PALESTINE-RELATED EVENTS
in the SEATTLE AREA for May 28-June 7
For information about
history, issues, and our Seattle Divest from Israeli
Military Occupation campaign, please see www.palestineinformation.org.
E-mail us at palestinejustice@aol.com. We try to limit this listserv to
Seattle area events and news about the International Solidarity
Movement to End
the Occupation. To
have us post an event on this calendar, please email
lindabevis1@aol.com. For more general news and analysis on the
Palestinian-Israeli
conflict without a pro-Israeli-government bias, please see:
and other sites listed on our website.
To send a letter about anything you learn here to your
congressional rep:
http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=2174&ms=irqpeace
PALESTINE SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE/ISM SEATTLE NEWS
* Next
Palestine Solidarity Committee Meeting: June 15, 5:30-7:30
* Next ISM
Seattle subcommittee meeting: TBA
* Next ISM
Seattle Discussion Cafe: June 2, 5-8 pm (every first Wed.)
* Next Sidewalk
Education, June 12, 12-2 p.m.
* Next
Divestment meeting: TBA
* Next Theatre
meeting:TBA (usually every first Tuesday)
* Next ISM
pre-training: Fall
* Next ISM
Palestine Campaign: Summer 2004 -- June 25-Aug. 14
* Palestine
Film Festival: October 2004
Call 206 633-1086 for locations, dates, times.
PSC now has a copy of the new Media Education Foundation video,
"Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: American Media and the Subversion of Peace" (75 minutes) that you can borrow to
show in your living room or community hall. We previewed the video and found it extremely informative as
a tool for
understanding what is really happening in the Occupied Territories
and why Americans don't know about it. For more details on the video, go to the website of
the Media Education Foundation at www.mediaed.org. To borrow the video, email woodwend@earthlink.net
with your request. For information about other videos in PSC’s lending library,
contact: palestinejustice@aol.com
THIS WEEK:
WOMEN IN BLACK
FILM: PALESTINE IS STILL THE ISSUE &
SPEAKER JOHN REESE
CHILDREN’S DABKE AT FOLKLIFE
ISM DISCUSSION CAF
PALESTINE IN YOUR LIVINGROOM? BRING
SPEAKERS AND VIDEOS TO YOUR FRIENDS ANYTIME -- CALL PSC FOR MORE
INFO 206 633-1086
WOMEN IN BLACK.
Stand against occupation and war every
Thursday at Westlake.
4th & Pine. 5-6 pm. Wear Black. Men can
support.
FILM: PALESTINE IS STILL THE ISSUE & SPEAKER JOHN REESE
May 28: Beacon Hill Peace Action, and The
Seattle Cuba Friendship Committee, in conjunction with Bethany UCC, INVITE YOU
to
our monthly Movie/Discussion Night. Film: "PALESTINE IS
STILL THE ISSUE"2002, 53 minutes. Date: Friday, May 28, 2004 (the fourth
Friday, as usual). Time: 7:00 pm. Location: Bethany UCC Church, corner of
Beacon Avenue and Graham Street, about 1 mile South of the intersection of
Beacon Avenue and Columbian Way. We will have John Reese of CAN (Community
Action Network), whose current work is centered around the "Stop the
Wall" project, to give a brief presentation and guide the discussion.
Please invite your friends, and anyone who has special interest in Palestine. This is a family-friendly
event. We will be showing a children's film in an adjoining room. Feel free to
bring a children's film in DVD or VHS format.Feel free to bring a snack to
share.For more details, contact 206-725-7535 or 523-1720
May 29, CHILDREN’S DABKE AT FOLKLIFE:
More info (and exact times): contact Maha
Gebara at gebara@attglobal.net
June 2 ISM DISCUSSION
CAFE
at the B&O Espresso, Belmont and Olive
on Capitol Hill. Drop by anytime between 5 and 8 pm to learn more about the
International Solidarity Movement to End the Occupation. Every first Wednesday of the month.
More info: 206 633-1086.
UPCOMING:
SIDEWALK EDUCATION
NATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION
PALESTINE LIVES
FREEDOM SUMMER IN PALESTINE
PALESTINE IN YOUR LIVINGROOM? BRING SPEAKERS AND VIDEOS TO YOUR
FRIENDS ANYTIME -- CALL PSC FOR MORE INFO 206 633-1086
June 12, 12-2 pm. SIDEWALK EDUCATION FOR PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS.
Usually every 2nd Saturday from 12-2
pm. We have info, banners, signs,
and welcome all anti-racists to join us. Palestine Solidarity Committee. More info: palestinejustice@aol.com. Check our calendar for updates. Call 206 633-1086 if you need to
confirm a location. Westlake
Park: 4th & Pine, downtown Seattle.
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation National Week of
Action--June 5-11, 2004
No More U.S. Support for Israel's Illegal
Military Occupation!
On June 5-11, join with the US Campaign to
End the Israeli Occupation in a NATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION national week of action
to demand that our government end its military, economic, and diplomatic
support for Israel's illegal military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. For more information about Israel's
illegal occupation, its violations of international law, and the role of the
United States in supporting them, please see "Ending the Occupation: It's
the Law" at: http://endtheoccupation.org/downloads/fact_sheet_2.pdf
and "Dual Occupations: If It's Wrong in Palestine, Why is the U.S. Doing
it in Iraq?" at: http://endtheoccupation.org/downloads/dual_occupations.pdf
June 19, The next PALESTINE LIVES
event at the Crossroads community center
will be Saturday June 19th. 5:30 - 8:00pm, in the gym. More info:
m.simonsen@comcast.net.
June 25- Aug. 19: FREEDOM SUMMER IN PALESTINE.
It's not too late to join the
International Solidarity Movement in their nonviolent direct action campaign
against Israeli occupation. Contact palestinejustice@aol.com to find out
details of logistics, training, and partial funding help.
PALESTINE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM:
As always, Palestine Solidarity Committee
would love to help you discuss this issue with your community. Invite friends
over for dinner or tea and show a video and host a speaker who’s just back from
witnessing the occupation. All for free. Let us know if you’re interested:
206-633-1086, palestinejustice@aol.com.
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
STOP THE WALL
CAMPAIGN
”GO TO RAFAH TO INVESTIGATE RACHEL CORRIE’S DEATH” CAMPAIGN
OLYMPIA-RAFAH SISTER CITY PROJECT
SEATTLE DIVEST FROM ISRAELI MILITARY OCCUPATION CAMPAIGN
STOP THE WALL CAMPAIGN.
The Wall is higher than the Berlin Wall,
will take millions of American tax dollars to build, and cuts the West Bank in
two: confiscating some of
the
richest Palestinian farmland and many
wells for Israeli use. For more info: John Reese,
jreese@scn.org, 206-568-7110 or
Community Action Network can@drizzle.com
This link is to a translation of a May 23rd article in Yediot Ahronot titled
“Wall in the Heart”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1546.shtml
These links have additional information on
the wall including maps.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html
http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Changing%20Wall%20Path%2016-06-03/index.htm
The Israeli government continues to build
a massive wall to surround Palestinian areas and turn their ghettos into large
prisons. Twice as high and
planned-to-be three times as long as the
Berlin Wall, Israel's latest project of dispossession has already uprooted tens
of thousands of Palestinian fruit and olive trees and has destroyed or isolated
from Palestinian farmers tens of thousands of dunams of farmland, de facto
confiscating the Palestinian people's most fertile land and most important
water wells. Entire farming
communities are losing all of their agricultural land. More statistics:10% of the West Bank
will be confiscated by and for Israel by the path of this wall. As of December 2002, some 11,500 dunams
of land have been razed for the footprint of the wall, and 83,000 trees
uprooted. Over 31 groundwater
wells will be in the confiscated areas of the wall's first phase. A number of
villages are to lose their ONLY source of water. Land confiscation, destruction, and severe restriction of
movement will translate into the loss of over 6,500 jobs. Over 100 buildings have thusfar been
destroyed to make way for the wall, mainly shops, an important source of income
for families and communities At least 17 Palestinian communities will be
trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Some communities will be
surrounded on all sides by the wall. If completed as planned, some 95,000
Palestinians will be isolated. A
number of small villages have been informed that their proximity to the wall
will
deem most of their community
demolished. Courtesy of
PENGON. For more information and
statistics, see: www.pengon.org The ISM
invites you to join the Palestinian people in coordinated direct-action,
nonviolent resistance to this strangulation, oppression and affront to peace
initiatives. While leaders talk
about peace and the "road map", take part in working for justice on
the ground and paving the road to freedom. For more information: www.palsolidarity.org
SEATTLE DIVEST FROM ISRAELI MILITARY OCCUPATION CAMPAIGN
Ask Seattle City Council to divest its
pension funds from American companies selling war machines
to Israel. Includes Caterpillar and
Boeing. More info: www.palestineinformation.org
206 633-1086.
GO TO RAFAH CAMPAIGN
CALL ON YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO GO TO
RAFAH TO INVESTIGATE RACHEL CORRIE’S
DEATH & TO SUPPORT THE RACHEL CORRIE
RESOLUTION
(H.Con.Res. 111 calls for a U.S. investigation
into her death. Rachel Corrie was a 23
year-old American peace
activist who was killed by an Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer while nonviolently protesting the demolition of
the home of a Palestinian doctor and
his family in the Gaza Strip on March 16.
For more details, please see: http://www.endtheoccupation.org.): Murray:
206.553.5545; Cantwell: 206.220.6400; McDermott: 206.553-7170; Baird:360.695.6292....
DONATIONS IN MEMORY OF RACHEL CORRIE:
International Solidarity Movement --
Palestine
c/o Linda Bevis & Ed Mast
4330 2nd Ave. NE
Seattle, WA 98105
(you can also send donations to Rafah to
this address; make checks out to MECA)
Rachel Corrie Memorial Fund
The Community Foundation of South Puget
Sound
111 Market Street NE, Suite 375
Olympia, WA 98501
More information on the Community
Foundation can be found at:
http://www.thecommunityfoundation.com
Rachel Corrie Memorial Fund
c/o The Evergreen State College Foundation
Library Building, Room 3122
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, WA 98505
Corrie Scholarship Fund
c/o Elizabeth Abuhayder
351 Lee Street
Seattle, WA 98109
Plant An Olive Tree in East Jerusalem in
Rachel’s Memory
$20 buys a tree
Contact: Joan Abu Jebara
PR & Advocacy Desk Coordinator
YWCA Palestine
email: pr.advocacy@ywca-palestine.org
or olivetree@ywca-palestine.org
You can also send a check to "Friends of Sabeel-North Amerca", which
is an IRS registered 501(c)(3)
organization and the local contact is: sister Elaine Kelley, admin. officer,
2036 SE Jefferson St., Milwaukie, OR 97222-7660 Ph: 503-653-6625 email:
kelleysfcc@aol.com (do this and sister Elaine sent us a receipt and forwarded
the forms to the YWCA/ YMCA in Jerusalem).
The Corrie family also encourages people
to remember Rachel by doing
volunteer service in their community.
Cards and remembrances for the Corrie
family should be sent to:
P.O. Box 12149
Olympia, WA 98508
Emails to the family can be sent to:
rachelsmessage@the-corries.com
"MIDDLE EAST JUSTICE SCHOLARSHIP IN
MEMORY OF RACHEL CORRIE" has been created. This was created with the generous contributions of our
communities. If people are still interested in making contributions to this
fund they can do so by writing a check to the name of the scholarship fund and
send this to Evergreen State College at 2700 Evergreen Parkway NW., Olympia,
WA, 98505.
OLYMPIA-RAFAH SISTER CITY PROJECT
Dear Friend,
We’re writing to ask your help on an
urgent matter. As you likely know, the Palestinians of Rafah, in the Gaza
Strip, have been enduring a terrifying assault by the Israeli occupation
forces. Hundreds of homes in Rafah
were wantonly demolished last month in an indiscriminate campaign of
destruction that Amnesty International labeled a “war crime”. Thousands of people,
already impoverished, were then left homeless, and the campaign of home destruction
continued with scores of houses leveled in the month of November. A grave humanitarian crisis is taking
shape, with many injured persons cut off from medical care by the Israeli
Occupation forces, and local hospitals unable to cope with the growing number
of casualties.
One international volunteer currently
working in Rafah sent this dispatch on November 19th, which gives a look into
the grim daily existence of Gaza:
We are spending much of our days visiting
families who have lost children and other family members from Israeli bullets.
The other day in Gaza City, halfway through Ramadan, a very poor family lost
one of its sons. The 13 year old was out catching birds with other kids from
the neighborhood when an Israeli military foot patrol came upon them. The
autopsy report describes the child as being shot 17 times at close range and
his face was injured from being stomped on by the soldiers’ boots. His arm was
broken when they dragged him from the place of his murder to the border, in
order to claim they shot him because he got too close to the Green Line.
In Rafah, another 13 year old child was
shot in the stomach on his way home from school. That day there was an unusual
amount of gunfire all day long. In
Block O, one of the refugee camps along the border, this child was just getting
out of class and on his way home when he was either targeted or hit with a
stray bullet. He was not killed instantly, but was taken to the ICU where over the
course of 3 days was given 16 liters of blood. In the end the doctors could not
stop the bleeding and the child died.
Stories of such atrocities are almost
entirely absent from U.S. media reporting, yet are common fare to those involved
in solidarity work inside Palestine. As citizens of the country that finances and enables the
Occupation, we are trying to provide some immediate relief and hope to the
victims, while laying the foundation for long-term change. Who We Are The concept of an
Olympia-to-Rafah sister city relationship was begun last year by our friend and
colleague Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer on
March 16. Rachel insisted on living
in Rafah because she thought it was there that people faced the occupation’s
harshest conditions. It is well known that she was a member of
the International Solidarity Movement and that she lost her life defending a
Palestinian family’s home from destruction. Not so well known were her efforts at establishing a
sister-city relationship. She
traveled to Rafah with the names of school children from her hometown, seeking
to pair them with counterparts in Rafah in a pen-pal exchange. She imagined all sorts of
cultural exchanges, aid projects, and direct ways of connecting people across
the many barriers of distance, language and misunderstanding that separate us. She believed that only then might our
country’s misguided policies be confronted and changed.
Although Rachel’s life was cut short, many
of us were inspired by her and have resolved to carry out her project. Beginning with a small core group, we have
steadily expanded since our formation last Spring. A number of our members have gone to live in Rafah, building
connections with people and institutions there. We have begun a Fair Trade exchange for Palestinian artwork
through the Union of Palestinian Women, we support a Center for Disabled
Persons, we have sponsored cultural exchanges, and we offer translation between
English and Arabic for our pen-pal program. You can find out more about us, or contact us, through our
website at http://www.orscp.org/.
What You Can Help With Right Now
Right now the people in Rafah are asking
us for help in obtaining medical equipment and supplies. The idea of a Sister City in the U.S.
has raised hopes inside Rafah, and we wish to respond to their appeal as generously
as possible. While we have
longer-term ideas about setting up doctor exchanges and assistance from local
hospitals, we would like to respond to the more immediate request of obtaining
medical supplies. Our group’s ability to respond to such an appeal is limited,
and so we are reaching out to you for assistance.
Any contribution you can make to support
this project will be fully tax-deductible, and our transfer of funds to
Palestine will be completely legal and
transparent. Our 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor is the Middle East Childrens’
Alliance in Berkeley, CA, directed by longtime activist Barbara Lubin. If you are not familiar with them, see
their website at http://www.mecaforpeace.org/. MECA is one of the most established aid organizations
in the U.S. working
in the Mideast.
The funds they send to Rafah for us will
be distributed through Dr. Mona El-Farar of the Union of Health Work
Committees. You can read Dr. El-Farar’s
recent report on Rafah’s medical crisis at
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2054.shtml.
If you have any questions, feel free to
contact us by phone at (360) 867-0290 or via email at tomwright59@comcast.net.
Thank you so much for your help.
Tom Wright and Therese Saliba