It's time for a change of course for America's Mideast policy regarding Israel, Palestine and the Mideast
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When a great nation that claims devotion to the political principles of freedom and justice materially supports the enslavement of an entire people to the detriment of its relations with other nations it is time for the people to demand a change of course from those who rule in Washington. Our unconditional support for anything Israeli governments do to the Palestinians has damaged our international standing, hampered our efforts in the Arab world and given a recruiting tool to Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Islamic world.
It is our tax money that enables the continuing dispossession of the Palestinians. It is time for America to truly stand up for the ideas and ideals that made us great. It is time for America to stop supporting Apartheid in Israel, The Apartheid Wall and a religious state that denies basic freedoms to Palestinians. It's time to drastically cut aid to Israel until they join the community of democratic nations and cease their armed expansions into Palestinian lands.
Consider:
Muslim and Christian Palestinians driven from their homes in Israel in 1948, cannot get citizenship in the land that they grew up in, now Israel, nor can their descendants. They have been dispossessed. Forced to live in refugee camps in foreign lands. But a Jew, born anywhere in the world, can have Israeli citizenship almost immediately.
Palestine's original population was approximately ninety-six percent Muslim and Christian.
During the initial conflict between Palestinians and Jews the Jewish forces committed at least 33 massacres and destroyed 531 Palestinian villages and towns.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine violates the preface to the United Nations Charter banning nations from acquiring territory by war. Israeli government actions in the West Bank violates the Fourth Geneva convention, forbidding the transfer of populations to or from such occupied areas.
Israeli-only roads in the West Bank have are a defining feature of apartheid policies implemented by the Israel government in Palestine. Palestinians can't drive on them.
Were we to institute an Israeli-style democracy in America:
We would move all the Jews in America to enclaves and surround them with barbed wire, ditches and earthen berms, establish checkpoints to monitor their movement and body search them for weapons and bombs
We would demolish the Jew's houses and confiscate their property, building Christian-only high rises where the Jews once lived
Jews would not be allowed on many roads, even to take a loved one to the emergency room in a medical emergency
The police could close down Jewish cultural events
We would ignore all UN Resolutions against us regarding our treatment of the Jews
If a member of a Jewish family attacks us we would blow up their house and bulldoze their family holdings
We would build a massive concrete wall around Jewish areas to keep their terrorists from attacking us as our courts took more and more of their land
American Jews would have a 34% unemployment and over half would live below the poverty line
You could fire a Jew for speaking a Hebrew phrase in the work place
Marriages and other aspects of civil laws would be decided by High Priests of a conservative Christian religious court that did not recognize marriage between Christians and other religions. Washington DC would pay the salaries of the High Priests and the employee's of dioceses and religious councils that decide many civil matters.
Yet our tax money supports all this and more in Israel in the occupied territories of Palestine, (the West Bank and Gaza Strip).
Ask yourself: Are these American values that our tax dollars now support and enable?
It is time for a Mid-East Change of Course
Contact my Elected Representative
Resistance to Israeli occupation – a right
Palestinians are a people under occupation who has the right to self-determination under the UN Charter, the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations from 1970, and Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Quiz Yourself on 'Israeli Democracy'
Breaking the Taboo on Israel's Spying Efforts on the United States
Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S., yet public discussion about it is almost nil.
Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they'll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S.. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory -- the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.
Israel's spying on the U.S., however, is a matter of public record, and neither conspiracy nor theory is needed to present the evidence. When the FBI produces its annual report to Congress concerning "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel and its intelligence services often feature prominently as a threat second only to China. More
Spies, Lies and Mr. Lebanon's Demise
“There are agents, like Mahmoud Rafea, who confessed to have delivered bags with explosives. Other collaborators have confessed to have carried out field reconnaissance missions. Others have facilitated the entrance and exit of Israelis after accomplishing their missions. This is what is meant by executive agents. The door must be opened wide ... this Israeli path should be scrutinized so as to reach a place where we would find information about many crimes, particularly 2005 onwards.
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– Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, commenting on the recent spate of Israeli spy arrests during a rally marking the ninth anniversary of the removal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, 22 May 2009.
AIPAC The American Israel Public Affairs Committee
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference is one of Washington’s most important—and least reported—events.
This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.
The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man’s land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars in their 50s—Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year’s book The Israel Lobby.
The Slow Death of Gaza
There can be no dispute that measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law. Fuel and food cannot be withheld or wielded as reward or punishment. But international law was tossed aside long ago. The blockade has been presented as punishment for the democratic election of Hamas, punishment for its subsequent takeover of Gaza, and punishment for militant attacks on Israeli civilians. The civilians of Gaza, from the maths teacher in a United Nations refugee camp to the premature baby in an incubator, properly punished for actions over which they have no control, will rise up and get rid of Hamas. Or so it goes.
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Boycott Begins to Bite at Companies Supporting Israel's Military Occupation of Palestine
On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company's losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.
The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to "Hang Up On Motorola" until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land.
Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of "consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits."
Who will your Appointees Serve—Israel or America?
In effect, our Israeli shackled government would rather expend our treasury, our military youth, sacrifice our economic interests around the world, than dare challenge, change, or have the moral and just courage to even allow a political debate on this destructive “special relationship”. a nation condemned and despised around the world as a rogue brutal military occupier of an entire people living under its American paid for boots, uniforms, rifles, tanks, bullets, missiles, rockets, cluster bombs fighter jets, access to our latest technology and spy satellites, bulldozers, fences, barbed wires, walls, and concentration camps. The Nazism of Germany and the Apartheid of South Africa live in Israel’s policies with our government’s full knowledge, support, political protection, and funding. Many courageous people, including compassionate humanitarian Jews in and out of Israel have made this comparison. Israeli men and women like Uri Avnery, Professor Israel Shahak (deceased), Prof. Illan Pappe, Prof. Avi Shlaim, Israel Shamir, Journalists Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, and many others who work for peace and justice in the Holy Land.
Kathleen and Bill Christison - Will You Continue to Ignore Gaza's Suffering, Mr Obama?
Palestine and Palestinian suffering have always taken a back seat in the world’s attention while the United States starts this war, finishes off that war, or expands it; while the world deals with wars and economic crises; while the attention of the compassionate is taken up by starvation and pestilence and war in Sudan or in Congo or Rwanda or Somalia. Throughout these crises – quite legitimate crises all – Palestine is always left to molder, sometimes at a more rapid pace in more inhumane circumstances than at other times.
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5 articles on Christian Zionism
The Cost of Israel to the American People
Love and Marriage in Israel
Palestinian and Non-Orthodox Israelis Need Not Apply
HRW has often been critical of Israel while showing respect for its security concerns. For instance, it has condemned suicide bombing as a war crime and also assailed Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank.
Hebron
For an explanation and legend please go to:
http://antiwar.com/hacohen/?articleid=670
The land claimed in the Bible as belonging to the Jews
Nakba Day
The Palestinian Story Over Time
From:http://palestinethinktank.com/2006/05/10/the-shrinking-map-of-palestine
Images of Palestine
