On July 21st, 2014 representatives of Veterans For Peace attempted to deliver a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington, DC. The ambassador refused to accept the letter, it is reprinted below. (Ret) Colonel Anne Wright read the letter on behalf of VFP. Also published below is a statement read by VFP board member, Tarak Kauff. The VFP representatives were joined by CODE PINK and Popular Resistance.
All photos are by Bill Hughes and from his website where more photos are available.
Veterans For Peace: It is time to recognize the human rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to return to the homes from which they were forced to flee in 1948.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer
3514 International Dr NW
Washington, DC 20008
July 21, 2014
Dear Ambassador Dermer,
As veterans who have witnessed the horror of war, we are deeply outraged by the state of Israel’s slaughter of many innocent civilians in Gaza. The military assault against children, women and men, by air, by sea and now by land, is a clear violation of international laws of war and of human rights. More than 300 Palestinians have been murdered, almost all of them civilians, nearly a quarter of them children. Thousands are wounded, including nearly 1,000 children.
Veterans For Peace joins millions of people all around the globe who are shocked by this vicious, one-sided slaughter. We understand the huge injustice of the Israeli occupation. Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed from their homes and forced to live in the Occupied West Bank or in the open-air prison that is Gaza.
Mr. Ambassador, please tell the government of Israel to stop the massacre now! There should be an immediate end to all bombing and an immediate withdrawal of all Israeli military from Gaza.
Mr. Ambassador, please remind Prime Minister Netanyahu that you can bomb the world into pieces, but you cannot bomb it into peace.
Veterans For Peace calls for an end to the 8-year blockade of Gaza, so that normal trade and travel can occur.
Mr. Ambassador, please remind the government of Israel of the billions of dollars in aid that is provided to Israel by the United States. Veterans For Peace will push for an end to all military aid to Israel until such time as the Israeli occupation gives way to real peace negotiations based on the human rights of all the people concerned.
Veterans For Peace recommits itself to participating in the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and Israeli products.
We encourage all parties to search for a nonviolent path to peace. We urge both Hamas and the government of Israel to refrain from targeting civilians. We especially call on the state of Israel to stop its massive violence now. It is time to recognize the human rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to return to the homes from which they were forced to flee in 1948.
Mr. Ambassador, the peoples of Palestine, Israel and the world deserve to live in peace and harmony. The ultimate goal of Veterans For Peace is to abolish war. In the meantime, we stand ready to assist those Israelis and Palestinians who seek peace and reconciliation.
Patrick McCann, President
for National Board of Directors
VETERANS FOR PEACE
Tarak Kauff Statement on Gaza
Somewhere children sleep and dream peacefully but not tonight in Gaza.
Somewhere children wake to a peaceful dawn but not today in Gaza.
Somewhere children play soccer by the sea but not today in Gaza.
We are here today as veterans to deliver a letter from Veterans For Peace to the Israeli ambassador. I am here as a Jew and, like many American Jews, I am appalled by what Israel is doing.
The Israeli government and the U.S. Congress say Israel has a right to defend itself. So does a Palestinian population with no tanks, aircraft or navy, facing the fourth most powerful military in the world. Palestinians have been living under a brutal and strangling occupation for decades.
Almost 2 million people in Gaza have been surviving in what has been called the largest open-air prison in history. The people in Gaza have been subject for decades to regular IDF ground, sea and air attacks targeting suspected militants and politicians and often killing innocent civilians. They are denied freedom to travel, to farm. Their infrastructure has been destroyed, water treatment plants, hospitals, schools and power stations all bombed during three horrific assaults in 2006, 2009 and 2012 and now again in 2014.
Even fishermen, struggling to eke out a subsistence living and feed people, are targeted, their boats machine-gunned with fishermen sometimes forcefully kept in the water until they drown.
Israel kills an average of one Palestinian child every three days. How much oppression can a people stand? Still the majority of Palestinian resistance is nonviolent. Not so the violent, inordinate and overwhelming Israeli response.
Let us also be clear: Israel is not responding to Hamas rockets. It is Hamas home-made rockets that are responding rather ineffectually to a constant, ongoing brutal and killing aggression by Israel.
The “most moral army in the world” is again bombing and killing the people of Gaza. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed, many of them children, and over 2500 injured.
In 2009 after Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli soldier was quoted by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”
Palestinians are being subjected to a gradual genocide and yet the U.S. Congress slavishly supports Israel, parroting that “Israel has a right to defend itself!”
This is not war, this is not defense, it is murder.
Israel needs to immediately cease its attack on Gaza, open the borders, end the blockade and let the people of Gaza live like human beings.
Children in Palestine and in Israel need to be able to sleep, dream and live in peace.
