"Above and Beyond" for Israel
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- Written by Josh Ruebner, US Campaign Josh Ruebner, US Campaign
- Published: 17 May 2012 17 May 2012
- Hits: 5569 5569
Walter Pincus of the Washington Post has a hard hitting editorial about our military aid to Israel. It turns out that Israel is decreasing its defense spending by 5% and increasing taxes on the wealthy in response to popular demands in Israel to look after social needs. How does the US with our own severe budget crisis and lousy economy respond? By planning to give Israel 30% more in military aid, almost another billion dollars! And this additional money goes towards an profit making Israeli military contractor!
Josh Ruebner talks about it here:
Thursday, May 17, 2012
"Above and Beyond" for Israel
Is the United States "going above and beyond for Israel?" According to the Washington Post's Walter Pincus, the answer is yes. In his column today, Pincus asks provocatively, "Should the United States put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own? When it comes to spending, it appears that the United States already is."
What draws the ire of Pincus in today's column is the fact that nearly $1 billion of additional money for weapons to Israel is working its way through the appropriations process this year, in addition to a record-breaking $3.1 billion in military aid. We wrote about this development last week in Mondoweiss.
Pincus notes the absurdity of providing Israel more than $4 billion in weapons this year, even though doing so will likely bring the United States closer to painful across-the-board budget cuts next year. He writes: "So here is the United States, having added to its own deficit by spending funds that it must borrow, helping to procure a missile defense system for Israel, which faces the threat but supposedly can’t pay for it alone."
Read the entire column here.
After you read the column, please add a positive comment to Pincus's brave truth-telling and then spread the word to your friends via social media.
You can also write a letter-to-the-editor in support of the column. Instructions on how to do so are here.
Let's make sure that the Washington Post hears plenty of encouragement and support from us for printing such an important opinion!
Of course, we've been making for case for years that military aid to Israel comes at a moral and financial cost that we simply can't afford. Learn more about the budgetary trade-offs and the moral impact of providing weapons to Israel at our websites www.aidtoisrael.org and www.weaponstoisrael.org.
Pincus's column is yet one more piece of evidence that discourse around U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinian people is changing in dramatic and positive ways. Help us continue this momentum by signing up to receive a packet to educate and organize people in your community to end U.S. aid to Israel.
When you do, you'll be joining activists in more than 1,000 cities across the country who are doing this work and helping to shift the discourse as a step toward ending U.S. complicity in Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians.
Palestinian Prisoners Score Heroic Victory
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- Written by Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
- Published: 15 May 2012 15 May 2012
- Hits: 4642 4642
Palestinian Prisoners Score Heroic Victory
Struggle to End Israel’s Oppression and International Complicity Continues
15 May 2012 -- Nearly a month into the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, a historic victory has been achieved, as Israeli authoritieswere forced to comply with the prisoners’ main demands. Coinciding with the Palestinian commemoration of the 64th anniversary ofthe Nakba, the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing that uprooted most Palestinians from their homeland around 1948, theprisoners’ victory has heightened hope about the prospects for Palestinian freedom, justice, self determination and the return of refugees.
This important triumph for the Palestinian popular struggle could not have been reached without the unwavering resolve of theprisoners themselves, grassroots mobilization in their support in Palestine, and the immense wave of effective solidarity and calls for holding Israel accountable that the strike has triggered around the world.
More than a thousand people around the globe have pledged to undertake a 24-hour hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners, totake place this Thursday. While the solidarity hunger-strike has been called off, due to the prisoners' victory, injustice and illegal repression continue in Israeli prisons.
Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against thePalestinian people, Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations have called for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestmentand Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action tobe taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.
Please click here to demand G4S ends its involvement in the Israeli prison system and its complicity in violations of Palestinianhuman rights.
Signed:
Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
Stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Hunger Strikers
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- Written by Jewish Voice for Peace Jewish Voice for Peace
- Published: 10 May 2012 10 May 2012
- Hits: 5377 5377
Sign the Petition! I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Hunger Strikers
Israel has long imprisoned Palestinians without charge, a practice called "administrative detention." But now Palestinians are making history by nonviolently resisting these abuses with a 2,000 prisoner hunger strike.
Their demand is just: freedom from arrest without charge, the right of habeas corpus, is at the foundation of international human rights. The hunger strikers have inspired support actions from Palestinians and Israeli allies, as well as from international human rights organizations like Amnesty International.
Two of the hunger strikers are near death. We need to bring them justice before it's too late. Please add your name to petition to end administrative detention below.
I support the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and the Israeli practice of detaining Palestinians without charge. I stand with their historic act of nonviolent resistance to these gross injustices.
Urgent Alert: Imminent Displacement Risk in the Jerusalem Periphery
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- Written by ICAHD ICAHD
- Published: 08 May 2012 08 May 2012
- Hits: 4356 4356
Urgent Alert: Imminent Displacement Risk in the Jerusalem Periphery 18:08 , 08-05-12
Palestinian residential structures in Area C of the the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, are under looming threat of immediate demolition. Structures include EU-funded residential structures provided in response to previous demolitions in the area. The Palestinian-Bedouin communities living in the hills to the east of Jerusalem are at an exceedingly growing risk of forced ethnic displacement. The communities have been informed by the Israeli authorities that they have no option but to leave the area, as part of a larger plan to forcibly tranfer, in defiance of international law, Bedouin communities living in Area C (Jerusalem periphery, Jordan Valley, and south Hebron Hills), where Israel retains control over ;security as well as planning and zoning.
The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) issued eight eviction orders to the Kurshan compound of the Khan al-Ahmar Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin community, in the afternoon of Sunday May 6th. The orders affect the eight families of the community, who have been part of a recent shelter rehabilitation project, designed to replace sub-standard shelter with eight residential structures. The Kurshan families have used this location seasonally since the 1960s, and have been permanent in their current location since 1992. The ICA officers informed those present in the community that “the community had built illegally, and that Area C was not for Palestinians.” Fu rthermore, ICA informed the Az-Zayyem Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin community on May 3rd, that a demolition will take place in their community, effective immediately, following the lift of an injunction order protecting the structures. These are also structures funded by the international community, following demolitions in November 2011.
Az-Zayyem demolitions, November 2011
Settlers from Regavim, a militant organization based in the nearby settlement of Kfar Adumim, harassed the Khan al-Ahmar Kurshan residents earlier today. They photographed all structures in the community. At the time, ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain, and Field-Coordinator Salim Shawamreh were providing protective presence in the community, and were told by settlers, that they were gathering information on Bedouin structures with the intent of approaching the ICA to urge them to demolish community homes.
An appeal filed by the lawyer for the community against the eviction orders was rejected this afternoon, May 8th, and the ICA is most likely to demolish the eight family homes as early as tomorrow afternoon. According to recognized legal opinions the current planning and permit regime, and other Israeli practices and policies in Area C, violate International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law on several counts (more information available here). It is the duty of third states to ensure respect of international law. The EU Heads of Mission Report on Area C (July 2011) strongly recommended that EU member states promote economic development in Area C, and increase visibility and accountability for the delivery of aid and development architecture in Area C.
ICAHD has called the EU to immediately exert diplomatic pressure on Israel, and call it to account for the threatened demolitions in Khan al-Ahmar as well as in Az-Zayyem. The EU should seek assurance from Israel that the ICA will not demolish these, and other Palestinian structures in Area C. ICAHD will continue to provide protective presence in the community, along with partner organization.
For more information on the growing risk of displacement faced by Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin, please refer to the ICAHD publication'Nowhere Left to Go'. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1AOvsjv8IjdMjNlYTk5YjItZGU4Mi00ZmJiLWFlYjMtN2UwZWRkNTk1M2Q3/edit
For a normative and political analysis of Israel's displacement policy and practice in the Occupied West Bank, please find the ICAHD publication 'Demolishing Homes, Demolishing Peace'.
Palestinian farmers ordered to uproot 1,400 olive trees by Israeli Civil Administration
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- Written by Fairtrade Foundation Fairtrade Foundation
- Published: 05 May 2012 05 May 2012
- Hits: 4561 4561
The Fairtrade Foundation has expressed outrage and shock at the news that Israel has ordered nine Palestinian olive farmers of Deir Istiya, Salfit on the West Bank to uproot 1,400 olive trees in Wadi Qana area by 1 May 2012.
An additional 600 trees were added to this number as a second notice was handed out. Taysir Arbasi, from Zaytoun in Palestine, described the destruction: ‘the age of the trees is between 3 to 15 years, belonging to farmers from Deir Istya. The capacity of production of these trees is around 5,000 kg of olives’. For farmers in this district olives are the primary source of income.
There is a protest camp of approximately 70 local farmers, international and Israeli activists at the site, as of 11am yesterday morning the bulldozers had not arrived. Zaytoun have been unable to reach contacts in Deir Istya to confirm what has happened today.
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation said: ‘We are dismayed and appalled at this devastating news of what is a blatant act of aggression attacking people’s livelihoods. Many of us met Riziq Abunassar who toured the UK during Fairtrade Fortnight and we feel strongly that we should all take action to stop the daily harassment of Riziq and his fellow farmers and the destruction of their livelihoods and sign the petition set up by IWPS http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-uprooting-palestinian-trees .
Olive oil production provides many Palestinian farmers with as much as 50 per cent of their annual income. Olive production also prevents the abandonment of the land and the spread of desertification. As a result of the conflict in the region, Palestinian farmers continue to face severe barriers in carrying out their normal day-to-day agricultural activities caused mainly through restrictions on movement, exacerbating levels of deprivation and marginalisation. Almost 75 per cent of Palestinians live below the United Nations poverty line of US$2 a day.
This is the largest order to uproot trees that the farmers of Wadi Qana have ever been given. Most of the trees were planted about five years ago on privately owned Palestinian property. The orders, placed on retaining terraces, rocks and fences in the vicinity of the trees, state that if the farmers do not uproot their trees they will face punishment which could, according to Deir Istiya mayor Nazmi Salman, include large fines and imprisonment.
Fairtrade olive farmer Mahmoud Issa and PFTPC member said ‘The zaytoun, the olive, means everything to us. My father and my grandfather farmed on this land, and now my children work alongside me harvesting. Our olive oil is of the highest quality because of the fertility of the land and we use traditional farming methods. Fairtrade brings stability to our farmers with the Fairtrade premium allowing for investment.’
The first olive oil to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark was launched by two separate Fairtrade licencees, Equal Exchange and Zaytoun CIC (who also sell Fairtrade Palestinian olives and almonds). The first supermarket to sell the oil was the Co-operative. The olive oil is also available via Oxfam shops, independent retailers nationwide and Traidcraft.
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