ACTION! Let's cover Portland with messages of support for Gaza!

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Written by AUPHR AUPHR

Published: 02 August 2014 02 August 2014

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SUNDAY, August 3rd at Noon

Let's cover Portland with messages of support for Gaza! The idea behind this event is to get everyone out on our streets and sidewalks with Gaza in our hearts and chalk in our hands. We plan to chalk the names of the dead as an act of remembrance, write messages, draw pictures, and invite passerby to join us. We will provide the chalk - you just need to show up!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/744854478906585/

We will host groups in two locations - Southeast Portland Hawthorne Boulevard and the downtown waterfront.

Hawthorne District chalking: Meet at noon in front of Powell's Books, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Downtown waterfront chalking: Meet at noon in the area right next to the intersection of Columbia St. and Naito Parkway. Contact: Sara @ 202-257-1101

***Anyone is welcome to post additional locations where they will be chalking in their neighborhood.***

Faith groups join call for an arms embargo on Israel

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Written by Religion Press Release Services Religion Press Release Services

Published: 02 August 2014 02 August 2014

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http://pressreleases.religionnews.com/2014/07/30/faith-groups-join-call-arms-embargo-israel/

Religion Press Release Services

Faith groups join call for an arms embargo on Israel

July 30, 2014

For immediate release – July 30, 2014 – It is with heavy hearts that we compose this statement.  At the time of this writing, the Israeli military’s ground, naval, and aerial bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 1,280 Palestinians.  The vast majority of these victims were civilians, according to the United Nations.  Palestinian rockets and anti-tank fire have killed two Israeli civilians, one Thai migrant worker, and 53 Israeli soldiers (one Israeli soldier has been reported as “missing” by Israel and “captured” by Hamas).0
We deplore and condemn the use of violence by anyone, anytime, anywhere. For, each of these casualties is a child of God; each has a name; each has a family; each has a life story that has come to an abrupt and tragic end.

These deaths do not occur in a vacuum.  The current onslaught takes place within the context of a seven-year old Israeli and Egyptian imposed blockade of Gaza and forty-seven year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Read more: Faith groups join call for an arms embargo on Israel

An Israel Consumed by Hatred

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Written by Gilbert Schramm (7/30/2014) Gilbert Schramm (7/30/2014)

Published: 02 August 2014 02 August 2014

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Nothing demonstrates the failure of decades of Israeli and US policy in Palestine than the wave of hatred that is now consuming Israeli society. Now, 1,300 hundred Palestinian are dead and 7,000 wounded. They are overwhelmingly civilians (75-80%). Three Israeli civilians have been killed—all of them after the Israeli attack began. Yet some 95% of the Jewish/Israeli public supports this lopsided carnage. Even genocide is being debated as if it were permissible.  How did it come to this? The answer has much to do with how hatred is being deliberately fanned in Israel—and with Israel’s deep sense of guilt for the crimes on which it is built and sustained.

When three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in mid-June, Netanyahu immediately blamed Hamas and promoted the pretence that the boys were still alive. (This is an arbitrary starting point—just a day before, a Palestinian man and child had been killed without any similar outcry.) In the following 11 days, Israel's military killed about ten Palestinians and arrested almost 600 hundred more. In the weeks of public hysteria in Israel that followed, Netanyahu repeatedly used the language of incitement and hatred.

In Israel, a day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive by six Israeli Jewish youths, Ayelet Shaked, a Palin-esque young member of the Knesset, wrote on her Facebook page that, “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justified its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” She also called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.” She explained:

…They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists…they are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.”

In its immediate response to the lynching/murder of Abu Khudair, Israel claimed that there was no evidence that it was a “hate crime.” Israeli police then arrested and beat a young visiting American cousin of Abu Khudair. This hate crime was caught on video. The young American was held under house arrest and his family “detained.” The police who beat the boy are apparently still free. Yet still Israeli hatred grows. A hate site founded in response to the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens was then getting a thousand likes a minute in Israel.

Then, on the night of 6 July, Israel struck in Gaza, killing seven Hamas “militants.” And only then, with the existing ceasefire clearly broken by Israel, did Hamas rocket fire escalate.

We are now over 22 days into the resulting carnage. Over 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and over 6,000 wounded. None of them lived on the West Bank where the Israeli teens were killed. In all of 2013, up to the Israeli attack of July 6^th, zero Israeli civilians had been killed by Hamas rockets. At this point, there are only three civilian deaths in Israel.

Yet the hatred and bloodlust of Israel rages unchecked. A YouTube video from July 28^th shows Israelis demonstrating in favor of the current operation by gleefully chanting (roughly translated), “There is no school in Gaza tomorrow—all the children are dead.” Israeli military officials deny that Israel is responsible for civilian casualties—yet military officials privately refer to the policy of “mowing the lawn” — a hate filled  Israeli euphemism for violently, indiscriminately, and regularly “pruning” the Hamas leadership. Reports show that Israelis watch the bombing from their lawn chairs, cheering and applauding each time a target in Gaza explodes. They share popcorn and describe the event as “just good fun.”

Now the hatred has spread to America. Yesterday, Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner, (an executive of the NY Board of Rabbis) claimed that Palestinians who voted for Hamas are combatants who deserve to be targeted by Israel. He said:

When you are part of an election process that asks for a terrorist organization which proclaims in word and in deed that their primary objective is to destroy their neighboring country and not to build schools or commerce or jobs, you are complicit and you are not a civilian casualty.

Ironically, the rabbi’s words apply more aptly to the Israeli leadership which occupies Gaza than to Hamas. Israel’s siege of Gaza has involved the destruction of everything listed above. His words are an eerie echo of Osama Bin Laden’s claim that ‘there are no innocent American civilians because America elected an oppressive government.’ So (according to the Rabbi) if you voted for Hamas, Israel has a right to kill you!  The fact is, of the 1.8 million people in Gaza, about 15,000 (8%) are actually members of Hamas. About 440,000 voted for Hamas, 414,000 for Fatah and other roughly one million didn’t vote at all. You think we should help Israel kill them all?

Finally, the hatred spawned by Israel becomes the very face of America’s government.

The Senate just voted 100-0 to approve S. Res. 498. The bland bureaucratic faces of these Senators, and the media pundits who daily approve them and mouth the talking points of Israel’s cadre of professional liars, are the very picture of Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase about the “banality of evil.” 

Israel’s hatred has overflowed. America has embraced it. This is exactly why our founding fathers warned us against entering into ‘entangling foreign alliances.’  They knew that so called “special relationships” have a special power to corrupt. We don’t need “special relationships” with countries like Israel. We need decent, ethical and practical relationships that promote peace. By that standard, all US aid to Israel should immediately be cut off, the Israeli leadership should be held accountable for war crimes, and sanctions should be imposed on Israel until they abide by all the many UN resolutions and international laws they are in violation of. (Please notice I am NOT calling for the killing of all Israelis who voted Netanyahu into office.)

Of course you may say, “There is hatred on the Palestinian side as well.” There certainly is, but that is the angry hatred that comes from the real violence, dispossession and oppression that has been inflicted on them by Israel over the years—it is rooted in honest anger.

The hatred I see in Israel and its supporters is different. It reeks of bad conscience. It is an ever deepening sewer fed by a guilt that silently corrodes the shaky foundations of the state and the whole Zionist project that spawned it. It threatens Israel’s cherished goal of attaining “legitimacy”—even in its own jaded eyes. The deaths of three teenagers, however tragic, could never unleash this torrent of hatred in a country that was not already deeply in the grip of a virulent disease. It is absurd to talk, as some pundits have done lately, about ‘hatred on the fringes of Israeli society.’ The hatred is at the core—in the government, the military, and the 95% of Jewish Israelis whom (polls now show) support Netanyahu’s current policy.

Today a serious op-ed in “The Times of Israel” debated the notion that genocide permissible. The very fact that this question is now openly being debated in Israel says all we need to know about the hatred consuming that country.

It’s tragic to see how that foreign hatred is polluting our own country: to see so many people choosing to hate. One can feel pity for them—but that doesn’t mean we need to buy into their hatred and lies. In fact, we must not. For us there is still time to stop and think. After all, there are no “chosen people.” We are simply what we choose to make of ourselves. No one forced Israel to start this war.

"Gilbert Schramm is a peace activist and international educator who currently lives in Oregon. He has previously lived and worked extensively in the Middle East and has studied the region for almost 35 years."

Condolences to Dr. Mona El-Farra and all who have lost their loved ones

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Written by Middle East Children's Alliance Middle East Children's Alliance

Published: 01 August 2014 01 August 2014

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The staff and board of the Middle East Children's Alliance would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to our colleague Dr. Mona El-Farra, her family, and all of the Palestinian families who have lost their relatives and loved ones.

Early this morning, Israeli tanks shelled a home in Khan Younis and killed nine members of Dr. Mona's family including 5 children. Ten more relatives are injured and five of them are in critical condition.

We are saddened by the very personal loss of our friend and colleague, Dr. Mona El-Farra, and by the knowledge that her relatives were killed with the full support of our government.

Rest in peace:
Abed Almalek Abed Al Salam El-Farra, 54 years
Osamah Abed Almalek El-Farra, 34 years
Awatef  A'ez Eldeen El-Farra, 29 years
Emad El-Farra, 28 years
Mohamad Mahmoud El-Farra, 12 years
Nadeen Mahmoud El-Farra, 9 years
Yara Abed Al Salam El-Farra, 8 years (pictured above)
Abed Al Rahaman El-Farra, 8 years
Lujain Basem El-Farra, 4 years

We spoke to Dr. Mona by phone today and she told us: "It was shocking to find out that my cousins were killed with their children and grandchildren. But my family is not different from any other family living in the Gaza Strip. This is the brutality of the Israeli occupation and we are expecting bad news all the time. Whenever there is bad news here, we ask ourselves who is next? Still, no matter how much you are prepared for this kind of bad news, it’s shocking and it hit me very hard."

As always, we are impressed by Dr. Mona's huge heart and dedication to help children and families. After taking a short break to process the shock of this news, Dr. Mona went to the emergency room at the Red Crescent Society to treat patients today.