Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
Payday men’s network is delighted to see the statement (below) from the Global Women’s Strike, calling on women everywhere to condemn the Israeli slaughter on Gaza. We hope women in your organisations/networks will want to add their names and circulate widely.Payday wants to celebrate the Druze conscientious objector Omar Saad, as well as 50 shimnistim (school leavers) and 50 reservists who have refused to serve in the Israeli army.
Women
of Gaza, children of Gaza, people of Gaza – we are with
you!
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Dear sisters,
We
call on women’s groups and organisations, prominent feminists, and all women
everywhere, of all faiths and secular, to stand with the women and children of
Gaza and demand an immediate end to this Israeli slaughter of the innocents. It
is time to hear from the women outside of Gaza.
Women and children are being bombed night after
night, day after day, year after year, and some Israeli politicians and
academics are advocating the killing of Palestinian mothers and the rape of
sisters and mothers.
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19 July, London:
100,000 people marched for Gaza.
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Please sign the statement below. Email back to us indicating your country and your
title or organisation (if you have one), and we add them to the list of
signatories.
Circulate it on Facebook
and Twitter. Get your organisation to sign. We need as many signatures as
possible for our voice as women finally to be heard.
Thank you. We look forward to hearing from
you.
Selma James,
Nina Lopez and Phoebe Jones, Global Women Strike (GWS), UK/US
Sara Callaway and Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour GWS, UK/US Maggie Ronayne, GWS Ireland Didi Rossi, Queer Strike
Women of Gaza,
children of Gaza, people of Gaza – we are with you!
As
women and women’s organisations we unequivocally condemn the Israeli military
attack on Gaza by land, sea and air which continues to kill so many hundreds of
people and injure thousands more. Many victims are women and children.
At
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, 19 July 2014, Ms Hunood Abu Jarad, mother of
six-year-old survivor Noor, spoke to Channel 4 TV News
(UK) about losing eight family members, four of them children, the youngest
seven months old:
“Suddenly rockets came down with no warning. Uncle
was hit first, his body parts flew across the room. As
we ran another rocket hit the house next door. My children were running around
in panic. Noor was completely covered in blood.
Ambulances came within half an hour and started collecting the body parts. Even
today they found legs, arms, hands and feet. I will never forgive those who
killed our children. What have these children done to deserve this? Are they
carrying guns? They are targeting children because they don’t want them to grow
up to resist. Would you be OK if this happened to your children? We will
continue to resist inside Palestine until the last day of the world.”
Ms
Abu Jarad speaks for women in Palestine and for all of
us around the world.
We
are outraged by Israeli parliamentarians like Ayelet
Shaked (Jewish Homes), a woman, who is calling for
Palestinian mothers to be killed and their houses demolished so they can’t give
birth to “little snakes”, and academics like Mordechai
Kedar (Bar Ilan University)
who talks about “the only thing that deters [terrorists] is if they know that their sister or their mother will be
raped.” The mass killing of mothers and children is already happening.
Should we now expect mass rape?
While governments, starting in the US and Europe,
continue to back Israel or keep silent, people across the world, especially
women, have been protesting in support of the people in Gaza. Palestinians in
the occupied West Bank as well as those who are citizens of Israel held a
general strike as a day of mourning, and there have been demonstrations, many of
them huge, in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Chile, China, France, Germany,
Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Kuwait, Morocco,
Norway, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, US,
UK, Yemen . . . But the mainstream media has hardly mentioned them.
Israel is the
largest recipient of US foreign aid, almost all military: over $3.1 billion a
year and several billion more in military assistance and contracts. This has
transformed Israel’s armed forces into one of the most technologically
sophisticated globally and Israel into the sixth biggest arms exporter. As we
saw in the 2008-9 attack and again today, Israeli weapons are “field-tested” on
the population of Gaza: 1,417 were killed then, 313 of them children; tens of
thousands of people displaced and homes destroyed. This killing is happening
again, now, but even more unrestrained than before.
We
are women across the world. We speak out in the name of mothers and children, of
the civilian population, and of the right of the Palestinian people to resist an
illegal military occupation of their land and a life-threatening blockade which
deprives them of water and electricity. We demand an immediate end to the
slaughter in Gaza and its blockade; an end to the illegal occupation of
Palestine; and an end to funding of Israel’s military and its capacity for mass
murder. Invest in caring, not killing.
Selma James
and Nina Lopez, Global Women’s Strike (GWS), UKMaggie Ronayne,
GWS-Ireland Phoebe Jones and Rachel West, GWS-USA Sara
Callaway, Women of Colour GWS, UK
Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour GWS, USA Didi Rossi, Queer Strike, UKLori Nairne, Queer Strike, US | |
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