ZIONIST GENOCIDE !!!!!!!!!!!! : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

the past 24 hours, Israeli occupation forces massacred 21 Palestinians including six children and a cameraman for Reuters. In the same period Israeli forces also attacked and damaged El Wafa Medical Rehabilitation Hospital and the damage does cause conditions that endanger lives (e.g. damaging power and essential medical equipement that cannot be replaced due to the siege). Patients denied access to medical care are still dying in Gaza due to the brutal siege. Abu Mazen and others who are trying to please the Israeli government (the 800 pound Gorilla in the room) continue to claim that the fault lies with Hamas for the concentration-camp-like of the Gaza strip. But creating a concentration camp with occasional runs by US-supplied weapons to kill civilians and destroy essential infrastructure is a war crime and a crime against humanity and there are no excuses per International law.

Israel intensified the attacks to send a political message to President Jimmy Carter who is meeting with all leaders willing to meet with him including Hamas. Israeli authorities and their stooges shunned the ex-president, refused him entrance to the Gaza strip, and intensified their media attacks/vilification. The three candidates for US President (Clinton, Obama, McCain) dutifully obeyed the Israel-first lobby in the US by also denouncing the peace efforts of Carter. (Obama who said he would meet with leaders of Iran claimed to self-appointed "Jewish leaders" in Pennsylvania that we should not meet with Hamas until they fulfill conditions that the Israeli government refuses (renounce violence, accept the other side, abide by signed agreements). Meanwhile, ex-Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that "We [Zionists/Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq" and added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor" (1). But I think he is wrong at least on the second part, I think in the long run the truth is very costly to hide and will be discovered by most people. Let me give you examples.

The chorus of public discontent is rising and the media and politicians cannot continue to ignore it. In the US and Canada, alternative Jewish voices are getting organized in forming lobbies to counteract the Israel-first right wing lobbies. Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are spreading like wildfire prompting Israeli authorities (both in an out of Israel) to divert significant resources to combat these efforts. The ensuing discussions only act to expose Israeli apartheid. The Nakba events and commemorations are raising significant awareness about the 60 year process of ethnic cleansing that is continuing and was and is intended to create a more homogenous Jewish state in a land that was and is inhabited by Christians, Muslims, and others. For example, LeftTurn just had an issue devoted to the Nakba including excellent articles about Refugees and about the upcoming August Popular Palestine conference in Chicago (2).

It is gratifying to see Nobel Peace Prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu endorses the Nov. 2008 anti-apartheid organizing tour of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (3).

It is nice to see for a change fair coverage of the demonstration that challenged Zionism in the center of the highest concentration of Zionists in the US (4). It was also gratifying that other local newspapers are publishing our letters to the editor on such subjects (5).

It is nice to see the Huffington Post ridicule the front page coverage in the LA times about Obama's "Palestinian Connections" (6).

It is nice to see a new survey shows public in Arab world becoming even more opposed to the US and Israel (and thus at odds with their governments) despite over hundreds of millions spent by the US to sway public opinion in the Arab and Islamic world to support their (political Zionist) agenda (7)

And it is nice to see that those who support apartheid and racism on college campuses are frustrated; see for example what this person reports in Israel's right wing newspaper about the University of Texas in Austin (8).

These examples are of tens of thousands. The chorus is getting louder and will become deafening when more US citizens find out how their economy was fleeced.

ACTION: Donate to help Palestinian Refugees: Friends of UNRWA Association, Inc.
http://www.friendsunrwa.org/donate.html

and speak out!!

Attend and organize events. Sample upcoming events in the next 10 days (hope to see you there)

Thursday April 17 , 7 PM
Philly Remembers Al-Nakba: 60 Days for 60 Years
The Western “Peace Process” & the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Lecture by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
Golkin Room is on the 2nd floor., Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce St., Univ of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

April 18-19 Living Stones Conference
Seattle, WA
http://www.livingstonesconference.org/

Saturday, April 19 at 4 pm
Western Connecticut Peace activist meeting (email me if interested)

Saturday, April 19 7:30 PM
Palestinians in CT meeting (email me for details)

April 25-27
Sabeel Conference in Philadelphia
http://www.fosna.org/conferences_and_trips/PhiladelphiaConferenceFlyer.htm

April 27 6:30 PM
Irish American Club, 177 West St., Malden, MA 02148
Palestinian Night with Dr. Elaine Hagopian and Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh

April 25-26, 2008
Tufts University – Medford, MA
A New England United Conference: END THE WAR(S) ABROAD AND AT HOME
CHARTING A PATH FOR 2008

NOTES:
1) http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975574.html

2) http://leftturn.org/?q=currentissue

3) For more info, please see: http://www.endtheoccupation.org
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrgGW5Q-f7s

4) Protestors at street fair denounce Zionism
http://www.teanecksuburbanite.com/NC/0/98.html

5) Letter to the editor published in North Jersey Record April 13, 2008
http://www.northjersey.com/news/nationalpolitics/17572724.html?c=y&page=2

6) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-wiener/breaking-news-obama-met-p_b_96115.html
Original LA Times article at http://tinyurl.com/4hp855

7) http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9458.shtml

8) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208246577144&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
=================
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://peace-action.org
http://justicewheels.org
http://palestineconference.org

srael's restraint in this sphere-which turned out to be desperately misguided-is only part of the story. The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the betteroff Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

ALL THIS, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres.

Cleveland Indy Media Center