27 December 2008

The world majority stands with the Palestinian people in this devastating time that Israeli Defense Secretary Ehud Barak calls “just the beginning.” Israeli attacks on Gaza in the past 24 hours have killed over 200 people and injured hundreds more. We decry the multiple forms of collective punishment currently being inflicted that reflect Israel’s 60-plus year history of ethnic cleansing: lack of access to electricity and potable water, blockades of food and medicine, and these brutal attacks.

We are outraged but not surprised by this escalation. Israel’s unilaterally designed and implemented disengagement from Gaza has maintained control of the borders, air and water space, and completely isolated Gaza practically and politically. This has been accomplished with unconditional support from the United States and its allies and with the complicity of the broader international community and Gaza’s neighbors. It has also set the stage for these horrendous events.

The media frames this violence as a conflict between warring peoples with equal power. This framing is possible because the media fails to recognize Israel as an apartheid State or as a colonial occupying force with one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world.

The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group has called for “all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.” IJAN stands in solidarity with the people of Gaza and supports this call.

WE ASK YOU TO JOIN US AND TAKE ACTION!

1. Join or organize emergency protests and direct actions in partnership with Palestine solidarity and social justice organizations in your area. Please send announcements of actions you are joining or organizing (with date, time and location) to ijan@ijsn.net so they can be announced on our web site. Also send reports of actions you participate in so this information can be shared with people around the world.

2. Donate money through the Middle East Children’s Alliance to pay for desperately needed medical supplies and their delivery. The current conditions in Gaza medical facilities are dire. The Middle East Children’s Alliance is working with health organizations in Gaza to procure the most-needed medicines and send them direct to Gaza with the help of the Free Gaza Movement.

3. Flood Israeli embassies and consulates with letters and calls decrying the attacks. Find contact info for Israeli embassies around the world.

4. Contact government officials and call on them to act by denouncing the attacks and demanding an immediate cease-fire.

5. Shift the framing of Israel’s actions in the media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor.

6. Sign the petition in support of UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann who has spoken out to condemn Israeli “Apartheid” and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

source

NATAF, ISRAEL — Asked to name the forces that led to the state of Israel, almost every Israeli would say Zionism and the Holocaust.

If those same people were asked just a few years ago which Israeli was likely to become prime minister, the name most often given would have been Avraham Burg — son of a prominent rabbi and founder of the country’s National Religious Party, former paratrooper, leading member of the Labour Party, speaker of the Knesset and head of the powerful Jewish Agency.

For more than 20 years, Avrum Burg, as he likes to be known, was a pillar of the Israeli establishment.

However, four years ago Mr. Burg turned his back on all that and wrote a powerful book, an indictment of how Zionism and the Holocaust have been used.

In The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from its Ashes, Mr. Burg slams what he calls the “omnipresence of the Shoah,” in Israeli society and urges his countrymen to move beyond Zionism. He goes even further and says that Zionism has become an excuse for racism. The statement is not far removed from the infamous 1975 UN “Zionism is racism” resolution to which Israel, Canada and many other countries strenuously objected, and had rescinded in 1991.

READ ON

from the BBC website

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.

Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group’s links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen.

The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

Israel’s foreign ministry has rejected the accusation as “totally ridiculous”.

“A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services,” Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province.

“Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings,” he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell – led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani – whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the Yemeni president’s statement was without foundation.

“To believe that Israel would create Islamist cells in Yemen is really far-fetched. This is yet another victory for the proponents of conspiracy theories,” Igal Palmor said in remarks reported by AFP.