I am so angry my hands are shaking.
I do not want one more American dollar going to Israel. It is behaving like an apartheid state -- persecuting the Palestinians with brutal force, and murdering people who try to prevent this outrage.
Yesterday an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) bulldozer ran over and killed an unarmed American woman, Rachel Corrie aged 23. This page has more information. Be warned: there are graphic photographs of what happened to her, but I think it is very important that such picture are shown to the world.
We give nearly $3 billion a year to Israel at this point, and it's being used to kill people. They are requesting an additional $12 billion for this year.
I do not want the blood of Palestinians or anyone else on my hands.
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Related Stories from Google News.
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See earlier coverage of the activists on James's site.
I would qualify this by saying that I would not give one dollar to Sharon's government.
It's unfortunate the student was killed. However, what was she doing in a War zone???
Also, we give $2 billion a year to Egypt and all we get are gov't sponsored anti-American propaganda and willing volunteers to terrorist groups.
We give the money to Egypt, only because they made peace with Israel. And then they get 2 billion for a population of 65 million. Israel gets 3 billion in cash and 3 billion in loans, and they have 5 million people-- 1m of whom are Arabs and get 35% less services from the government.
It is an outrage. Israel does not behave 'like' an apartheid state, it IS an apartheid state. America is brainwashed by the world's most massive propaganda mobilization in history.
Matt: The policy of building illegal settlements and driving Palestinians from their homes to do so has continued under both Labor and Likud governments. One of the reasons the PLO (rightly) rejected the Oslo accord was that it didn't really deal with the issue of the settlements.
Yes, what happened in WWII was horrible, but the Palestinians living in Israel/Palestine who were driven from their homes to found the new state of Israel were not the perpetrators of the Holocaust. For Israel to behave as it has destroys any moral credibility it might have once had in the eyes of the world.
I don't know what the answer is. I have plenty of friends who grew up in Israel. I don't want them to have to leave their homes, but a state that seems to need to kill and lock up Palestinians to survive doesn't deserve to exist in this form.
Here's another image of Rachel, from yahoo. Is this the "peaceful" protest you are talking about?
The link.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030317/168/3j5nj.html
Robert: I don't consider shouting at a camera, or even burning a paper copy of the U.S. flag, the equivalent of killing someone with a bulldozer.
Ari: You call it a war zone. I call it a refugee camp. She was trying to stop the demolition of a doctor's house:
"The ISM activist was taking part in protest efforts yesterday afternoon in Rafah, to prevent the army from demolishing houses in a strip of land a few hundred meters wide between the Rafah refugee camp and the nearby Egyptian border, in an effort to block smuggling from Egypt."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=273498&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
I suspect Israeli tanks are a bit more careful when doing demolitions in Israeli neighborhoods.
Barry,
The situation is very sad, and both parties have allowed settlements. Labor tends to be less aggressive on that front, in particular, Rabin, who barred settlement activity until he was killed. So let's tie aid to removing settlements.
The current situation is awful, though, either way you cut it.