Condemn U.S.-Israeli Genocide in Palestine

Voice of Revolution vigorously condemns the U.S.-Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, which has been unending since June. The most recent massacres of women and children in Beit Hanoun, backed by the U.S. and using U.S. weaponry, is a brutal crime against humanity. Yet far from denouncing it, President George W. Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the White House just days after the massacre. The U.S. also vetoed a United Nations resolution condemning the -massacre, claiming it was not “evenhanded” and did not “contribute to peace.” Like Israel, the U.S. claims this crime is simply a “tragic mistake.” Bush has made clear that for the U.S., Israeli aggression and crimes have no limits, while it is the Palestinians who are supposedly guilty of terrorism.

A UN Rapporteur rejected Israel’s claim that the bombing was a mistake, saying it indicated pre-meditation. “Since June 25, the most recent Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, I have received alarming reports about deliberate attacks by Israeli forces resulting in the destruction of homes, civilian property and infrastructures I the Gaza Strip, Rapporteur Miloon Kothari said in a statement. “The explanation by the Israeli authorities that this wantonly criminal act was a mistake is unacceptable, he added. “The shelling and subsequent killing of civilians indicates a premeditated military tactic constituting a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.”

The world’s people, with many U.S. organizations participating, have demonstrated their full support for the Palestinians and demanded justice. Israel could not continue without U.S. backing and it is no doubt the U.S. that is pushing them to see just how far they can take these atrocities against the Palestinians. Olmert said he and Bush have a “complete understanding” about the current situation.

The peoples of the world reject the U.S.-Israeli crimes and aggression. As one they stand to say, We Are All Palestinians! We will not rest until Palestine is free! End the Occupation!

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We Overcame Our Fear

Jameela al-Shanti, Beit Hanoun

Yesterday, November 8 at dawn, the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed my home. I was the target, but instead the attack killed my sister-in-law, Nahla, a widow with eight children in her care. In the same raid Israel’s artillery shelled a residential district in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, leaving 19 dead and 40 injured, many killed in their beds. One family, the Athamnas, lost 16 members in the massacre: the oldest who died, Fatima, was 70; the youngest, Dima, was one; seven were children. The death toll in Beit Hanoun has passed 90 in one week.

This is Israel’s tenth incursion into Beit Hanoun since it announced its withdrawal from Gaza. It has turned the town into a closed military zone, -collectively punishing its 28,000 residents. For days, the town has been encircled by Israeli tanks and troops and shelled. All water and electricity supplies were cut off and, as the death toll continued to mount, no ambulances were allowed in. Israeli soldiers raided houses, shut up the families and positioned their snipers on roofs, shooting at everything that moved. We still do not know what has become of our sons, husbands and brothers since all males over 15 years old were taken away last Thursday. They were ordered to strip to their underwear, handcuffed and led away.

It is not easy as a mother, sister or wife to watch those you love disappear before your eyes. Perhaps that was what helped me, and 1,500 other women, to overcome our fear and defy the Israeli curfew last Friday - and set about freeing some of our young men who were besieged in a mosque while defending us and our city against the Israeli military machine.

We faced the most powerful army in our region unarmed. The soldiers were loaded up with the latest weaponry, and we had nothing, except each other and our yearning for freedom. As we broke through the first barrier, we grew more confident, more determined to break the suffocating siege. The soldiers of Israel’s so-called defence force did not hesitate to open fire on unarmed women. The sight of my close friends Ibtissam Yusuf abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda taking their last breaths, bathed in blood, will live with me for ever.

Later an Israeli plane shelled a bus taking children to a kindergarten. Two children were killed, along with their teacher. In the last week 30 children have died. As I go round the crowded hospital, it is deeply poignant to see the large number of small bodies with their scars and amputated limbs. We clutch our children tightly when we go to sleep, vainly hoping that we can shield them from Israel’s tanks and warplanes.

But as though this occupation and collective punishment were not enough, we Palestinians find ourselves the targets of a systematic siege imposed by the so-called free world. We are being starved and suffocated as a punishment for daring to exercise our democratic right to choose who rules and represents us. Nothing undermines the west’s claims to defend freedom and democracy more than what is happening in Palestine. Shortly after announcing his project to democratise the Middle East, President Bush did all he could to strangle our nascent democracy, arresting our ministers and MPs. I have yet to hear western condemnation that I, an elected MP, have had my home demolished and relatives killed by Israel’s bombs. When the bodies of my friends and colleagues were torn apart there was not one word from those who claim to be defenders of women’s rights on Capitol Hill and in 10 Downing Street.

Why should we Palestinians have to accept the theft of our land, the ethnic cleansing of our people, incarcerated in forsaken refugee camps, and the denial of our most basic human rights, without protesting and resisting?

The lesson the world should learn from Beit Hanoun last week is that Palestinians will never relinquish our land, towns and villages. We will not surrender our legitimate rights for a piece of bread or handful of rice. The women of Palestine will resist this monstrous occupation imposed on us at gunpoint, siege and starvation. Our rights and those of future generations are not open for negotiation.

Whoever wants peace in Palestine and the region must direct their words and sanctions to the occupier, not the occupied, the aggressor not the victim. The truth is that the solution lies with Israel, its army and allies - not with Palestine’s women and children.

Jameela al-Shanti is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for Hamas. She led a women’s protest against the siege of Beit Hanoun.

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Stand Up and Stop the Massacres in Palestine

StopTheWall.org

Last night, Occupation Forces attacked the people of Beit Hanoun in their sleep, shelling indiscriminately at houses, killing 18 Palestinians and leaving many more injured, most of them women and children. It comes just 24 hours after Occupation Forces had ended another invasion that led to the killings of over 50 people in the Gaza strip and almost 200 injured.

In Beit Hanoun, two doctors were killed as ambulances were sent to treat those injured during the invasion. People were left bleeding to death as Palestinians were prevented from reaching hospitals. Dozens of houses have been turned into rubble and the infrastructure and agriculture of Beit Hanoun has been destroyed.

And in a sign of even more war crimes, the Occupation murdered 5 Palestinians during the night in the Jenin district of the West Bank.

The Israeli apartheid regime -announces that this is only the beginning. As an Occupation officer puts it: “In the future we will be involved in more dramatic missions. […] The operations in the Gaza Strip will have to take on a different character in the future, similar to what we did in Beit Hanoun.”

The daily crimes and killings express the Zionist policy of terror and genocide against our people: who wish us to grant unconditional surrender to life in the ghettos, flee our country or to die under their fire. In the ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank, imprisoned by cement walls and razor wire, Palestinians become hostages to a vicious machine of sanctions, starvation and invasion.

There is no reaction, no condemnation of these crimes against humanity, no urgent meetings from world leaders. Only complicit silence. Just as if the world had adopted the racist Israeli paradigm that excludes Palestinians from humanity, global media and governments shamelessly continue to table up justifications for the mass killing of our people.

We are thus calling on all of you to take immediate action and to break the silence. We are calling all of you that are mobilizing for the week against the Apartheid Wall to step up your efforts and:

• To protest and raise your voice

• To call for an end to the massacre and to uncover the apartheid nature and genocidal aims of Israel.

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Oppose Palestine Massacres

Citizens for Fair Legislation

On November 8, Israeli tank shells killed at least 18 people in their sleep. Eight children are said to be among the dead. Of the 18 killed, 13 were from the same family and over 40 more were wounded in a residential attack on Beit Hanoun. According to witnesses at the scene all of the dead are women and children. The human cost of the attacks on Beit Hanoun have resulted in over 75 Palestinians killed in less than a week.

On November 6, the International Red Cross condemned what they called a deliberate Israeli attack on clearly marked ambulance workers; the ICRC issued a statement saying that, “The International Committee of the Red Cross is appalled by this failure to protect personnel engaged in emergency medical duties. The individuals concerned and their means of transport were clearly marked with a distinctive emblem conferring the protection of the Geneva Conventions [on the conduct of warfare],” continued the same statement.Two paramedics were killed.

On November 3, two Palestinian women who were taking part in non-violent protest were killed when Israeli Occupation Forces began shooting at a group of hundreds of women from Beit Hanoun.

Call, fax and email your representatives today and ask them to stop supporting the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian women and children. Tell them that you expect this country to do what it must to stop the killings in Gaza. Israel would not be able to commit these crimes if not for the support of the U.S. In fact, in Palestinian media has been showing pictures all day of the shrapnel being pulled out of the bodies of Palestinian victims all of it stamped: Made in the U.S. It is unacceptable for us to be supporting war crimes in the territories. Tell your elected officials to take heed of the elections we just had in this country. The Republicans ought to realize that we have had enough war, lies and corruption. The Democrats should know that we can, as a people, come together for change and that they must support justice in this world by condemning Israeli atrocities or we will not vote for them either. Supporting Israeli war crimes is not only immoral but it is never going to make this country safer.

Email And Or Call The White House

White House Comments Line:

202-456-1111

White House Switchboard:

202-456-1414

White House Fax:

202-456-2461

(from www.cflweb.org)

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Palestinians Massacred in Gaza and U.S. Remains Silent

Muslim American Society

While American citizens went to the polls and voted their opposition to death and destruction in Iraq, there is an unsettling silence within our government and many of its citizens, concerning the ongoing death and destruction taking place in Gaza.

Despite increasing criticism of the Israeli military shelling of the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun which yesterday claimed an additional 18 lives and left scores of civilians wounded, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remained intransigent in his continuation of attacks on Northern Gaza.

As a result of these attacks, Shifa Hospital, the main hospital in Northern Gaza, is “on the verge of collapse”, stated the director of the hospital, Dr. Juma’a Squ’a. Recent reports today reveal up to eight children killed and scores wounded. Dr. Squ’a, in an interview on Tuesday with the Israeli media outlet YNetnews, stated that “the hospital is at its maximum capacity, we have several wounded patients whose condition is critical and the hospital is on the verge of collapsing because of a serious shortage of medical supplies, medicine, and irregular electricity.”

“We have the personnel but not the means (to handle the increasing number of casualties),” he said.

Since the beginning of 2006, some 96 children in the Occupied Territories, most of them in Gaza, have been killed. The increasing level of military violence directed against Palestinian civilians has drawn sharp criticism of Israel from many international leaders and communities, including the European Union, the Vatican, and the International Red Cross.

Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the MAS Freedom Foundation commented that “this continued Israeli offensive is clearly an attempt by Israel to retake Gaza, with no regard for the injuries and deaths to innocent civilians and non-combatants. This extreme and indiscriminate military violence is much more than a response to any Palestinian rockets aimed at Israel. But once again Israel indiscriminately violates international and U.S. law and we the American taxpayers foot the bill. Our government’s silence in the face of such atrocities is unconscionable. Dr. Martin Luther King once said ‘there is a time when silence is betrayal’. Our government’s silence toward this violent Israeli aggression betrays the humanity of the Palestinian people. This is not in the interest of our nation or justice”

The Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation has arranged for a meeting of interfaith leaders with U.S. State Department officials to discuss responses to the grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by severe shortages of electricity, food, medicine, and safe drinking water. Additionally, MAS Freedom is calling upon all Mosques during this Jumah (Friday prayer) to make dua (prayers and supplications) on behalf of the suffering people of Gaza.

The Freedom Foundation is the public affairs arm of the Muslim American Society (MAS), a national grassroots religious, social, and educational organization, www.masnet.org

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World Horrified by Beit Hanoun Massacre

IslamOnline.net

World countries, the U.S. excluded, reacted with horrified shock on Wednesday, November 8, to the Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip that took the lives of twenty civilians, including eight children.

“This brutal collective punishment of a people, not a government, has passed largely unnoticed by the international community,” said John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). He blasted failure by the quartet overseeing the moribund Middle East peace process — the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the U.S. — to staunch the Palestinian bloodshed.

“The quartet ... has done little to halt Israel’s attacks. Worse still, the (UN) Security Council has failed to adopt any resolution on the subject or attempt to restore peace to the region,” the UN official said. “The time has come for urgent action.”

Israeli occupation forces bombarded houses in the battered northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, killing twenty Palestinians, including eight children and four women, in their sleep. Pools of blood lay in the streets of Beit Hanoun as pieces of flesh and the small sandals of children were strewn about. At least 40 people had been wounded in the Israeli offensive. Dugard said that the devastating onslaught Israel unleashed in June had left 300 people dead and caused “large scale devastation” of homes and public facilities. He accused Israel of destroying farmland, cutting off power, food and water supplies and imprisoning the people of Gaza.

War Crimes

The Arab League, the pan-Arab organization and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s largest Islamic body, condemned the new Israeli massacre against innocent Palestinian civilians.

“These massacres of children, women and civilians are unjustified and incomprehensible.” said Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the 22-member Arab League. Moussa called for an emergency meeting of foreign ministers, urging Arab countries to “send a strong message to Israel and to stop matters from progressing in this manner.” Jordan’s King Abdullah II condemned the “horrible massacre” and pledged to “exert all the efforts necessary to stop the Israeli military operations.”

Syria condemned Israel’s “state terrorism” and urged the UN Security Council to “punish Israel for its repeated crimes.”

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) accused Israel of war crimes. “This affirms that Israel scorns international law and insists on continuing to commit war crimes and violate the Fourth Geneva Convention,” it said in a statement. The OIC asked the UN Security Council to take urgent measures “to stop the Israeli attack and to guarantee the protection of the Palestinian people from Israel’s brutality and state terrorism.”

The International Red Cross (ICRC) accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law that “strictly prohibits” attacks on civilians and homes.

The U.S. asked Palestinians to refrain from retaliating against the Israeli onslaught, which it called a “terrible tragedy.” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe called on “all parties to show restraint so as to avoid any harm to innocent civilians.” The deadly Israeli shelling came five days before Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert is to meet U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House.

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Massacre Sparks Large Hebron Protest

Hebron, Palestine erupted in a large, spontaneous, and angry demonstration Wednesday, November 8. Its emphatic show of sympathy for the victims of an early-morning Israeli military attack on the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun was militant and determined, lasting several hours. At least nineteen Palestinians including eleven members of one Palestinian family, eight of them children, as well as four women died in the attacks on Beit Hanoun.

As news about the massacre of women and children in Beit Hanoun circulated, shopkeepers began slamming shut the doors to their stores out of respect for the victims. Then shortly before noon a militant group of mainly young men and women, many waving either the green flag of Hamas or the flag of Palestine marched through Hebron to a large intersection near the Israeli military controlled area of the city.

After a vigorous rally denouncing the Israeli crimes, about half of the thousand protesters set off for the Bab iZaweyya outdoor market area. They were led by adolescent boys. At Bab iZaweyya, one flag waving teenager leading the way dashed up the street toward the Dubboya Street checkpoint. He was quickly followed by other boys who began throwing stones at the Israeli army caravan that blocks the way into the area of Hebron that is occupied by the Israelis.

Showing their anger with the -Israeli occupation, about seventy boys and young men began throwing stones, then chunks of paving stone at the checkpoint. The Israelis fired a fusillade of teargas against the youth. At least thirty tear gas canisters were fired during the next hour as soldiers moved out of the checkpoint area and began forcing the protestors and bystanders back up the streets. Protesters vowed to continue the fight to end the occupation and free Palestine.

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U.S. Vetoes UN Draft Resolution on Beit Hanoun

Palestine Media Center, November 12

The United States vetoed a United -Nations Security Council draft resolution Saturday, November 11, that sought to condemn an Israeli military massacre in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out of the territory. The veto unleashed a flurry of criticism in the Middle East.

“This decision by the U.S. government gives unlimited cover to commit more massacres of innocent Palestinians,” said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. “This is a shame on the American administration, which says it is trying to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East.”

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was “biased against Israel.”

“This resolution does not display an evenhanded characterization of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace to which we aspire and for which we are working assiduously,” he told the Security Council. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the draft resolution would have aggravated the situation in Gaza because it contained “inflammatory and unnecessary language.”

The draft received 10 votes in favor and four abstentions, along with the U.S. vote against. Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia all abstained. The U.S. is one of five permanent members of the council that has the power to veto resolutions, along with Britain, China, France and Russia.

It was the second U.S. veto this year of a Security Council draft resolution condemning Israeli military operations in Gaza. The U.S. blocked action on a resolution this summer after Israel launched its latest offensive.

Palestinians strengthened calls for Security Council action after an early morning Israeli artillery barrage in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun killed 19 people Wednesday. [More than 100 Palestinians have been killed, 500 wounded and 1500 captured by the Israelis in the three weeks leading up to the massacre].

In an open session of the General -Assembly on Thursday, Palestinian U.N. observer Riyad Mansour called the attack state terrorism and said the perpetrators should be held accountable under international law for war crimes.

Qatar’s U.N. Ambassador Nassir Al-Nasser warned in the Security Council meeting that the failure of the body to act on the draft would lead to more Israeli violence against Palestinians. “Any lukewarm reaction or response on our part gives the impression we are shirking from our humanitarian responsibilities,” said Al-Nasser, who sponsored the resolution on behalf of the Palestinians. Qatar is the only Arab nation on the council.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said the veto “will only increase the anger” toward Israel, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused the Security Council of “-turning a blind eye to Israeli acts in Gaza.” The Arab League was planning to hold an emergency meeting of foreign ministers in Cairo, Egypt, to decide how to respond the latest Israeli offensive.

[Under U.S. pressure], the draft resolution had been weakened in recent days to help improve its chances of passage. A section was added demanding the Palestinian Authority take immediate action to bring an end to violence, including the firing of rockets into Israel.

It also called for the U.N. secretary-general to establish a “fact-finding mission” to probe Wednesday’s attack in Beit Hanoun, a step below ordering a full investigation.

In addition, it backed off calls for U.N. observers to be placed on the Gaza-Israel border, asking instead for the “possible establishment of an international mechanism for protection of the civilian populations.”

In his remarks to the Security Council, Bolton said the draft was still too one-sided. He said it compared legal Israeli military operations with the firing of rockets into Israel — an act of terrorism. He called the fact-finding mission unnecessary and said the text failed to condemn the ruling Hamas party’s refusal to renounce terrorism.

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