Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

Put Your Body Where Your Heart Is - Break The Siege On Gaza!

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/05/01/put-your-body-where-your-heart-is-break-the-siege-on-gaza/

On May 30th 2008, people of conscience from around the world will gather in Egypt to break through to the imprisoned people living inside the Gaza Strip. People will attempt to enter Gaza in an act to break the murderous siege and to stand in solidarity with those inside.

The siege, brutally imposed by the Israeli government in June 2007, following over a year of sanctions has resulted in lethal denial of medical access, shortages of food, fuel and electricity, and stands as a grave act of collective punishment.

It is time to stand up and shout, “No more!” It is time to show that we will not simply stand by while this atrocity is carried out, as our governments do nothing. It is time to use our bodies to prove what we believe is just in this world.

Our governments have backtracked on their responsibility, as stipulated in past agreements, to facilitate and over see the flow of people through the Rafah border crossing, making us complicit with the murderous acts of the Israeli government.

We call on international human right activists and lawmakers to join us in breaking the siege, entering Gaza, and standing in solidarity with the people imprisoned there. Join us in Egypt, come with us to Gaza and put your body where your heart is.

What you can do?

1. Join us in this act of solidarity with the people of Gaza, come to Egypt before the end of May, preferably as early as possible to help with preparations.

2. Have your organization endorse and circulate this call

3. Support this initiative financially - email http://au.f528.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=gazasolidarity%40gmail.com for more information

Signed: The International Solidarity Movement - Palestine

http://freegaza.ps/english/

____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
A Smarter Email http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html

Back to top ajsilvera@yahoo.co.uk&Subj=Re%3APut%20Your%20Body%20Where%20Your%20Heart%20Is%20-%20Break%20The%20Siege%20On%20Gaza%21" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reply to sender | networkingforpeace@yahoogroups.com&Subj= Re%3APut%20Your%20Body%20Where%20Your%20Heart%20Is%20-%20Break%20The%20Siege%20On%20Gaza%21" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group Yahoo! News

http://hotzone.yahoo.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kevin Sites

Get coverage of

world crises.

http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">for Moderators

on the Yahoo!

Groups team blog.

http://new.groups.yahoo.com/moderatorcentral" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Yahoo! Groups

Join and receive

produce updates.

Click one of the “Reply” links to respond to a specific message in the Daily Digest.

Re: Latest "WAR TIMES' on GAZA

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

WHAT ABOUT HAMAS ?   DID YOU ASK THEM IF THEY WANT PEACE?  DID YOU KNOW THAT HAMAS WANS TO DESTROY ISREAL?   YOU ARE NOT MUSLIM. SO THEREFORE HAMAS CALL YOU AN  CRUSADER ( INFIDELETY TO ALLAH , IT MEANS  A DEMON SPIRIT)  SO THEY WAN TO KILL YOU TOO.  WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO  DO ABOUT IT??? NAMASTE

Re: Sharing a Gaza Poem from the Peace Network

A member of one of my peace networks has asked that this
poem he wrote, be shared..

The racist slaughter of the people of Gaza

Some of my best friends are Jewish
but none of them are Zionists.
Israel's attack on the people of Gaza is not a war
it is a pogrom - the killing is too disproportionate;
no sane person would glorify it by suggesting it is a just conflict.
It is a holocaust amongst the refugee camps of Gaza.
There is no Israeli honour to be won.
The Israeli military are not soldiers and airmen
they are the murderers of children and their families.
It is a collective punishment of Palestinians
after all they voted for a leadership which Israel can't control.
Rabbis infected with religious rabies
encourage reservists to kill babies.
Massacres consume the living,
massacres just feed the grieving.
We haven't forgotten Shetila or Shabra;
we remember Mei Lai, Hiroshima, Nagasagi;
we still speak about the sinking of the Luisitania and the Belgrano;
we can't sleep for the crying of the children of Rwanda;
we are awakened by the cries of the starving children of the Congo;
we are sickened by the rape of the women of Darfur;
or the children blown to pieces in Lebanon by cluster bombs.
Now we have more slaughter in the back alleys of Gaza city to keep us awake.
I yearn to sleep, and wish you had the humility to weep.

Surely after sixty years of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own land
it is time to call a halt, to reflect, to seek forgiveness.
Surely your god does not need any more settlers to dispossess
still more Palestinians from their land, their olive trees or their houses.

There is Prime Minister Olmert,
The mad yahoo, Benjamin Netanyahu
the ruthless Ehud Barak, Minister for Killing
and the sly Shimon Peres.
They are always prepared to kill
apart from their cunning it's their only skill
nothing matters to them so long as they can hold on to power

Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister;
Tzipi Livni, something sinister.
Some said she should be PM.
that was enough to encourage her
to brutalise and to condemn.
She has the face of a young woman
but the curse of Dorian Gray
has visited her and now holds sway.
To know what her god thinks of her soul
just look at her heavily lined scrawny neck -
the neck of an old disfigured hag.
The plastic surgeons may have saved her face
but they can't save her soul or the rest of her.
In some ways Tzipi Livni is a metaphor for all of Israel.
Her ruthlessness may kill Hamas leaders and Palestinian women,
it can suppress and obliterate angry young men with homemade rockets,
it can delay the tide of justice, it can interfere with the United Nations,
it can pull the feathers out of the wings of peace doves, but
it can't ensure enduring security for Israel and the rest of the Middle East.

The task of creating a peaceful Middle East requires something more than ruthlessness -
it requires courage and trust, humility and foresight, forgiveness and honesty:
it demands intellect and justice, patience and understanding and something else -
it needs love to bind the wounds.

John Tomlinson
16/1/2009

Re: Sharing a Gaza Poem from the Peace Network

Dear Sandy,

Re: Sharing a Gaza Poem from the Peace Network

Interesting poem.

I'm not sure what it seeks to redress or ameliorate.

“the killing is too disproportionate;”

So we should seek killing to be 'proportionate'? That line seems a bit shocking to me.
Would Israel be more innocent if it had only killed the same number as have died from Hamas rockets? In making that determination how far back since the killing started should we go? Are there such concepts as “more innocent” or “less guilty”?

Clearly Israel's bombings must stop, but if Israel is guilty is Hamas innocent?

It does seem that as long as we measure 'sin' by the number killed, killing will continue. This poet is angry and so he should be.

But if we continue to choose sides, we will only embolden those who choose killing as the method of peace. If Israel stops killing, will Hamas? The problem is deeper than the two combatants.

I imagine this poem will serve to increase hate against  Israelis or Zionists, many who remember the past extermination of their own.
 
But I cannot understand how it will serve to increase peace.

Help me out, here….
mikeS

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

I cannot answer for everyone, ELIASAR.

Yet I feel I can say everyone  in the right mind,
wants Peace.

And no, I am not Muslim -yet neither am I a “demon spirit”,
and they have no reason to want to kill me.

Am sure you didn't mean it to, but it did sound a bit like a threat?

I love one and all, all brother's, all sister's and my only
desire is that we may live together on this planet,
in peace and harmony.

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

Well said, sandy. 

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

This is such an important topic, and certainly hope that this discussion can prosper as a journey of peace, rather than a declaration of justice by either side.

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

If my friend attacks me with a fly swatter will I strike him back with an axe?
We live in an age where one well armed man can kill a thousand. However you look at this there is no honour in it. I can well see why a thousand men with sticks might think it best to disempower the one, or at least refuse to be cowed by him.

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

If my friend attacks me with a fly swatter will I strike him back with an axe?

As long as we believe in resolving conflict through attack, does it matter what weapons are used or how proportionate the attacks are? The analogy fails, since why would “friends” attack?

Obviously, the answer, is the solution.

I can well see why a thousand men with sticks might think it best to disempower the one, or at least refuse to be cowed by him.

Unless, of course, a thousand men with sticks saw attack as the only means to peace. Matyrdom is the postmodern middle east peace plan that can only fail to bring peace, since attack ,in any form whatsoever, can only fail to bring peace.

The problem goes back farther than the current crisis. In fact, it goes back farther than all crises in that it is primordial to the human condition. It goes back before logic demanded attack in the name of peace.

But who wants to go back that far….

..and so, we continue to have war….

Peace Angels,
mikeS

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

It is our “belief” that we can resolve conflict through attack-
and a belief that must be changed before the World can move
forward onto a Path of Peace.

And attack, not only conflicts peace, it incites defenceful
violence in return.

Each People's, Religion's, Countries believe they are right
and yet the only right thing is that we all want peace for our
families.
Families are our common denominator, in each and every creed.

Our “time honoured” violence means we are still as primordial
as we were in cave men day's!

You would think our mentailty would have lifted since then!

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

Families began a desperate search for the remains of dead relatives on Sunday as soon as Israeli soldiers abandoned Jebaliya refugee camp.

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

One solution to the problem of the refugees in Gaza would be for the oil rich neighbouring Arab countries to open their borders and offer to repatriate them.

This would at least give the refugees a quality of life.  It is clear Israel are not going to invite the descendants of those that left Israel, (expecting the Jews and any Arabs that remained to be driven into the sea as promised by the surrounding Arab countries), to return.

Surely it is time for the Arabs to take some responsibility for this situation.

In peace and love

Re: Raytheon Bombs Gaza's Children

  Raytheon Resistance in Bristol, Dublin, and Brisbane

A small group returned to Brisbane's Raytheon offices today after two of it's members went to court for occupying the companies lifts last November.

The group held a banner reading, “Raytheon bombs Gaza's Children”, among other banners and placards.

They claimed there is little doubt Raytheon missiles would have been used extensively by Israel in their

recent slaughter of over 1000 people, including over 300 children, in Gaza. (A Raytheon bomb was proven to have killed 28 civilians in a single bomb attack in Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon)

No one was arrested, and Bernie and Jim were remanded to appear in court for another mention on 16^th February, a date on which the group will undoubtedly return to the scene of Raytheon's criminal activities.

Meanwhile:

In Bristol, England, a small group has been occupying the roof of Raytheon for 40 days.

See attached photo.

And

In Derry, Northern Ireland, on 12^th January, 9 women chained themselves the doors inside the Raytheon building (the same building, where a activists had previously thrown files and computers out of the window and been acquitted by a jury).

The women left after the head of police agreed to accept all their information on Raytheon and study it to see if Raytheon should be charged with war crimes. See also attached photo

You can read more of these other stories by checking Indy Media sites (Bristol and Ireland)

Re: Raytheon Bombs Gaza's Children

One state the way to peace in MidEast, says Muammar Gaddafi

IS a combined one state the way to peace in the Middle East?

What do other’s think?

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

I certainly don’t believe in any form of attack, however, I am in a minority there.

Given that most seem (sadly) to accept such concepts readily, we should at least work on why they accept them, and how we can use their beliefs to help stop outright aggression.

It seems to me that one area we can exploit, is that when aggressor “A” kills a thousand of “B”s civilians, and “B” kills eight of “A”s then many people who are not even pacifists would support nonviolent action directed more at “A” than “B”, since this might appear to save more innocent lives. Whilst I would prefer to achieve an end to all conflict, I am still open to working with others to achieve less than this.

Re: Break the Siege on Gaza -Fwd from English Peace Network

Yes, your A/B theory does seem to be relevant.

Look at the case of war in Iraq -to hear Bush -American lives

that were lost were far more valuable than any other’s -and enough

to justify the killing thousand of innocents…

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/