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:

www.palestinechronicle.com

www.electronicIntifada.net

www.btselem.org

www.miftah.org

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