UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today said he was "shocked" at Israel's "apparently deliberate targeting" of a UN post in Lebanon, in which up to four UN observers were killed.
Please call your Representative (esp. Doris Matsui) on Tuesday and let her/him know that California Reps. Mike Honda, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Bob Filner, Pete Stark & Hilda Solis have already signed Kucinich's resolution. We really need to encourage Doris to sign on to this Immediate Cease Fire resolution and STOP the killing of innocent civilians.
In solidarity,
Karen
D.C. Capitol Switchboard: (888) 355-3588 (for all members of Congress)
Local Numbers
Doris Matsui: (916) 498-5600 http://www.house.gov/matsui/email.htm
TAKE ACTION: Contact your Representative and ask them to sign on as a cosponsor to H.Con.Res.450, calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East. If your Representative has already co-sponsored this resolution, please call to thank him/her. For contact information, click here: http://www.congress.org
BACKGROUND: Despite mounting civilian casualties on all sides, the United States continues to provide Israel with a green light to destroy
Israel’s Unwarranted Collective Punishment Breaches Geneva Conventions and US Arms Export Control Act on Offensive Attack on Civilians
by Andrew H. Dral
The situation in Lebanon is a war crime -- collective punishment means a breach of the Geneva Conventions. The Israeli air force has targeted 1,000 sites in eight days. Many of those sites are Lebanese infrastructure: airports, harbors, roads, bridges, power plants, apartment buildings, and hospitals. Israel is attacking an entire nation, a population, for the crime of a very few militants. The destruction is apocalyptic. This is a deplorable over reaction, which will further alienate support for Israel.
Palestinian Chief Says Israel Uses Captives to Cloak Its Aims
By Ashraf Khalil, Times Staff Writer
July 22, 2006
GAZA CITY  Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, in his most extensive public comments in more than two weeks, said the Israeli military offensives in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon were an attempt to establish regional dominance under the pretext of rescuing kidnapped soldiers, and he called for unity among the armed Palestinian factions.
US rushes precision-guided bombs to Israel: NYTimes
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
This is in response to Right-wing, Pro-Death, Pro-War, NeoCon Republican William Kristol's editorial "It's Our War" in which he encourages the US to attack Iran
My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.
Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora.
To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work."
...the Israel lobby is a sacred cow and anyone who dares criticize it runs the risk of being branded an anti-Semite. "In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it," ...
A Beautiful Friendship?
In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on Washington
By Glenn Frankel
Sunday, July 16, 2006; W13
All David Ben-Gurion wanted was 15 minutes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's time.
Israel's founding father, one of the indomitable political leaders of the 20th century, came to Washington in December 1941 yearning to
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's top Shiite cleric urged his followers Thursday to refrain from reprisal violence against Sunnis, his strongest call yet for an end to increasing sectarian bloodshed. The statement by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani came as U.S. military officials reported a 40 percent increase in the daily average of attacks in the Baghdad area.
"In my opinion, only this type of opposition that I've chosen will put an end to the madness that is going on now and will shatter the false feeling that the entire home front supports this unnecessary war that is based on deceptive considerations."
The Lebanon 2006 war has produced its first conscientious objector - Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat, a 28-year-old TV producer. He refused to comply with an emergency order
Protesters burned an Israeli flag Thursday outside the country's embassy in Venezuela and demanded an end to Israel's military offensive in Lebanon, while crowds also took to the streets in Mexico and El Salvador to press for a halt to the fighting.
More than 2,000 protesters, including Venezuelans of Arab descent, marched through Caracas waving Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian flags. Many were die-hard supporters of President Hugo Chavez, who has denounced the Israeli bombardments in Lebanon as a "genocide."
United Nations - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan faces opposition from Israel and the United States to an immediate ceasefire in the escalating Israeli-Lebanon conflict.
Annan went before the security council on Thursday, urging a halt to the fighting and support for a wide-ranging plan to end the war, saying hundreds of innocent civilians are being killed and injured.
By ELAINE GANLEY - The Associated Press - Friday, July 14, 2006; 12:13 PM
PARIS -- French President Jacques Chirac castigated the Israeli offensive into Lebanon on Friday, calling it "totally disproportionate," while he and other European leaders expressed fears of a widening Middle East conflict that could get out of control.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday strongly deplored Israel's strikes on Lebanon, saying they were "an attack" on a sovereign and free nation.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Pope Benedict and his aides were very worried that the developments in the Middle East risked degenerating into "a conflict with international repercussions."
Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans claimed belonged to them.
“I represent the Israeli defense forces,†Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles’ Westside for Israel’s political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a balance of power.
