"...This week, the anniversary of Nakba, it is as important as ever that we maintain the pressure to secure peace with justice in the middle-east...

..tightened restrictions mean it is becoming almost impossible for aid agencies, journalists and peace activists to operate in the occupied territories. This is in the face of increasing poverty and destitution in Gaza with almost three quarters of Palestinians now living below the poverty line..."

"We are here to demand an end to the Israeli governments state terrorism against the Palestinian people, and we are here to demand an end to the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

And we are here to demand an end to the hypocrisy of Bush and Blair who tell us they care so much about some UN resolutions that they are prepared to go to war over them and yet they cynically ignore others.

And we are here to demand an end to the slaughter of innocent people. Over the last two and a half years over 2000 Palestinians have been murdered. But its not just the cold killings we are protesting about, its the daily routine terror of a people being controlled and subjugated and humiliated - its the humiliation of an entire people.

And so we are here because we are angry, we are here because if the US can invade Iraq on the pretext of saying its upholding one UN resolution then it can take firm action against the Israeli government to uphold some other UN resolutions as well

There is the resolution of 36 years ago that stated that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal, there is the resolution of 55 years ago that demands the right of return for Palestinian refugees, there is the resolution of 29 years ago for the Palestinian right to self-determination. Do you remember Bush and Blair wouldn't even give the weapons inspectors 4 months well they have given the Israeli government over 40 years!

In the General Assembly there have been over 450 resolutions calling for justice for the Palestinian people. No country has been more condemned by the international community than Israel but no country has been allowed to get away with its rogue behaviour so consistently because its backed by its rogue supporter the United States of America.

So we are here to demand an end to such hypocrisy and an end to the military and financial support for Israel. Last year alone Israel received over two billion dollars of military aid from the US and in the first 14 months of the Palestinian uprising our own government granted 230 licences for military exports to Israel.

In the European Parliament the Greens are doing what we can to get action on these issues, and we've been getting the Parliament to uphold and support resolutions that demand the full and immediate implementation of UN resolutions that call for an arms embargo, call for the suspension of the EU-Israel Euro-Mediterranean Agreement and as Greens we are supporting the Campaign to Boycott Israeli Goods because we want justice.

How can North Korea, Iraq and Iran be rogue states but not Israel and not the United States. Sharon and Bush are due to meet shortly, but even as they do so Sharon is still building this wall to separate him from the Palestinians, this new wall. But we know that you cant build to peace by building walls, we know that you cant fight terror with terror, we know that the only way to get peace is through justice, and so we are here to demand justice for the Palestinian people."

"Sharon and his neo-fascist government do not speak for us...

We fully support a trade and arms embargo against Israel...

[We] contradict the mainstream Jewish communities bland justifications for Israel's brutal occupation - being in denial most follow the line of my country right or wrong. On this they have strayed far from real Jewish ethics.

Just Peace UK aims at making its voice heard in the national and Jewish press, and on radio. Challenging and rebuffing the myths and propaganda and misinformation by the Israeli government and its publicity agents Viacom and AIPAC. They claim that the occupied territories are now "disputed" territories - are just one example of how UN resolutions are being twisted and distorted. There should be no let up in exposing Israel's illegal and criminal activities in the occupied territories...

Israel must stop trying to silence or censor valid criticism with accusations of anti-semitism and bias, and in our case of being self-hating Jews or traitors..."

"I follow the news coming out of the occupied territories with horror and incredulity and having two young children myself I find particularly unbearable the fate of Palestinian children.

A whole generation now is being traumatised, couped up, maimed and being deprived of an education - that hope of the future which is every childs birthright and entitlement is being plundered by what is happening in their community. 350 Palestinian children are being currently detained in Israeli prisons. 28 of these prisoners are held in Quetzal, a military prison in the Negev where conditions are extremely poor and where medical treatment is withheld from them.

A local NGO - the Palestinian section of defence for children international reports that for those held across the Israeli prison system nutrition is very poor and that children are denied education contrary to Israeli and international law. And many children are dying. Of the more than 2000 Palestinians killed in the current intifada a quarter are children. Many of them are killed by the Israeli army - mostly shot in the head or upper body. Tank shells and bombs from f-16s also take their toll as does falling masonry of houses demolished over the heads of their inhabitants.

Only last week two year old Ani Al-Saeda Bashid from Gaza was shot in the head whilst playing in her back yard. Unfortunately overlooked by the illegal settlement of Jadin Such is the hatred of some of these settlers that killing children may be seen as a grotesque form of sport. In an earlier case the settler Shimon Yifra shot a girl dead in a school playground. He was in fact brought to trail and in his defence he said that he had only intended to shock her not to kill her. That defence was accepted and he was given a seven month suspended sentence. The absence of punishment by the state for such killings serves as a positive encouragement for such acts. Its seems to be part of the policy of state terrorism to make life so unbearable for the Palestinians that some will leave if only to protect their children's lives. In this way its a very effective form of ethnic cleansing.

"Stop Supporting Child Killers - Boycott Israel"
One of our downloadable boycott posters

And then there are the deaths caused by the closures and curfews that are so brutally imposed through out the occupied territories. 4 year old Abdul Fateh Java from Gaza needed specialised treatment for a heart condition but the family could not get her out either to Israel or Egypt and she died. Recently 10 year old Ala Osama Hamdan from a village near Nabulas got appendicitice. The Israeli soldiers at the local checkpoint turned the family back as they tried to make their way to Nabulas hospital. Her appendix burst and the little girl died. There are many such stories. Heavily pregnant women and women in labour attempting to reach hospitals are often held at checkpoints and obliged to give birth there. The world health organisation tells us that in the last 16 months 51 women have given birth at Israeli checkpoints and 29 of those babies have died.

So when this happens to your wife, to your children, where do you turn? To whom do you appeal? the Israeli government? the NGOs who can only catalogue these atrocities? the world press may show a fleeting interest but Palestinian deaths are so normal these days - two or three a day on average that they are hardly news worthy.

So its up to us, here in Britain to stand up against the normalisation of these horrors. We CAN put pressure on government to instruct Israel that the world community does not acquiesce in these barbaric policies. We can urge our government to exclude Israel from membership of all European institutions where it enjoins privilege status until it withdraws from the occupied territories. Our government must be brought to understand that this is an issue that many British people feel passionately about, we do after all bear much historical responsibility for the whole present Palestinian catastrophe. We have a government that spoke tirelessly about the human rights abuses in Iraq in order justify its military intervention there but has remained silent on the subject of the Palestinians. I would appeal to you to become active if you are not already, to lobby parliament and the European parliament to use their best offices to intervene, to see an end to these human rights violations and to work in good faith towards the outcome of peaceful change for the Palestinians and for all peoples of the middle-east."

"Israeli Occupation - England Today"
Many in Britain are worried by the growing Israeli influence in the UK,
already they feel that the UK has gone to war for Israeli interests...

The longest serving Member of the British Parliament Tam Dalyell has recently been attacked for criticising Zionist influence in the British government (May 2003) - specifically the influence of Lord Levy.

Lord Levy, an unashamed Zionist,
he shapes the governments policy on the Middle-East

Lord Levy, an unashamed Zionist, has in return for fundraisng for the Blair government been allowed to shape the UKs Middle-East policy as Blairs advisor and special envoy to the Middle-East (an unelected position which allows Levy to remain unaccountable to parliament).

Levy was introduced to Blair by a senior Israeli diplomat, Gideon Meir, in 1994. He became Blairs tennis partner and in charge of the 'private trust' which funded Tony Blair's office before the 1997 election. After the election he became the chief fund raiser for the Labout Party, dubbed "Mr.Cashpoint". In return Levy was given a peerage and made Tony Blairs special envoy to the Middle-East.

Lord Levy's villa in Tel Aviv, Israel

Lord Levy's second home is Israel where he owns a villa in Herzliya Pituah, an exclusive suburb of Tel Aviv.

He was former member of the board of the Jewish Agency, a body which established the alternative Zionist government in Palestine via the British mandate, which later became the State of Israel Levy was also a former Chair of the Jewish Israel Appeal, now the United Jewish Israel Appeal, an organisation which raises large amounts of money, much of which is channelled to Israel

He has acted as a fundraiser for Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister before Sharon, and maintains a close relationship with him. His son Daniel worked for the Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, to whom Levy contributed campaign funds. Both his children live in Israel

Is it any surprise then that the Blair government is blind to the plight of the Palestinians? How can Britain hope to have an objective policy in the Middle-East when clearly its shaped by a man who's loyalties lie with Israel?

At a time when the overwhelming majority of the British people were against war, Tam Dalyell reveals the reason why Britain still ended up going to war: "I believe his [Lord Levy] influence has been very important on the prime minister and has led to what I see as this awful war..."

The Islamic Human Right Commission has campaigned for sometime for the dismissal of Lord Levy. Please add your voice to their campaign to remove Lord Levy and give Britain a chance to determine its own Middle-East policy.

Related Links:

• http://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=680
• http://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=93
• http://politics.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4267434,00.html
• http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,950116,00.html
• http://www.red-star-research.org.uk/ levy.html
  

"We have always said that peace and justice are indivisible and the government should remember that when 2 million people marched in London on February the 15th it was for two slogans - stop the war AND freedom for Palestine - that is what the British people want...

The British people can see more clearly then ever that they have been lied to by the government. We were lied to about the weapons of mass destruction, we were lied to that this war will be backed by the United Nations and we were lied to that the invasion will be welcome by the Iraqi people. And the same people are now lying when they pretend that they are going to bring justice to the Palestinian people. You will get no justice from George Bush and Tony Blair!"

In solidarity with George Galloway::

"I would like to make it clear today the solidarity of the stop the war coalition with George Galloway. He has been persecuted for speaking the opinions of millions of British people, not just against the war but in his life long campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian people. He has been persecuted for saying that the emperor in Downing street has no cloths. And it is not George Galloway that is bringing the Labour party in to disrepute, it is Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and the other lying imperialists who are betraying the values of the British labour movement!"

In 1956, this is what Ariel Sharon told General Ouze Merham in an interview (*):

"I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child are more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child's existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger.

Mother with three children
Sharon's handywork that we dont see on the BBC.
Photo taken after the massacre of Jenin (April 2002) shows
the burnt body of a Palestinian mother and her three children
clinging to her legs, their bodies having melted and fused together.

"I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit, I've killed 750 Palestinians [in Rafah, 1956]. I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian woman is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do, but we tell others what they shall do."

[Source Palestine Monitor]

So what do you think President Bush and Prime Minister Blair called Sharon? Perhaps the new Hitler? Or perhaps a butcher, war criminal... No, instead they called him a "a man of peace". So next time you hear them use the word "peace", like in "a road map to peace", we will understand what they mean - the peace that is derived from genocide.

 

He highlighted the importance of the demo:

"Tonight the people of Jabalia and Beth-Lahia who were attacked by the Israeli tanks, the people of Jenin camp, the people of Kalkilia and Nabulus will see these demonstrations on their TV and will understand that the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people is alive, continuos and will continue till our victory."

And he stressed the unity of the Palestinian people:

"Today when we are commemorating the memory of 55 years of the Nakba we remember and we recognise that at this moment their is no more any difference between the Palestinians who were forced to become refugees in 1948, or those we were forced to leave their homes in 1967 or our Palestinian people that live now in the West Bank and Gaza strip - we are all one people deprived of its freedom, deprived of its independence. We are all one people imprisoned either in its camps or in the 300 clusters of prisons that Israel has established. But we are more than anytime before we are now the Palestinians, more determined than anytime before to be free, to be free not anywhere but in our home land Palestine!

If the US wants to see a solution in the middle east then the road is very short and easy - all they need to do is pressure Israel to abide by United Nations resolutions... He [Sharon] is bringing 12 pages of changes and comments for a road map that does not exceed 5 pages..."

And he mentioned the apartheid wall:

"He [Sharon] used the war on Iraq to create a new plan - to make the new Berlin wall that he is building in the occupied territories. to make it 700 Km length. The borders by the way between West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and Israel do not exceed 200 Km. He is building a wall that is 700Km in length - this is not for security, this is for annexation and theft of land and appropriation of the Palestinian territories."

"I think we can all agree that the world this century is a more and more dangerous place for media workers. We are now targets whether in Iraq, and now throughout Palestine

James Miller was a member of the national Union of Journalists, a member of our London freelance branch. He is the first British journalist to be killed in the occupied. He was not shot in the back by a stray bullet, forensic evidence makes it quiet clear, and it was a criminal act. Our call therefore is that there should be a proper criminal investigation, that is what we demand, and that is what we have demanded anytime a journalist, who are under Geneva Conventions civilians, have died.

... seven Palestinian journalists have been killed. In 18 months nearly 200 Palestinian have been shot at, stoned, harassed, intimidated, arrested, jailed. The very profession of journalism is at stake. Journalists in Palestine do not get any of the accreditation from the Israeli government, from the government press office. They are subject like all civilians to the curfew, their installations are bombed and raided and that's particularly important for media freedom in Palestine There are 45 independent radio or TV stations. Last year alone 4 of them in Gaza, Ramallah and two in Bethlehem were practically totally annihilated.

To end in the worlds of one Palestinian journalist: "We have no freedom to work, no freedom to live, no freedom of expression. A need to be able to tell the truth. Through truth can come peace."