Local media campaign and vigil remember and protest Israel’s 2008 assault on Gaza
(The following is from a Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign press release.)
On Dec. 27, the second anniversary of Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza, Seattle-area activists are launching a Metro bus ad campaign to expose the use of U.S. taxpayer money to support Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people.
Inspired by similar public advertising campaigns in Chicago, San Francisco, Albuquerque and other cities, the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign is launching the advertising campaign aimed at securing equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as an end to United States military aid to Israel, which continues at a time of economic crisis and severe budget cuts that have resulted in massive unemployment. A companion website at www.stop30billion-Seattle.org suggests ways that people can get involved locally.
The initial campaign begins on 12 Metro bus routes in the city of Seattle, with the slogan “ISRAELI WAR CRIMES: Your Tax Dollars At Work”. The ads will run 4 weeks.
Seattle activists will also hold a vigil and protest in downtown Seattle on Monday, December 27, starting at 5:00 pm at 4th & Pine St. The walking vigil will be in memory of those killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza and in protest of Israel’s ongoing crimes against human rights.
December 27, 2008 was the first day of Israel’s three-week military offensive against the captive population of Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them non-combatants, more than 300 of them children.
A formal inquiry by the United Nations found grounds for a criminal investigation into war crimes by Israel. The UN report concluded that Israel’s assault was not in self-defense, but was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. Amnesty International found evidence that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields, and Israeli soldiers have testified publicly to other human rights violations. Yet the U.S. government has pledged $30 billion in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years, even though the U.S. Arms Export Control Act prohibits the use of U.S. weapons against civilians.
An increasing number of US citizens are becoming aware of this issue. “I had never heard the whole story of the Israeli occupation. I never anticipated US complicity in Israel’s crimes. I had no idea,” says one volunteer with the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign. “When I began to learn the truth, it was like an avalanche. I became angry. Why all the lies? Why the blackout of information? Why the silence from our government?”
Another volunteer was in the West Bank during Israel’s assault on Gaza. “I was in Ramallah during the entire Operation Cast Lead – watching TV with people from Gaza in the evening in the hotel reception area, talking with our staff in Gaza each morning to see if they had survived the night of bombings.”
The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign is incorporated in Washington State.
For more information: www.stop30billion-Seattle.org, info@stop30billion-Seattle.org
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As those more deeply familiar with the Israel-Palestinian conflict no doubt recognize, this is just the latest in a series of measures aimed at delegitimizing the existence of Israel, blaming Israel for the entirety of the conflict, and suppressing Israel’s right to defend its own citizens.
The reality is that Israelis overwhelming want peace, want a two-state solution, and are willing to sacrifice heavily to achieve those goals. Meanwhile, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of other smaller terrorist groups, whose entire existence is predicated upon perpetual conflict, and who will lose power and influence in the event of a lasting peace, continue to make war on Israel, and hide among Palestinian civilians when Israel fights back. The tragic result is civilian deaths. Israel takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian casualties–more so than any other Western military–but they are often unavoidable, particularly given the tactics of the terror groups they are up against. Only when Palestinians rise up and reject the terrorists in their midst can this cycle be brought to an end, and peace achieved.
In the meantime, such grotesque and misleading campaigns as the one referenced in the article will only serve to misinform, polarize, and spread rhetoric–all of which are counterproductive to peace.
Israel delegitimizes itself with its numerous human rights abuses and by ignoring international law. The reality is that Israel simply refuses to recognize the right of Palestinians, both inside the Green Line and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, to live normal lives with equality. Israeli politicians, journalists and academics routinely refer to Palestinians as a ‘demographic threat’ and Israel allocates rights on the basis of a person’s religious or ethnic background – this is what your tax dollars are supporting.
It is disingenuous to lump together the Palestinians inside and outside the Green Line. The ones inside are Israeli citizens with rights identical to those of Israel’s Jewish citizens, PLUS an added exemption from compulsory military service. Yes, there is certainly discrimination and socioeconomic inequality among Israeli Arabs. Yes, it’s a problem. The same can be said of the US, UK, France, the Netherlands, etc., and it hardly constitutes apartheid, as Israel’s detractors like to argue. But it is a problem nonetheless, and awareness of the problem is growing in Israel.
The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are not citizens of Israel. Quick history lesson as to why: in 1948 when the UN partitioned the area into two independent Palestinian and Jewish states, the neighboring Arab nations rejected the presence of a Jewish state and attacked the newly-independent Israel. The stated goal of the Arab leaders was the extermination of the Jews in the region. Most of the Arabs living in the area fled the invading armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, anticipating that the Arab armies would quickly emerge victorious and that they could soon return to their homes in a land free of Jews. Instead, Israel won the war. The Arabs who fled became refugees; the ones who stayed became Israeli citizens.
When in 1967 Israel again fought for its life against its Arab neighbors, and again emerged victorious, it found itself controlling a large chunk of land that was occupied mostly by Palestinians, as well as the entire Sinai peninsula. Sinai was returned to Egypt–in exchange for what? Nothing more than peace, and recognition of Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinians could have had the same deal, and in fact it has been offered to them three times–in 1948, 1993, and 2000–and rejected each time. (Btw, as a result of the 1967 war, there are nearly as many Palestinian refugees in Jordan as in the West Bank and Gaza, and their conditions are far worse–yet their plight gets no attention from the mainstream media).
Obviously there are a lot of details and nuances not captured here, but this is at least a brief history of how the Palestinians came to be in their present situation. It is a tragic situation indeed, as they are among the poorest, most illiterate people on earth. But this situation 1) is due to 60 years of Arab aggression toward Israel, not unilateral Israeli action, and 2) can only be solved with peace, and not by anti-Israel propaganda, divestiture campaigns, or hateful rhetoric.
Israel has no interest in peace for the Middle East. See the continued refusal to stop building in Palestenian and Arab lands. See the mass murder and cover up of Palestinian dead with bulldozers and other earth moving machines.
She the destruction of Palestinian agricultural produce. See the bulldozering of Palestinian houses and government buildings. Israel is a kind of Third Reich in the Middle East. It does not matter that it does not want that said about it. A spade is a spade.
Yes, I am pissed that the US government is using my hard earned money to help perpetrate this monstrous crime on people with stones and slingshots.
the fact that this information is not one-sided, it is a true fact that as Americans, the tax dollars we pay go to supporting the oppression of the palestinian people by having Israel maintained as the Middle East watchdog is astounding for me to read the comments above. do we give military aid support to israel for what reason? how can you claim land as Israel when people had settled there long before. It is sickening and disgusting what is happening in Gaza, read Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Read books about why there are struggles occurring Palestine and I hope they can look to Egypt and Tunisia for inspiration to fight back.
To deny this billboard is to deny the truth and free speech. Learn the true facts of what is happening..OPEN YOUR MIND AND EYES to what is happening on the ground in Gaza.