Mideast Just Peace

Bombing civilians, denying water, food and

medical supplies are War Crimes
There are those who would have us believe that nothing can be done. They are wrong.  
Donate Humanitarian Aid: The Free Gaza Movement

Middle East Children’s Alliance
American Near East Refugee Aid

Educate Yourself:  US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation  
Jewish Voice for Peace

Contribut toward  upcoming events:  MidEast:JustPeace P.O. Box 815, Suttons Bay, MI 49682

Wednesday January 21
Wednesday February 18
Wednesday March 18
All at 6:30 PM at the Traverse Area Public Library
60 minute DVD presentation, followed by discussion.  Free/Public Invited.

January 21: The first presentation is by Anna Baltzer, a  Jewish-American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and three-time volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service, a human rights organization based in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  The 60 minute DVD  Life in Occupied Palestine provides critical information and documentation and encourages dialogue towards taking action on the issue.  The presentation covers checkpoints, settlements, Israeli activism, censorship, the Wall, and the frequently unreported Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance movement.  See www.annainthemiddleeast.com.

February 18: The second DVD forum will be with Israeli professor and author Ilan Pappe.  Hear Ilan Pappe discuss his new book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.  Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. The pervasive denial of the Nakbah, as Palestinians call the catastrophe that befell them, is still a mystery today. But why is it denied, and by whom?

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery, and Pappe puts forward a ground-breaking – if controversial – interpretation of the relationship of Nakbah to the Palestine-Israeli conflict, naming Nakbah as the conflict’s very origin. Portraying Israeli-Palestine relations in a revolutionary new light, this book is guaranteed to spark fierce debate throughout the world.
See www.IlanPappe.com

March 18: The third DVD forum will be with with American professors and authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. They discuss their new book, The Israel Lobby.  For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.Hear more from Mearsheimer and Walt. See January 26, 2009 issue of American Conservative Magazine at www.amconmage.com and  London Review of Books

MYTH NO 1: Gaza is no longer occupied by Israel

Israel says that when it withdrew the 8,000 Israeli settlers from

Gaza in 2005, it had given control back to the Palestinians.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Israel

tightened its grip even more and has full control of Gaza’s air,

sea and land spaces. Furthermore, it imposed a draconian

siege that created a complete humanitarian crisis even before

the latest military assault.

 

MYTH NO 2: Hamas violated the ceasefire

This is totally untrue. Israel violated the ceasefire when it

killed several Palestinians in November provoking a Hamas

response. Israel also refused to end the siege as required

under the ceasefire arrangements, allowing at best a trickle of

aid through while keeping the border hermetically sealed 70%

of the time. Even after all the death and destruction of this

military campaign, Israel refuses to countenance a cease-fire.

 

MYTH NO 3: Israel wants peace

Since the beginning of the Annapolis Peace Process in Dec

2007, and before this latest offensive, Israel killed 546

Palestinians (including 76 children), some 5,000 Palestinians

were arrested and checkpoints were increased from 521 to

699 in the West Bank. Furthermore its illegal settlement

projects have continued and have increased by a factor of 38.

 

MYTH NO 4: Israel is acting in self-defense

As the Occupying Power with the largest military arsenal in the

region, Israel has a complete monopoly over the use of force

and claiming self-defense when it provoked the confrontation

is simply mendacious. Furthermore, Israel let it be known for

some time that it intended to launch a military assault on Gaza

which clearly suggests that this offensive was premeditated.

 

MYTH NO 5: Israel strikes only military targets

This is the familiar refrain whenever civilians are killed and/or

wounded, with Israel attributing the deaths and injuries to

either an unfortunate mistake, collateral damage, a technical

malfunction, or explosions caused by Palestinian militants

themselves. This is despite Israel clearly having hit schools,

mosques, a university, a hospital, government buildings,

charitable institutions and marked UN-run organizations.

 

MYTH NO 6: Hamas is the target not Palestinians

There is no way that bombs and artillery fire can distinguish

between people who are Hamas supporters and those with

other or no political affiliations.

 

MYTH NO 7: Palestinians are the source of violence

The root cause of the conflict is Israel’s occupation of

Palestine since the 1967 war and its oppressive military

control that denies the Palestinians their freedom, human

rights and their right to self-determination in their own land.

 Thanks to Australians for Palestine for the contents of the last two postings.

 

 

 

 

• More than a million Gazans still have no electricity or water

and thousands have fled their homes for safe shelter

• Hospitals are unable to provide adequate intensive care to the

high number of casualties

• 75% of Gaza’s electricity has been cut off

• Hospital electricity is being provided by back-up generators

• There is an urgent need to evacuate patients out of Gaza

• There is urgent need for more neuro-vascular, orthopedic

and open heart surgeons

• UNRWA has opened 11 shelters for 5,000 displaced persons

• Gaza’s water and sewerage system is on the verge of

collapse due to the lack of power and fuel

• Over 530,000 people are entirely cut off from running water,

and the rest are receiving water only intermittently

• The sewage situation is highly dangerous, posing serious

risks of the spread of water-borne diseases

• Movement of humanitarian aid and food distributions continue

to be difficult due to the dangerous situation on the ground

[United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs]

 

GAZA: six millennia history – before creation of Israel

Gaza, one of the world’s oldest cities, lies between Africa and

the Levant and has always been of strategic importance and

very much coveted by conquerors who also eyed its fertile

land. Its earliest beginnings are recorded as Canaanite, and

at different times, it has come under the rule of the Hyksos,

Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and

the Turks. The dogged resistance of the people against all

invaders is legendary, yet over time, every invader contributed

to the rich Gazan melting pot. Under the Philistines it grew into

the largest of five city-states. During the Byzantine era, Gaza

flourished intellectually and economically, its exports reaching

as far as England in the 5th century AD. So prosperous did

Gaza City become over the following ten centuries, the

Ottomans allowed it to remain a regional capital of Palestine.

But as the Ottoman Empire declined, so too did Gaza.

Napoleon entered Gaza without resistance, as he passed

through to Egypt. The British though, pounded Gaza with

shells during World War I as European interest in Palestine

grew again due to its strategic location.

 

1948 Israel’s ethnic-cleansing of Palestine crowds Gaza

The Palestinians who lived in Askalaan– what Israel today

calls Ashkelon – were dispossessed of their lands and fled in

terror to nearby Gaza in 1948. Fleeing Palestinians from other

towns and villages also ended up as refugees in Gaza.

Today, some 80 per cent of the 1.5 million Palestinians

crowded into Gaza belong to families who once lived in what is

now called Israel.

 

1967 Israel’s occupation shuts down Gaza’s economy

Since Israel’s occupation of the little land left to the

Palestinians after the 1967 six-day war, Gaza has suffered

miserably. In the years that followed, Israel has done

everything to shut off opportunities for economic growth and

has made sure that Gaza’s infrastructure remained

undeveloped.

 

1993 Oslo increased Gaza’s dependency on Israel

Despite the optimism of the Oslo Accords, Israel’s vice-like

grip on Gaza continued and the people found themselves

increasingly denied freedom of movement which again

impacted on their economic development. Unable to produce

or invest, the Palestinians became more and more dependent

on imports from Israel.

 

2005 “Disengagement” does not end occupation

Nothing changed after Israel removed the deliberately

implanted 8,000 Jewish settlers to a massive publicity

campaign around Israel’s “painful sacrifice for peace”.

Instead, the Palestinians were left hopelessly impoverished

and were literally strangled economically and socially by

Israel’s formidable military cordon around the Gaza Strip.

This, despite Israel claiming that it had disengaged and was

no longer occupying Gaza. It closed Erez Crossing between

Gaza and Israel and the Karni Crossing – the commercial and

humanitarian lifeline of Gaza. Worse still, Israel began the

insidious opening and closing of Rafah Crossing on Egypt’s

border, the only remaining access out of, or into, Gaza. Many

Palestinians found themselves stranded on either side of the

crossing not knowing when it might open to access medical

care, studies, work or to return home.

 

2006 Israel imposes sanctions after Hamas elected

Hamas is elected to government in fair and democratic

elections, but Israel and the world decide to cut off funds for

the government’s operating budget while Israel arrests 64

Hamas government officials, the majority of whom (including 6

cabinet ministers) remain in Israeli military prisons. The

Palestinians in Gaza already reduced to dependency on

international donors, now find themselves effectively

imprisoned and living under a state of siege.

 

2006 – 2009 Israel’s offensive operations in Gaza

Israeli raids, incursions and bombardments in Gaza occurred

on and off for years before Israel’s “disengagement” and

since. From 2000 – 2006, some 2,300 Palestinians in Gaza

were killed. From 2006, Israeli operations are as follows:

 

Jun 2006 - “Operation Summer Rains” – 250 Palestinians

killed, hundreds wounded

Jul 2006 – 170 Palestinians killed; 395 wounded

Oct 2006 – “Operation Rain Man” 23 killed; 100 wounded.

Nov 2006 - “Operation Autumn Clouds” – 77 Palestinians

killed, 250 wounded

Mar 2008 – “Operation Hot Winter” – 120 Palestinians killed;

150 wounded.

Dec 2008 – “Operation Cast Lead” – 800+ Palestinians

killed; 3000+ wounded

(The assault on Gaza continues: 12 January 2009)

 

Dear George W. Bush—

Cong. Barney Frank said recently that Barack Obama’s declaration that “there is only one president at a time” over-estimated the number. He was referring to the economic crisis. But where are you on the Gaza crisis where the civilian population of Gaza, its civil servants and public facilities are being massacred and destroyed respectively by U.S built F-16s and U.S. built helicopter gunships.

Continue reading “Letter to Bush on Gaza Crisis”