Starving the Hungry 

July 2006

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Go to: http://www.sapienspromise.org/ for daily news of the Occupation.

Israel's F16s , tanks & helicopter gunships would be no match for International Sanctions and an Academic and Cultural Boycott

Zionism in practice

Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property  

24 hours to 8am July 27, 2006 :

3 air raids – 20 attacks – 21 raids – 20 dead – 39 wounded

Israelis shell house - kill mother & 3 little girls

11 civilians die & 31 wounded in Israeli attack

F16 missile strike destroys house – wounds 3 including child

Israeli soldiers seize & take away 3 children aged 15-16

Settler gunman wounds 3 Palestinians

Israelis stop ambulance – sick elderly man dies

Settler gunmen shoot & kill Palestinian sheep

Israeli Army bulldozers ruin Palestinian farmland

10 taken prisoner – 26 detained

88 restrictions of movement

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TWENTY Palestinians killed, most of them civilians, and 36 wounded on this one, by-no-means exceptional day, the inhumane oppression continuing 365 days a year, without any end in sight. Can you imagine living under such conditions? How does anyone have the fortitude to do so?

And so who do we apply sanctions against  --  those deliberately increasing the hunger of people already suffering a terrifying brutal racist occupation? No: the US, Israel, and the EU have cut all aid to the Palestinian Authority because the Palestinians have used their democratic right to elect a government of their choice.

This must be the first time that international sanctions have been applied to the VICTIMS of an occupation, rather than to the oppressors. How can we continue to be complicit in a situation where people who are oppressed, impoverished and terrorized are being bullied instead of being treated with compassion? And not only does the US supply a massive arsenal of arms to Israel which are used against the Palestinians, but last year we in Britain increased our arms sales to this pariah state.

There are 10,000 Palestinian men, women and children in Israeli prisons, many of whom have been tortured and many imprisoned for years. Yet there has been an outcry about three Israeli soldiers taken prisoner, rather than about the 10,000 Palestinians, most of whom have done little or nothing to oppose the occupation.

For a long time we should have been boycotting Israel because its government (?junta) ignores UN Resolutions and does not respect international humanitarian law or international human rights law, notably the the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel claims to be a party, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has ratified.

Archbishop Tutu has said: “Compared to what the Palestinians are going through, what we suffered in South Africa was a picnic.” If we do not work for justice to the oppressed, we reject something priceless: our humanity.