We Refuse to Celebrate Ethnic Cleansing!

From: travelinganna

Dear friends,

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the
founding of the state of Israel. Israel's creation required the
violent displacement of Christians and Muslims from the
area, a monstrous injustice that is not only unrecognized
by much of the world, but is being celebrated by
Israel and the United States. Last month, the US House of
Representatives voted to recognize and reaffirm the Jewish
state'screation and the United States' ongoing friendship and
cooperation with Israel. This is no time to celebrate; this
is a time for mourning and for action! Pastor Bob Cornwall--
a former ADL ally!--interviewed me for the occasion and published
our exchange on his websites:

http://faithfullyliberal.com or

http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2008/05/jewish-american-speaks-for-palestinian.html

Below is a call to action I contributed to with many Jewish
colleagues.

The website, http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/ (not
only for Jews!) also contains EXCELLENT:

- ACTION IDEAS
including street theatre, media actions, public art, etc

- MEDIA TIPS and other tools including information about your right to
protest, visuals, suggested slogans, etc

- NETWORKING possibilities with others near you to
publicize or find out about local events in your area!

Here is the call to action:


No Time to Celebrate!: Jews Remember the Nakba

This May, Israel marks 60 years of statehood. In cities across the
U.S. and Canada, major Jewish organizations will sponsor celebrations
of "Israeli Independence Day." Meanwhile, Palestinians around the
world will mourn 60 years since the Nakba - Arabic for "catastrophe" -
of 1948. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias destroyed over 500
Palestinian villages and made more than 800,000 Palestinian people
refugees in order to create a Jewish state in a land where the
majority was not Jewish. This does not deserve to be celebrated.

Today the Palestinian Nakba continues. In order to maintain Israel's
artificial Jewish majority, the Israeli government has continued
campaigns of ongoing displacement, violence, and occupation. Inside of
the 1948 borders of Israel, Palestinian citizens are denied equal
rights to Jews under the law. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and
East Jerusalem are denied access to land, water, healthcare, and other
basic resources. Palestinians throughout historic Palestine experience
international isolation, economic devastation aided by the erection of
a 730-kilometer wall, and continued closures and invasions including
the current horrific siege of Gaza.

Today there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the
world, all of whom are denied their internationally recognized Right
of Return to their homes and land. Meanwhile, we are invited to live
on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this
"right" to "return" given to us by Israeli law.

In addition to 60 years of occupation and dispossession, this
anniversary marks decades of creative and powerful Palestinian
resistance to Israel's violence. With this statement, we support this
struggle, which is so often ignored or vilified in the U.S. media. As
Jews committed to justice, we imagine an "independence" that does not
depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the
displacement of indigenous people. As North American Jews, we refuse
to celebrate the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Palestinian
lives and communities funded by U.S. foreign aid. There has never been
Jewish consensus around Israel: not in 1897, not in 1948, and not
today. We reject the notion that we have been chosen to displace
others. We support Palestinian people's right to return, individually
and collectively, to the homes they lost in 1948 and in the violent
decades since then. In response to these historical events and a call
from Palestine to mark their significance, we refuse to celebrate
"Israel 60." We will take action to make our shared position clear and
visible. In cities across the U.S. and Canada this year, we pledge to
participate in or to support:

- Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;

- Peaceful disruption of these events;

- Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and
the Palestine solidarity movement;

- Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover seders;

- The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;

- Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among
American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities
about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the
history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.

As North American Jews, we stand together with Palestinians in
mourning 60 years of al-Nakba and in honoring 60 years of vibrant
resistance.

http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/


For the past 60 years, Palestinian refugees have hungered for not only
justice but something as basic as a sense of recognition. To celebrate
their ethnic cleansing is utterly outrageous. Let us all—no matter who
we are, no matter where we come from—do all that we can to make this
known.

In struggle,

Anna