June 5-11: End US Support for Israel's Occupation!

["UFPJ Action Alerts" <listmaster@unitedforpeace.org>]

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ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545

To subscribe, visit http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email

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On June 5-11, join with United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and UFPJ member
coalition US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in a national week of
action to demand that our government end its military, economic, and
diplomatic support for Israel's illegal military occupation of the West
Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

OCCUPATION: WRONG IN IRAQ, WRONG IN PALESTINE

The lesson of Abu Ghraib isn't that a few bad apples went awry, as Rumsfeld
and Bush want us to believe. It's that occupying other people's countries
inevitably requires brutal and dehumanizing means to try to make the
occupied accept foreign control of their land and resources.

It is a fact that more than 3 million Palestinians living under Israeli
military occupation have known for 37 years.

June 2004 marks the 37th anniversary of Israel's illegal military
occupation of Palestine's West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. This
occupation denies the Palestinian people the right to self-determination,
fuels bloodshed, and prevents the establishment of a just peace between
Israelis and Palestinians whereby both peoples can live in freedom,
dignity, and security.

If occupation is wrong in Iraq, why would it be right in Palestine?

WHY U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION MUST END

While it is Israel that directly occupies these Palestinian lands, it is
our government that provides Israel the military, economic, and diplomatic
support Israel depends on to sustain its military occupation. Israel is the
largest recipient of U.S. financial aid in the world, receiving $7.7
million per day in direct U.S. aid. Washington views this support as
central to U.S. efforts to dominate the Middle East for U.S. economic and
military advantage.

Worse, Bush has given unqualified support to the illegal occupation
policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He has backed Sharon's
brutal military measures, extra-judicial assassinations, and apartheid-like
wall snaking through the West Bank. In April Bush abandoned decades of
formal U.S. policy and backed Sharon's unilateral plans to keep Israel's
colonial settlements built on occupied territory and reject Palestinian
refugees' right to return to the properties from which they were driven out
by Israeli militias during the 1948 war.

Sharon's policies trample on the human rights of Palestinians, violate
international law, flaunt U.N. authority, and fuel the tragic cycle of
violence between Palestinians and Israelis. But with a blank check from the
U.S., Sharon faces few obstacles to pursuing his reckless dream of taking
"as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible," as
Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe recently put it. Without that blank check,
Sharon would feel pressured to end Israel's occupation, remove the
settlements, and negotiate a just Palestinian/Israeli peace.

TAKE ACTION—JUNE 5-11, 2004

NO MORE U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION!

It's time for the U.S. to stop giving Israel a blank check for occupation.
UFPJ is calling for June 5-11 to be a national week of action and education
to expand public backing for ending US support for Israel's illegal
military occupation. UFPJ formally called for these actions last December,
but the deepening of the Bush/Sharon alliance makes them even more urgent.
Here's what you can do:

1) EDUCATE YOUR COMMUNITY. If you or your group hasn't taken a position on
or undertaken work for a just Palestinian/Israeli peace before, we
encourage you to organize educational events for your group or community
during the national week of action. For more information about Israel's
occupation and U.S. support for it, see the resources below.

2) ORGANIZE A PROTEST in your city or town. Let others know by posting your
event on UFPJ's on-line calendar at
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/calendar_gxinput.php . Be sure to cross-post
at the US Campaign's on-line calendar:

http://endtheoccupation.org/calendar_input.php

3) SIGN A PETITION TO CONGRESS. The US Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation is seeking individual and organizational endorsements of its
petition to end U.S. support for Israel's occupation. The U.S. Campaign
will deliver the petition to Members of Congress and the State Department
during the US Campaign's grassroots advocacy day on Capitol Hill on June 7.
The Campaign's goal is to have 500 organizational endorsements and
thousands of individual endorsements.  To read and sign the petition,
please see:

http://endtheoccupation.org/petition.php?pid=2

4) WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR or opinion article for your local newspaper
demanding that the United States end its support for Israel's illegal
military occupation of Palestinian lands.

RESOURCES

* For more information on Israel's illegal occupation, its violations of
international law, and the role of the United States in supporting them,
please visit:

http://unitedforpeace.org/article.php?sub=43&list=sub

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

* Download the U.S. Campaign's "Dual Occupations: If It's Wrong in
Palestine, Why is the U.S. Doing it in Iraq?" at:
http://endtheoccupation.org/downloads/dual_occupations.pdf and "Ending the
Occupation: It's the Law" at:
http://endtheoccupation.org/downloads/fact_sheet_2.pdf

* For information on UFPJ's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, go to
http://unitedforpeace.org/article.php?sub=43&list=sub

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ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545

To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email

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