In 1948 Israel could have chosen to include all indigenous Arabs- Christian and Muslim- as part of the process to make a real democracy for all human beings, but Zionists did the opposite by creating a huge refugee crisis.

 

Old PHOTO: Palestine, 1948. Refugees [try to] return to their village after surrendering in the war against Israel. The conflict forced 85 percent of the Palestinian population living in what became Israel to leave their homes. Their right to return was writen into a U.N. resolution that year, but 65 years later this issue has yet to be resolved.

Dear President Biden,

It is villainous for American leadership to empower Israel's ongoing quest to ethnically cleanse the Holy Land from the river to the sea. 

Israel is a cruel war machine: We should not be arming and enabling Israel's violations of international law and basic human rights.

Every IDF soldier and Zionist settler is forced to look back knowing their crimes against humanity. They have to live with themselves either by feeling remorse & soul crushing guilt, OR by finding solace in a boundless DENIAL that what Israel has been doing to the native non-Jewish Palestinians is absolutely wicked and wrong. 

Denial is a major component of Israeli life and public relations as Zionists seek to gather funds and support from individuals and governments every where and in every way worldwide. Our Congress and our national newspapers are pawns for racist Israel as they foolishly foster monstrous misinformation provided by the nefarious agents of a foreign country.

I abhor HAMAS, but please start noticing that for the past 100 years Zionists have set the example of arming religion and using terrorism to gain land and political power. Israel wants HAMAS to thrive, to demonize and further undermine Palestinians' quest for real freedom, justice, and true democracy.

In 1948 Israel could have chosen to include all indigenous Arabs- Christian and Muslim- as part of the process to make a real democracy for all human beings, but Zionists did the opposite by creating a huge refugee crisis.

Air dropping food to the starving people trapped in Gaza while also arming Apartheid Israel with lethal weaponry, money AND a green light to further impoverish and displace Palestinian men, women and children is a PR stunt.  A more honorable and helpful way forward is to PLEASE RESTORE FUNDING TO UNWRA ...

& Please STOP FUNDING ISRAEL for everyone's sake.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

A tenth child in a Gaza hospital has been registered as dying from starvation and warns 'real figure is likely to be higher'

Palestinians face assault by [Israeli] gun, bulldozer and attack dog- ‘They took our home, our land, everything’: Palestinians displaced by illegal settlers tell their stories

Rev’d Munther Isaac, Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, Bethlehem in Palestine: "When churches justify a genocide or are silent...."

Israeli Soldiers Just Murdered 103 Starving Palestinian Civilians, Wounded 700, as the Palestinians waited for aid

Israel, Palestine, Democracy... and the Rule of Fair and Just Laws & Policies- for a true and lasting peace

UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNWRA ‘at breaking point’ after $450m budget shortfall

The world should thank South Africa for standing against genocide in Gaza

The Guardian: Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, United Nations rights expert say

US Air Force member died setting himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy Washington DC #FreePalestine Aaron Bushnell 1999-2024

Gary Burge, Wheaton College professor, explaining why he is no longer a Christian Zionist.

Famous #Gaza artist Fathi Ghaben passed away this morning while awaiting Israeli permission to travel abroad for medical treatment, despite numerous appeals.

The New Yorker: My Family’s Daily Struggle to Find Food in Gaza by Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha

Jews don watermelon kippahs in Gaza solidarity #Palestine

Where you stand matters

Every nation that has divested funding from UNWRA is complicit in the starvation of human beings... and the torture of children

Our beloved "friend" Israel has been actively oppressing, demonizing, impoverishing, and displacing the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine and has been since 1948.

"I cannot understand how raw, naked evidence can be overridden by American intellectuals just because the “security” of Israel demands it" Edward Said

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

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

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."

 

A tenth child in a Gaza hospital has been registered as dying from starvation and warns 'real figure is likely to be higher'

© UNICEF/Abed Zagout

An 8-year-old child waits her turn to receive food in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. (file)

 

Gaza: Worst famine fears realised as 10th child reportedly ‘starves to death’

1 March 2024 Peace and Security

Repeated warnings from humanitarians over desperate food insecurity and imminent famine in Gaza came into focus on Friday amid reports from the enclave’s authorities that a tenth child had died from malnutrition and dehydration.

“The official records yesterday or this morning said there was a tenth child officially registered in a hospital as having starved to death,” said UN health agency spokesperson Christian Lindmeier. “A very sad threshold…(but) the unofficial numbers can unfortunately be expected to be higher.”

The development followed media reports overnight that four children had died in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, in addition to six other youngsters who died on Wednesday at the same facility and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Hunger ‘catastrophe’

© UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

A two-year-old girl in Gaza is screened, indicating severe acute malnutrition and drastic weight loss and muscle atrophy.

The deepening food insecurity crisis in the enclave – which UN aid coordination office OCHA said had left one in four facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity – prompted renewed international alarm on Thursday, when more than 100 Palestinians were apparently killed and hundreds were injured trying to get aid from a relief convoy stopped at a roundabout southwest of Gaza City.

Swift condemnation of the incident by UN Secretary-General António Guterres – who also called for an independent investigation – was echoed by other top UN officials, including UN relief chief Martin Griffiths, amid reports of continuing intense Israeli bombardment from air, land and sea across much of the Gaza Strip. 

“We saw pictures from Al-Shifa (hospital) where victims of the killings were lying next to each other waiting for any treatment,” the UN World Health Organization (WHO)’s Mr. Lindmeier told journalists in Geneva.

Water and power cut

“The system in Gaza – we’ve said it many times that it’s on its knees – it’s more than on its knees,” the WHO official continued, explaining that all of Gaza’s “lifelines have more or less been cut”, notably water and electricity, since immediately after Hamas-led terror attacks on Israeli communities on 7 October. 

OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke meanwhile insisted that before the conflict “people had food; people were able to produce their own food.”

Today, finding food within Gaza itself, whether from farming or fishing, “is almost impossible”, Mr. Laerke continued. “Putting food on the table…has completely stopped. The very foundation for people's daily sustenance is being ripped away.”

Latest humanitarian food insecurity assessments – the IPC classification index which is used as a reference by aid agencies – indicate that the entire population of Gaza – 2.2 million people – face "crisis" levels of food insecurity, the OCHA spokesperson said. Of that number, around 1.17 million face "emergency" levels of food insecurity, and the plight for another 500,000 is "catastrophic".

'Dire situation'

"We have a dire situation coming towards us at very high speed," Mr. Laerke said, his comments echoing a recent UN humanitarians' warning to the Security Council that famine in the enclave is "almost inevitable" unless aid is massively scaled up.  

According to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the quantity of aid supplies reaching Gaza in February was just half of January’s total, “and we know that January was not enough at all”, the WHO spokesperson said.

Just last week, the Council heard briefings from top humanitarian organisations, including medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières, which reported that a pattern of attacks by Israeli forces against hospitals and other civilian buildings, together with humanitarian personnel and convoys, was “either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence”.

Thursday evening, the Security Council held closed consultations, but were deadlocked over a presidential statement related to the aid emergency, according to media reports.

Vital signs

Reiterating repeated UN calls for a ceasefire, Mr. Lindmeier maintained that Thursday’s tragic aid convoy deaths had highlighted how desperate Gazans were for food, fresh water and other essentials after nearly five months of war. 

“This is the real drama; this is the real catastrophe here, that food and supplies are so scarce that we see these situations coming up, and the food supplies have been cut off deliberately,” he maintained, noting that Gazans were no longer able to provide for themselves.

“The fields which were existing – the greenhouses, the little bit of agriculture – all that needs water supply, or water supply depending on electricity and pumping stations,” he explained. “This is the real drama; this just underlines more and more that we need an urgent ceasefire now. If not now, then when?”

Donate to the humanitarian response in Gaza.

 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147112

 

UN News

Global perspective Human stories

 

[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]

Palestinians face assault by [Israeli] gun, bulldozer and attack dog- ‘They took our home, our land, everything’: Palestinians displaced by illegal settlers tell their stories

Salah Abu Awad says he is haunted by memories of the night he was woken up by Israeli settlers who burst into his home and threatened him at gunpoint.

It was one of the many attacks that forced the 28-year-old shepherd and his family to dismantle their homes and abandon their land in the village of Widada in the occupied West Bank’s south Hebron hills.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/01/they-took-our-home-our-land-everything-palestinians-displaced-by-settlers-tell-their-stories

[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]

Salah Abu Awad, 28, with his flock on Samoah lands, in the south Hebron hills. Abu Awad was forced to abandon Widada village due to constant settler violence and harassment. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

"In July last year, Abu Awad fled Widada, where his family had lived for decades, because he felt “caged and threatened”, he said. “We were afraid all the time, living in fear. It was not life.”

Abu Awad said that days earlier, Federman tried to steal his sheep at gunpoint while he was out grazing his flock.

It was the last straw for Abu Awad, who was still reeling from the shock of the home invasion in the early hours of 12 March 2023. Abu Awad recalled: “Yinon and Ely broke into my home. Ely came with an attack dog and a M16 rifle.

“They came inside and opened everything, including cabinets, and made a mess with everything. They asked ‘where’s the money’, but I didn’t have any money. My wife and children were so afraid.”

He said he reported the incident to the police, adding: “I got official paperwork saying I’d filed a complaint but nothing happened.”"

Rev’d Munther Isaac, Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, Bethlehem in Palestine: "When churches justify a genocide or are silent...."

Rev’d Munther Isaac, Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, Bethlehem in Palestine

 

Israeli Soldiers Just Murdered 103 Starving Palestinian Civilians, Wounded 700, as the Palestinians waited for aid

 The death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza has now passed 30,000. With more than 70,000 others injured, and thousands more uncounted victims buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings, nearly one in 20 of the prewar population of Gaza are now casualties of attacks. 

Dear (elected officials): Israel, Palestine, Democracy... and the Rule of Fair and Just Laws & Policies- for a true and lasting peace

Protest for Palestine 2024

 Dear President Biden,

America has its Trail of Tears and Jim Crow laws IN THE PAST.  The Nazi Holocaust with all its horrors is IN THE PAST... but armed Israeli bigotry, violence and injustice is going on right now.

Arab children are being terrorized and starved in Gaza by Israel, because racist Israel wants Palestinians either dead or radicalized and silenced. 

Israel claims to be a democracy but Israel is obsessed with demographics and with demonizing Palestinians.  That is clearly not a democratic value, nor is building a land grabbing Apartheid Wall on illegally occupied territory- or bombing refugee camps.

John Stewart has a recent show on the Israel/Palestine conflict "The Futile Crescent" where he makes jokes about American hypocrisy, and the cruel craziness of Christian Zionism, but Stewart drops the ball totally when it comes to seeing the full picture from 1948, when Zionists first chose to impoverish and displace the native non-Jewish Population of the Holy Land.

One state or two or three to end the Israel/Palestine conflict, a lasting peace can only start with a fully secular understanding of democracy... and the rule of fair and just laws.  

After WWII the vital importance of respecting every refugee's inalienable right to return to original homes and lands was a known factor in building a better, more just world.  Please start there- with full respect for basic human rights, including but not limited to UN Resolution 194 regarding the Palestinian refugees' right to return to original homes and lands. 

We should be fully funding UNWRA.

We should not be funding racist Israel and its ongoing violations of international law and the native non-Jewish Palestinians basic human rights. 

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNWRA ‘at breaking point’ after $450m budget shortfall

The world should thank South Africa for standing against genocide in Gaza

The Guardian: Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, United Nations rights expert say

US Air Force member died setting himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy Washington DC #FreePalestine Aaron Bushnell 1999-2024

Gary Burge, Wheaton College professor, explaining why he is no longer a Christian Zionist.

Famous #Gaza artist Fathi Ghaben passed away this morning while awaiting Israeli permission to travel abroad for medical treatment, despite numerous appeals.

The New Yorker: My Family’s Daily Struggle to Find Food in Gaza by Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha

Jews don watermelon kippahs in Gaza solidarity #Palestine

Where you stand matters

Every nation that has divested funding from UNWRA is complicit in the starvation of human beings... and the torture of children

Our beloved "friend" Israel has been actively oppressing, demonizing, impoverishing, and displacing the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine and has been since 1948.

"I cannot understand how raw, naked evidence can be overridden by American intellectuals just because the “security” of Israel demands it" Edward Said

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

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

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."

UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNWRA ‘at breaking point’ after $450m budget shortfall

Palestinian children gather to receive food at a government school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

 "Chris Gunness, who was UNRWA’s spokesperson for 11 years until 2019, said donors who had defunded the agency were “guilty of complicity” in a “slow-motion massacre” by starvation: “There are 1.2 million people on UNRWA’s food distribution lists in Gaza who are slipping into starvation right now. By defunding UNRWA, the UK and other countries are also adding to regional instability.

“UNRWA educates 550,000 children in over 700 schools, in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as well as Gaza. UNRWA’s health clinics across the Middle East see 7 million patient visits a year. The agency gives food and cash to 2 million people in the most fragile communities across a region at war.

“If the UK government wants to promote regional stability as it claims, they should be increasing funding to UNRWA, not suspending it.” " 

READ MORE... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/uns-palestinian-aid-agency-at-breaking-point-after-450m-budget-shortfall

[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]

The world should thank South Africa for standing against genocide in Gaza

The world should thank South Africa for standing against genocide in Gaza | PennLive letters

".... In the US, protected by oceans and a mighty military, we have felt relatively safe. It is easy to think these problems affect only other people. But that is an illusion. Every conflict creates more instability in the world, and when tens of thousands of men, women, and children are slaughtered, there is an increased risk of terrorism. September 11 was an act of revenge. Can military responses protect us from future such acts? And with the advance of technology, can we be certain that future wars will not be fought on our land?

To stand against genocide is to create a world which is safer for us, too."

Lilly Hirsch, Pottsville, Pa.

Feb. 26, 2024 | PennLive letters

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2024/02/the-world-should-thank-south-africa-for-standing-against-genocide-in-gaza-pennlive-letters.html

[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]

The Guardian: Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, United Nations rights expert say

Exclusive: UN special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri says denial of food is war crime and constitutes ‘a situation of genocide’

Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on 16 February. Photograph: Fatima Shbair/AP

Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians and should be held accountable for war crimes – and genocide, according to the UN’s leading expert on the right to food.

Hunger and severe malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip, where about 2.2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies. Aid trucks and Palestinians waiting for humanitarian relief have come under Israeli fire.

“There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza – other than to deny people access to food,” said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.

“Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide. This means the State of Israel in its entirety is culpable and should be held accountable – not just individuals or this government, or that person.”  ... READ MORE...   

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide

[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]

US Air Force member died setting himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy Washington DC #FreePalestine Aaron Bushnell 1999-2024

"I would have tried with all my might to talk Aaron Bushnell out of killing himself because things do get better and I would have liked for this courageous and beautiful soul to have lived to see that. He was the epitome of a soldier. Memory eternal, dear Aaron." Nancy Harb Almendras

 

from Palestine- Hanan Ashrawi

Who was Aaron Bushnell?

"Aaron Bushnell — the Air Force engineer who died hours after lighting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in DC on Sunday — was a 25-year-old IT engineer-in-training who hailed from a tiny Massachusetts town.

Bushnell livestreamed his gruesome final moments — chilling footage that included him calmly walking to his final destination outside the embassy’s gates before dousing himself in a flammable liquid and lighting it, sending him up in flames.

The steely-eyed serviceman, dressed in his camouflage uniform, said in the video, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide [in Gaza].

“I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” he added before repeatedly screaming, “Free Palestine!’’ as fire engulfed him and he eventually collapsed. "

 https://nypost.com/2024/02/26/us-news/who-was-aaron-bushnell-us-air-force-member-who-set-himself-on-fire/

 

Gary Burge, Wheaton College professor, explaining why he is no longer a Christian Zionist.

"... And here is the truest thing I can say: You can’t understand a story of occupation and oppression or the violence it requires unless you’ve seen it up close -- or made friends with those who live it.

This Arab pastor told me that even though I thought I had been to the Holy Land a dozen times, I had only been there once. I had been on the “tourist trail” and never gone astray. He was right. This tourist trail kept people from seeing behind the scenes in order to protect the Israeli tourism industry. But now I had peeked behind that curtain. And there was no going back.

 

I asked to meet other pastors. And this led to a network of friendships. And more experiences in the second uprising of 2000. I wrote a book about this in 2003 (Whose Land? Whose Promise?) and while it became a best seller my momentary fame evaporated quickly: I foolishly thought my evangelical friends would like to learn what was going on. They did not. By then I was a tenured professor at evangelical Wheaton College, still taking students to “Israel/Palestine” and feeling the growing resentment of my evangelical world. Which culminated in a formal letter from the college that prohibited me from taking any of our students to a Palestinian theology conference because “it was dangerous.” It would be “upsetting.” Some might need counseling afterward. Actually, it was inconvenient for Wheaton’s constituency. 

 

I have returned to Israel/Palestine and about a half dozen Arab countries many times over the years. I have tried to read widely and thoughtfully and discovered that the views of Israel – the theological views promoted by Christian Zionism -- are ill-informed and simply not biblical (see my analysis of this in Jesus and the Land). But worse, they are dangerous. I became convinced that there was a severe moral flaw in my evangelical church’s commitments. We were promoting harm and not representing the gospel or the love and truth of Christ in this part of the world. Our zeal for prophecy, our excitement about Israel and our hope in end times had blinded us. In a word, Christian Zionism had betrayed us.” 

 

About Gary Burge: A respected authority on the context of the New Testament, Dr. Gary Burge has authored numerous books on an academic level as well as books for laypeople. His technical works generally focus on the Gospel of John as well as the Israel/Palestine conflict. Gary is Professor of New Testament and  Dean of the Faculty at  Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI (USA). His works include Life Questions Every Students Asks (edited by Gary Burge and David Lauber), Interpreting the Gospel of John, and John: the NIV Application Commentary.  

https://overthinkingchristian.com/2021/06/03/why-im-not-a-christian-zionist-by-gary-burge/

[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]

 

 ~

 

Gary Burge, author of  Whose Land, Whose Promise: What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians (2003, revised 2013)

Famous #Gaza artist Fathi Ghaben passed away this morning while awaiting Israeli permission to travel abroad for medical treatment, despite numerous appeals.

Famous #Gaza artist Fathi Ghaben passed away this morning while awaiting Israeli permission to travel abroad for medical treatment, despite numerous appeals.