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For Immediate
Release
November 21,
2012
MEMBERS OF CIVIL RIGHTS DELEGATION TO WEST BANK URGE
PRESIDENT OBAMA: END THE VIOLENCE AND SECURE A JUST PEACE
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about the things that matter.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An immediate
end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” matters. An immediate end to the
violence—the onslaught of missiles, rockets, drones, killing, and targeted
assassination—matters. An end to
Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza matters. An end to Israeli’s 45-year occupation of
Palestine matters. A resolution of
the issue of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in 1948, many of
whom live in Gaza matters. Equality, security, and human rights for
everyone matters.
We write as
individuals who recently traveled to the West Bank with the Dorothy Cotton
Institute’s 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation, organized by Interfaith
Peace-Builders. We cannot and will not
be silent. We join our voices with
people around the world who are calling for an immediate cease-fire.
Specifically, we implore President Barack Obama to demand that Israel withdraw
its forces from Gaza’s borders; make U.S. aid to Israel conditional upon
Israel’s adherence with relevant U.S. and international law; work with Israeli
and Palestinian leaders to bring an end to Israel’s occupation of the
Palestinian territories and to secure a just peace that ensures everyone’s
human rights.
In the words
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Returning violence for violence multiplies
violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared in
1993, “Enough of blood and tears.”
Enough!
We deplore the firing of rockets on civilian areas in
Israel. We also deplore and are outraged
by the asymmetry, the disproportionality, of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza,
evidenced by the growing number of Palestinian civilian deaths and
casualties. This is not a conflict
between equal powers, but between a prosperous occupying nation on one hand,
armed and sanctioned by 3 billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid, and on
the other, a population of 1.7 million besieged people, trapped within a strip
of land only 6 miles by 26 miles, (147 square miles) in what amounts to an
open-air prison.
United States military support to Israel is huge. From 2000 to 2009, the US appropriated to
Israel $24 billion in military aid, delivering more than 670 million weapons
and related military equipment with this money.
During these same years, through its illegal military occupation of the
Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, Israel killed at least
2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities.
During our trip to the West Bank, we witnessed for ourselves
the injustice and violence of the Israeli occupation and the suffering
inflicted on the Palestinians, in violation of international law and UN
resolutions.
In the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, for just one
example, we observed a weekly nonviolent protest. The neighboring Israeli settlement of
Halamish was illegally built on Nabi Saleh’s land. This settlement has also seized control of
the Nabi Saleh’s water spring, allowing villagers to access their own spring
water for only 7-10 hours a week.
Demonstrators of all ages participated in the protest, including several
who, in recognition of the civil rights veterans in our delegation, carried
posters with quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We watched in horror as heavily armed members
of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded to this peaceful assembly with
violence, strafing the demonstrators with a barrage of tear gas canisters,
rubber bullets, gas grenades, and even a round of live ammunition.
The IDF assault in response to these weekly nonviolent
demonstrations can be deadly. Rushdi
Tamimi, a young adult Nabi Saleh villager, died this past week while he was
protesting Israel’s attack on Gaza. The
IDF fired rubber bullets into Rushdi’s back and bullets into his gut, and
slammed his head with a rifle butt.
Israel’s assault on Gaza is exponentially more violent than
what we witnessed in the West Bank, but the context--the oppression of the
Palestinian people—is the same. Most of
the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees expelled from
their homes in Israel in 1948. This
dispossession of the Palestinians that they call the Nakba (The Catastrophe)
continues on the West Bank where Israel has built extensive Jewish settlements
on confiscated Palestinian land. We saw with our own eyes how this settlement
expansion and the systemic discrimination has further dispossessed the
Palestinian people and is creating a “silent transfer” of Palestinians who are
either forced or decide to leave because of the oppression. This injustice—Israel’s decades-long
oppression of the Palestinian people—has to be addressed by honest and good-faith
negotiations and a genuine agreement to share the land. The alternative is a future of endless
eruptions of aggression, senseless bloodshed, and more trauma for Palestinians
and Israelis. This surely matters to all people of good will.
To President Obama, we say, use the immense power and
authority United States citizens have once again entrusted to you, to exercise
your courage and moral leadership to preserve lives and protect the dignity and
self-determination, to which the Palestinian people and all people are
entitled. Israel relies upon the
economic, military, and strategic cooperation and support of the United
States. You have the power to not only
appeal to Israel to show restraint, but to require
it.
Feeling ourselves deeply a part of “We the People,” sharing
so much of your own tradition of organizing for justice and peace, we believe
it is just, moral and in keeping with the best spirit of Dr. King to urge you
to:
§ Call for an end to violence
by all parties and an immediate cease-fire for the sake of all people in the
region.
§ Use your
power to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF
cease the bombardment of Gaza and withdraw their armed forces immediately.
§ Join with
the international community in using all diplomatic, economic, and strategic
means to end Israel’s illegal, brutal siege of Gaza.
§ Insist that
the United States condition aid to Israel on compliance with U.S. law
(specifically the U.S. Arms Export Control Act) and with international law.
§ Work with the leaders of
Israel and Palestine to secure an end to Israel’s occupation and to negotiate a
just peace.
As citizens of the United States, we are responsible for what
our government does in our name, and so we will not be silent. Justice, peace and truth matter. The future of the children of Israel and
Palestine matter. We cannot be silent
and neither can you.
Members of
the The Dorothy Cotton Institute 2012 Civil and Human Rights Delegation:
donnie i. betts, Filmmaker, Denver, CO
Rabbi Joseph Berman, Chair, Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for
Peace, Boston, MA
Laura Ward Branca, Senior Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute,
Ithaca, NY
Prof. Clayborne Carson
Director Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute,
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Dorothy F, Cotton, Distinguished Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY.
Rev. Richard L. Deats, Ph.D. Editor Emeritus, FELLOWSHIP magazine, Nyack, NY
Rev. Richard L. Deats, Ph.D. Editor Emeritus, FELLOWSHIP magazine, Nyack, NY
Kirby Edmonds, Senior Fellow and Coordinator, Dorothy Cotton Institute,
Ithaca, NY
Jeff Furman, National Advisor, Dorothy Cotton
Institute
Prof. Alan Gilbert, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Dr. Vincent Harding, Historian, Activist,
Friend and Colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Denver, CO
Robert. L. Harris, Jr., Cornell University,
Ithaca, NY
Sara Hess, Ithaca, NY
Aljosie Aldrich Knight, Atlanta, GA
Aljosie Aldrich Knight, Atlanta, GA
Rev. Lucas Johnson, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, Atlanta, GA
Dr. Marne O’Shae, Ithaca, NY
The Rev. Dr. Allie Perry, Board Member,
Interfaith Peace-Builders, New Haven, CT
Dr. Paula M. Rayman, University of Massachusetts, Lowell,
Watertown, MA
Dr. Alice Rothchild, American Jews for a
Just Peace, Cambridge, MA
Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Freeman Fellow, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Boston, MA
Dr. James
Turner, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Rabbi Brian Walt, Palestinian/Israeli
Nonviolence Project Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute, Ithaca, NY
For More
Information:
Rabbi Brian
Walt
Palestinian/Israeli
Nonviolence Project Fellow, Dorothy Cotton Institute
508 560-0589
or
Kirby Edmonds
Coordinator,
Dorothy Cotton Institute
607-277-3401
