AWOL workshop planned

While other churches work to help soldiers serving in combat and veterans recovering from wounds, Joy Mennonite Church in Oklahoma City wants to help AWOL soldiers return to civilian life. The church has scheduled a workshop Sunday to help volunteers learn about regulations pertaining to AWOL soldiers. Oklahoma’s Fort Sill is one of only two U.S. installations where deserting military personnel can surrender and be discharged if they meet certain criteria. Leading the workshop will be attorney James M. Branum, co-founder of an anti-war group known as the Oklahoma Center for Conscience. The workshop is free; refreshments will be served. The church is just a few blocks from the Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where soldiers who stuck it out are treated.

Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has become the first of any college or university in the US to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. More than 800 students, professors and alumni have signed SJP’s “institutional statement” calling for the divestment.

The proposal put forth by SJP was approved on Saturday, 7 February 2009 by the Board. By divesting from these companies, SJP believes that Hampshire has distanced itself from complicity in the illegal occupation and war crimes of Israel.

Meeting minutes from a committee of Hampshire’s Board of Trustees confirm that “President Hexter acknowledged that it was the good work of SJP that brought this issue to the attention of the committee.” This groundbreaking decision follows in Hampshire’s history of being the first college in the country to divest from apartheid South Africa 32 years ago, a decision based on similar human rights concerns. This divestment was also a direct result of student pressure.

The divestment has so far been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Rashid Khalidi, Vice President of the EU Parliament Luisa Morganitini, Cynthia McKinney, former member of the African National Congress Ronnie Kasrils, Mustafa Barghouti, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, John Berger, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, among others.

The six corporations, all of which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are: Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex. Furthermore, our policy prevents the reinvestment in any company involved in the illegal occupation.

SJP is responding to a call from Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a way of bringing nonviolent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law. SJP is following in the footsteps of many noted groups and institutions such as the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK, the Israeli group Gush Shalom, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the American Friends Service Committee.

As well as voicing our opposition to the illegal occupation and the consistent human rights violations of the Palestinian people, we as members of an institute of higher education see it as our moral responsibility to express our solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation.

SJP has proven that student groups can organize, rally and pressure their schools to divest from the illegal occupation. The group hopes that this decision will pave the way for other institutions of higher learning in the US to take similar stands.

MIRAMAR — Antiwar activist Dawn O’Brien of Oceanside frets plenty about her three Marine sons, two of whom have served in Iraq.

She worries almost as much, though, about another young soldier – the one who is sitting in the brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station because he refused to fight.

Pvt. Robin Long, 25, enlisted in the Army in 2003. Ordered to Iraq in 2005, he fled to Canada. He was deported last year, the first to be sent home under a crackdown on the estimated 200 war resisters who have taken refuge north of the border.

After a court-martial last August, Long was sent to Miramar to serve his 15-month sentence. O’Brien and others in San Diego County’s small but fervent community of peace protesters have taken up his cause.

“We knew this kid made a moral decision, and he was honestly being punished for it,” said O’Brien, president of the local chapter of the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out. “It’s not illegal to refuse to fight in an illegal war.”

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TEL HASHOMER, Israel — Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Gazan and a doctor who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

But on Saturday, the day after three of his daughters and a niece were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza, Dr. Abuelaish, 53, struggled to hold on to the humane philosophy that has guided his life and work.

Elsewhere in the hospital another daughter and a niece were being treated for their wounds.

As he sat in a waiting room of the Israeli hospital where he works part time, he asked over and over, “Why did they do this?”

“I dedicated my life really for peace, for medicine,” said Dr. Abuelaish, who does joint research projects with Israeli physicians and for years has worked as something of a one-man force to bring injured and ailing Gazans for treatment in Israel. “This is the path I believed in and what I raised and educated my children to believe,” he said.

Dr. Abuelaish said he wanted the Israeli Army to tell him why his home, which he said harbored no militants, had been fired upon. He said if a mistake had been made and an errant tank shell had hit his home, he expected an apology, not excuses.

The doctor, a recent widower, had not left Gaza since the Israeli assault began last month and was at home in the Jabaliya refugee camp with his eight children and other family members during the attack on Friday.

An army spokesman said that a preliminary investigation had shown that soldiers were returning fire toward the direction of areas from which they had been fired upon.

“The Israeli Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation the army has been fighting an enemy that does not hesitate to fire from within civilian targets,” said the spokesman, speaking anonymously on behalf of the army.

The Israeli public became witness to the Abuelaish family’s tragedy on Friday night when a conversation that a television journalist was having with Dr. Abuelaish was broadcast live.

In a video now available on YouTube, the doctor implored the journalist, whom he had called, to help send assistance, wailing, “My daughters have been killed.”

Journalists had come to know the doctor, who was already well known in the country’s medical establishment, because he has been providing witness accounts of the Israeli operation for television stations. After the broadcast, an ambulance was sent to a border crossing to pick up the doctor and the two wounded girls. His four other children remain in Gaza and are expected to join him in Israel soon.

At the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer on Saturday, Dr. Abuelaish was surrounded by Israeli colleagues. Several were crying. Tammie Ronen, a professor of social work at Tel Aviv University, knelt beside the doctor. “You cannot let yourself collapse, you have your living children to take care of,” said Dr. Ronen. Dr. Ronen had worked with him in researching the effects of conflict-related stress on Palestinian children in Gaza and Israeli children in Sderot, a border town that has been the main target of Gazan rocket fire in recent years.

“Tell them who my children were,” said Dr. Abuelaish, spotting Anael Harpaz, an Israeli woman who runs a peace camp in New Mexico for Israeli and Palestinian girls that three of his daughters attended, including his eldest, Bisan, 20, who was killed Friday. The other two daughters who were killed were Mayar, 15, and Aya, 13. The doctor’s niece who died, Nur Abuelaish, was 17.

Dr. Abuelaish recalled that it was Bisan who, after her mother died of leukemia, urged him to continue his work in Israel, saying she would look after the younger children.

In a hospital room, Ms. Harpaz held 17-year-old Shada Abuelaish’s hand as a nurse placed drops of medicine on her tongue. The girl’s forehead was covered in bandages as was her right eye, which had been operated on in hopes of saving it. The niece who was wounded is in critical condition, with shrapnel wounds.

Outside the room, Ms. Harpaz crumpled into a chair, sobbing.

“I hope this is a wake-up call,” she said. “This is such a peace-loving family.”

Dr. Abuelaish is a rarity: a Gazan at home among Israelis. He describes himself as a bridge between the two worlds, one of the few Gazans with a permit to enter Israel because of his work.

“I wanted every Palestinian treated in Israel to go back and say how well the Israelis treated them,” he said. “That is the message I wanted to spread all the time. And this is what I get in return?”

Later, sitting on a plastic chair near his daughter’s hospital room, Dr. Abuelaish spoke with the prayer of so many parents who have buried their children as part of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I hope that my children will be the last price.”

Due to the current situation in the Gaza Strip that was imposed by the Israeli military operations since Saturday 27/12/2008, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility “CMWU” hereby announces its inability to (failure) maintain its services in both the water sector in terms of production and distribution and wastewater sector in terms of collection and discharging in Gaza Strip governorates. Despite our several appeals to all international aid agencies and organizations to help out and support our technical teams in keeping all water and wastewater facilities operational and repairing the infrastructure damages and destructions caused by the Israeli bombarding, but all these requests were declined until this moment.

In addition to the continuation of many obstacles during the past three years such as closures and sieges, the CMWU faced acute shortage in necessary spare parts, equipments, and machines for affording the required infrastructural services and had to deal with electricity insufficiency and fuel (diesel) shortage as power supply alternative for restoring these services.

According to the above, the CMWU would like to brief the followings:

1. The water carrier line between Al-Moghraga wells and Nussierate city was damaged due to Israeli air strikes to nearby El Zahraa’a and Nussierate Bridge . As a result, more than 30,000 residents in Nussierate city are inaccessible to water services.
2. Complete destruction of El-Edara Well in eastern side of Jabalia city. As a result, more than 25,000 residents in Jabalia city are inaccessible to water services. “CMWU” wants to state that the well operator has been deceived due to Israeli bombarding.
3. The main electrical transistor that belongs to El Shiekh Ejleen water well has been damaged. As a result, more than 40,000 residents of southern Tal El Hawa city and the surrounding residential towers are out of water services.
4. The main 12″ steel water carrier that supply 40% of total water produced from Gaza city northern side has been destroyed due to the Israeli military operations. As a result, more than 200,000 residents in Gaza city are out of vital water source.
5. Main sewerage line in Bait Hanoun city has been destroyed by the Israeli military actions. The line is not repaired until this moment, which caused health hazardous consequences.
6. The main power generator in Beit Lahia wastewater treatment plant “BLWWTP” has been targeted by the Israeli military operations, which halted the CMWU from carrying on its services in collection and discharging the wastewater in Beit Lahia city. In addition to several damages in several wastewater networks due to continuous Israeli shelling.
7. Due to the presence of the Israeli troops in Netzarim area, the CMWU states that the Gaza Wastewater Treatment Plant is completely out of operation and yet the plant is unable to discharge the wastewater to the sea. As a result, the collection ponds are threatened to be broken down at any moment in which it will impose serious catastrophic humanitarian, health, and environmental consequences on the surrounding lives and properties from danger of sewerage floods.
8. Since the beginning of the Israeli military operations in Gaza Strip, the wastewater level in main Beit Lahia discharging pond is increasing due to power shortage and lack of fuel in the plant. As a result, major catastrophe shall threaten the lives of thousands of residents of eastern Beit Lahia city of danger of drowning in the sewage flooding.
9. The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility “CMWU” assures that it has applied for several coordination requests from the Israeli side and through the Palestinian Water Authority “PWA”, International Committee of Red Cross “ICRC”, UNRWA, and all international humanitarian aid organizations working in Gaza strip to facilitate the CMWU to repair all the aforesaid damages points, and to distribute the fuel (diesel) to all water and wastewater facilities that was donated by UNRWA as an urgent aid to CMWU, but all these requests were declined and failed until this moment.

The Coastal Municipalities Water Utility “CMWU” appeals all international humanitarian aid organizations allover the world for quick and prompt intervention and involvement with the Israeli side to allow the CMWU for providing and affording the minimum basic water and wastewater services and restoring the operational capability of its water and wastewater facilities to avoid further serious catastrophic humanitarian, health, and environmental consequences under this hard situation in Gaza Strip.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Several thousand protesters descended on the White House Saturday in support of Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza, as other protests took place across Canada and in the Mexican capital.

As many as 10,000 people, according to organizers, gathered from about 1:00 pm (1800 GMT) in Washington’s Lafayette Park, across from the White House, chanting “free Palestine” as protest leaders and activists spoke from a podium.

The protests came as Israel vowed to escalate its war in Gaza that has left at least 825 Palestinians dead as troops battled fighters from the Islamist movement Hamas into a third week, in defiance of a United Nations truce call.

“There are many young people. We feel it’s one of the most important demonstrations for Palestine ever in the US,” said Eugene Puryear, a coordinator of the Washington protest, which was organized by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition.

Protesters waived Palestinian flags, wore keffiyeh — a traditional Palestinian headdress — and waived signs, some of which read “Stop the Gaza holocaust” and “Free Palestine, let Gaza live.”

They then led a march passing in front of the headquarters of The Washington Post newspaper to protest “its hard pro-Israeli line,” Puryear said, before heading to the offices of construction equipment giant Caterpillar and military contractor Lockheed Martin.

“I came because there are innocent children dying daily in Palestine. The American people need to know the truth,” said 13-year-old Razan Ali, a Palestinian-American who bused in from New York.

A dozen buses filled with protesters came from New Jersey and another seven buses drove in from New York.

Yasmina Farej, a 54-year-old who came from Brooklyn dressed in conservative Muslim garb, said she was motivated to join the protest because of “the war in Gaza; they bomb the innocent children.”

Thousands more protested across several Canadian cities, calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and especially targeting conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his support of Israel.

In Montreal, some 2,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted “Israel the assassin” and called for a ceasefire in the impoverished Gaza Strip. Some brandished dolls spattered with red paint that they said represented children killed by the Israeli army.

Several hundred protesters also gathered in front of the US embassy in Mexico City in opposition to what they called the “criminal aggression” in Gaza. Some protesters set shoes ablaze and hurled them against the embassy gates.

Demonstrators against the Israeli offensive also rallied in major cities across Europe, with the largest protests in Paris and London, where largely peaceful demonstrations turned violent as the day wore on.

Jonathan Freedland: Talking to Hamas is a step toward peace

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

Go to article on guardian.co.uk

Montreal – Early Thursday, January 8th Montrealers blockaded the Israeli Consulate in Montreal in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.

The demonstrators were acting in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza, demanding Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

Protesters are outraged at Israel’s latest assault on the Palestinian people and by the Canadian government’s refusal to condemn these massacres that have left 700 dead and over 3000 wounded since December 27, 2008.

In the past 24 hours Israeli has bombarded three U.N. schools in Gaza killing dozens of internally displaced refugees inside Gaza.

“Canada’s lack of response to recent war crimes in Gaza speaks volumes about their support for Israeli apartheid,” said Sophie Schoen, a spokesperson for the action.

“The Conservative government should expel all Israeli Consular officials from Canada, as other countries have done,” said Amanda Dorter. “Until Ottawa ends its support for Israel we will continue to disrupt the workings of Israeli-Canadian cooperation.”

“We demand the Canadian government cut all ties with the apartheid regime of Israel,” said Mostafa Henaway.

The action in Montreal comes on the heels of countless protests worldwide against Israeli war crimes, including an occupation of the Israeli Consulate in Toronto by Jewish women yesterday.

For more information contact:
Mostafa Henaway (English/Arabic)
Phone: 514.659.0106

Sophie Schoen (French)
Phone: 514.998.7243

Matan Cohen (Hebrew)
Phone: 514.476.1132

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