Boycott israHell!

Boycott israHell!
Бойкот на израел и печелещите от окупацията! Boycott israHell and those who profit from occupation!

Friday, July 11, 2014

Ала Кадер: Медиите пренебрегват живота на палестинците

15-годишният палестинец Мохамед Абу Хдейр беше отвлечен и зверски убит в нощта след като израелските власти съобщиха, че са открили телата на тримата млади израелски заселници, изчезнали на 12 юни 2014 г. Няколко дни по-късно неговият братовчед Тарик беше жестоко пребит от израелските сили за сигурност. Ала Кадер е братовчедка на двамата младежиЖивее в Тампа, Флорида.
- Ала, какви са фактите около смъртта на Мохамед?
- Смъртта на Мохамед беше опустошителна. Опитах да си представя терора, който е преживял и ужасяващия начин, по който е страдал преди смъртта си и все още съм шокирана. Накарали са го да пие гориво и са го изгорили жив. Нанесли са му и удари по главата. Той е нечие дете, нечий брат, приятел. Онова, което са му причинили, е нечовешко. Никой не заслужава подобно нещо.
- А какво се е случило преди това, как е бил отвлечен?
- Мохамед е чакал приятелите си пред магазина на баща си, за да отидат на сутрешна молитва заедно. Тогава една кола е спряла и са го издърпали в нея. Около час по-късно тялото му е открито в гориста местност около Йерусалим.
- Имате ли информация за разследването?
- Доколкото знам, разследването е в ход и има шестима израелски граждани, които са заподозрени и арестувани.
- Как ще запомните Мохамед?
- Аз лично никога не съм имала възможността да посетя Палестина, но сестра ми е ходила там и казва, че Мохамед е бил обикновен тийнейджър и едно наистина мило момче.
- Разкажете за Тарик. Смятате ли, че задържането му може да е свързано по някакъв начин с убийството на Мохамед?
- Тарик живее в Тампа, Флорида и него го виждам често, той ми е като по-малък брат. Израснали сме заедно, след като се преместиха със семейството си от Балтимор. Той наистина е добро момче, което, за съжаление, се е озовало насред един конфликт, който продължава вече десетилетия. Надявам се случилото се с него да няма нищо общо с убийството на Мохамед, но на този етап всичко е възможно.
- Беше публикувана информация, че Тарик е бил задържан, защото в хвърлял камъни.
- Вярвам на братовчед си, когато казва, че той само е наблюдавал ставащото. Няма никакви доказателства, че той е хвърлял камъни, но има солидни доказателства за това как израелските сили са го пребили жестоко, докато той е бил с белезници и в безсъзнание. И въпреки това те не са задържани. Тарик, за сметка на това, е бил арестуван без каквито и да било доказателства или обвинения и са му отказали подобаваща медицинска помощ.
- Той все още ли е в ареста?
- За щастие, не. Неделя сутринта беше освободен под гаранция и е под домашен арест за 10 дни извън Шуафат, родният град на нашето семейство. Наложена му е също така и глоба.
- Вярвате ли, че ще бъде постиганата справедливост за това, което се случи с двамата Ви братовчеди?
- Мога само да се надявам и да се моля, че справедливост ще има. Едно невинно дете беше жестоко пребито заради престъпление, което не е извършило. Задължително е справедливостта да възтържествува.
- Оставате ли с впечатлението, че фактите около това, което се случи с братовчедите Ви Тарик и Мохамед, са преиначени?
- Сърцето ми е с тримата израелски младежи и техните семейства, но да видя как много от масовите медии пренебрегват живота на палестинците, според мен е голямо неуважение към човешкия живот. Неговата ценност е еднаква навсякъде. Аз непрекъснато чета и слушам за постоянното напрежение в Палестина и ме боли да гледам как хората там страдат толкова много, но това, че се случва в моето собствено семейство и в родния ми град, беше шокиращо и ми разби сърцето. Опитвам да не се фокусирам върху негативните коментари и лъжите, които някои хора имат наглостта да изрекат. Има видеоматериал, който доказва какво се е случило с Мохамад и Тарик и аз оставям доказателствата сами да говорят, защото ако позволя на някой да ме ядоса или да отговоря на омразата, означава допълнително да го стимулирам, а аз не искам да доставя това удоволствие на никого.
- Какви лъжи имате предвид?
Някои хора опитаха да кажат, Мохамад е жертва на „убийство на честта”, извършено от семейството и че смъртта му е заради семейни конфликти. Всички тези твърдения са безпочвени.
- Разкажете повече за семейството си. Откога сте в САЩ?
- Абу Хдейр е доста голямо семейство, но успяваме да останем близки помежду си. Семейството ми е в САЩ откакто се помня, но дядо ми е роден в Йерусалим.
- Мохамед и Тарик в Йерусалим ли живееха или в САЩ?
- Тарик е роден в Балтимор, но Мохамед е роден и живял в Палестина.
- Знаете ли дали семейството Ви ще потърси по съдебен път отговорност от извършителите?
- Към този момент не съм сигурна.
- Какво бихте искали да кажете на българските читатели?
- Искам хората да знаят, че като мюсюлмани ние сме научени да ценим живота. Моментът, в който започнем да решаваме чий живот е по-ценен, е моментът, в който губим своята човечност. За да има равенство и промяна, трябва да сме толерантни и да разбираме другия. Всеки ден цивилни умират заради нерешените проблеми в Палестина и това е недопустимо. Нищо няма да върне Мохамад, но неговата смърт ще донесе промяна. Той остави удивително наследство. Тарик ще се върне с различно виждане за живота и се надявам опитът му да е за добро. Несправедливостта, която се стовари върху Тарик и Мохамед, не засяга само моето семейство, тя засяга всички.
РАЛИЦА ТРИФОНОВА, Газа
ИЗточник: 24chasa.bg/

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Have Your Members of Congress Write Attorney General Holder about Rasmea Odeh’s Case

Apeal from End the occupation


Dear PEOPLE,


Israeli forces killed six children when a missile struck a residential building in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Credit: DCI-Palestine.
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It is with a heavy heart and a profound sense of outrage that we are witnessing Israel yet again brutally attack the besieged 1.7 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip with U.S. weapons and political support. 
As of last night, Israel had killed at least 41 Palestinians, including 13 children; injured more than 100 people; and deliberately targeted at least 60 homes since the latest assault began on Monday.
Already, people like you have sent more than 20,000 letters since Monday to President Obama and Congress protesting Israel’s human rights abuses and collective punishment of the Palestinians. Send an updated letter to them calling for an immediate ceasefire and accountability for Israel’s actions by clicking here.
As Israel is intensifying its U.S.-sponsored brutality toward the Palestinian people, the United States is moving ahead with its prosecution of Rasmea Odeh—a survivor of Israeli torture and a beloved Chicago-area Palestinian-American community organizer—despite thousands of you who have written to and called the District Attorney to drop the spurious immigration-related charges against her.
But we won’t be deterred. Today, we’re joining with US Campaign member groups and friends—American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations Chicago, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, Defending Dissent Foundation, Jewish Voice for Peace, National Lawyers Guild, and the United States Palestinian Community Network—in a joint day of action.
Please take a moment to write and call your Members of Congress expressing your concern about Rasmea's prosecution and asking them to send a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder about the case.
As we explain in the letter to Congress:
“The 67-year-old community leader is facing up to ten years in federal prison and the prospect of her U.S. citizenship been revoked and being deported. Her arrest stems from allegations that she failed to disclose on her naturalization application an unjust conviction by Israeli military courts over 45 years ago.  She was physically and sexually tortured into confessing to a crime she did not commit, and subjected to continued torture, sexual abuse and solitary confinement while in detention for 10 years. 
These charges against Odeh are spurious because she has not hidden her torture and imprisonment. On the contrary, in 1979, she publicly testified before the UN in great detail about the torture to which she was subjected while imprisoned by Israel.”
Click here to read the letter and send a personal version to your Members of Congress. It’s easy…just type in your zip code to get started.
As we mentioned in our alert earlier this week, the August Congressional recess is coming up. We want to help you set up a delegation to meet with your Members of Congress to share your concerns about Rasmea Odeh’s prosecution and to hold Israel accountable for its increasing brutality both toward Palestinians and Americans such as Tarek Abu Khdeir. 
To get started, please contact our Legislative Coordinator Mike Coogan who will provide you with the training and resources you need for a successful meeting. Don’t worry if you’ve never met with your Members of Congress before. We’ll walk you through the process as needed.    
For additional details about Rasmea’s case, please check out this flyer from USPCN and this article I wrote in The Hill
Thank you for taking action to protest our government’s prosecution of Rasmea Odeh and for all of your continued activism to end Israel’s U.S.-sponsored brutality toward the Palestinians.
Sincerely,



Josh Ruebner, 
Policy Director

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

#GazaUnderAttack: Eyewitness Account from MECA's Director of Gaza Projects


Gaza Under Attack: Eyewitness Account from MECA's Director of Gaza Projects

Gaza Under Attack: Day 1
Eyewitness Account from Middle East Children’s Alliance’s Director of Gaza Projects, Dr. Mona el-Farra
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  • 16 killed and over 100 wounded, including children.
  • Hospitals already reporting shortages of medicine.


Eyewitness Account from Dr. Mona El-Farra, Gaza

In Gaza last night, while Israeli army forces launched military attacks against Gaza, by sea, air and via artillery shells, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children were unable to sleep inside their roof- tinned homes, clinging to their parents, crying, and terrified. The shelling last night was earth shattering, and went through the entirety of the Gaza strip- at least 100 attacks have already taken place .

In Gaza, we do not have bomb shelters to escape and hide.

In Gaza, these bombs fall on top of our deteriorating economic situation.  Unemployment because of the Israeli blockade against civilians is almost 40%.  It is Ramadan, making it more difficult to get basic foods, and thousands of government employees cannot reach banks to access their salaries.  I know there are internal problems between Fatah and Hamas, but the outcome is hardship, while the bombs keep dropping on top of our heads.

In Gaza, the feeling of insecurity throws its shadow against all of the population, and the military operation continues.  With threats of expansion in the coming few days, there is no news about any ceasefire.

Prior to the attack, the local authorities warned the population against swimming in the Mediterranean sea (the only recreational outlet for 1.7 million people).  The sea around Gaza has become overly polluted with sewage and wastewater, that the authority, due to lack of fuel, had to pump untreated into the sea.

In Gaza, over 90% of water is unsuitable for drinking.

Through my work at the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), we continue to implement the water purification systems at schools and kindergartens, to provide over 50,000 Palestinian children with clean water.  Even though it is the summer holiday,  the community had accessibility to our water units in schools, but the attacks make travel dangerous.

In Gaza today, imagine choosing between your child’s thirst and your child’s safety.

Also, at MECA, because of our deep understanding of the poor recreational facilities for Palestinian children, we continue our educational, entertainment and recreational  activities, inside our partners’ community centres. It will be even more important during the difficult times ahead, to help the children and attract their attention away of the night shelling.  Let the Children Play & Heal is an ongoing program, and I fear that there will be the need for more psycho-social programming, like we did in 2009 and 2012.  While we help these children, we take care of the mothers too, via psycho-social trainings that aim to educate women about trauma, and how to deal with family and children during times of crises.

Today, different health facilities announced a need for more emergency supplies, which were already lacking because of the closure of the borders and the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza.  Just before the attacks,  MECA managed to send some highly needed emergency medications to the Red Crescent Society, but more is needed.

In Gaza, MECA’s team, along with the many  humanitarian and health organisations are  going through  a very difficult situation.  We are physically unsafe, and we cannot sleep. But we work hard to support people at this very difficult times.

The streets of Gaza are empty, few cars are here and there, and Israel continues a collective punishment assassination policy demolishing homes by aerial bombardment.

These air raids fall on the majority of the population living in very crowded areas, so while they hit their targets, civilians pay a big price- we have many causalities and the numbers are rising every hour.

In Gaza, it is not a war or a military operation though it may look so.  It is collective punishment and it is a brutal attack against all Palestinian people, and mainly civilians are paying the price.

In Solidarity,
Dr Mona el- Farra

Dr. Mona El-Farra
, Director of Gaza Projects, is a physician by training and a human rights and women's rights activist by practice in the occupied Gaza Strip.
 
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Monday, July 7, 2014

израелска адвокатка призовава за геноцид на Палестинците

Ayelet Shaked
Само ден преди жестокото убийство на 15-годишния Muhammad Abu Khudair, отвлечен, изтезаван и изгорен жив от 6-ма млади израелци, израелската адвокатка Ayelet Shaked публикува на профила си във Facebook призив за геноцид над Палестинците. 
Тя казва, че “всеки Палестинец, е враг” и оправдава неговото изтребление, “включително възрастните, жените, градове и села, имущество и инфраструктура.”
Затова е призив за геноцид,
Призив е и защото призовава за убиване на Палестинските майки, които раждат “малки змии.”
Shaked е старши член на Habeyit Hayehudi (Юдейски Дом) партия, част от управляващата коалиция.
Uri Elitzur, за когото тя говори и който умря няколко месеца по-рано, беше лидер на движението на заселниците (бел. пр. - най-големите изроди в измислената държава) и говорител и близък съветник на министър-председателя Нетаняху. 
Ето и превод на английски на поста на адвокатката (оригинала е във Фейсбук и е на иврит):
Here’s a full translation of Shaked’s posting:
This is an article by the late Uri Elitzur, which was written 12 years ago, but remained unpublished. It is as relevant today as it was at the time.
The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to define reality with the simple words that language puts at our disposal. Why do we have to make up a new name for the war every other week, just to avoid calling it by its name. What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy. A declaration of war is not a war crime. Responding with war certainly is not. Nor is the use of the word “war”, nor a clear definition who the enemy is. Au contraire: the morality of war (yes, there is such a thing) is founded on the assumption that there are wars in this world, and that war is not the normal state of things, and that in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.
And the morality of war knows that it is not possible to refrain from hurting enemy civilians. It does not condemn the British air force, which bombed and totally destroyed the German city of Dresden, or the US planes that destroyed the cities of Poland and wrecked half of Budapest, places whose wretched residents had never done a thing to America, but which had to be destroyed in order to win the war against evil. The morals of war do not require that Russia be brought to trial, though it bombs and destroys towns and neighborhoods in Chechnya. It does not denounce the UN Peacekeeping Forces for killing hundreds of civilians in Angola, nor the NATO forces who bombed Milosevic’s Belgrade, a city with a million civilians, elderly, babies, women, and children. The morals of war accept as correct in principle, not only politically, what America has done in Afghanistan, including the massive bombing of populated places, including the creation of a refugee stream of hundreds of thousands of people who escaped the horrors of war, for thousands of whom there is no home to return to.
And in our war this is sevenfold more correct, because the enemy soldiers hide out among the population, and it is only through its support that they can fight. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Под бележката на еврейката във ФБ има доста "лайкове" и интересни коментари, които заместват липсата на бутон, който да показва, че не харесваме написаното, а в случая нехаресването е нищожно действие!

Няма да препубликувам грозни снимки, които са пускали израелци, в линка, който е на Еlectronic intifada, можете да ги видите сами, а и да прочетете техния коментар.

Кога и ние ще направим нещо? 

Israeli lawmaker’s call for genocide of Palestinians gets thousands of Facebook likes

Image wikipedia.org
A day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive allegedly by six Israeli Jewish youths, Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked published on Facebook a call for genocide of the Palestinians.
It is a call for genocide because it declares that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”
It is a call for genocide because it calls for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”
If Shaked’s post does not meet the legal definition of a call for genocide then nothing does.
Shaked is a senior figure in the Habeyit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party that is part of Israel’s ruling coalition.
Her post was shared more than one thousand times and received almost five thousand “Likes.”
Uri Elitzur, to whom she refers, and who died a few months ago, was leader of the settler movement and speechwriter and close advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Here’s a full translation of Shaked’s posting:
This is an article by the late Uri Elitzur, which was written 12 years ago, but remained unpublished. It is as relevant today as it was at the time.
The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Cry for Mohamad, cry for Palestine

I feel sad, sorrowful, mirthless and jumpy. This crimes have no end.
Mohamad is not first and may be last killed boy in Palestine.
His face make me feel sick and i cry for his pain before his death, i cry for all Palestinians - like my husband and my son - they have no home, no land - their motherland is kidnapped, tortured and raped.




Here is the Funeral of Mohamad Abu Khdair (15 years), the ‪#‎Palestinian‬ angel who was kidnapped, tortured, and forced to drink fuel then he was burnt to death by the some extreme ‪#‎Israeli‬ settlers in the ‪#‎WestBank‬ - ‪#‎Palestine‬.
‪#‎EndSettlements‬ ‪#‎EndOccupation‬ ‪#‎StopIsrael‬ now.



Monday, June 9, 2014

Tell FIFA to dump Israel now, urges international campaign

 on June 8, 2014
The congress of FIFA, the International Football Federation, is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Sao Paulo, and the international campaign to have Israel kicked out of the organization for longtime human rights abuses and violations of international law is swinging into full gear right now.
Kick Israel out of FIFA
(graphic: Stephanie Westbrook)
As we’ve been reporting for months, Jibril Rajoub, chair of the Palestinian Football Association, is seeking sanctions against Israel and demanding Israel’sexpulsion from FIFA. Time is of the essence, so if those who care about Palestinian rights act together with a loud enough roar, our global message of solidarity will reverberate all over the world and land… in Sao Paulo.
Red Card Israeli Racism (RCIR), has issued a Twitter Action Alert! that begins within hours of this post being published–Monday morning in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Check it out.
Its petition,  a call to suspend the Israeli Football Association’s FIFA membership, was submitted at FIFA offices in Zurich last Wednesday and has over 12,000 signatures. RCIR will keep the petition active until its objective is achieved. The article Petition to suspend the Israeli FA submitted to FIFA prior to decisive Congress explains:
It is intended as input to all FIFA members at the 10-11 June Annual Congress.   There the results of the Israel/Palestine Task Force will be presented and the abuse of the human rights of Palestinian footballers will be addressed.  Ever since the 1920s Zionists and the Israeli state have exploited football for political reasons to camouflage the apartheid character of the Zionist enterprise.  This cannot be allowed to continue.  The Israeli FA is complicit in Israeli repression.

For anyone not following the campaign (documented in пart hereherehere,here), RCIR issued a response to FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s misleading assertions on the issue. RCIR’s Kenneth Fryde, reporting at Football Beyond Borders, does a wrap up of the strides taken over the past year in “No normal sport in an apartheid state.”
And finally, RCIR coordinator Geoffrey Lee recently returned from Palestine where he’s making a film about football in the land of apartheid. He visited the family of Saji Darwish, a student at Bir Zeit University who was shot in the head and killed while feeding goats outside his home near Ramallah during an Israeli military killing spree last March (six Palestinians killed over 24 hours).
Lee emailed this to me today and I wanted to share it with you:

Our visit to the family of Saji Darwish was the most poignant.  It was a month after his killing.  His brother was brave in the interview and pointed out the fenced off Israeli-only road from which the shots had come.  The official report mentioned that there were only two shots – and said little more. That evening the village held a 5-a-side commemorative tournament.   His uncle thought that only then was the village beginning to emerge from its state of shock.  Football was helping the community pull itself around.
We met a coach who had been beaten, and a sports organiser who had tear gas grenades thrown at him, and children who were manhandled in pitch invasions.  The potential for violence seemed to be everywhere.  Road blocks were quiet and threatening; delays meant that an away game could often take two days.  Families worried about players’ return.
 It was depressing to see the pitches that couldn’t be used, as they were in Area C (full Israeli security control), and to hear of the shortage of pitches.  The professional league has eleven pitches for twelve teams and that only seven are up to full international standard.  FIFA had to abandon Goal investment projects due the intransigence of the Israeli military.
For all that, the game is on the up.  The Palestinian FA is pushing domestically and internationally for improvements and it has FIFA support.  We can express our solidarity through BDS activities, like banning Israeli hosting of tournaments and suspending the Israeli FA from FIFA, and by direct involvement like fixing team exchanges and coaching visits, which is already happening through Friendship Associations.  But how about upping the ante – training camps, exchanges between professional teams and direct support in facilities by our Football Associations?  There’s plenty of scope and it would be enormously beneficial. 
Action Alert! Let’s make it happen.
(Thanks to Steph Westbrook and Edward Mast at Apartheid Adventures)

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

I didn't commit the Holocaust


By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Every time Zionist Jews mark the holocaust anniversary, they strive, often in a pathetic and disgusting manner, to utilize the colossal crime against humanity in order to divert attention from the gigantic crimes the same Zionist Jews have been carrying out against the Palestinian people ever since the creation of the misbegotten state in 1948.

Hence, the holocaust is used as the ultimate red herring to justify another huge crime against humanity that is Israel.

Day after day, Israel is proving to all and sundry that it is more of a malignant tumor whose ultimate goal is to kill, replace, destroy and liquidate than of a normal human entity wanting to live and let live.

The creation of Israel has been and continues to be an unrelenting crime against humanity in light of the persistent and never-ending effects and aftereffects of that crime. Most Jews no longer suffer as a result of the holocaust. In comparison, however, most Palestinians continue to suffer miserably as a result of Israel’s creation.

Hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians continue to die every year as a direct or indirect result of the homelessness and dispersal inflicted on them due to Israel's creation.

The Palestinians may not be the most oppressed people under the sun. But they are absolutely the world’s most consistently and uninterruptedly tormented people, thanks mainly to the harmful existence of Israel.

Even today, Palestinian refugees die of starvation in Syria. These people wouldn't be dying such a painful and agonizing death had they been allowed to stay in their ancestral homeland.

But Zionism and humanness have always been an eternal oxymoron. An ideology that condemns people to death and endless suffering just because they don't happen to belong to "the holy tribe" is an evil ideology par excellence, even if constantly corroborated by ancient religious texts.

Evil is evil and a god that condones evil and oppression must be a false god.

I, a Palestinian Arab Muslim, would really and honestly identify with Jews marking the holocaust anniversary. However, because Israelis and Zionist Jews in general are exploiting and manipulating the tragic occasion to perpetuate and justify the immense oppression meted out to my people, I feel I would be dishonest to claim I feel any empathy with the people who use the memory of one holocaust to perpetrate another.

Of course, at the human level I feel immensely sorry for the victims of the holocaust as well as for Nazi Germany's tens of millions of victims, Jews and non-Jews.

In the final analysis, Nazi Germany actually committed two colossal crimes: First, the Holocaust (which is by the way not the biggest act of genocidal killing in history- Stalin may have murdered more people than Hitler ever did). And, second, the creation of Israel.

One anti-Zionist rabbi once told me half-jokingly that Hitler might be eventually forgiven for doing what he did against European Jewry, but he would never ever be forgiven for helping establish the state of Israel.

I don't know why God permitted the creation of Israel. I don't know why the Almighty allows evil in the first place. Well, God probably created Israel for the same mysterious reasons for which He allowed Nazi Germany to thrive and prosper, which could mean that Israel will eventually meet the same fate that Germany eventually met. Yes, Israel does apparently have a longer life-span than did Nazi Germany. But will the end-game be much different?

I know the subject of theodicy is not an easy one. We should just realize that there are certain things that can't be sufficiently explained in human terms. We humans are just too imperfect and too incomplete to understand things beyond our immediate perceptions.

None the less, there is no doubt that the continued existence of Israel is a major sign of evil in this world. But evil is ultimately self-destructive and self-limiting. This is why I have no doubt that Israel will eventually find its way to demise and disappearance. I hope this end will not be too far into the future.

In a world where everything can be denied, there are forces undeniable. I am sure these forces will ultimately move to apply the laws of history and nature to Israel as these forces had been applied numerous times to other oppressors

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Pledge to Demad the Syrian government and the armed opposition end the Yarmouk siege




It is with deep sorrow and concern that we witness the injustice and tragedy befalling the Palestinian refugees in Syria. Displaced from their homeland, our courageous people continue to face the horrors of violence, siege, famine, and indiscriminate targeting. 
We believe it is our duty to support them, as we believe it is our duty to support all innocent civilians who fall victim to slaughter, displacement, destruction of homes and lack of medical care and basic necessities. 
We know that many communities in Syria are currently suffering from these horrors, and we sympathize and stand in solidarity with all of them. 
However, as an organization that is dedicated to supporting Palestinian refugees and their inalienable right of return to their homes and lands of origin in Palestine, we are well aware of our responsibility in drawing attention to their specific fate, as it is inextricably tied in with our common history of brutal expulsion in the shatat (exile). 
We call upon all parties involved in this unprovoked injustice to cease their hostilities against our Palestinian brethren and sisters in Yarmouk camp. In the current quagmire of the warring parties in Syria, we believe that this is the proper response to adopt as a Palestinian organization that was founded with the specific aim and goal to create a strong basis of international solidarity with Palestinian refugees, regardless of where they have been forced to live outside of Palestine by their Zionist aggressors. 
With regard to the Syrian people, we extend our gratitude, brotherhood and solidarity to them, and we believe it is not up to us, but up to them to decide who leads their country. 
All we want for our Palestinian refugee communities is the protection of their homes, their families, and their livelihoods for the time that they are still unable to return to their rightful place in the world, in our homeland Palestine. As long as this exile in the Shatat lasts, the horrors that are befalling the people living in Yarmouk camp cannot be tolerated, accepted, or defended, regardless of whom is to be held responsible for this cruel siege, that victimizes only innocent people who have little or no part in the ongoing hostilities that are prevalent on Syrian soil. 
We call upon the citizens of the free world, international media, and all international aid organizations to direct their attention and action to the indefensible suffering that is taking place in Yarmouk camp. 
We call upon all parties, the Syrian government and the armed opposition, to take responsibility for any actions on their part, direct or indirect, that are contributing to this horrendous situation, and to cease any such activities immediately. 
We demand that the siege of Yarmouk camp end and that all fighters leave the camp with their weapons immediately. 
The injustice must end, and it must end immediately. 
Our people deserve food, medical aid, protection and shelter, and everything possible must be done to make sure they receive these with immediate effect. 

ACTION: We ask all people of conscience to contact the Syrian Embassy and the Office of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces in Washington DC to demand that the siege of Yarmouk camp end and that all fighters leave the camp with their weapons immediately. Let our people live! 
Please contact the Syrian Embassy in 
Washington DC at Embassy of Syria 2215 Wyoming Ave. N.W., 
Washington, D.C. 20008 USA
info@syrembassy.net 
Tel (202) 232-6316 
Fax: (202) 232-4357 

Please write to 
National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces using the online form posted at this page http://links.causes.com/s/clOurc?r=ueqU 

We also call on all members and supporters to hold protests and demonstrations to draw attention to the desperate plight of our people in the Yarmouk camp and elsewhere in Syria and to demand an end to the siege of Yarmouk camp and that all fighters leave the camp with their weapons immediately. 

Let our people live! 

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition stands by its brothers and sisters in Yarmouk camp, squarely and firmly. Forever we will stand in solidarity with our Palestinian refugee communities, wherever they live in the world. 
Until Return! 
Thank you for your support. 
We depend on it.