TAKE ACTION! Act now to lift the Gaza Blockade!
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- Written by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
- Published: 10 December 2008 10 December 2008
- Hits: 3550 3550
Following is an alert from the ADC and I think we should respond.
You can find your elected officials by going to: http://capwiz.com/adc/dbq/officials/
Collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva conventions, but this is exactly what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza.
Sincerely,
Peter Miller
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights
TAKE ACTION!
ADC Action Alert
Act now to lift the Gaza Blockade!
The civilians in Gaza need your help now!
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) calls on the United States and the international community to take immediate action to pressure Israel to lift its blockade and to act without delay to stop the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel blockaded Gaza over a month ago and has only allowed five shipments of humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. It seems, only enough supplies are being let into to prevent mass starvation and widespread disease, despite the facts that reports indicate the population in Gaza, the majority of whom rely on food aid to survive, is already suffering from chronic malnutrition and serious vitamin deficiencies.
Serious fuel shortages have also led to widespread power cuts across Gaza City. That, in turn, has caused problems in pumping water to homes, and sewage to treatment plants. To further compound the dire situation, hospital lack medicine and supplies.
ADC Communications Director Laila Al-Qatami said, ”Today is the 60^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the founding document of the modern human rights movement which codified the principle of basic human rights of all people. Yet today we see daily life for Palestinians is a struggle, with people unable to access food and basic necessities. This cannot be allowed to continue, we urge immediate action to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”
According to media reports, Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, said the UN must act immediately to protect the Palestinian population suffering from “collective punishment.” Falk also indicated the International Criminal Court should investigate whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Contact Your Elected Official Today and Add Your Voice to the Growing Number of Americans Calling for the Immediate Lifting of the Blockade and Siege of Gaza. Click here to find your representatives and contact them now about this ongoing crisis: http://capwiz.com/adc/dbq/officials/
Dignity to Gaza: “We’re Back!” - Fourth Successful Voyage Breaks Through Siege of Gaza
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- Written by Free Gaza Free Gaza
- Published: 09 December 2008 09 December 2008
- Hits: 3273 3273
Dignity to Gaza: “We’re Back!” - Fourth Successful Voyage Breaks Through
Siege of Gaza
For More Information, please contact:
(Gaza) Caoimhe Butterly, +972 598 273 960 / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(Gaza) Lubna Masarwa, +972 505 633 044 / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(Cyprus) Ramzi Kysia , +357 99 081 767 / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(GAZA, 9 December 2008) - The Free Gaza Movement ship “Dignity” successfully broke through the Israeli blockade for the fourth time since August, arriving in Gaza Port at 2:45pm, Tuesday 9 December. The ship carried one ton of medical supplies and high-protein baby formula, in addition to a delegation of international academics, humanitarian and human rights workers. Three earlier missions made landfall in Gaza in August, October, and November through the power of non-violent direct action and civil resistance. The Free Gaza ships are the first international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over 41 years.
Ewa Jasiewicz, a Free Gaza organizer, journalist, and solidarity worker, pointed out that, “Tomorrow is International Human Rights Day, and it's high time the world turned its rhetoric on human rights into reality. We mounted this mission to give our solidarity to the people of Palestine and to highlight the strangulating conditions Israel causes in besieged Gaza. The inhumane effects of this siege threaten to stunt an entire generation - both in terms of physical and mental growth due to malnutrition, terrorization by bomb attacks, incursions and the use of sonic booms - but also in terms of the generation of students which have won places at academic institutions around the world but cannot fulfill them, and those undermined on the ground in Gaza by a lack of food, medicine, electricity, materials, and the peace and space to make use of them in.”
For over two years, Israel has imposed an increasingly severe blockade on Gaza, dramatically increasing poverty and malnutrition rates among the 1.5 million human people who live in this tiny, costal region. The World Bank recently warned that the entire banking system in Gaza may soon collapse resulting in “serious humanitarian implications.” Already, over eighty percent of Gazan families are dependent on international food aid in order to feed their children.
Lubna Masarwa, another Free Gaza organizer and the current delegation’s leader, pointed out that, “The Palestinians of Gaza don't need charity. What they need is effective political action that changes their lives and ends the Occupation. We can't bring electricity to Gaza on our boats. We can't import freedom of movement or safety. But we can get into Gaza and we are intent to keep coming. We will come again and again and again until the world breaks its silence and we shatter this siege once and for all.”
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Free Gaza activists set sail from Cyprus for 4th time
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- Written by ASSOCIATED PRESS ASSOCIATED PRESS
- Published: 08 December 2008 08 December 2008
- Hits: 2268 2268
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NICOSIA, Cyprus
A group of international activists said that one of their boats had left Cyprus bound for Gaza carrying medical supplies and trying to break an Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Free Gaza Group spokesman Ramzi Kysia confirmed that the 66-foot yacht SS Dignity, carrying a dozen passengers, left Larnaca Monday evening. He said it was due to arrive in Gaza on Tuesday, carrying a ton of medical supplies.
The group has previously made three successful boat trips to Gaza.
Kysia said the group's intention is not solely to supply Gaza.
"Gaza doesn't need charity, it needs an end to the siege," Kysia said. "We are taking political action to break the siege and to encourage other countries to take similar action."
7 Dec. '08: Security forces stand idly by during settler rioting in Hebron
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- Written by B'Tselem B'Tselem
- Published: 08 December 2008 08 December 2008
- Hits: 3339 3339
7 Dec. '08: Security forces stand idly by during settler rioting in Hebron
Last Thursday, following the eviction of settlers from the Jewish settlement in the a-Ras neighborhood in Hebron, B'Tselem called on security forces to protect the city’s Palestinian residents and Palestinians living elsewhere in the West Bank from anticipated acts of revenge by settlers.
Despite the request, and the great likelihood that such acts would occur, security forces failed to provide suitable protection to Palestinian residents of the city in the hours following the eviction, during which settlers made incursions into Palestinian neighborhoods, torched houses and cars, threw stones, shattered windows, and damaged solar water containers, satellite dishes and water tanks. In one case, settlers shot two Palestinians, a father and son. The shooting was filmed by a member of the family on a camera that he received through B'Tselem’s camera distribution project. On Saturday night, the media reported that the two settlers suspected of the shooting had turned themselves in to the authorities.
At the same time, settlers attacked Palestinians elsewhere in the West Bank, throwing stones at houses and vehicles, destroying property, setting fires, and scrawling graffiti on the walls of mosques.
Obama team's warring Middle East views
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- Written by Ben Smith Ben Smith
- Published: 08 December 2008 08 December 2008
- Hits: 3577 3577
But the Middle East conflict is, perhaps unsurprisingly, already playing out on a small scale within Obama’s own transition.
Top policy jobs haven’t been filled — the org chart, insiders say, hasn’t even been drawn — but Middle East politics watchers, and Obama backers concerned with Israel, are carefully eyeing the interplay between two of his most important advisers on the Middle East.
One is Dennis Ross, a stalwart of the Clinton administration’s peace negotiations who is seen as favoring a tough approach to Iran. The other is Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel who in his 2008 book quoted Arab and U.S. officials saying Ross was perceived as “tilted” toward the Israeli side, and that he "listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it toward the Arabs."
The choice of who shapes his policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, said a top Obama backer, will be a “bellwether” for the administration’s Middle East policy — for how much to require of Palestinian leaders before they can strike a permanent deal, and for how hard to push Israel for concessions in the interest of peace.
The interest is particularly intense because despite his general pro-Israel views, the details of Obama’s approach remain unclear: During the campaign, he riled the right by suggesting that to be pro-Israel isn’t to be pro-Likud, but he has also offered tough talk on Israeli security, disappointing Palestinian activists who saw him as an ally during his State Senate days in Illinois.
The difference is a matter of degrees — and not very many degrees — within a firmly pro-Israel policy team, and there are no obvious differences of policy between the two men. Ross, the supposed man of the right, was central to the Oslo peace accords despised by some conservatives in Israel and the United States; Kurtzer, the supposed man of the left, is a Hebrew-speaking Orthodox Jew who was President George W. Bush's ambassador to Israel.
But some close watchers of the negotiations in the region think that choosing Ross would indicate that Obama plans to make tough negotiations with Iran, with a focus on weakening its regional grip, a priority, and to work closely with Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians. They think the choice of Kurtzer might mean a slightly tougher stance toward the Israeli government, and a more rapid push for a historic South Lawn handshake between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
And a small, perceived distinction in the swirl of politics and perception that is Mideast politics can produce a lot of heat. Insiders say there is no love lost between the two.
Kurtzer emerged in the Democratic primary as an ambassador to the pro-Israel and Jewish communities for Obama. Ross, a trusted figure among relatively hawkish American Jewish leaders, advised both Obama and Clinton in the primary, and was a behind the scenes force in the general election, assuring figures such as New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman that Obama was committed to Israel’s safety.
Obama has worked to keep both men inside the tent. They serve together on his Middle East transition team, along with Biden adviser Tony Blinken and two campaign aides, Dan Shapiro and Eric Lynn. But camps have begun to develop: The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz floated Kurtzer as “special Mideast envoy” (puzzling Obama insiders who say that Obama — and Clinton — have not yet even decided whether to appoint a Mideast envoy whose portfolio includes the linked issue of Iran, or to divide that portfolio).
A Kurtzer admirer in Obama’s camp said choosing him would send the message that “we want to draw on the past, but we want to move forward on our own and not be bound by that.”
Meanwhile, Kurtzer’s critics say he lacks Ross’s stature, and that his relationship as ambassador with the icon of the Israeli center-right, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, left something to be desired. They see Ross in a more senior policy making role than envoy, if there even is an envoy.
“I’m not sure Dennis wants to be the new Bill Murray of 'Groundhog Day' and just be special envoy again,” said a Ross fan.
Ross did not return a call from Politico seeking comment, and Kurtzer e-mailed that he isn’t speaking to the press. And they aren’t the only ones in the running for top posts shaping U.S. Mideast policy. Clinton Israel Ambassador Martin Indyk remains a force in the field, and Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. Jim Jones, has his own background in Middle East peacemaking and could bring in a member of his military team there.
The distance between Kurtzer and Ross, moreover, isn’t the only possible rift. The New Republic suggested recently that conflict could come between Jones, who has pushed for Israeli compromises, and Clinton, who has become firmly identified with a hard pro-Israel line. Even Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a fiercely pro-Israel Florida Republican, advised Obama in a telephone conversation “to rely on Hillary’s advice on Israel, because she is very pro-Israel,” her spokesman, Alex Cruz, told Politico.
The form of the peace process also remains unclear. Top American diplomats, inlcuding Indyk, Ross, and Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, have suggested that the U.S. press for a treaty between Israel and Syria before attempting to settle the Palestinian conflict. The Israeli elections on Feb. 10 could bring to power Benjamin Netanyahu, who is thought to favor that Syria-first approach, and who is skeptical of talks with Palestinian leaders; or Tzipi Livni, who appears more likely to aim for a grand bargain with the Palestinians.
And ultimately, the key factor may be the commitment of the key American players, Clinton and Obama, whose attention will be drawn by an economic crisis at home, and Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan abroad.
“What counts is whether the president of the United States is going to make this a top priority, and whether the secretary of state is going to provide the kind of adult supervision and oversight that is required,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official and veteran of Mideast negotiations. “Who they come up with [as envoy] is significant but not determinative.”
Amie Parnes contributed to this report.
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