A Letter/Telephone Call from Prisoner 88794 (Cynthia McKinney)

If she runs for President in 2012, I'm voting for her AGAIN.

A LETTER FROM PRISONER 88794
Letter from an Israeli Jail
By Cynthia McKinney

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to
Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water ... It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli
military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime ... I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream ... like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better ... The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best
collective efforts for self-fullfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a
place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8
trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of
detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

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Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested and forcibly abducted to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on June 30th. For more
information, please see http://www.FreeGaza.org

Obama, Take Away the Pain in My Stomach

An open letter to Obama, from an Israeli woman:

Thank You Palestine

This afternoon, a friend emailed me a picture of a Friday afternoon Gaza protest that took place outside the mosque I grew up attending. I recognized some of the faces; uncle figures who had helped raise me. This small San Gabriel mosque and these people are not the type I would ever imagine affiliated with a protest. But subhana'Allah, the modern day genocide in Gaza has given the silent amongst us voices. Everybody is organizing. Everybody is acting. So, thank you Palestine:

Thank you Palestine for setting us free.
Thank you for giving the masses of Arabs a voice.
Thank you for giving the masses of Arabs a will.
Thank you for giving the masses of Arabs a uniting cause.

They were thrown down the well of humiliation,
Just like Josef; to get rid of them
They were pushed one small step at a time
Mow they are so used to it
Now they cannot tell if it was day or night

But you Palestine set them free
There is no darkness like occupation and
there is no light like liberty.

And that is not all!

Even those who were silenced after 9/11 got their voice back.
Thank you for giving Muslims in the US a voice.
Thank you for giving Muslims in the US a will.
Thank you for giving Muslims in the US a uniting cause.

Palestine you have awakened hearts from Caracas to those in a far away sea

Palestine, you have set us free so many times...

So...
When will we set you free.
When ... ?

Source: unknown

Stop the Starvation of Gaza!

Dec 19, 2008

Senator Barbara Boxer
Constitution Avenue and 2nd Street, NE
Washington, DC 20510-0505

Dear Senator Boxer,

I join with people all over the world in condemning [apartheid] Israel's deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The U.S. government sends $15 million each day to [apartheid] Israel. In addition to the military attacks against the people of Gaza, Gaza City residents are without electricity for up to 16 hours a day and half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours. These are war crimes, and crimes against humanity. I demand that the United States end all funding for [apartheid] Israel.

Sincerely,

Ms. Zahra Billoo
1505 4th St Apt 203
San Francisco, CA 94158-2270

Send your own letter, it's the LEAST we can do: Act Now

There is Palestinian Blood on Our Motorola Cell Phones

To whom it may concern:

I am deeply disappointed in Motorola’s response to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s invitation to respond to the US Campaign to End the [Apartheid] Israeli Occupation allegations that Motorola’s products and services to Israel are in breach of international law and violate human rights.

Rather than refute any of their carefully documented allegations, outlined in a letter to CEO, Greg Brown (dated February 26, 2008), of your corporation’s profiteering from [apartheid] Israeli military occupation and human rights abuses, you choose to shroud yourself in empty, moralistic pieties of “ethical business conduct”. A corporation which is truly committed to human rights and ethical business conduct would take these allegations seriously, not sweep them under the rug as you did in your letter. You have made clear that your corporation has chosen to continue its morally bankrupt position of profiteering from and supporting Israel’s illegal military occupation and human rights abuses rather than acting to prevent future ill-gotten profits. Failure to act once a corporation becomes aware of immoral corporate practices and behavior in this case at the very least constitutes support for violence and at worst, complicity in practices of apartheid and military occupation, collective punishment of an entire group of people, and the destruction of any viable attempt for a sustained peace in Palestine.

I ask Motorola to respond to the allegations outlined below:

Fuses for aerial devices and munitions-Motorola [apartheid] Israel:
a fully-owned subsidiary of Motorola Incorporated—produces the 980 Low Altitude Proximity Fuse for the MK-80 series of high explosive bombs. On July 30, 2006, during its war on Lebanon, the [apartheid] Israeli Air Force dropped an MK-84 high-explosive bomb on an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon killing at least 28 civilians, many of whom were children.

Can you explain how this does not violate Motorola’s Human Rights policy?

Communication devices for military occupation:
The $100 million contract used to develop and supply the ‘Mountain Rose’ secure cell phone communication system to the [apartheid] Israeli military directly enhances the coordination and monitoring capabilities of the occupying forces in their illegal military operations in the Palestinian territories. [Apartheid] Israel routinely engages in gross patters of human rights violations in its military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, including but not limited to the killing and injuring of civilians, torture, extra-judicial assassinations, the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, acts of collective punishment and economic warfare.

Can you clarify how this does not violate Motorola’s own Code of Business Conduct www.motorola.com/code?

Radar detection devices for [apartheid] Israel’s illegal Wall:
Motorola Israel supplies Israel with the Wide Area Surveillance System (WAAS) to monitor and maintain the illegal wall/fence barrier it has constructed in violation of the July 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion.

How does this honor the spirit of Motorola’s own Human Rights Policy www.motorola.com/humanrights policy?

Radar Detection devices for [apartheid] Israel’s Illegal Settlements:
Motorola Incorporated set up advanced radar detection devices and thermal cameras in 47 [apartheid] Israeli settlements. According to the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Article 49, it is considered a war crime for an Occupying Power to transfer its civilian population into an Occupied Territory. Motorola Incorporated provision of these systems helps to entrench Israel’s illegal settlements on expropriated Palestinian territory, in direct violation of international law.

Finally, can you describe how Motorola’s Code of Business Conduct Expectations for Suppliers Policy www.motorola.com/supplierexpectations- is not being violated?

It is clear from the US Campaign’s research and findings that Motorola [apartheid] Israel, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola Inc, profits from human rights violations. And although we welcome Motorola’s proactive efforts to review policies for corporate responsibility and accountability, your company’s support for Israel’s human rights abuses negates attempts to establishing a just and lasting peace.

If Motorola is serious about serving as a responsible corporate citizen, then all of Motorola’s activities both in the United States and abroad, including [apartheid] Israel/Palestine, must adhere to a human rights policy that promotes human rights and international law, not contribute to their violations.

In your response, Motorola stated that your Code of Business Conduct is currently under review and the process includes studying internationally recognized human rights standards. Can you give us a specific date as to when you plan to complete your review?

Furthermore, how does your corporation plan to change your practices should your internal investigation reveal that your corporate practices enable the violation of internationally recognized human rights standards?

I request that Motorola respond substantively to allegations of war profiteering and financially benefiting from [apartheid] Israel’s illegal military occupation.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,
Zahra Billoo

Send your own letter ASAP: Democracy in Action

Taxes

My paperwork is sitting with the family accountant. He's got my W-2, my 1099-MISC and a 1098-T as well. As a result, my conscience is killing me. I'm filing taxes for the purposes of abiding by the law of the land, but dang it by doing so I'm perpetuating my role as a silent partner in war crimes.

The US Campaign to End the [Apartheid] Israeli Occupation says: "in 2007, the United States gave Israel $2.34 billion in military aid to enforce its illegal military occupation and siege of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. That amounts to each individual tax payer giving on average $8.56 to [apartheid] Israel to commit its human rights abuses."

Mind you, this is just Apartheid Israel. Imagine if we added the cost of imprisoning folks for non-violent crimes (in this country), Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. etc.

A Picture/Drawing is Worth a Thousand Words

Talking Points on the Gaza Drama

(Hijab tip: American Muslims for Palestine)

We call on the US government, as a contracting party to the 4th Geneva Convention, to take immediate steps to end the on-going War Crimes directed at Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip and the West bank.

We are distressed by the news of the continuing violence and killing directed at the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and the imposition of an illegal blockade on all border crossings. Since the beginning of the year, the [apartheid] Israeli actions included cutting off supplies for electricity and fuel, which renders the whole human services infrastructure in Gaza Strip in great impairment and itself constitute a crime against humanity. This action as well as the continued disproportionate use of violence is a major violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. [Apartheid] Israel is responsible for the well-being and safety of all occupied civilians, including the Gaza Strip.

In his most recent statement Professor John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, called [apartheid] Israeli government's actions "serious war crimes" for which its political and military officials should be prosecuted and punished. The killing of civilians violates, he said, "the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention. It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets." Indeed, the very legal framework invoked by the Israeli government to carry out this illegal and immoral act - declaring Gaza a "hostile entity" within a "conflict short of war" – has no basis or standing in international law.

We call on the US government, as a signatory of the 4th Geneva Convention, to act immediately to put a stop to [apartheid] Israel's actions and, revive the diplomatic process, to end all attacks on civilians, including the continuing demolition of Palestinian homes at an alarming rate and building of settlements. As we mark the 60 anniversary of the Nikba (the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine) we are reminded of the continued dispossession and violence directed at Palestinian refugees and their families, a fact that must be addressed as we deal with the current unfolding war crimes.

1. Under International law and standing UN conventions, destroying a people in part or in full is considered ethnic cleansing.
2. The escalation in Gaza was forewarned by [apartheid] Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai of a "greater Shoah" the Hebrew work for the Nazi Holocaust.
3. The full siege of Gaza is leading to deaths due to lack of access to medical essentials, sickness, lack of sanitation, lack of access to basic resources that are there and protected as basic human rights.
4. [Apartheid] Israel is the occupying power and uses air, sea and land US made weapons to bomb civilians in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, a clear violations of rules of engagement in armed conflicts.
5. Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. This right is protected by International Law.
6. Palestinians dying in Gaza were forced out by [apartheid] Israel, forcefully and illegally in an effort to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Now [apartheid] Israel is killing them inside the refugee camps.
7. Peace can only be achieved when Israeli apartheid is ended and Palestinians are granted their national, political and civil rights, as well as the right to return.
8. As of March 4th, 2008, [apartheid] Israel killed 128 Palestinians, injured 350, and 28 of those killed are children, the youngest being a 20 day old infant.
   
   

Hamas Fighters Battle On

To Israel and its allies, Abu Mohammed and his comrades are Jew-hating terrorists. But Abu Mohammed sees himself on a mission from God to rescue his people from 60 years of misery as refugees since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Full Story: Reuters

Gaza Massacre Continues

How do we sleep while our brothers bleed?

[Apartheid] Israeli forces have kept up attacks on the Gaza Strip, where they have killed at least 32 Palestinians, militants and civilians, since Wednesday morning.

Creative Activism Makes Me Happy

Egyptian player Mohamed Abou Traika wears a tee shirt reading "Sympathize with Gaza" as he celebrates his goal 1-0 against Sudan in Kumasi 26 January 2008 during the African Cup of Nations football championship. STR/AFP/Getty Images