Beginning 5 Years Ago Today -- Israel Brutally Attacks Gaza for Weeks, Killing over 1400

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Dr. Mads Gilbert has written a book about his experience in Gaza during Cast Lead.  Haaretz interviewed him:  http://www.haaretz.com/nordic-doctor-revives-gaza-casualty-debate-1.8458

From Eva Bartlett's blog, In Gaza.

Occupied Palestine: "Living in Fear" - Israeli Settlers Attack Families to Force Them to Leave!

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http://youtu.be/qGBWPeuZjmw

via Electronic Intifada

Witness the Dire Straits of the People of Gaza; First a Siege than A Flooding Storm. Stand by Gaza!

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Video via In Gaza blog:  http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/video-from-gaza-gaza-above-the-storm/

"Palestinians Celebrate Release of Issawi Despite Israeli Threats"

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EXCERPT:
"JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Defying Israeli warnings banning celebrations, dozens of Palestinian Jerusalemites on Monday evening celebrated the release of prominent prisoner Samir Issawi in his hometown of Issawiya in East Jerusalem."

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=659675

Voices for Palestine & Veterans for Peace Seattle Remind Messiah Concert Attendees of Current Status of Birthplace of Jesus

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We passed out 400 postcards depicting Mary and Joseph at the Walls that now surround Bethlehem.  The card and its message are available to view here at the "If Americans Knew" website:  http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/bethlehem06.html

Our Palestine Vigil will be on Sunday Dec. 22 at 1:30PM in front of Benaroya Hall, Downtown Seattle. Join Us!

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To raise awareness about US foreign policy and the plight of Palestinians, Voices of Palestine and VFP92 Greater Seattle Chapter of Veterans For Peace will be distributing "O Little Town of Bethlehem " cards to folks attending the 2 PMperformance of Handel's Messiah at Benaroya Hall.

We are planning to meet in front of Benaroya Hall at 1:30 PM. Please join us!

What: Vigil for Bethlehem

Where: Benaroya Hall, 200 University Street • Seattle, WA 98101

When: Sunday Dec. 22 at 1:30 PM

Hope to see you there!

Get the Word Out! Israel/Egypt Drowning the People of Gaza! End the Siege!

Tweet from Amin Odeh, Voices for Palestine:

Zahi Damuni posted in Al-Awda News Zahi Damuni 5:35pm Dec 15 URGENT APPEAL TO PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE AROUND THE WORLD: PALESTINIANS IN GAZA URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP Snowy weather since Wednesday December 11 — the most severe since 1878 — has further crippled daily life among the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank near Jerusalem. The central responsibility for the problems this has brought lies with the Israeli occupation, which conducts a policy of deliberate and calculated neglect when it comes to maintaining essential infrastructure. This is aimed at further pressuring our people to leave their homeland. Adding to the already extremely bitter taste, these outrages are being visited on the Palestinian people on the 65th anniversaries of the United Nations adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of Resolution 194. This resolution called on the Israeli entity to cease obstructing our people’s right to return to the lands and homes taken from them during the Nakba. Earlier this month, the world’s conscience was shocked to see our people fording through sludge pouring from open sewers that overflowed when power from the Gaza Strip’s sole electricity generating plant had to be cut due to fuel shortages. Many have been shocked to learn of the repeated shortages of fuel deliveries needed for maintaining electric power. These shortages are brought on by the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip which began in 2006. Currently, driven into the streets by flooding, over 40,000 Gaza residents find themselves homeless. Over the preceding years ‘Israel’ has deliberately left the electricity plant to collapse in the hopes of driving our people out. Two winters ago, their Mossad, acting through Ukrainian military police, went to the extent of kidnapping the plant’s chief engineer, Dirar Abu Sisi, on a train while on a visit with his wife’s family and tossed him in their Eichel prison. There they left him in solitary confinement and declining health to rot, while Gaza’s infrastructure continues further to crumble. All this comes on top of the Israeli Occupation Forces continuing to use farmers and youth inside Gaza for target practice. On December 14-15, a farmer trying to check his crop inside the 300m so-called “security zone” at the Gaza border was killed by Israeli tank fire. Nearby, in a separate incident, Israeli forces shot a Palestinian youth in the foot. Each day brings more such news of fresh horrors. Most discouraging of all, the current Egyptian military regime has enthusiastically taken up finding ways to make the Zionist occupation bite with that much more cruelty. It destroyed tunnels used as a lifeline to bring essentials into the Gaza Strip. In addition the regime instituted a completely arbitrary approach to opening and closing the Rafah crossing from the Gaza Strip into Egypt and which remained closed shut at the height of the most recent storm. Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (USA) is calling at this time on all activists for the cause of Palestine to marshal whatever resources are available or at hand — write letters to your local newspapers, raise the Palestinian emergency situation in other public venues, speak on local radio stations (especially university-campus-based) and community cable television, and whatever social media outlets are available — And organize local demonstrations (pickets or other publicly-visible manifestations; We can help with speakers, literature, etc). You can reach Al-Awda’s national office by email atoffice@al-awda.org; telephone 760-918-9441 and fax760-918-9442. Or by mail at 2720 Loker Avenue West Suite J, Carlsbad CA 92010, USA. Our national office will connect you with Al-Awda chapter activists in your area. HERE IS SOME MORE OF WHAT YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL CAN DO: Communicate this news and additional updated reports of these developments to interested and concerned friends and family. DEMAND AN END TO THE SIEGE OF GAZA Call, email, fax: 1 The U.S. State Department. Insist it tell Israel and Egypt to Open the Crossings to the Gaza Strip. Call 202-647-4000; select option 4 and ask the operator for the comment line. (You get one minute to record your message.) 2. The White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ Alternatively, write to: President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500 Call: 202-456-1414 Fax: 202-456-2461 3. The Office of Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations at sgcentral@un.org 4. Contact the Near and Middle East Desk at The International Committee of the Red Cross Ms. Dibeh FAKHR Tel: +41 22 730 37 23 Mobile: +41 79 447 37 26or fill out the form at http://www.icrc.org/eng/directory/?contactId=303023 View Post on Facebook · Edit Email Settings · Reply to this email to add a comment.

10,000 Flee Flooding in Gaza -- from "In Gaza" blog

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EXCERPT from In Gaza blog:
http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/13270/

OCHA: Number of displaced tops 10000 in GazaDec 15, 2013  Approximately 10,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to widespread flooding in the Gaza Strip, according to a report released Saturday evening by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  The numbers of displaced dwarf earlier estimates, as they take into account both the thousands who have sought refuge in Gaza shelters as well as those who have sought refuge elsewhere.  The areas most devastated by the storm are "North Gaza and Gaza City where over 1,500 houses suffered damage due to water entering houses, damaging furniture and electricity networks." An infant died and 100 were injured in storm-related incidents throughout Gaza, the report said. Schools throughout Palestine have been closed since Thursday, and according to OCHA 17 schools in Gaza have been converted into shelters, while five other schools have been rendered unusable due to flooding. In Gaza, over 10 percent of the coastal enclave's greenhouses and field crops were destroyed or damaged by winter storm Alexa, in addition to 50 animal pens, the report said. "120,000 chicks and 200 heads of livestock died as a result of the weather." UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said on Saturday that large regions of the Gaza Strip were a "disaster area" and called on the international community to lift the Israeli blockade in order to allow recovery efforts to proceed.

Carlos Latuff on Drowning Gaza

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http://latuffcartoons.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/gaza-disaster.gif

Heartbreaking Picture from Farah Falasteen Blog

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http://farahfilasteen.tumblr.com/post/69806076016/shadakader-a-palestinian-girl-on-an-israeli

shadakader:
A Palestinian girl on an israeli checkpoint after she was banned from entering Jerusalem with her mother.
(via basosy)

"International Human Rights Day…. Palestinian People’s Suffering Continues" [Excellent Summary of Oslo Results]

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via Aletho News
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/international-human-rights-day-palestinian-peoples-suffering-continues/

Moon of Alabama: "Kerry's Time Bomb And Beduin Genocide"

Tweet http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/12/kerrys-time-bomb-and-beduin-genocide.html#comments

Kerry's Time Bomb And Beduin Genocide

The Israeli government wants to cleanse some 70,000 Beduins from their ancient land and push them into a few desolate cities. It would then give the Bedu's land to Jewish settler and some bits of compensation to the Beduins. This plan is known as the Prawer-Begin plan. The Israeli government needs the parliament to approve the plan and to assure its passage had claimed that the Beduins had agreed to it.

In fact they did not agree.

Thus, the bill passed its first reading based on the assumption that the Beduin agreed, Levin said in a letter addressed to Begin. But as it was now clear that the Beduin did not agree to the plan, it would be used as a starting point instead of as an end to their demands, he said.

The contention in the Knesset is not about ethnic cleansing or about asking the Beduins for agreement. No, those Knesset members are outraged that the Beduins would be (partly) compensated at all. They prefer to commit genocide:

Arab Knesset members were very upset during the hearing, and some were removed from the hall for disorderly conduct. UAL-Ta’al MK Taleb Abu Arar said that Begin’s comments were “proof that you are a racist – hate Arabs.”“The law will cause an intifada in the Negev,” he pronounced.
“You want to transfer an entire population,” MK Hanna Swaid (Hadash) said.
Committee chairwoman MK Miri Regev (Likud) responded, “Yes, as the Americans did to the Indians.”

Such thought seems to have support from the U.S. Secretary of State Kerry who just a few days agodeclared the non-Jewish population in Palestine to be "time bomb":

Now, I want to come back to the peace process for a moment, because there is another existential threat to Israel that diplomacy can far better address than the use of force. And I am referring to the demographic dynamic that makes it impossible for Israel to preserve its future as a democratic, Jewish state without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state solution.Force cannot defeat or defuse the demographic time bomb.

As those Palestinian and Beduin children are seen by Kerry as a bomb and a threat what else are those Zionist to do than defuse it by doing to them what "the Americans did to the Indians"?

Seattle's Free Bethlehem Singers at Figgy Pudding Choral Competition #FreePalestine

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It's hard to sing and take pics at the same time!  ;)  Not to mention when it is freeeeezing!  Puts you in mind of what is happening to the people of Gaza with no power (thanks to politicians everywhere, but especially ISRAEL!)

We sing re-purposed carols about Palestine liberation.  It's great fun!  We had super audiences.

Thanks to Sima Kahn, who arranged our group and got us in the competition!

P.S.  the fact there is no video is NOT an indication that we didn't sound magnificent. 

“Made in Israel” Film Festival Draws Protest in Dublin -- #FreePalestine

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http://youtu.be/nZ1Duu49x4g

Apartheid? In Israel???? Apartheid Adventures Answers at Last!

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http://youtu.be/S_O5UTSBFCY

Go Canada! Zionists & Their Colonist Allies Cannot Party with Their Funders Unnoticed! #DayofRage

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http://youtu.be/QO7JpkQi8Io

Israeli Police Assaulting and Arresting Protestors in Haifa -- Thank You, Palestine, for Teaching Us How to Standing Against Oppression! #FreePalestine

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http://youtu.be/-hpfLUF_Fy4