On Passover, Jewish Activists Call for End to U.S. Military Aid to Israel

On Passover Jewish Activists Call for Suspension of U.S. Military Aid to Israel

At noon on Wednesday, March 27, members of A Jewish Voice for Peace will walk to the San Francisco Federal Building and deliver petitions to members of Congress.

San Francisco, CA-On the eve of Passover, Wednesday, March 27, at 12:00 noon, U.S. Jews will gather at UN Plaza in San Francisco to call for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. They will walk from UN Plaza to the San Francisco Federal Building's offices of Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Representative Nancy Pelosi to deliver hundreds of signatures on petitions that state, in part, "we, the undersigned American Jews, call upon the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Israel until Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem."

More U.S. aid goes to Israel than to any other country in the world and of that aid, $2 billion every year is direct military aid. A large part of the U.S. aid to Israel goes to purchase tanks, helicopter gunships, and other military equipment that are used against Palestinian civilians. U.S. aid literally pays for the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

The U.S. military aid to Israel has continued despite a U.S. law that prohibits our country from giving aid to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of human rights violations. Sources that range from the U.S. State Department to United States and Israeli human rights organizations have documented human rights abuses by the Israeli military. For example, Human Rights Watch reported in January 2001 that during a three-week period, more than 120 Palestinians were killed and over 4,800 injured in clashes with Israeli security forces. Most of the deaths were the
result of excessive, and often indiscriminate, use of lethal force by Israel Defense Forces soldiers,
police, and border police against unarmed civilian
demonstrators including children.

Israeli security forces engage in "targeted killings,"
which are actually assassinations, and the Israeli
human rights group, B’Tselem has documented numerous cases of torture of prisoners in detention. Additionally, Israel has placed sweeping restrictions on movement of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These restrictions not only violate Palestinians' right to freedom of movement but other human rights, including the right to work and make a living, the right to proper medical treatment,
the right to education, and the right to maintain
family life.

"As American Jews, we have to suffer the indignity of seeing Israel trample Palestinian human rights in our name. We call on the U.S. government to end its funding of the Israeli military until these human rights violations and the whole Occupation end," said Henri Picciotto of A Jewish Voice for Peace. "The Occupation is taking a bloody toll on both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, and it has to end."

During the protest, participants will also present the "Modern Day 10 Plagues of the Israeli Occupation." The story of the 10 plagues, told during Passover, is traditionally about the 10 plagues that God visited on the Egyptian people to allow for the escape of the Israelites from Egyptian oppression. The Modern Day Plagues, on the other hand, are plagues that are visited by Israeli oppression on of the Palestinian people. They include house demolitions; checkpoints that prevent the movement of Palestinians throughout
the Occupied Territories; the destruction of thousands of olive trees; and assassinations. The plagues also include the illegal settlements that have been established in the Occupied Territories, and policies that serve the settlements such as special by-pass roads that are for the exclusive use of the Israeli settlers living in the Occupied Territories and the diversion of water by Israel to the settlements so that while Palestinians find their wells dry, many settlements have swimming pools.

A Jewish Voice for Peace is a Bay Area grassroots
organization dedicated to the human, civil and
economic rights of all peoples in the Middle East.
For further information, please visit
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org.