Tag: Action Alert

Free Gaza Movement: Hope Fleet to Gaza

Free Gaza Movement

30 March 2009

The Free Gaza Movement will again challenge Israel’s illegal closure of the Gaza Strip and collective punishment of its civilian population by sailing the HOPE FLEET, a flotilla of passenger and cargo ships, to Gaza at the end of May 2009 – to be followed by freedom riders this summer. We are turning to you, our friends & supporters, to help make Hope come alive.

Our small yet committed group has already made five successful voyages to Gaza, delivering needed human rights workers & humanitarian supplies, taking out Palestinian students and medical patients, and helping to lessen Gaza’s terrible isolation from the world. We are confident that with the universal outrage over Israel’s massacres in Gaza we will be able to send a flotilla of ships to shatter the siege and deliver a message of international hope and solidarity to the people of Palestine.

March 30th, 2009 marks the BDS (Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions) Global Day of Action against Israeli violence. Responsible BDS actions were used to end apartheid in South Africa. Today, Israeli policies of racism, ethnic cleansing and the brutal military occupation of Palestine demand equally determined & direct action to overcome them. When our governments fail to act, we – the citizens of the world – must stand up and make our voices heard. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants all people the right to leave and return to their own country – a right that Israel summarily denies Palestinians.

We are looking for ships wishing to join the Hope Fleet and sail to Gaza in late May, and we are looking for high-profile people, including parliamentarians and celebrities, who want to join us and demand that a besieged Gaza cannot forever remain an open-air prison with no access to the world. The Free Gaza Movement will continue to challenge Israel’s brutal policies. We will go to Gaza again, and again, and again, until the Israeli siege is broken and the people of Gaza have access to the rest of the world.

We will begin collecting names and information as we ready for this historic voyage. With your help, we will make the HOPE FLEET a reality.

NYCBI launches Motorola boycott

New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel

30 March 2009

Why Boycott?

In the wake of Israel’s recent assault on the people of Gaza and the US government’s complicity in the attacks, we as people of conscience in the US must challenge Israeli policies. Israel systematically violates Palestinian human rights through unrelenting checkpoints, surveillance, house demolitions, and military aggression. Hundreds of Palestinian civil society organizations have called on the world to work on campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and New York is taking up the call! We, the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, call for a boycott of Motorola until it stops profiting from and supporting Israeli apartheid.

Why Motorola?

We demand Motorola end its production and sale of fuzes to the Israeli military

Motorola Israel produces fuzes used in cluster bombs, ‘bunker-buster’ bombs, and a variety of other bombs. Cluster bombs, whose export was recently banned by the US government, are each composed of hundreds of exploding bomblets that spray metal shrapnel over a large area when they explode.

Cluster bombs are specifically condemned by an international consensus of human rights organizations, banned by many countries, and even the US government has voiced concern over their use, especially in civilian areas. Despite this, Israel has regularly used cluster bombs in the past few years.

We demand Motorola end its transfer and/or sales of all communication devices to the Israeli military

Motorola Israel acquired a $100 million contract to provide a nationwide military data encrypted cellular network, “Mountain Rose,” for the Israeli Defense Forces, allowing commanders to communicate securely anywhere they operate.

The IDF is accelerating investment in Motorola Israel’s Mountain Rose system in a time of cutbacks because of its critical role in developing Israel’s land-warfare maneuvering capacity.

We demand Motorola end its transfer and/or sales of all products that aid and support Israel’s settlements including all radar detection devices

Motorola supplies the Israeli military with the Wide Area Surveillance System (WASS) and other high-tech configurations of radar devices and thermal cameras used to keep Palestinian civilians under constant surveillance on their own land.

Motorola surveillance systems are being installed around Israeli settlement/colonies and the apartheid wall that Israel has constructed in the Palestinian West Bank. This shows that Israel has no intention of dismantling the illegal settlements or ending its occupation of Palestinian land.

What can I do?

1. Join us at the demo
2. Don’t buy Motorola
3. Say goodbye to Moto! Sign our pledge not to purchase Motorola
4. Spread the word

22 days to lift the siege on Gaza

In 22 days, the Israeli military invaded Gaza and left death and destruction in its wake.

In 22 days, we will focus on lifting the blockade of Gaza by pressuring Egypt and Israel to open the borders.

With participants from 22 countries, we will make this a truly international effort.

From May 22-June 14, delegations will amass at the Rafah border in Egypt and the Erez crossing in Israel, along with boats coming in from the Mediterranean Sea (via www.freegaza.org). We will envelop Gaza with solidarity in order to LIFT THE SIEGE.

With your help, we can do it. We will do it.

Here’s how you can help:

Organize your own delegation—students, labor, health workers, lawyers, artists, religious, environmentalists, farmers, peacemakers—sometime between May 22 and June 14. You can try to enter Gaza through either the Israeli or Egyptian border. CODEPINK, a U.S.-based peace group that took a 60-person delegation to Gaza in March 2009, can send you a detailed guide with info on hotels, transport, visas, etc. and help you camp at the border if you don’t get in. Contact us at gaza.codepink@gmail.com.

Participate in a delegation: If you don’t have the ability to organize a delegation but would like to join one, contact us at gaza.codepink@gmail.com. For a one-week trip, the per person cost is airfare to either Cairo or Tel Aviv, and then approximately $600 for other expenses (internal transport, hotel, food, visas, program in Gaza and donation to local groups).

Donate funds to this effort. You can donate online (https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4489) or send a check made out to CODEPINK/Gaza to 2010 Linden Ave, Venice, CA 90291. You can also host a house party fundraiser.

Volunteer time to build the campaign: We need help with outreach, media, website, organizing teach-ins, setting up speaking engagements, etc. Contact us at gaza.codepink@gmail.com with ways you can help.

Thank you for your support. Together, we can take a stand to protect and respect the human rights and dignity of all people in the Middle East.

CODEPINK, www.codepinkalert.org

Background:
In March, CODEPINK organized a 60-person delegation, that included Alice Walker, to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and to give gift baskets to the women of Gaza on International Women’s Day. This campaign is the next step in our commitment to work for peace in the region. To read more about the previous Gaza delegation, click here (LINK to alert, http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=4761 ).

Find frequently updated news and analysis about the Gaza siege on our blog here: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/category/codepinkcampaigns/gazaisrael/

More info and resources on CODEPINK’s Gaza Campaign here:
http://codepinkalert.org/gaza

Additional background resources on Palestine and Israel here:
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/mideast/palestine/background.html

Blog against apartheid

It Is Apartheid

The first week in March is International Apartheid Awareness Week. There are now activities in 40 cities around the world. In solidarity, itisapartheid.org is making March Blog Against Apartheid Month.

The main stream media does not print what is going on in Israel and Palestine. Blogging can be a very effective way to get around this blockade of the truth. If many people are blogging on many different sites on a similar subject and point of view, it can have a ripple effect. That is our intention: to get the word out that there is apartheid in Israel/Palestine. We are asking each supporter of itisapartheid.org to make two blog entries about apartheid in Israel/Palestine in the month of March.

  1. Look for a blog with recent posts on I/P and post your opinion that Israel is an apartheid state. Google blog and the word “Israel” or “Pro Israel” or “Palestine” or Gaza etc…
  2. It is ok if others on the blog don’t agree with you.
  3. Link to the itisapartheid web site, www.itisapartheid.org, so people can see the facts.
  4. Make your blog short. Under 200 words.
  5. Send your blog post and where you posted it to info@itisaparteid.org so we can keep track.
  6. Media outlets have blogs, individuals have blogs and organizations have blogs (such as the David project).
  7. Visit the itisapartheid fact sheet

Sample blog entry:

To question whether there is Israeli Apartheid is like asking if there is any such thing as global warming. There are people who say there is no global warming, but people in the scientific community who study such things say there is no doubt about the facts. The same is true for Israeli apartheid, you can deny the “inconvenient truth,” you can call people names who say it, but it does not make it any less true. Just look at what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem concluded; “Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime … is reminiscent of … the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

What about Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz, which observed in that “The apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation.”

Or Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, who said, “If you change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa.”

Even the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, said failure of the peace process will sink Israel into a South Africa apartheid struggle. “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”