“O little town of Bethlehem/How still we see thee lie…”
A massive 25 foot high concrete separation Wall enchains the city and confines and chokes its Palestinian Christian and Muslim inhabitants. The Israeli government continues building thousands of housing units in existing and ever-increasing Jewish-only settlements. “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/ The silent stars go by.” Many cannot see the stars anymore. Bethlehem’s land is controlled by a ring of settlements, military zones, highways for settlers and Israelis only. Bethlehem’s agricultural lands have been confiscated, sacred olive trees uprooted and water resources stolen. “Yet in thy dark streets shineth/ The everlasting Light…” Families are separated from each other, their jobs, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques. The biblical and literal path from Nazareth to Bethlehem is blocked by checkpoints and 25 foot high slabs of concrete. “And praises sing to God the King/ And Peace to men on earth.” Let us raise our voices to ending racism, occupation, and apartheid. Let us dedicate the NewYear to rebuilding a Holy Land for people of all faiths.
Jane Toby
Festival of Lights
Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself. But Israel does NOT have the right to block food and medicine to Palestinian men, women, and children. Israel does NOT have the right to steal Palestinian land to build thousands of illegal homes in illegal settlements. Israel does NOT have the right to confiscate or demolish Palestinian homes. Israel does NOT have the right to steal Palestinian water and resources. Israel does NOT have the right to imprison over one and a half million Palestinian refugees in Gaza and then bomb them from F-16 fighter jets, shell them from battleships, or assassinate them with drones. In short, Israel does NOT have the right to inflict collective punishment on innocent Palestinians.
As long as Israel continues to oppress, humiliate and brutalize Palestinians there is little hope for a lasting and just peace. Perhaps, during this festival of lights, Israel will see the light. Until Israel's military occupation ends, until displaced Palestinians can return to their stolen homes and farms, until there is justice and equality for all (Israelis and Palestinians) the light of peace will not shine on Israel.
Eli Kassirer
National Disgrace
The price of our country's alliance with Israel is a forbidden topic in our media. The figure of 3 billion a year is sometimes given, although that amount is always exceeded by armament shipments and other giveaways.
Money given to Israel is only a small part of the price we pay as US citizens. The Israeli lobby has turned our electoral process into a sham, and our elected representatives into sycophants to Israel's rightwing leadership. Congress pays much more attention to currying favor with Israeli war hawks than trying to keep young Americans out of another Middle Eastern conflict. And there is nothing our elected leaders won't do to please their foreign masters. The spectacle of our representatives pledging allegiance to Israel at meetings of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee is enough to turn one's stomach.
Our government's one sided relationship with Israel has also eaten away at our rights as citizens for a fair trial. Take the case of Ghassan Elashi, sentenced to 65 years for founding a Palestinian charity, the Holy Land Foundation. His trial had a special witness, a nameless Israeli secret service agent whose qualifications and testimony couldn't be cross examined. Among the agent's inflammatory statements was the declaration that, "there was a smell of Hamas" about the Palestinian charity group. Dr. Elashi's rights for due process as an American citizen were destroyed by our court's "special relationship" with Israel.
And then there is slaughter in Gaza. America's support for Israel is a national disgrace.
Fred Nagel
Almost Unimaginable Degree of Injustice
Letter to the Editor:
I'm one of the people who stand in front of Starbucks to bring attention to the desperate plight of the Palestinians, and I'm writing in response to Suzanne Federman's letter (12/6/12) questioning our knowledge and our motives. Yes, Ms. Federman, most of us have been to Israel and to the West Bank, some of us multiple times. We are highly informed—please stop and talk to us next time. We protest because of what we have witnessed firsthand: the almost unimaginable degree of injustice and human rights violations endured by Palestinians daily.
Certainly there are individual Israeli Jews who are principled, compassionate, and courageous, and we applaud them. But their government is impervious to demands for justice. Boycotting products made in the illegal West Bank settlements, calling for sanctions, and divesting in Israeli corporations are our only way of creating pressure that we hope will eventually lead to change, as it did in apartheid South Africa.
Jo Salas
Palestinian Bid for Non-member Observer State
Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison—it is the most densely populated area on this planet. Since the election of Hamas in 2006, Israel has imposed a harsh siege on Gaza. Israel now controls the water, land, and air space of Gaza; Israel mainly controls who and what goes in and out of Gaza; Israel determines the daily number of calories ingested by Gazans (“Put them on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” said an Olmert advisor); and Israeli gunboats force Gaza’s fishermen to fish within a three-mile limit, in water polluted by Gaza’s Israeli-destroyed sewage system. A recent UNRWA report noted that unless damage to Gaza’s aquifer is reversed, Gaza may not be a "livable place” by 2020. The list goes on and on—this is collective punishment. And, sadly, Israel does this with our tax dollars and with total impunity. Israel wants Gazans to feel powerless; Israel wants Gazans to feel hopeless about even the possibility of a better future.
Noam Chomsky recently visited Gaza. He reports, “The Gaza Strip could have become a prosperous Mediterranean region, with rich agriculture and a flourishing fishing industry, marvelous beaches and, as discovered a decade ago, good prospects for extensive natural gas supplies within its territorial waters. By coincidence or not, that is when Israel intensified its naval blockade, driving fishing boats toward shore ….”
Perhaps, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are now provoking Gaza, implicitly threatening another assault akin to Operation Cast Lead. During that travesty, it was excruciatingly evident that Gazans were trapped—they had no way to escape. Perhaps Israel is using its current provocation to stop the Palestinian bid for non-member observer state status at the United Nations later this month. Israeli leadership has notified the world that Israel will “go crazy” if the UN grants even limited recognition to the Palestinians. Ehud Barak said the Palestinian UN bid had to be delayed "immediately."
The next day, the IDF went into Gaza with tanks and bulldozers and killed a child. The Popular Resistance Committees fired rockets into southern Israel saying they were a “revenge invoice;” the PRC wanted to make it clear to the world that they saw the Israeli attack as a provocation. However, Americans are mainly ignorant of these facts because our mainstream media keeps us from knowing the facts.
As Annie Roberts wrote, “On Election Day in 2008, Israel invaded Gaza and broke the ceasefire. The ensuing rocket fire was used as the pretext for a full on invasion and war against Gaza beginning 3 weeks later. November 29, the day the Palestinian delegation is expected to submit its bid for observer status at the UN, is two weeks from tomorrow.”
Let’s see what happens.
Helaine Meisler
The Greenville Mountain View Pioneer
On the front page of the October 19th issue of the Pioneer, we learned that the US Postal
Service is planning to reduce the hours of service at “thousands of rural post offices around the
country” and that 30 of those post offices are in our area. Nineteen of the thirty would be open
only four or less hours each day to serve the families in our communities.
Just one day earlier, the International Herald Tribune had reported our federal government
would spend 30 million dollars on an Israeli missile drill in October. That’s 30 million of our tax
dollars added to the nearly three billion dollars in annual military aid Washington gives to
Israel…a country that ranks 10th among all the world’s nations in terms of military firepower,
before even taking into account the atomic weapons in Israel’s arsenal.
Does that make you wonder how many rural post offices could continue to provide full service
in the heart of their communities if our government were to bring some of our tax dollars back
from Israel and use them to help our postal service continue to help us?
Sincerely,
Paul W. Rehm
Service is planning to reduce the hours of service at “thousands of rural post offices around the
country” and that 30 of those post offices are in our area. Nineteen of the thirty would be open
only four or less hours each day to serve the families in our communities.
Just one day earlier, the International Herald Tribune had reported our federal government
would spend 30 million dollars on an Israeli missile drill in October. That’s 30 million of our tax
dollars added to the nearly three billion dollars in annual military aid Washington gives to
Israel…a country that ranks 10th among all the world’s nations in terms of military firepower,
before even taking into account the atomic weapons in Israel’s arsenal.
Does that make you wonder how many rural post offices could continue to provide full service
in the heart of their communities if our government were to bring some of our tax dollars back
from Israel and use them to help our postal service continue to help us?
Sincerely,
Paul W. Rehm
End the New Jim Crow! Action Network Statement Against the U.S.-Israeli War on Gaza
14 November 2012
As we meet today the state of Israel, funded to the tune of $3 billion U.S. tax dollars worth of military equipment and aid per year, is engaging in a military assault on Gaza City, Palestine, a civilian city with almost a million residents. At the time we penned this statement, at least 15 people had been killed as a result of the assault, including a one-‐month old toddler and a seven-‐year-‐old girl, and over a 100 people had been wounded. The number of dead and wounded is expected to rise if this war is allowed to continue.
Like the racist system of mass incarceration here in the United States, the U.S.-‐Israeli war on the Palestinian city of Gaza is an example of the gross contradiction between the priorities of the vast majority of humanity who want to live peaceful, dignified lives and the misuse of societal resources by elites that should be used to meet human needs but are instead used for war, bank bailouts, police brutality, and mass incarceration.
The End the New Jim Crow! Action Network (E.N.J.A.N.) stands with the Palestinian people in their struggle against war and occupation, and makes the connection between the struggle of the people in Gaza which M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky called the “world’s largest open air prison” during his recent trip there and the struggle of people in the United States fighting the world’s largest prison system.
The U.S. system of mass incarceration directly restricts the movement and liberty of over 2 million people, including over a million African Americans, just as Israel’s occupation restricts the movement and liberty of all Palestinians. It is the same racist system that harasses people of color on the streets of U.S. cities, and whose police and racist vigilantes murdered at least 120 Black people in the first six months of this year. As a network we oppose all forms of racism, including anti-‐Black racism, Islamophobia, and anti-‐Semitism, and we make common cause with all those around the world who do the same.
As an organization we demand societal resources be shifted towards jobs, housing, healthcare, and education, both at home and abroad, and away from prisons, war, and
occupation. End the U.S.-‐Israeli War on Gaza! Free Palestine! End the New Jim Crow Now!
The End the New Jim Crow! Action Network (E.N.J.A.N.) Campaign Against Mass Incarceration http://endthenewjimcrow.blogspot.com/
845-‐475-‐8781
Meetings are on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, on the second floor, in the Family Partnership Center, 29 North Hamilton St, Suite 218, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
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