Stop the bombing of Gaza! Prevent a humanitarian crisis!

UPDATE: Since this Action Alert was posted, the shelling of Gaza has continued almost non-stop.

Eight days [now 17 days] and thousands of shells later, the assault on Gaza continues. Israel has vowed that it will continue to intensify the attack. Eighteen people are dead, including at two children, and many more are injured.

Amnesty International is “calling on the Israeli army to end immediately its air bombardments and shelling of civilian residential areas in the Gaza Strip.” Amnesty says, “Israeli forces…must put an immediate end to the frequent, disproportionate and excessive use of force against Palestinians. Such attacks continue to cause death and injury to Palestinian children and other bystanders, and constitute violations of international law.”

John Ging, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, stated that “from a humanitarian perspective the outlook here in Gaza is bleak at the moment. We are once again facing imminent food shortages, insecurity is making delivery of humanitarian services difficult and we are very concerned about the public health risks from the outbreak of avian influenza. All of this is likely to add up to more refugees falling below the poverty line and becoming dependent on humanitarian assistance.”

Please help stop these atrocities:

  1. Contact your local representatives and demand they raise the issue of the bombardment of Gaza and the closure of the Karni checkpoint (see information below).
  2. Contact your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and demand they put pressure on Israel to stop the bombardment of Gaza and open the Karni checkpoint (see information below).
  3. Hold a protest, vigil, or rally in front of your Israeli embassy or consulate and demand that Israel stops bombarding Gaza and opens the Karni checkpoint. To find the address of the Embassy or one of the Consulates, go to (http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Israel.cfm#171)

UK
Contact MPs
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/aristotle/

Fax your MP direct from this site
http://www.faxyourmp.com/

USA
Contact local representative
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Contact your Senators
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

US (Department of State)
http://www.state.gov/

Websites for Ministries of Foreign Affairs
For all countries see http://www.usip.org/library/formin.html

Australia
http://www.dfat.gov.au/contacts.html

Denmark
http://www.um.dk/en/servicemenu/Contact/?wbc_purpose=basi

France
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr

Greece
http://www2.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/en-US

Germany
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/en/index_html

Japan
http://www.mofa.go.jp/feedback/index.html

Spain
http://www.mae.es/en/Home/

Protest Against the Withdrawal of US and EU Funding

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bil’in, Occupied West Bank

Protesters wearing US, EU and UN flags will eat a lavish feast in front of others, fenced in and wearing Palestinian flags who will eat nothing.

The protest symbolises the withdrawal of US and EU funding of the Palestinian Authority, as a result of the democratic election of Hamas earlier this year.

Villagers, International and Israeli peace activists, anarchists and others will hold the peaceful symbolic protest on Friday afternoon after midday prayers.

Peaceful protests in Bil’in have taken place every week for over a year now, since the apartheid wall and illegal settlement construction threaten approximately half of the village’s agricultural land. The withdrawal of EU and US funding will not make their situation any easier.

For more information call:
Mohammed Katib: 054 557 3285
ISM Media office: 02 297 1824 or 057 572 0754

Rachel Corrie Foundation Peaceworks Conference

Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice
Peace Works Conference
Olympia, Washington, USA

April 20th, In Lecture: Arun Gandhi, Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi
April 21st, Putting Justice into Action: Exchanging Organizing Strategies and Addressing Issues of Identity and Oppression in Our Solidarity Work
April 21st, Jerry and Sis Levin (CPT) at United Churches
April 22-23, A Conference Cultivating a Just and Enduring Peace for the People of Palestine and Israel

History: After Rachel Corrie was killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003 while nonviolently protecting the home of a Palestinian pharmacist and accountant and their families from demolition, the Corrie family, with the devoted support of Olympia community members and supporters across the country, established the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, that continues the work Rachel began and hoped to accomplish. One of the Foundation’s dreams, Peace Works–an annual memorial lecture/conference addressing a significant justice and peace issue–will come to fruition in April 2006.

Rationale: The mission of Peace Works is to provide a continuing forum for exploring the meaning and practice of justice and peace as they affect the social, economic, political, environmental, and spiritual aspects of all people’s lives. The focus of the 2006 conference is the cultivation of a just and enduring peace for the people of Palestine and Israel. We were reminded recently by Jim Wallis (Sojourner’s Magazine) of how Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that “to change the nation, you had to change the wind… change how a nation thinks and feels and perceives the most important things…and then the politicians will follow.” Our conference working group hopes that through this first conference many can join in considering where things stand in Israel and Palestine and can strategize about how to further “change the wind”—in this country, and hopefully beyond. We anticipate that this will be a meaningful event locally, regionally, and nationally.

The Audience: We will engage those long familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian issue and, also, newcomers who are interested in learning, sharing, and stepping up their own efforts to work for enduring peace in the Middle East. We hope to draw both local and regional participants, as well as friends from around the country who will want to be part of this discussion and the inaugural Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice event.

Formats and Speakers: We are considering formats that include lectures, panels, and small group discussions with emphasis on action flowing from the work we do together. The voices of conference attendees will be as important as those of the thoughtful and powerful speakers who will participate:

• Arun Gandhi: the fifth grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, a social-political activist, and founder of the M.K.
Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence in Memphis, Tennessee.
• Dr. Mustafa Barghouti: Palestinian physician and prominent Palestinian leader. Dr. Barghouti recently ran
as an independent candidate in the Palestinian presidential elections.
• Diana Buttu: Canadian-Palestinian lawyer, peace activist, and advisor to the Palestinian Negotiation Team.
• Amira Hass: Israeli author and journalist for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz who has lived in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• Huwaida Arraf: Palestinian-American co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement.
• Lama Hourani: Gaza Branch Coordinator of one of the first Palestinian NGOs, the Palestinian Working Women Society for Development, which advocates for women’s rights as equal citizens.
• Liat Weingart: Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace in San Francisco.
• Dr. Sarah Roy: Research Associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, author of The Gaza
Strip: The Political Economy of De-development.

How to Help:
This is an exciting but large undertaking for our foundation and community. To be successful, we need your help. Here are some things you can do to help:
• Join a planning committee: Program, Logistics, Tools (Publicity & Media), Gandhi Event, Interfaith Service, and Administrative/Finance & Fundraising.
• Become a sponsoring individual by making a tax deductible contribution to support the conference: Make check payable to the Rachel Corrie Foundation and designate “Peace Works” in the memo. Mail to Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, P.O. Box 12149, Olympia, WA, 98508 or use our convenient credit card option with Groundspring.
• Ask your organization to become a sponsoring organization providing financial and other support.
• Plan to attend one or all of the Peace Works events.

Information: For further details or to have a member of our committee speak with your group, contact Donna Schumann at 943-0965, 584-3103, or donnaschumann@comcast.net.

Visit our web site at http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org.

Sir Gerald Kaufman MP: Israel “would be a rogue government” if Refuses to Prosecute Killer Soldiers

We Cannot Allow These Murders to Go Unpunished

We can demand these homicidal Israeli soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes

by Sir Gerald Kaufman MP

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0412-26.htm

In a marvellous book of essays, “The Slopes of Lebanon,” the great Israeli novelist Amos Oz advanced an audacious thesis. He contended that the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Holocaust – they included many members of my own family – must not be used as justification for the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

Recent Israeli governments, led first by Ariel Sharon and now by Ehud Olmert, have launched a new twist on the argument refuted by Oz. They operate actively on the policy that the murder of 1,000 Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorists allows the Israeli forces to do anything they think fit in what their government claims is national self-defense. Over the past few days they have killed 13 Palestinians, including a five-year-old girl.

Those of us who believe in a two-state solution, a secure Israel alongside a free and internationally recognised Palestine, are denounced as sympathisers with terrorism – or, in cases such as mine, self-hating Jews – if we attack the appalling suppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

We point out that the evacuation of the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops last summer was not a move towards a two-state solution but simply self-defensive action. We point out that Olmert’s plans to base Israel’s permanent border by the year 2010 on the illegal Israeli wall is not a peace formula but an imposed settlement that the Palestinians will never accept. We point out that every withdrawal of funding from the Palestinians by the European Union and the US increases support for Hamas among the Palestinians. We point out that the road map for peace in the Middle East, of which our own government is a key initiator, is moribund. We are all but ignored.

But, when it comes to the murder of Britons by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers, the self-serving apologia of Israeli atrocities by right-wing Israelis and their sympathisers loses all credibility.

New territory is opened by the verdict of the inquests in Britain that the British peace activist Tom Hurndall and the British film-maker James Miller were murdered by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. As Britons we have the right to require action by our own government when our own nationals are stated by legal authorities in our own country to be the victims of homicide by a foreign power. If the Speaker allows me when the Commons reconvenes next Tuesday after the Easter recess, I shall be asking my friend and colleague Jack Straw what action he proposes to take about the murder of Hurndall and Miller.

It seems to me that we have three choices. We can ask for these killers to be extradited for prosecution under war crimes legislation in this country. After all, even Colonel Gaddafi agreed eventually to the Libyan Lockerbie killers being put on trial. Alternatively, we can demand that these homicidal Israeli soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes before an international court, as Slobodan Milosevic was. If the Israelis cooperate in neither of these courses, then we should impose sanctions on what would be a rogue government.

Those of us who have visited the Palestinian territories in recent months know that there is an element in the Israeli armed forces which is trigger-happy and well nigh out of control. Last November I led the first ever British Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to the Palestinian National Authority. Twice, during our period there, our group of three members of the Commons and two members of the Lords was held at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers, even when we had explained our mission.

I pointed out to my Parliamentary colleagues that we were being subjected to only transitory harassment, that we were going home on Friday, while for the Palestinians this was their life, much worse, and permanently. And of course brief annoyance for a British team of parliamentarians is less than a minute fraction of what happened to Hurndall and Miller. But it is a meaningful symptom.

Apologists for the Israeli government say that that country is a democracy. So what? The United States is a democracy, yet it almost routinely tortures prisoners held in violation of international law at Guantanamo Bay. A democratically-elected French Government suppressed the Algerians for years.

This current Israeli government, posing as moderate when it is extremist, is, like President Bush’s administration in Guantanamo, also in violation of international law. I look to my own British government to take action on behalf of its own murdered nationals and their families. They must ensure that the Israeli government is made to abide by international law and international decency.

Sir Gerald Kaufmanis Labour MP for Manchester, Gorton, and former Shadow Foreign Secretary, 1987-92.

UNRWA Director: “Counting down to a crisis in Gaza.”

From UNRWA

PDF Version of Press Release

Gaza – Another week of closure at Karni commercial crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip adds to the mounting woes facing Palestine refugees living in Gaza. This follows a weekend that saw the killing of 14 Palestinians, protests by refugee farmers who have yet to receive any compensation for bird flu and widespread public demonstrations protesting the cutting of donor funding.

John Ging, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza, warned that “if Karni remains closed, we are, once again, counting down to a food crisis.” 765,000 refugees depend on UNRWA’s food distribution of flour, oil, sugar and other basic items. Ging stated that “the clock is now ticking and distribution will have to be shut down entirely for the second time in less than a month if the crossing does not open immediately.”

Returning from a visit this morning to an UNRWA primary school in Beit Lahia, where parents and teachers protested that the children are in very real danger from the daily Israeli shelling in close proximity to the school, Ging stated that “from a humanitarian perspective the outlook here in Gaza is bleak at the moment. We are once again facing imminent food shortages, insecurity is making delivery of humanitarian services difficult and we are very concerned about the public health risks from the outbreak of avian influenza. All of this is likely to add up to more refugees falling below the poverty line and becoming dependent on humanitarian assistance.” However, Ging warned that UNRWA does not yet have the money to meet today’s needs and is facing a bill of almost $900,000 in penalties for port and other charges arising from the Karni closure.

-Ends-

For more information please contact:

Jerusalem: Johan Eriksson
Office: 972-2-589-0249
Mobile: 972-59-428-056

Gaza: Adnan abu Hasna
Office: +972-8-677-7531
Mobile: +972-59-428-61

Jamal Hamad
Mobile: 972-599-416-877