Posted on 01/02/2009 12:42:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Saturdays protest is the third in Atlanta this week. The other two were held last Saturday and Tuesday in front of the Consulate General of Israel . The protestors decided to gather in front of CNN to call attention to media coverage of the attacks, which are in their eighth day. The media in the U.S. has a tradition of not providing an unbiased message, said Ziyaad Lunat , one of the protest organizers. They dehumanize the Palestinians. The Emory Advocates for Justice in Palestine; Athens Justice for Palestine; and the International Action Center organized the protest. Similar ones are being held in other cities across the nation and in other countries. Every person here is outraged by the military assault in Gaza, said Dianne Mathiowetz , one of the organizers. This, under all international law, is a war crime.
Rose Jones, a retired police officer who is majoring in political science, Middle East Studies and Arabic at the University of Utah, said she has witnessed firsthand some of the violence. She said she came under fire from Israeli soldiers while in the city of Ni'lin in the West Bank in November. She said Israeli soldiers began gassing the group she was with, and stopped only after she removed her hijab, showing her blonde hair. "When the smoke cleared, I looked up and there was a line of boys, some only five or six, who had stood up in front of me to defend me," she said. "They were throwing rocks, trying to save me, even though I was the one paying for the weapons that were being fired at us." She hopes to go to law school after completing her degree and return to what she hopes is then a Palestine state and work as an attorney.
"Cease fire now," read some signs. And: "Stop the real terrorists/ US-Israeli war machine," and, "As a Jew, I cannot support attacks on civilians."
Neil Fox, who is Jewish, attended the protest with his wife and two daughters, who are 8 and 10. He described his own upbringing as Zionist but said he hopes to pass a different legacy on to his own children. He and his wife send their girls to Middle East Peace Camp for Children in Seattle's Magnuson Park to ensure they have personal connections to Palestinian and Muslim children, he said. American Jews, he said, have a particular responsibility to speak out against the Israeli government's military actions. "As a Jew, I want to tell Israel that they're not doing this in my name," he said.
http://www.middleeastpeacecamp.org/
Hundreds march in Seattle to protest Israeli attacks on Gaza - January 3, 2009 - In the crowd, Wendy Somerson, 40, a Jewish woman from Seattle, clutched a sign that read, "The State of Israel Betrays Jewish Values." "We don't support collective punishment of the Palestinian people. All people are equal and all lives are equal," said Somerson, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. "The 400 Palestinian lives. We're mourning them just as we're mourning the four Israeli lives," she added, referring to those who have died recently. Voices of Palestine and other groups, including The Church Council of Greater Seattle and Jewish Voice for Peace, organized the rally.
In a speech to the crowd, Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called for an end to the "bombardment" of Gaza. He said residents have been denied food, water and other necessities. "Palestine must be given some hope of freedom from Israeli occupation," he said. The Rev. Charles Stovall, senior pastor of Munger Place United Methodist Church, also appealed for Israel to stop the strikes. "This is not a Muslim issue. This is not a Jewish issue," he said. "This is an issue of humanitarian rights." The crowd cheered at his words and chanted: "Occupation is a crime."
The Dallas protest, organized by the Muslim Legal Fund of America and the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, follows similar rallies around the world. "What's going on in the Gaza Strip is an atrocity and it needs to stop," said Noor Elashi, the daughter of Ghassan Elashi, one of five Holy Land Foundation defendants recently convicted of conspiring to send money to Hamas.
Local Muslims protest Gaza strikes - January 2, 2009 - "We need to tell the whole world, especially Austinites that your tax dollars nowadays are being used to buy F-16'S that will drop 2-thousand, 3-ton bombs on civilians in the Gaza Strip and that is absolutely unacceptable," says Mohammad Al Bedaiwi, a member of the Austin Network for Islamic Studies.
Regarding your comment #66, I wouldn’t blame Orthodox Jewish people for being more wary of taking Irish and Norwegian conversion candidates.
...Irish and Danish, rather.
"We're Jewish people making a statement," said demonstrator Jeff Warner. "I think it's important because Jewish Americans are assumed to back Israel no matter what it does, which is not true."Warner... isn't that a *gasp* GERMAN name?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.