Peace in the New Year

December 28th, 2009 at 09:05pm Sue Gray 2468

It’s been one year since Israel attacked Gaza, killing over fourteen hundred people, wounding thousands, displacing 60,800 civilians and damaging 17,000 homes, resulting in Jewish South African judge Richard Goldstone finding Israel guilty of war crimes and human rights violations. In the last year, Israel has prevented the Palestinian people from rebuilding their homes, businesses, and infrastructure, causing a humanitarian crisis the likes of which the world has never seen.

Still, the Palestinians have expressed their willingness to make peace with the regime that relentlessly oppresses them. Palestinian leaders’ only requirement for resuming peace talks has been that Israel stop building Jewish homes in occupied Palestinian territory. This they have absolutely refused to do, proving that Israel’s leaders clearly do not care for peace, equality, justice, human rights or anything else that gets in the way of their goal of eliminating the possibility of Palestinian statehood. Their slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian people over the last 50 years shows they care nothing for human life either.

It’s time to get tough with Israel and show them that the United States will not tolerate the oppression, apartheid, and disregard for life that Israel has demonstrated since its formation. Join me in writing and calling our state representatives to ask that they vote to discontinue all financial aid to Israel until a peace agreement is reached.

Let’s make 2010 the year that the U.S. finally does something real to end the Middle East conflict.

Entry Filed under: Politics, Foreign Policy, Middle East

6 Comments Add your own

1. Sue Gray | January 4th, 2010 at 8:30 am

And now a note from our visiting and resident Jewish extremists:

In response to Sue Gray

Aspen Daily News: Thursday, December 31, 2009

Editor:

This letter is in response to Sue Gray’s recent letter.

Sue, please tell us straight out. How tough do you want to get with Israel? Do you want to blow it up to pieces with rocket launchers, blow it up from inside with suicide bombers, push it all the way into the sea or simply wait a little until Iran will be able to use its secret, peaceful nuclear power on Israel?

Alex Feuer
Snowmass Village

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Just the facts, ma’am

Aspen Daily News Saturday, January 2, 2010

Editor:

How disappointing to see you publish the letter from Sue Gray of Carbondale titled “Get Tough with Israel.” Perhaps the most insidious form of hate and bias is that masquerading as fact or truth. Gray makes her charged statements either ignorant of or willingly misrepresenting fact. As “Dragnet’s” Sgt. Friday used to say, “Just the facts ma’am.”

Fact: Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005 offering the Palestinian people an opportunity to build their own society. Instead of building schools, hospitals, businesses and creating infrastructure that would have attracted billions in global economic support, Hamas-led Gaza chose to use its resources to bombard southern Israel with thousands of rockets over the course of years forcing an armed response by Israel to protect its people.

Fact: During the Gaza war, Israel repeatedly announced by telephone and leaflet drop where it would bomb — in advance. The Israel defense force went beyond any modern precedent to seek to avoid civilian casualty, while Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields made clear the moral bankruptcy of their culture of death.

Fact: The Palestinian charter continues to list the destruction of the state of Israel as a primary goal. Israel’s sovereignty and its willingness to negotiate borders are without dispute. President Clinton’s efforts at Camp David, and more recently, Ehud Olmert’s offers to exchange land to help create a Palestinian state have been well documented. Rather than seizing the opportunity to negotiate a solution, the Palestinian response was increased violence under Arafat and abject rejection under Abbas.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King: “We have a dream.” The dream is of a new reality of peace and of two states living side-by-side. Sadly, until the Palestinian people and their leaders accept the permanence of the Jewish state of Israel and truly seek peace, the dream is likely to remain but a dream.

Bill Lipsey
Snowmass Village
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No more mister nice guy?

Aspen Daily News: 1-4-10

Editor:

It’s refreshing after all of the letters that Sue Gray has written to the editor over the years that she has at last left no doubt about who she is and where she stands. Many of her past letters have been faux conciliatory suggesting that the two sides need to come together to work out their common problems. No more mister nice guy, right Sue? Tell it like it is. Israel is now and always has been bad.

When Israel defended itself against the six invading Arab armies in 1948 after the Arabs’ rejection of the UN partition plan (they rejected it, Sue), was it because Israel had oppressed all of those countries?

Almost 20 years after that, living benignly within fixed boundaries determined by an armistice after the 1948 war again Israel had to defend itself against many of those same armies. Who were the Israelis oppressing? What human life were they disregarding?

Although you stressed that Israel is bad and always has been, your last letter made particular note of the war a year ago in Gaza. Yes Sue, it was a war, not an attack. A war brought on by years of aggression by Hamas. You make note of the 1,400 killed without noting that even the UN has acknowledged that some 75 percent of those killed were Hamas terrorists. And, unfortunately, even our country is finding out that it is impossible to fight a war without there being some innocent victims (Iraq and Afghanistan being prime examples). Wars are fought by civilized countries in order to protect their citizens, not by terrorists in order to destroy a people.

Finally Sue, you argue that the Palestinians have expressed their willingness to make peace if Israel makes certain concessions. Wrong, Sue, they have only expressed a willingness to have peace talks. And I’m sure even you recognize the difference.

In closing I will paraphrase your letter’s close. Let’s pray that 2010 becomes a year when the Israelis and the Palestinians really do something to end the Middle East conflict.

Buster Feldman
Aspen
2. Sue Gray | January 4th, 2010 at 8:33 am

Oh those poor misguided souls. They just don't get that I won't give up...

As a result of the lop-sided coverage of the Israel/Palestine issue in our media, which focuses mainly on the transgressions of a minute number of Palestinians, most Americans are unaware of the daily suffering endured by the men, women, and children living under Israeli occupation.

This has led some Americans to develop a view that favors portrayal of Israeli Jews as victims of Arab hatred and violence, when the opposite is more often true.

Fact: In addition to the 1,400 killed in Israel’s 2008 attack on Gaza, 4,836 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers since the year 2000 (B’Tselem).

Fact: 24,145 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967 (B’Tselem).

Fact: a 2007 U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report found that Israeli roads, towns, and military bases now cover 40% of Palestinian territory. All along, Israel’s leaders have been giving lip service to peace while continuing to push Palestinians from their land and replace their homes and family farms with Jewish only neighborhoods.

For more than 42 years, Israel’s government has advanced Jewish colonization using segregation and apartheid; confining the Palestinian people to small separate enclaves of poverty and deprivation reminiscent of South African Bantustans and U.S. Indian Reservations. Israel has been actively creating a Palestinian Trail of Tears; driving the indigenous people from their land just as European immigrants did to Native Americans.

That’s the irony in the use by a recent letter writer (ADN letters 1/2/10) of Martin Luther King Jr’s anti-oppression “I have a dream” speech, to symbolize Israel’s attitude toward peace.

Fact: Israel has achieved its dream of a great Jewish homeland, by oppressing millions of people and killing tens of thousands.

Palestinians have a dream too. That is to receive a homeland of their own, free from occupation by a foreign power and secure from the terror of ethnic cleansing they’ve endured for far too long.

By denying financial aid to Israel until they agree to end their occupation, America can help the people of Palestine achieve that dream and become free at last.
3. Cathleen Krahe | January 7th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

It has been a long time since I posted, but I have to support Sue's view of the Israeli -Palestine issue. We get a one sided view point, pro Israel, in the American media. In 2008, I visited Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank and met many on both sides of the issue, but to see the conditions in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank is to know that living under the Israeli occupation has destroyed the Palestinian economy, brutalized Arabs and stolen their land.

I attended a weekly Friday peaceful protest in the West Bank against the Separation Wall and the Occupation. Unarmed Palestinians and International supporter are attacked and sometimes killed by Israeli soldiers for peacefully protesting. Israeli soldiers enter the homes of protesters in the middle of the night and cart them off to jail where they sit without trials. This is the "democracy' our almost $ 3 billion aid to Israel is supporting.
4. kehoff | January 16th, 2010 at 12:10 pm

As I'd observed some months ago when this discussion was in progress, the Palestinians have had in excess of 60 years to make compromise and have their own state but as always, "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Their agenda will not brook the presence of Israel and anything but its elimination would violate their stated goals. If they'd really desired statehood, it could've happened a long time ago. They just can't let it go.
5. hboronski | January 31st, 2010 at 7:12 pm

The peace agreements that Israel offers are, frankly, crap. In one, for example, they offered the Palestinians a large area of land, but the media did not mention that this land was broken into fragments no larger than 2 km, all separated by Israeli roads.

In the recent Gaza War (or Israeli Operation Cast Lead), Israel mercilessly bombed Gaza, killing nearly 3000 people. This was a response to the 19 Israelis killed by the rockets. A little too much force, perhaps? Especially considering that they used white phosphorous (which reacts with the air and burns human skin off) in areas where no militants were present. Estimates of the damage are up to 50,000 homeless and 400,000 without water. These people, besides suffering from PTSD, do not have fuel for cooking their food. They do not have electricity for pumping water, although given that according to WHO, only 5-10% of the water is safe for drinking even once chlorinated. Israeli blockades will not even allow children's toys into Gaza, let alone the necessary materials to fix their infrastructure. The damage done by Israeli bombing, while significant, only intensifies the infrastructure problems. In March 2007, 5 people were killed when a sewage reservoir burst and flooded a village. They literally drowned in sewage. An entire village was destroyed. Oxfam International has said that most of the sewage reservoirs in Gaza are similarly dangerous. It is a blatant human rights violation for Israel to treat these people this way. It's not a matter of politics. It's not a matter of sides. It's a matter of human life and suffering.
6. Sue Gray | February 3rd, 2010 at 8:03 am

[It is a blatant human rights violation for Israel to treat these people this way. It's not a matter of politics. It's not a matter of sides. It's a matter of human life and suffering.]

Even though that is absolutely correct, some people will never ever…ever, be able to see it that way. Those whose lives are fear-based can’t get past the fact that there are Arabs who have threatened Jews, killed Jews and apparently want to annihilate Israel. Never mind that there is a tangible reason for the violence: resistance to oppression.

Because the Palestinian viewpoint has been framed for so long as stemming from religious intolerance, their oppression doesn’t register, only their terrorism. Therefore to some people, the Israelis will always be right and the Palestinians wrong. And those who are wrong, get no rights.