[WCUSP] [Belovedcommunity] Fw: Letter to Black America on PalestinianRights & June 10 March

[mouliert at vtlink.net]

Thanks Mary Day...s


------- Original Message -------
>From    : Mary Day Kent[mailto:mdkent at wilpf.org]
Sent    : 5/16/2007 6:18:47 PM
To      : belovedcommunity at wilpf.org; wcusp at wilpf.org
Cc      : 
Subject : RE: [Belovedcommunity] Fw: Letter to Black America on PalestinianRights & June 10 March

 A timely letter making the links between Racial Justice here in the US and a just peace in Palestine-Israel. mdk
----- Original Message ----- 
From: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation 
To: mdkent at wilpf.org 
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 3:35 PM
Subject: Letter to Black America on Palestinian Rights & June 10 March







Letter to Black America on Palestinian Rights and June 10th March & Rally





       
     On 15 May 2007, 22 Black American professors, writers, religious figures, and other leaders issued a call to Black America to join in the June 10 March and rally, and break the silence on the injustices faced by the 
Palestinian people. 
     




      To Black America: 

      It is time for our people to once again demand that the silence be broken on the injustices faced by the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation.

      On June 10th, the national coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (endtheoccupation.org) will be spearheading a march and rally to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the 
illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. 

      We, the signatories of this appeal, ask that Black America again take a leading role in this effort as well as the broader work to bring attention to this 40 year travesty of justice. 
      United Nations resolutions have called for the Israeli withdrawal, yet the Israeli government, with the backing of the USA, has ignored them. The Israeli government has appropriated Palestinian land in open defiance of 
international law and overwhelming international condemnation. 

      Within the USA anyone who speaks in favor of Palestinian rights and justice is immediately condemned as being allegedly anti-Israel (and frequently allegedly anti-Semitic), shutting down legitimate discussion. A case in 
point can be seen in the current furor surrounding former President Jimmy Carter who was criticized for his assertion in his best-selling book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that Israeli obstructionism lies at the root of the 
failure to achieve a just Palestinian/Israeli settlement. 

      As Nobel prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written, "People are scared in the US, to say 'wrong is wrong,' because the pro-Israeli lobby is powerful--very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is 
God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists." 

      Many of those who most outspokenly agree with President Carter and Archbishop Tutu are American Jews. And many American Jews, including the national organization Jewish Voice for Peace, will be among those 
rallying for Palestinian rights on June 10th - as will many other Americans, including member groups of the leading anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice. 

      Leaders from Black America have repeatedly and historically been among the most outspoken proponents of justice for the Palestinian people. Our leaders have defended the Palestinian people's right to full self-
determination and an end to the Occupation as central to peace in the region. Our leaders have not criticized the Jewish people but they have expressed outrage at the Israeli government that collaborated with the apartheid 
South African government (including in the development of weapons of mass destruction) and emulated South Africa's treatment of its Black majority in its own treatment of the Palestinian people. 

      As we struggle to build our country's support for Palestinian human rights, we widen the door for both Arab and Black Americans to deal with the issues that join them together, as well as those that separate them. We 
will help to energize - and to heal - both communities. 

      June tenth and Juneteenth: will our struggles lead the way to a new emancipation of others? Our own integrity as a people, let alone our own experience with massive injustice and oppression, demand that we step 
forward, speak out, and insist on a change in US policy towards the Palestinian people. Since when have an illegally occupied people been wrong in demanding and fighting for their human rights and land? Since when have 
such people and their cause not been worthy of our support?

      Please join us on June 10th!

      Signed by (affiliation for identification purposes only)

      Salih Booker, former Executive Director of Africa Action

      Khephra Burns, author, editor, playwright

      Horace G. Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science

      Dr. Ron Daniels, President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century

      Bill Fletcher, labor and international activist, and writer

      George Friday, United for Peace and Justice Co-Chair, National Coordinator, Independent Progressive Politics Network

      Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Minister, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ; National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice of the United Church of Christ

      Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and Public and International Affairs

      Manning Marable, Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies

      George Paz Martin, National Co-Chair of United for Peace and Justice and Green Party U.S. Activist

      E. Ethelbert Miller, literary activist; board chair, Institute for Policy Studies 

      Prexy Nesbitt, speaker and educator on Africa, foreign policy, and racism

      Barbara Ransby, Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies

      Cedric Robinson, Professor, Department of Black Studies

      The Rev. Canon Edward W. Rodman MDiv.LCH,DD. Professor of Pastoral Theology and Urban Ministry at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Ma.

      Jamala Rogers, Black Radical Congress 

      Don Rojas, former director of communications for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 

      Zoharah Simmons, human rights activist 

      Chuck Turner. Boston City Councilor

      Hollis Watkins, Former Freedom Singer and staff member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; human rights activist (1961 - present) 

      Dr. Cornel West

      Emira Woods, co-director, Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies


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