Today, we are all Lebanese, we are all Palestinians!

Tom Joad

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Sun Jul-30-06 10:40 AM
Original message

Today, we are all Lebanese, we are all Palestinians!

Edited on Sun Jul-30-06 10:52 AM by Tom Joad

We stand in mourning with our brothers and sisters who are in mourning with the many killed in Qana --again! For it was just 10 years ago that Israel committed another war crime there. see this . Yet another has just claimed the lives of over 50 children. We watch in horror as the words of the Israeli Justice minister are put in action, that everyone in southern Lebanon is a target. He certainly meant everyone.

We stand with the over 800,000 people of Lebanon who have been made refugees, forced out of their homes, forced to flee. Not unlike the 700,000 Palestinians forced to flee Israeli aggression in 1948, who were never allowed to return to their homeland, and even today fill refugee camps, a monument to a terrible injustice.

We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza, who have been weeks without regular power, many without running water in their homes, sewage in the streets because of lack of electrical power, cynically bombed by the war makers by orders from Tel Aviv, and blessings from Washington, Democrats and Republicans.

We stand in solidarity with our Israeli brothers and sisters, those like Uri Avnery, Jeff Halper, and Tanya Reinhart, the Women in Black, the refuseniks, and the very many common folks, who work tirelessly and courageously for peace, and more than peace, for real justice, that will create a livable future for all.

We stand with the West Bank village of Bil'in, who have for months, with hardly any notice in the United States, conducted a remarkable campaign of nonviolence that will bring down this Wall that is being built on their land, that will separate farmer from his crops, workers from their fields. They have played music, prayed, they have resisted beatings, and every week, they have returned to protest with internationals and Israelis joining them. Where is the Palestinian Ghandi or Martin Luther King? There are hundreds! Thousands! We celebrate the American Friends Service Committee's nomination of one of them, Ghassan Andoni, for the Nobel Peace Prize. http://www.afsc.org/news/2006/nobel-nomination.htm">See more here.

We stand with you all, we commit ourselves to creating a new U.S. foreign policy based on fairness and justice for all, not cynical desire to extend U.S. power and influence that benefits only the elites. We support liberation, not occupation. We demand an immediate ceasefire, negotiations to release all prisoners, including Lebanese held by Israel predating this brutal invasion. We demand the release of Palestinian prisoners, including the hundreds of Palestinian children. Including the prisoners held months without charge or trial.

We reject any false line separating us from those who are struggling against oppression, even as we struggle against a regime that supports war and occupation in Iraq, supports extreme economic injustice at home and abroad. Whether we are secular, or Muslim, Christian or Jewish, we know that we cannot be free unless you are free. Our struggle is one.