*The demo will not be at Public Square as was originally planned.*

Join the Middle East Peace Forum and Al-Awda/PRRC Cleveland (Al-Awda.org) demonstration against the Israeli attacks on Gaza in Cleveland, at 18th Street and Euclid Avenue (Across from the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland), Friday, Jan 2, 2009 at 2:30PM.

Demonstration organizers will host Allison Weir, journalist and founder of If Americans Knew, as keynote speaker at the protest Friday.

Friday's demonstration is an appeal to the US and Israeli governments to end the siege and military attacks in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Palestinians in Gaza have been under siege for nearly two years and have been suffering a terror attack by the Israeli (US-funded) military since, Dec. 27.

"We hold sorrow for all the deaths, especially civilians," said spokesman, Don Bryant, on behalf of the demonstration organizers, Middle East Peace Forum, The Greater Cleveland Arab Community, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and the Interfaith Council for Peace in the Middle East.

FYI: There will be thousands of passersby's due to the sold out Cleveland Cavs VS. Chicago Cubs game in the vicinity. So come out for this great opportunity to get our message out in support of our people in Gaza, Palestine who are currently enduring a brutal Israeli Massacre! We need not be idle at this time!

The Israeli military attack against Palestinian civilians in Gaza Strip has reached an unprecedented mass scale level in the past two days. This has left more the 300 people dead and over 700 injured, most of whom are women and children as well as causing collateral damage to civic and residential buildings.

Israeli air strikes pounding Gaza are deepening the humanitarian crisis in an area that was already in deep distress, according to a United Nations official. "The situation is absolutely disastrous," U.N. official Christopher Gunness told CNN on Sunday.

Palestinian human rights organizations call the attacks "a war crime." The organizations stated: "Both the time and location of these attacks also indicate a malicious intent to inflict as many casualties as possible with many of the police stations located in civilian population centers and the time of the attacks coinciding with the end of the school day resulting in the deaths of numerous children."

The first Protest Rally was held Monday, 12/29/08 at Public Square

Brief Report-Back: The Middle East Peace Forum press conference on Israeli attacks on Gaza was covered by 3, 19 and PD today; about 275 people showed up on Pub. Sq tonight for the protest of US funded Israeli attacks on Gaza- these attacks have killed 350 people, 20 children under age 16, women and other civilians and combatants, over 100 were injured- some will die because of the 2-year siege that has left hospitals ill-equiped.
Maria Smith spoke on behalf of nonviolence at the rally this eve. Yoshiko Ikuta, Fuad Hamed and Abedel Baset (Freddie) also spoke and many other Palestinians, Arab-Americans, activists and people of color spoke at the rally

Commentary:
Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power
Nir Rosen, the Guardian
Full article here

[excerpt]
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can. [...clip...]