Posted on 03/30/2002 2:19:11 PM PST by kattracks
NEW YORK, Mar 30, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Steve Quester is spending his spring break in the West Bank.
Quester, a public school teacher, is joining about 20 other American activists who are traveling to the Palestinian territories to act as human shields for Palestinians as the Israeli military mounts retaliatory strikes for a series of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
"We're going to put ourselves in the way between Israeli military aggression and a helpless civilian population," said Quester, 39, who departs Sunday for a ten-day trip. He and other activists, several of whom are already in the Mideast, plan to stay in Bethlehem, Nablus and Gaza.
The group, which includes Jewish and Palestinian Americans, hopes to engage in various nonviolent protests and activities "to stop the madness that's going on there," said Quester, who teaches first grade in the New York borough of Brooklyn.
Their goals include removing Israeli roadblocks around Palestinian towns, observing Israeli-controlled checkpoints, helping rebuild demolished Palestinians homes and accompanying Palestinians on protest marches, he said.
The activists are part of a growing contingent of foreigners, mostly from Europe, who are in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest the Israeli occupation and recent military action. On Thursday, about 600 activists arrived in Ramallah, where Israeli tanks have surrounded the offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat since Friday.
The U.S. activists are working in cooperation with a Palestinian-led coalition called International Solidarity Movement that has appealed to foreigners to bring attention to conditions under the Israeli occupation. This is the third time that Americans have made trips to the Mideast in conjunction with the coalition, most recently in December.
An American member of this coalition, Adam Shapiro, and an Irish woman, Caoimhe Butterly, spent Friday night inside Arafat's Ramallah compound. Shapiro left the offices Saturday, but Butterly decided to stay because she has medical training.
The Israeli siege is part of a major military offensive launched after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 22 Passover diners on Wednesday.
Quester, who has lived in Israel for three years and speaks fluent Hebrew and "shaky" Arabic, says his "heart breaks for everyone killed in the violence."
He believes the suicide bombers are "desperate and hopeless" and that that ultimately "all the heartbreak flows directly from Israel's policy" of occupying the Palestinian territories.
He hopes his trip will boost the morale of Palestinians "by seeing more internationals standing shoulder to shoulder with them."
"I'm a Jew," Quester said. "The Israeli army and government are perpetrating a great evil on the people of Palestine, and they're doing so in my name. I can't let this stand."
Also, as an American, Quester said he opposes the financial and military aid that the United States provides Israel, which in his opinion perpetuates the violence.
Israel receives more than dlrs 3 billion a year in civilian and military aid from the United States.
"We U.S. citizens have a special responsibility to stop the madness that's going on there," he said.
By MALCOLM FOSTER Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 17:28:44 -0800 (PST)
From: Steve Quester
To: spt31@columbia.edu
Subject: Jews Against the Occupation
I am writing to you today as a member of Jews Against the Occupation (JATO). Elizabeth Wilson gave me your address, and said that you could forward this message around.
JATO is an organization of progressive, secular, and religious Jews of all ages throughout the New York City area that is actively organizing and advocating around issues of peace and justice for Palestine. We bear witness to the fact that the Jewish community does not have one monolithic voice of unconditional support for the Israeli government. Rather, there is a growing national movement of American Jews who oppose Israeli oppression, and support Palestinians right to self-determination.
If you are planning any public events around the current crisis in Palestine, we would be delighted to provide a speaker who could address the issue from a Jewish, pro-Palestinian perspective. We can usually meet requests for speakers on evenings and weekends, and can sometimes meet requests for daytime speakers.
We can be contacted at jatonyc@yahoo.com, or at (212)539-6683.
Yours truly,
Steve Quester
for Jews Against the Occupation
from www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org:
Jews Against the Occupation
Our Mission
NO OCCUPATION IN OUR NAME
We as American Jews reject the Israeli government assertion that it is "necessary" to subjugate Palestinians for the sake of keeping Jews safe. We assert that security can only come from mutual respect, and that the occupation of Palestine is only worsening the position of Jews in the Middle East and around the world.
RESTORE HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS
The Israeli military fires bone-crushing rubber bullets and live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian civilians engaged in peaceful protest, failing to distinguish between peaceful and violent resistance. The Israeli government has been demolishing Palestinian houses and crops in the Occupied Territories, while allowing Jewish settlers -- many of them American -- to illegally occupy the same land.
STOP ECONOMIC ATTACKS ON PALESTINE
The Israeli government has attacked the Palestinian economy by: closing Palestinian banks; imposing extreme taxes on business; withdrawing operating licenses; destroying industrial equipment; bulldozing farmland and banning fishing; restricting workers' movement; controlling the export of Palestinian goods; closing the borders of the Occupied Territories; and refusing to fund infrastructure like water and electricity -- even in Arab villages within Israel.
LET PALESTINIANS RETURN HOME
Thousands of Palestinians were driven out of their houses and off of their farms during and after the creation of Israel. They must be allowed to return to their homeland.
NO COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE
SAY YES TO THE RIGHT OF RETURN
=====
"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the airhowever slightlest we become unwitting victims of darkness.
William O. Douglas
U.S. Supreme Court
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the nitwit makes it back alive, perhaps we can send him on a wild goose chase for a speaking engagement that doesn't exist. We could have some fun with this guy.
Nam Vet
ACORN is a racist orgaznization promoting "community control" (black supremacism) and the elimination of standards at New York's elite, public high schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech). Those schools require candidates to take the nation's most competitive exams, in order to gain admission. Back in 1996, I believe it was, ACORN organized sit-ins by black mothers in the lobby of Stuyvesant H.S. (in Battery Park in lower Manhattan, then in the shadows of the World Trade Center). ACORN organizers claimed the sit-ins were to protest the racism inherent in predominantly black junior high/middle schools' failure to provide the sort of high-level math classes required to prepare students for the Stuyvesant (& Co.) exam. But that was just a cover story.
Who could argue with the demand for upper-level academics? I got ACORN to send me a packet. Their demand wasn't for upgrading the curricula at black schools; it was for eliminating the Stuyvesant (et al.) entrance exam, and accepting incompetent black kids, based on the qualification of pigmentation.
The ACORN lady I'd spoken to, was proud of ACORN's support of "community control." It all made sense, but not in the way ACORN wanted people thinking. Community control was the '60s black apartheid movement that had banished high-octane academics (along with white teachers) from black schools, and condemned black achievers as being guilty of "acting white." It wasn't the white "racists" who dashed black hopes, it was the black racists.
I have not read all of this rather long thread yet, but...
These idiots are obviously "with the terrorists", and their U.S. citizenship should be revoked immediately.
Then, let the Israelis deal with them as necessary.
What an embarrassment. These sorry traitors show zero respect for the risks and sacrifices my father accepted during WWII to safeguard their freedom. Our world is currently being attacked by suicidal (Kamikaze-like) animals that have no respect for their own lives, much less the lives of innocents. Now we have "Americans" seeking to support the effort of the murdering savages? These are not Americans, and they should never, ever, be welcomed back into our country.
I say let them go. They are liable to get shot by the very heathens that they are trying to protect. If they survive, maybe they will wake up and smell the coffee. Israel is doing what they are doing for a very good reason, to try and protect themselves. It is the Palistinian suicide bombers and their leadership that is trying to destroy others out of a deep-seated hatred.
Anyone that hates that much will kill anyone. They do not see any distiction between friend and foe. To them all are foe, and they will kill them.
we as Americans have that responsibility. we need to stop the madness.
let's stop it by telling Israel, "hands off, defend your country as you will. do what you need to do to be safe from terrorists. we will prevent any non-ME country from deploying its military against you. go with God Israel and do what is right."
you meant morons, right?
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