Annie's New Letters (& notes): 2/4/24

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Where Should People Go?

In Gaza, Palestine- intentional & cruel destruction by Israel is everywhere... Mosab Abu Toha's younger brother's library

This is what remains of my younger brother’s home library. My brother is an extraordinary scholar of Arabic language grammar and was about to earn his PhD and who has introduced six books into the Arabic language rich collection of scholarly books.

Mosab Abu Toha

This is part of the original library

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

The Philly Palestine Coalition, CAIR, and Jewish Voice for Peace Rally for Justice & Peace: DIVEST FROM GENOCIDE

On February 5, hundreds of members of CAIR, the Philly Palestine Coalition, and JVP, along with Arab and Muslim community members and allies from across Pennsylvania rallied at the Capitol in Harrisburg to demand the state divest from genocide and invest in our communities.

As hundreds rallied and marched outside, hundreds occupied the main Rotunda steps in the Pennsylvania Capitol Building to demand the state divest from Israeli bonds and invest in Pennsylvania.

State troopers and other police agencies took over a hundred demonstrators away with their hands zip-tied, later releasing them with citations.

As Pennsylvanians, we work hard every day to invest in our communities and improve the lives of our families and neighbors–and our government should do the same.

But instead of investing in improving our communities, Pennsylvania elected officials are giving into special interests by investing our tax dollars in genocide and war by irresponsibly investing millions in Israel Bonds.

The Pennsylvania Treasury recently invested an additional $20 million of taxpayer dollars in Israel Bonds–bringing the total amount invested to $56 million.

This money directly enables the Israeli military and government to commit genocide of Palestinians and oppress Palestinians by upholding a brutal, separate-and-unequal apartheid system. The Israeli military has used these funds to kill over 25,000 Palestinians in this recent genocidal assault, with half being children. Pennsylvanians want our government to invest in our communities–not genocide and war.

Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity unilaterally made the decision to invest an additional $20 million in genocide and war via Israel Bonds, shortly after joining a financial advisory board for the Israel Bonds corporation. Stacy Garrity should invest in improving the lives of our communities–not gambling our taxpayer money to appease special interest groups.

Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s decision to invest public funds in Israel Bonds is both ethically and fiscally indefensible. Not only is an investment in Israel Bonds an investment in genocide of Palestinians–it’s a terrible investment of taxpayer money.

Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity should invest taxpayer money in our communities–not in genocide of Palestinians and war.

Pennsylvanians demand: not another dime for genocide, not another dime for Israel Bonds. https://www.flickr.com/photos/109799466@N06/albums/72177720314604388/

Monday, February 5, 2024

Pennsylvania troopers handcuff protesters calling for end to state investments in Israel

The sign says DIVEST FROM GENOCIDE-INVEST IN PA

Dozens of protesters, calling on the state to divest itself of Israel, entered the Pennsylvania Capitol on Monday.

The protesters, many of whom wore masks and black T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Divest From Genocide," started their protest outside. But sometime after noon, they entered the main rotunda, temporarily blocking the main stairs and some access points.

When members of the crowd were told they needed to leave immediately and that the protest was now an unlawful assembly, they cheered.

Eventually, Pennsylvania state troopers removed those gathered, handcuffing them with zip ties as others chanted, "Free, free, free Palestine."

Before entering the Capitol, organizers called on the Pennsylvania Treasurer to stop investing money in Israel.

In October, Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity announced that her department would be investing $20 million in Israeli bonds---for a total of $56.4 million in Israeli investment. An additional $8 million is invested in securities with companies based in Israel.... READ MORE https://www.wgal.com/article/protesters-enter-pennsylvania-capitol/46650909

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes or watch videos IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Please stopping funding Israel and fueling terrorism and war all over the Middle East

Our hard earned tax money going to CEOs

Dear President Biden (etc)

We the people should not be wage slaves for a foreign country that violates international law and basic human rights. Yes Zionists give American politicians who praise Israel preferential treatment and tons of money and perks- but that is called bribery and should be illegal.

American taxpayers should not be forced to fund religious preferences and Apartheid in the Holy Land.

Since 1948 Israel has been cruel to the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine, and every day bad goes to worse as Jews-preferred Israel builds a regime shaped on bigotry and injustice rather than the rule of fair and just laws.

Please stopping funding Israel and fueling terrorism and war all over the Middle East.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Religion should be a personal choice, not a state funded project.

October 7 should have been stopped before it happened - an Irish perspective by by Don Mullan

We are witnessing the first televised genocide in Gaza

How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation The Guardian’s interactive scrolls through three such damaged areas of Gaza: Beit Hanoun, al-Zahra and Khan Younis.

The Guardian: ‘Everything beautiful has been destroyed’: Palestinians mourn a city in tatters

127 Palestinians killed in Gaza in last 24 hours, death toll climbs to 27,365

Sorrow and fury: a letter from American rabbis to President Biden... also puplished (as a paid ad) in the New York Times late January 2024

Dear President Biden (etc) What Others See

CSM: Settler extremists widen campaign against Palestinians

HISTORIC UNRWA FILM AND PHOTO ARCHIVE

Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites.

Revealed: review of internal state department documents shows special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws

THE NATION: A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.”

I have hope

Violence is the feel good answer in movies & on TV- not in real life.

The human cost and the environmental cost of war in the Middle East is horrifying, and yet America's mainstream newspapers, TV news, and politicians itch to have more & more war, investing in Israeli violence at every turn.

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

October 7 should have been stopped before it happened - an Irish perspective by by Don Mullan

"I cannot accept that the Israeli intelligence services – one of the best resourced and most sophisticated in the world – were caught entirely blindsided."

People, holding banners and Palestinian flags, gather to stage demonstration to show solidarity with Palestinians and demand permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to support South Africa case against Israel on January 13, 2024 in Dublin, Ireland [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

On the evening of 31 January, 1972, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Widgery, accepted an invitation from British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, to conduct a public Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday massacre. A massacre I had witnessed the day before in my hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, as a 15-year-old schoolboy.

Prime Minister Heath told the Lord Chief Justice that he needed to remember that the British were ‘in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war.’

It was a political steer, indicating the desired outcome of the Inquiry. Truth was to be the sacrificial lamb. When, three months later, Widgery delivered the official report of his Inquiry, he had done his master’s bidding. He found the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent. British paratroopers had murdered unarmed civilians. Lord Widgery murdered the truth. And, in so doing, he also killed the non-violent Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement and handed the initiative to the men of violence – on all sides.

My community had agreed to cooperate, in good faith, with the British public Inquiry. When Widgery delivered his whitewash, it was clear our trust had been betrayed. In the end, many young men and women reasoned that there was no such thing as British Justice and, therefore, decided to fight fire with fire. In the process, they were branded ‘terrorists’, a politically loaded term aimed at dehumanising and delegitimising their decision to resist what they increasingly saw as another chapter of British colonial dominance in the north of Ireland.

For the next quarter of a century, the British government and its military resourcefully sought to crush Irish resistance, using every method conceivable. Their actions, however, succeeded only in giving birth to new generations of resistance whose political leaders, in the end, had to be engaged in what became a dynamic peace process.

As we look south-east towards Gaza today, we witness the merciless, revenge-driven, folly of Israel, under the malign and collapsing leadership of... Read More https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240130-october-7-should-have-been-stopped-before-it-happened-an-irish-perspective/

We are witnessing the first televised genocide in Gaza

Published: Feb. 03, 2024

Suhail Shafi, Mechanicsburg, Pa:

For the past four months, the world has been witness to what could well be the world’s first ever televised genocide committed by Israel in Gaza with the Biden administration’s near total complicity and support. Israel’s massacres in Gaza, which have caused tens of thousands of casualties, have involved attacks on civilian targets on a massive scale.

The U.S. funded and armed Israeli military has been responsible for the carpet bombing of entire civilian neighborhoods in Gaza with the indiscriminate destruction of houses, hospitals, schools and places of worship of both Christians and Muslims.

As a child growing up during the 90s, I still remember the horrors of the war crimes the Milosevic dictatorship inflicted on Bosnians and Kosovans. The massacres in Gaza are horrifically reminiscent of the siege of Sarajevo where Serb forces routinely massacred and bombed civilian targets in the city... READ MORE https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2024/02/we-are-witnessing-the-first-televisted-genocide-in-gaza-pennlive-letters.html

The Guardian: ‘Everything beautiful has been destroyed’: Palestinians mourn a city in tatters

The ruins of al-Hassaina Mosque, damaged in Israeli bombardment.

More than 200 buildings of cultural and historical significance have been reduced to rubble in Gaza, including mosques, cemeteries and museums

Kaamil Ahmed

Sun 4 Feb 2024 01.00 EST

Its walls collapsed and its minaret cut short, Gaza’s Omari mosque remains standing but vastly diminished. Around it, the historic old city is also in tatters. The 7th-century mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Gaza, was Gaza’s most famous and its surroundings a focal point of the Palestinian enclave’s history and culture, but the damage done to its heritage over more than 100 days of Israeli bombardment spreads across the city.

For the few Palestinians who remain, and the far greater number displaced and hoping to return, the culture and history has been reduced to memories.

“The city is a ghost town, people walk around with pale faces and their spirits are tired after having gone through this war. If you walk to the old city of Gaza, you will only remember the memories and feel sickened and saddened by the amount of destruction of cultural and religious sites,” said Bader Alzaharna, who lives in Gaza City despite the intensity of Israel’s ground operation in the area.

“The old city of Gaza, which used to be full of cultural sites, is grey and overcast. Walking in Gaza feels like we are in a movie, in a fictional story, in a fantasy. The scene is apocalyptic.”

Unesco, the UN agency responsible for protecting culture, says it has verified damage to at least 22 sites, including mosques, churches, historical homes, universities, archives and the archeological site of Anthedon Harbour, Gaza’s first known seaport... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/04/everything-beautiful-has-been-destroyed-palestinians-mourn-a-city-in-tatters

127 Palestinians killed in Gaza in last 24 hours, death toll climbs to 27,365

A view of the destruction in Al-Atatara district caused by Israeli attacks after the Israeli army withdrew from parts of Gaza City and North Gaza governorate for the first time since it started its ground offensive on 27 October, in Beit Lahia, Gaza on 1 February February 01, 2024 [Mahmoud Sabbah – Anadolu Agency]

At least 127 Palestinians were killed and 178 others were injured in the last 24 hours as Israel continues its onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, the territory’s Health Ministry said on Sunday.

“The Israeli occupation committed 14 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, leaving 127 martyrs and 178 injured during the past 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the statement said.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 27,365 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 66,630 injured since 7 October, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240204-127-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-in-last-24-hours-death-toll-climbs-to-27365/