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An Open Letter For Justice And Peace

By Diane V. McLoughlin

11 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

To: Members of the Senate; Members of Congress; Vice President Joseph Biden and the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama: Regarding Our participation in the oppression of the Palestinian People

Dear All:

One cannot emphasize enough the thunderous humanitarian import of the
following statement:

The violent illegal settlers in the West Bank have the vote; the oppressed Palestinians who
continue to languish under Israel's illegal military occupation do not.

Gaza is a tiny area crammed with starving 1.5 million Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Israel and then ultimately locked up in the world's largest open air concentration camp.

Israel broke the ceasefire in 2008 - a ceasefire Israel had agreed to with Hamas. [1a]

Hamas abided by the ceasefire with the understanding that this would lead to
the lifting of the military blockade.[1b]

The entire time Israel, behind everyone's back, girded for destruction;
everyone's back, that is, except our own.

Israel broke the ceasefire, raining hellfire and death upon them - hellfire, I hasten to add, that we illegally donated to them - a hellfire which included our own donated white phosphorous
chemical weapons; chemicals which cannot be put out with water; chemicals that burn straight through bone. [1c]

Half of Gaza's 1.5 million hungry, cold, injured, sick and scared individuals are children. We are hearing reports that Israel, for the first time in over three years, has just allowed in clothes and shoes. [1d]

Reasonable people surely would feel compelled to ask themselves what children's shoes have to do with Israel's security. It is but a glimpse of the extremity; of the imposed deprivation.

Other examples of Palestinian life:

  '[The] Israeli regime destroy[ed] some 400,000 trees during their incursions into territories under the Palestinian Authority's rule in the last two years. [Palestinian authorities] describe the damage as a systematic move aimed at mounting financial pressure on Palestinian families, especially those living off their farms and orchards. Israeli settlers often join the campaign by raiding and burning West Bank olive orchards and gardens, while a separation wall Israel has been constructing across the West Bank furthers the burden posed on the Palestinians.' [1e]


From the January - February 2010 Settler Violence Report: ...approximately fifteen settlers invaded the village of At-Tuwani, south-west of Hebron, and attacked Palestinians.
According to the statement released by the associations Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams the settlers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers in three army jeeps; ...settlers uprooted 8 vineyards; ...settlers attacked a child; ...settlers... stoned cars; settlers damaged the main gate of the school as well as water pipes, and uprooted trees in the school garden. They damaged windows, classroom doors, and they wrote bad words
against the Palestinians on the walls of the school, such as death for Arabs, leave this place or we will kill you...'. Etc. [2]

Defense of Children International-Palestine reports that arrests of children
have been increasing. 'Presently approximately 350 West Bank
  children under 17 are being held in Israeli prisons.
Defense of Children provides testimonies of children, detailing the brutal circumstances of their detention and interrogation, and their confinement with adult prisoners. Urgent appeals on
behalf of the children are issued by Defense of Children,
including in the case of mass arrests (17 children taken in
night raid from Al Jalazun Refugee Camp near Ramallah), and the
transfer of children to prisons within Israel, where family members cannot visit because of restrictions on movement of people under Israel's military Occupation.'[3]

  I recommend the following Youtube map illustrating the takeover of
occupied East Jerusalem which legally belongs to the Palestinian people; [4]

A child, all of ten years old, abducted by the Israeli
Defense Forces in the dead of night...father tear gassed trying to protect him...[5]

The fact is, that the sheer number of crimes committed against the
indigenous Palestinian people by the State of Israel are as
mind-boggling, as racist, as they are
  evil; an evil perhaps incubated in an understandable fear
grown of the world. But this perpetual state of injustice
will obviously never bring Israel peace.

The situation requires decisive leadership. The U.S., first and foremost,
must cut off the annual billions in American tax dollars and military
hardware which underwrite Israel's crimes.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, a highly respected British parliamentarian, is Jewish. He
suffered loss from the Nazis. Sir Kaufman in a Parliamentary speech, protested:

'The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the
continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews
in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of
Palestinians...Madame Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.' [6]

The U.S. must cease breaking American law. It is against American law to
knowingly supply any country with weapons that will be used
to commit war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. We gave
  them weapons to rain down on the defenseless.

The U.S. must outlaw private charitable donations to the criminal regime of
Israel until Israel swiftly deals on peace - either one bi-national state with
equal rights for all its citizens, or a two-state solution
with the starting point of pre-1967 borders with East
Jerusalem as the future Palestinian state capital.

The so-called prime ministerial West Bank representative, Salam
Fayyad, has begun to pitch a faux proposal to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state of the occupied West Bank - while leaving the occupation in place on occupied Palestinian lands.

Fayyad's proposal is traitorous, treasonous, and it is, quite frankly, mad. Suffice to say,
the madness of Fayyad does not have the backing of the Palestinian people.

It is time to look past what Israel says. It
is high time to only judge what Israel actually does.

America is a country of laws. It is a country of humanitarian ideals.

It is time for us to start living by them.

I am, most respectfully and sincerely yours,

Diane V. McLoughlin, writer, peace activist
website: mcloughlinpost.com

- To the Office of Public Engagement for your kind assistance in
disseminating the above, I thank you.

Links to selected references:

[1a] Youtube CNN Confirms Israel Broke the Ceasefire First; Jan. 5,
2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4

[1b] Graph summary of rocket fire from Gaza 2008,
clearly shows period of ceasefire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2008

[1c]
  Amnesty International: Gaza white phosphorous shells were U.S. made; Times Online; Feb. 24, 2009. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5792182.ece

[1d]
  Israel allows clothes, shoes into blockaded Gaza for first time - Haaretz -
Israel News; Mar. 29, 2010.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159929.html

[1e] Israelis don't even spare Palestinian Trees; Press TV; Apr. 7, 2010
http://presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=122693&sectionid=351020202

[2] Alternative News.org
Settler Violence Report January-February 2010 http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=2526:settler-violence-report-january-february-2010&catid=119:english&Itemid=878


[3] The Only Democracy.org:
In West Bank Palestinian Childhood is Cut Short - It's the Law;
  Mar., 2010 http://theonlydemocracy.org/2010/03/
in-west-bank-palestinian-childhood-is-cut-short-its-the-law/


[4] Youtube: By the Maps:
Jerusalem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v-Tpg9xN5k&feature=youtu.be&a

[5] IPS News: Israeli Raids
Target Children; Mar. 16, 2010 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50680

[6] YouTube - UK Jewish MP:
  Israel Acting Like Nazis in Gaza; Jan. 16, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8





 

 

 


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