements, and how to manage the security
dynamic in the West Bank.
The litany of settler actions over this week makes for particularly
bleak reading on a Friday night. On the walls of home and in mosques
in the West Bank villages of Yatma, Sanjil, Turmus Ayya, and
Isawiyya, graffiti has been scrawled reading "Mohammed the pig" and
"Death to the Arabs", elsewhere cemeteries have been desecrated,
Palestinian homes set on fire, olive trees uprooted, tires
punctured, and yesterday two Palestinians were shot and seriously
wounded by settler fire. Israeli security forces overseeing the
evacuation of the Hebron house and sometimes trying to bring order
were stoned and assaulted by settlers, along with the customary
hurling of choice abuse, notably the word "Nazi". According to the
Israeli Yedioth Ahronot newspaper, Ethiopian IDF soldiers "enjoyed"
their own variation on the abuse theme, being told "niggers don't
expel Jews"..... "
http://www.prospectsforpeace.com/2008/12/israeli_settler_pogrom_against.html
Civil rights group claim Israeli occupation is "reminiscent of
apartheid"
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
Sunday, 7 December 2008
"Israel's leading civil rights organisation yesterday broke a taboo
by describing Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank as being
“reminiscent of apartheid” in South Africa.
Alleging an intensification of human rights abuses against
Palestinians, the respected Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)
made the comparison in an annual report that described the existence
of separate legal, planning and transportation systems for Jewish
settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank....."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/civil-rights-group-claim-israeli-occupation-is-reminiscent-of-apartheid-1056546.html
