Tag: Global Actions

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

Protests in Solidarity with Tristan Anderson and Palestinians

Tristan Anderson, from Oakland, CA, was shot and critically injured in the West Bank on March 13 while protesting the Israeli apartheid wall. Demonstrations were held in solidarity with him and with all Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Below are videos from the rally in San Fransisco at the Israeli consulate and some images from a protest in London outside the Israeli embassy.

His partner, Gabrielle Silverman, spoke to a rally at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco today by telephone from the hospital. She discusses the weaponry that Israel has deployed against Palestinians and international supporters, including live ammunition as well as the controversial high-velocity tear gas projectile shot at Tristan.

Starhawk speaks to the rally about Tristan and the occupation.

Recording of Tristan reading from his diary played at the rally.

Photos from solidarity rally in London. (filkaler)

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.”