After Weeks of Telling Israel Not to Widen Gaza War, US Widens It to Iraq and Yemen

by Dave Lindorff, a 2019 “Izzy” winner who has written for Rolling Stone, NY Times, Nation, FAIR, Salon, London Review of Books.

Americans are finally getting sick of US warmongering. For weeks we’ve been reading articles and hearing broadcast reports about how the Biden administration, including President Biden himself and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as US Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, have been warning Israel not to cause or allow the war on Gaza to spread across the borders of Israel and its occupied territories into other parts of the Middle East.

Suddenly, the US Navy ships based in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, along with some British ships and planes (added no doubt to be able to call it a “coalition” effort), have hit suspected Houthi militia targets in Yemen, making it the US itself, not Israel, that is “expanding the war.”

This act of war, ordered by President Biden without so much as a consultation with Congress, where progressive Democrats and Republicans are expressing outrage, is doubly dangerous because the Houthi militia being pummeled by the US and Britain are allies or/and are supplied by Iran.

The US also rolled out another provocation — a rocket attack that killed the leader of a Hezbollah militia unit right in central Baghdad. As the headline over that story in the Washington Post put it: “US Strike in Baghdad Raises Specter of a Wider War.”

“Raises the specter,” indeed, and not just outside Israel’s and Palestine’s borders but potentially all the way across Europe and the Atlantic to the US.

Now, admittedly, the US has long dismissed the laws of war, at least when it comes to applying them to its own actions. But however cavalier Washington is about those laws, they are universal and they do say that when a country does violate them, using certain banned weapons for example, or invading a country that doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the attacker, the country that is the target of such violation has the right to respond in kind. So Americans ought to know that attacking a Hezbollah target who is under the protection of the Iraqi government in central Baghdad is actually inviting Iraq, the host country, or Hezbollah, the victim, to attack leaders in the US, either where its troops are based abroad (for example in Iraq) or in DC. Same goes for the US attacks on Houthi militia sites in Yemen. After enduring attacks against their forces and the Yemeni people by Saudi Arabia for years (with US-supplied weapons and direct assistance), the Houthis, at this point, are warning that “US interests” will now be retaliated against.

It’s easy to see how this kind of tit-for-tat, started by a hubristic USA leadership, could quickly spiral out of control. Suppose the Houthis were to launch an anti-ship missile and sink or heavily damage a US Navy vessel in the Persian Gulf…

For the rest of this article, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.substack.com/p/after-weeks-of-telling-israel-not. For this and other articles: https://thiscantbehappening.substack.com.

Resisting the War on Gaza: An Appeal from the New Haven Sunday Vigil

Joan Cavanagh, vigil participant

We are witnessing, in real-time, ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza. It could not occur without US military aid and financial support. We urgently appeal to you to join the New Haven Sunday Vigil for Peace and Justice as part of your other efforts to end this atrocity.

The vigil began in May of 1999 as a project of the Connecticut Peace Coalition/ New Haven in response to the US bombing of Kosovo. Similar to the postal service before privatization, defunding, and DeJoy, we’ve vigiled most Sundays since, in sun, rain, snow and sleet, in temperatures ranging from several degrees below zero to 95 degrees above. Our message is simple: Resist this Endless War. By this we mean, resist our permanent state of war and preparations for it, overseas and at home.

Participant numbers have fluctuated from a “high” of 15 to 20 during the initial post-911 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 war on Iraq to a “low” of three to four in recent years. Occasionally, we’ve been told by a dismissive passerby that the US is “at peace.” Not exactly. Consider our ongoing nuclear weapons buildup; our drone bombings against many countries of the world; our “covert” operations and global regime change maneuvers; and our funding of wars conducted by client states. Consider our government’s war on poor and vulnerable populations to benefit a smaller and smaller number of global ultra-rich. Remember that these are ongoing, bipartisan issues.

When our regular vigil participants dwindled to a new low at the end of last summer, we figured we’d had a good run and considered ending it. Then came the terrible October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, followed immediately by an orgy of collective punishment supported by US funds and materiel against civilians in Gaza. It has, as of this writing, taken the lives of over 25,000 people, an estimated two-thirds of whom are children.

We continue with more urgency than ever. We need your help. For more information about the content of the vigil and how to join, please call 203-668-9082 or contact [email protected] or  [email protected].

Jews Call on CT Labor Unions to Support Ceasefire and Free Speech

Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven

Thursday, Nov. 13, 2023: Today the New Haven chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVPNH) released an open letter criticizing the retaliation against former SEIU CT State Council Executive Director Kooper Caraway and urging SEIU to support a ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and to defend workers from retaliation and firings based on support for Palestinian freedom.

“As Jews, we know that conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism only makes Jews less safe. Instead of retaliating against its members for speaking out for Palestine, the CT labor movement should be joining us in calling for an immediate ceasefire,” said Shelly Altman of JVPNH.

“We are living in a time of McCarthyite repression and as a rabbi, I affirm that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Speaking critically of the Israeli government and its actions, demanding a ceasefire, and supporting Palestinian rights are not anti-Semitic,” said Rabbi May Ye of Mending Minyan, a Jewish congregation based in New Haven.

“In Connecticut, we have free speech rights vis-a-vis our private employers. It is illegal for a private employer to fire, discipline, or threaten any employee for speech protected by the First Amendment,” said James Bhandary-Alexander, an experienced civil rights and labor attorney who teaches at Yale Law School.

The statement, released on Instagram, describes Kooper Caraway’s resignation as “a great loss” for movements for justice in Connecticut and affirms that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism. It urges the Connecticut and national labor movement to “stand up for all workers who are facing retaliation and firings for speaking out and organizing for freedom and ceasefire” as well as “demand a ceasefire, halt the provision of weapons to Israel, and end the occupation and Israeli apartheid.”

To find out more about Jewish Voice for Peace, visit our website www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org for campaigns, news, local organizing chapters, and ways to take action.

Israel-Gaza War’s Grief Spills onto Church St.

by Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent, Oct. 9, 2023

Half an hour into a tense and loud and flag-filled standoff between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters on the front steps of City Hall, city police brought in barricades to physically separate the two sides….

That was the scene outside of City Hall at 165 Church St. Monday afternoon during an at-times combustible, but never violent, set of dueling rallies sparked by the horrific bloodshed of the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza.

photo: Thomas Breen

Several hundred people from across the city and the state turned out for the parallel protests … The two sides took turns, and shouted over one another, about the Israeli occupation, Hamas terrorism, open-air prisons and blockades, the kidnapping and murder of civilians, the righteous uprising of a dispossessed people, the righteous defense of democracy….

“Free, free Palestine!” one side cheered over and over again at Monday’s rally. “From Hamas!” cheered the other side in response.

The pro-Palestine protest was organized by a number of student and local lefty political groups, including the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, Yalies for Palestine, the Party for Socialism and Liberation-Connecticut, and Wesleyan Students for Justice in Palestine….

The pro-Israel contingent, meanwhile, saw a mix of New Haveners and Connecticut residents, many of whom are members of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic community, and nearly all of whom have close ties to and family and friends currently living in Israel….

Joshua Pernick, the rabbi in residence and director of Jewish life and community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, told the Independent about his brother, who after a weeklong vacation in the United States returned to his home in Holon, Israel, this weekend just hours after Hamas began its attack. He and his wife and six-month-old child have been shuttling between shelters ever since, Pernick said. … ​“The problem of terrorism is it doesn’t discriminate….”

Faisal Saleh, the founder and director of Woodbridge’s Palestine Museum, showed up to the other side of City Hall’s steps Monday to support those rallying for Palestine.

Saleh was born and raised in the West Bank. He moved to the U.S. when he was 17, in 1969. He said he’s been communicating with Palestinian artists in Gaza who he knows through his museum work every few hours, just to make sure they are still alive amid the Israeli army’s strikes.
“Everybody is waiting to see what will happen,” he said….

[The article can be read in its entirety at newhavenindependent.org/article/israel_palestine]

News from Palestine from Dr. Qumsiyeh

by Stanley Heller, Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, spoke twice in Connecticut in August, once at the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge and the next day in Hartford at the Unitarian Society. He brought us up to date on the impressive activities of his institute and the Palestine Museum of Natural History, which is one of its projects.

Qumsiyeh lived in Connecticut at the start of the 2000s as he headed the Cytogenetics Department at the Yale Medical School. He was very active in Palestinian human rights work and co-founded the Palestine Right to Return Campaign. He returned to Palestine a decade ago. In his talks, he maintained that despite what is usually said, Palestine was a peaceful area for most of its thousands of years history. He dated recent problems to the Zionist movement and its settler colonial project.

As a bit of activism at the events we passed out copies of a picture of a two-year-old boy named Mohammed Tamimi, who was shot to death by an Israeli sniper on June 1. The ultra-right Israeli government almost immediately excused the sniper from all responsibility and expressed “regret.” We briefly chanted “Justice for Mohammed Tamimi.”

The one bit of good news discussed was the open letter called the “Elephant in the Room,” which was signed at the time of the meetings by over 700 academics and public figures decrying Israeli apartheid and telling Jewish leaders in the U.S. that democracy in Israel could only be maintained if it included equal treatment for Palestinians. The number of signers, overwhelmingly Jewish, has since swelled to more than 1,800. The wall of Jewish support for the Israeli government has a deep fissure.

Demos Call for a Sell-Off of Israel Bonds

by Stanley Heller and Shelly Altman, JVP (New Haven)

Protests against the trip to Washington, DC by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich took place in twelve cities on March 12, including New Haven. Smotrich, who describes himself as a “fascist homophobe,” achieved special notoriety for calling for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be wiped out. He came to the U.S. to hustle for Israel Bonds.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) nationally called for demonstrations. New Haven held one, though it made sure it wasn’t in competition with the St. Patrick’s Day parade going on that afternoon. About 20 people gathered in front of the Giaimo Federal Building early that Sunday morning with signs denouncing Smotrich, but more importantly calling for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and the selling off of Israel Bonds and other Israeli investments. The largest banner said, “Sell Off Your Israel Bonds and Other Investments in Apartheid.”

A few days later a second demonstration was held, this one in Hartford in front of the state office building housing the Treasury. Connecticut owns $10 million in Israel Bonds and about $100 million more in other Israeli stocks and securities. Among the 150 companies, 22 are particularly offensive, being involved with spying on activists and working on military projects. One is Elbit, Israel’s biggest weapons company. People came from around the state, not only Jews, but people notified of the action by the other event sponsors: the Middle East Crisis Committee, the Tree of Life Education Fund and Workers’ Voice. The new State Treasurer Erick Russell has not responded to letters or this protest so far. He can be reached at [email protected].

Where is all this money the state uses for investments coming from? Overwhelmingly it’s from state employees and school teachers. A portion of their pay is deducted each pay period and put in the Treasury. It’s highly doubtful that these workers know that some of their money goes to prop up Israeli apartheid.

The tactic of BDS got a new wrinkle these past weeks. Israeli leaders have constantly screamed about BDS saying boycotts are “existential threats” to Israel, in fact, “economic terrorism.” In their fight against Netanyahu’s attack on the Israeli High Court, several hundred U.S. Jewish business leaders have threatened to take their money out of Israel! They’re afraid to invest in a country without a court system that could protect business interests. Billions are at stake. If the threat were to be carried out, that would be BDS on steroids. Zionists like the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) pretend this is absolutely and completely different than BDS for Palestinian human rights. Sheer hypocrisy.
For more info, email [email protected].

The Palestinian Exception to Free Speech

by Noor Kareem and Craig Birkhead-Morton, Yale Daily News
Feb. 7, 2023

Although Yale claims to be a bastion of free speech that provides a forum for addressing all political and cultural issues, the one exception to this is the issue of Palestinian liberation.

The discourse around Palestine at Yale is surrounded by fear and restraint. Discussion is often prefaced with the familiar acknowledgment of how complicated the topic is, immediately obscuring the power relations between a Western-backed occupying power and a population subjected to life under occupation…

Many incorrectly frame Zionism — the political project seeking to establish Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people — as synonymous with Jewish identity. This conflation of the Jewish people with the Zionist state makes any criticism of the occupation immediately deemed “antisemitic.”

In reality, Zionism is an ideology and a political movement that, in the words of its founders, necessitates the erasure of Palestinians and the violent seizure of their land in the pursuit of creating a modern nation-state.

If we have learned one thing from the last couple of years, it is that silence kills. The lack of discussion on the systemic nature of Israeli war crimes has given total impunity to a state that murders civilians, massacres refugees and bombs a city already under siege. Since the assassination of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces in May 2022, the Biden administration has failed to hold Israel accountable. The number of murders is showing no signs of slowing down so far, as 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the Second Palestinian Intifada. And as of Feb. 6, 2023, 36 Palestinians have already been killed…

In December 2022, Yalies4Palestine launched the first-ever BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign at Yale. Prior to this, Yale was the only university in the Ivy League not involved in the BDS movement, largely due to this campus’s pro-Zionist climate. This is despite public institutional condemnations of human rights violations in Iran and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We must overcome this culture of hypocrisy and call on Yale to take a stand against the Israeli occupation… As students at one of the most elite academic institutions in the world, we have an obligation to illuminate truth and honor light over darkness. Join us in fulfilling this obligation by signing and sharing our petition demanding that Yale cancel its contract with G4S — a security company involved in some of the world’s worst human rights abuses, including those in Israel — and by taking the initiative to learn more about the BDS movement.

[Article can be read in its entirety at yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/06/kareem-birckhead-morton-the-palestinian-exception-to-free-speech. To find out more about the BDS Committee for Yalies4Palestine, email [email protected] or [email protected]]

#FreeAlaa, Free All Egypt’s Political Prisoners

 by Stanley Heller, Middle East Crisis Committee

The Middle East Crisis Committee held a rally in front of the Federal building at 450 Main St. in Hartford on Nov. 7 to call for President Biden to press Egypt’s ruler Abdul Fattah El-Sisi to free Egyptian political prisoners, in particular well-known activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Biden was going to Egypt to attend the COP27 climate conference.

Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been in prison for years for peaceful protests that demanded basic democratic rights. He has been on a partial hunger strike for months and has started a total hunger strike. Egypt has tens of thousands of people in El-Sisi’s prisons for the “crime” of standing up for human rights. The Human Rights Watch estimate is 60,000 political prisoners.

Photo: Stanley Heller Stanley Heller, Executive Director of MECC said, “Alaa ate his last bit of food Nov. 4 and stopped drinking water Nov. 6. We must do all we can to free this man. We’re directing our message to President Biden and Congress since Biden will be in Egypt for the COP27 climate conference and because the U.S. gives the Egyptian dictatorship about $1.5 billion in aid each year. Certainly the U.S. has means of leverage.”

To see the bright yellow banner we’ve created for this event go to: https://thestrugglevideo.org/the-struggle

The Middle East Crisis Committee was founded in 1982 in New Haven and has interest in working for human rights, especially in Middle Eastern and North African countries.  For more info: Visit TheStruggleVideo.org.

[Alaa ended his hunger strike and remains in prison. His family was allowed to see him on Nov. 17, and said his health has visibly deteriorated.]

Groups March and Rally for Palestine

by Stanley Heller, Middle East Crisis Committee

On Sept. 19, the groups that organized the protest for Palestine last month were joined by students from Wesleyan’s Students for Justice in Palestine.

Again we stood on a corner in the center of Middletown with signs and banners, chanting led by activists with bull horns. We featured signs about the recent Israeli report whitewashing their killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and again talked about the massacre of people in early August in Gaza. We also had signs calling for the shaming of both Connecticut Senators and our five members of Congress for their blind support of Israeli apartheid. Two signs had photos of two children who died because Israel would not let them leave Gaza for medical treatment. Judging by the number of honks from passersby our reception was even more friendly than in August.

Photo: Stanley Heller

About 70 of us marched on the sidewalks down to the City Green, displaying the signs and banners and being urged on by chanting led by some very young members of the Omar Islamic Center.

On the Green we had 7 or 8 speakers including Marwan Hameed, a former Iraqi diplomat, and Laura Schliefer of Promoting Enduring Peace. We opened up two banners created ten years ago to commemorate the mass murder of at least 1300 Palestinians and Lebanese in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon in September 1982. They had been ordered into the camps by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, supposedly to look for “terrorists.”

Ms. Schliefer was later interviewed on WPKN’s “Mic Check” for a half-hour. The interviewer was Mike Merli. We need more protests for Palestine like this all around Connecticut.

To see video and photos of the protest, go to thestrugglevideo.org. For more info on how to be involved, email [email protected] or call 203-444-3578.

Connecticut Must Oppose Israeli Apartheid

by Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace, New Haven

This is an excerpt from a viewpoint published in the CT Mirror on March 2, 2022. The entire article can be read at ctmirror.org/2022/03/02/connecticut-must-oppose-israeli-apartheid-shelly.

In 1982, Connecticut took the lead among states to be on the right side of history by passing legislation requiring divestiture from South Africa for its practice of apartheid.

In February, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and University of Connecticut President Radenka Maric led a delegation to Israel, seeking to strike deals with Israeli businesses to locate in Connecticut. Lamont says “Israel is a perfect fit because they are the leading innovators in life sciences, biotech and the defense industry — all the groups that we’re bringing over.” The Israeli defense industry has for years used Gaza and the West Bank as testing grounds for weapon and surveillance technology.

On Feb. 1, Amnesty International released a report based on four years of field research, concluding that Israel maintains a “system of oppression and domination over Palestinians” which “amounts to apartheid.” The crime against humanity of apartheid under international law is committed when serious human rights violations are perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

Some Israeli and American politicians and organizations have been quick to label the Amnesty International report as “false” and “antisemitic.” Middle East scholar Jennifer Lowenstein reports on the frequent charge of antisemitism against any criticism of Israel, noting “it is easier to shout at, label, condemn, and discredit the bearers of the message than to rebut the facts.”

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy questions the critics. Levy asks “What, precisely, is incorrect in the apartheid report?… Does Israel not maintain a regime of oppression and control of Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories for the benefit of Israeli Jews? Is the nation-state law not apartheid? Is there a single sphere, in Israel or the territories, in which there is true, absolute equality, except in name?”

In ignoring Israel’s well-documented practice of apartheid, Governor Lamont, UConn President Maric and their delegations are on the wrong side of history. It’s a disservice to the students of UConn to promote work/study opportunities in an apartheid state. It’s a stain on Connecticut’s name to seek out this partnership.

Answer the ADL with the Truth

by LouAnn Villani, secretary, MECC

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the CT Jewish Federation sponsored a film praising a particularly violent Israeli Prime Minister of the 1980s, Menachem Begin. Upon hearing about it, the Middle East Crisis Committee held an online panel on December 11 to spread the truth about Begin and about the ADL itself. Our Executive Director Stanley Heller talked about Begin’s career using terrorism in the 1940s, the role his Irgun played in the infamous Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 and his war in Lebanon in 1982 which killed an estimated 17,000 people.

Dr. Emmaia Gelman, who wrote her doctorate at NYU about the ADL spoke about both that organization and Jewish Federations as a whole. She explained that both groups were formed about a hundred years ago to support Jewish civil rights, but also to maintain the hold of the Jewish upper class on the Jewish community. Both the ADL and the federations became Zionist decades ago. The ADL claims itself as the go-to organization after acts of bigotry, but that’s pretty odd since its basically all-white and supports an apartheid state enthusiastically.

Shelly Altman of Jewish Voice for Peace talked about a program JVP has sponsored for a number of years to counter an ADL program. The ADL brings Israeli police to the US and US police to Israel for training. JVP believes they learn the worst practices of both forces from each other. US police learn to treat all minorities as potential terrorists. The JVP calls this program the “Deadly Exchange” and has worked to combat the program. Several years ago it picketed the ADL office in Hamden over this issue.

Parts of the program can be seen on TheStruggleVideo.org.

Good Start, Ben & Jerry’s: Now Finish the Job! — Take Action

Shelly Altman, Jewish Voice for Peace NH

UPDATE: The international Work Group of the Central CT Democratic Socialists of America is holding a “Eat an Ice Cream for Palestine” on Sat. Oct 9 at 1 p.m. starting at the Ben and Jerrys store in New Haven. The store is at 159 Temple St., New Haven. It’s near the New Haven Green. We’ll take photos of ourselves eating or holding B&J ice creams followed by a walk to the New Haven Green and an informal discussion about Palestine. – Stanley Heller, DSA Int Work Group member.

On July 19, 2021, Ben & Jerry’s (B&J) announced that it is inconsistent with their values to sell their ice cream in the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). They will not renew their license agreement with their Israeli licensee when it expires at the end of 2022.

We at Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven and the New Haven Mending Minyan Havurah join with so many Vermonters in lauding this long-overdue decision by B&J’s, in particular because it was taken as part of B&J’s long-time advocacy for human rights and economic and social justice. But it does not go far enough. The very principles that drove B&J’s decision demand that the company withdraw from selling their products in both the OPT settlements as well as in the state of Israel itself. Furthermore, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, must commit itself to ending ties with Israel for any action to be meaningful.

Here’s why:

  • Earlier this year, both the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued detailed reports which document Israel’s control over all the territory it administers as an apartheid regime. B’Tselem notes that “one organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.” HRW notes that “deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” Both reports document apartheid conditions in both the OPT and in the state of Israel itself.
  • B&J ice cream is manufactured in Israel in Be’er Tuvia (adjacent to the town of Kiryat Malachi). Kiryat Malachi is one of four Israeli localities located on the lands of the former Palestinian village of Qastina, destroyed and emptied by Israeli troops in 1948. Be’er Tuvia is in southern Naqab about 20 miles from the Erez crossing into Gaza. B&J products are transported to the illegal OPT settlements on Jewish-only roads. The factory draws water from the Jordan River system and the Mountain Aquifer in the occupied West Bank, the two highest-quality water sources in the region. At the same time, Israel severely controls and restricts West Bank Palestinian residents’ access to water from those same sources, reducing it to a level which neither meets their domestic and agricultural needs nor constitutes a fair distribution of shared water resources. The apartheid regime practiced by Israel in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River requires that to be consistent with its social justice values, B&J terminate sales in all of that land. Israel considers its illegal settlements to be part of its state. We celebrate this first step, but it is not enough. Unilever must work to finish the job that the independent board of Ben & Jerry’s started and cut the flow of money to this apartheid state.

News Flash: Our Third District Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has just introduced a standalone bill whose sole purpose is to gift Israel with yet another $1 billion so that it can continue to “defend” itself while it mercilessly besieges Gaza and conducts one devastating bombing after the next. This is on top of the $3.8 billion per year of our tax dollars that are already going for the same purpose.

This bill is being fast-tracked by the “Democratic” leadership and will almost certainly pass with “bipartisan” support, but we need to let Rosa know how outraged we are at this. Express it as soon as possible at (202) 225-3661.

Israel’s Actions Long Past Self-Defense

by Shelly Altman, Chairperson of Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven

The threatened eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The invasion of the Al Aqsa mosque by Israeli troops, firing rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. The bombing of the building in Gaza which housed the Associated Press and Al Jazeera press organization. All during the pandemic raging in Gaza. It’s all a pattern of erasure that is part and parcel of Israel circa 2021. Erasure of any trace of Palestinian presence between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Erasure of Jerusalem’s status as a holy city for three faiths. Erasure of news reporting of what’s going on in Gaza.

At the same time, Israel attempts to use its self-description as a Jewish state to erase any criticism of its crimes by labeling such criticism as anti-Semitic. But it is this state that is corrupting the meaning of Judaism and is dangerously fanning the flames of anti-Semitism worldwide.

President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, nearly silent for so long on war crimes visited upon the civilian Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, suddenly become vocal when Hamas fires rockets into Israel. Israel “has a right to defend itself,” they say. Dozens of American politicians deceitfully follow suit. But courageous voices in the Congress are now exposing this “right to defend” messaging for its utter failure to acknowledge reality. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Mark Pocan, Betty McCollum, Sen. Bernie Sanders and others have pulled open the blinds to expose to the American public the brutality of Israel’s rule. They speak to empty chambers, but their voices echo loud and clear.

Israel is not “defending itself.” It is a heavily militarized occupying force that is using that military strength to oppress and kill those whom it is occupying. That is not defense.

In January, the B’Tselem report “This is Apartheid” documented in detail that “the entire area is organized under one principle: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group — Jews — over another — Palestinians.” In April, the Human Rights Watch report “A Threshold Crossed” added further documentation: separate legal systems, separate road systems, illegal transfer of populations, no freedom of movement, residency rights, or building rights, and an intent by the state of Israel to maintain this in perpetuity. In Sheikh Jarrah and throughout East Jerusalem, we are witnessing 1948 Naqba in real-time 2021: people driven from their homes, the very essence of the Zionist project.

The highly respected Jewish journalist Peter Beinart recently wrote: “The crimes of the past, when left unaddressed, do not remain in the past.” It is well past time to address those crimes.

Shelly Altman is chairperson of Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven.

This opinion piece was published in the New Haven Register on May 19, 2021.

Israel Must Immediately End Its Assault on Gaza: The Imperative for a Human Rights Based Policy Toward Israel/Palestine

Excerpts from Statement by Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council, May 19, 2021

As U.S.-based health professionals and members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Committee (JVP-HAC), we demand an immediate end to Israel’s offensive war against the Palestinian population of Gaza, and an end to U.S. support for Israeli military aggression. We add our voices in solidarity with our besieged colleagues, the health workers in Gaza and in all of Palestine; with the anguished cries of those who have lost loved ones and suffered terrible injuries and trauma throughout Palestine, and their families in the global Palestinian diaspora; and with the outraged members of Congress who have taken a moral stand to end our government’s complicity in the willful killing of Palestinians.

As Israel reiterates its intention to continue the bombing siege, multiple sources report a death toll of over 200 Palestinian civilians, including 60 children; over 1200 injuries to Palestinians in the last few days, with nearly 500 (primarily women and children) severely wounded; and more than 30,000 made homeless. In a demonstration of the disproportionality of force, the death toll for Israelis stands at 11. An Israeli military operation to clear a network of tunnels in Gaza utilized 160 warplanes to drop 80 tons of explosives over a period of 40 minutes.

Gaza’s health facilities, already near collapse under the Israeli blockade, immense destruction from three wars in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic, are now over-flowing with bombing victims. Among those killed in Gaza are a number of doctors and health workers, including Dr. Moeen Al-Aloul, a neurologist with the Ministry of Health who died with his wife and five children. Dr. Ayman Abu al-Auf, an internist who directed Shifa hospital’s coronavirus response, was also killed at home with seven family members in the same incident. Tank and bomb attacks on May 16 not only destroyed many homes and their inhabitants on al-Wihda Street near Shifa hospital, but also blocked access to emergency services and obliterated two private clinics.

[The full text of this statement can be read: https://www.jvphealth.org]

 

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