ALERT ALERT to the Daily Kos, what say you? After all, you DO call yourselves "progressive",
cutting edge Democrats.
If You Want Peace You Gotta Show It
By Bruce Taub, Israel/Palestine Action Group
December 14, 2007
Justice in Gaza
The Israeli government is in the process of illegally and inhumanely withholding electricity, water, fuel and critical supplies (including medical supplies) from all of Gaza. The United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Physicians for Human Rights have condemned Israel for taking this illegal and punitive action. The Israelis justify their actions as an effort to stop occasional rocket attacks from a few very specific locations inside Gaza into Israel. But everyone understands that cutting power and supplies to an entire people will do nothing to deter rocket fire from a small group of militants and is merely a rationalization for punishing 1.5 million innocent Palestinian people for having fairly and democratically elected a Hamas-backed government.
PDA understands that Israel has the responsibility to protect its citizens from any group who fires rockets into Israel, but punishing all 1.5 million innocent women, children and men who live in Gaza is not an effective way to do so. Such brutal and inhumane deprivations imposed as a collective punishment upon an entire people in fact do not make the citizens of Israel any safer, but serve only to increase the desperation and despair of the Palestinians. The question is, what if anything can we as American progressives do to help move the Israeli government from this state of hostility to a place where peace is more likely and possible.
PDA suggests that one answer is for the United States' Congress to take steps to withhold military aid to Israel until Israel stops its territorial expansion, ends the occupation of Palestine, dismantles the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, negotiates with the Palestinians about the internationally recognized right of return, and ends the blockade of Gaza. Contact your member of Congress. Our belief is that the best way to defeat Palestinian terrorism is to create a viable Palestinian state.
Inasmuch as the United States has exercised substantial power and influence in Israel and Palestine for decades, we call upon our Congressional Representatives to pass a binding resolution that declares the human and material costs of the conflict are unacceptable, that the U,S, government will use its power and influence to promote peace, justice, and reconciliation in the region, and that the people of the United States demand the Israeli government end the siege of Gaza as an irrefutable expression of sincerity and good will in creating the conditions for a just peace. Send an email to your member of Congress.
In further support of these efforts PDA is proud to announce it has joined a non-partisan coalition of Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations and civil society leaders in a campaign to End the Siege on Gaza. The aims of the campaign are to get the Israeli government to lift the siege of Gaza and stop other collective punishment measures imposed on Gaza's civilian population, all guided by the wish to end all forms of violence in the region.
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