Sent by Lubna Hammad, I added our voice to hers. Please plan actions in your respective communities to defend the Palestinian people.

Dear all,

Please find below a letter to the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council re the latest Israeli aggression on our people. The letter demands immediate international protection for the Palestinian people in addition to the release of all political prisoners held by Israel, and holding Israel accountable for its ongoing crimes. This is part of a coordinated call for action by several Arab, Palestinian and international New York-based organizations and groups, which starts today by a demonstration in front of the Israeli mission at the UN and the offices of UN Secretariat.

The letter will be submitted to the head of the Palestinian Observer Mission at the UN, Mr. Riyad Mansour, to deliver to the Secretary General and the Security Council before the tenth emergency special session (expected to be held this Monday).

Please send your personal or organization’s endorsement of this letter to: ProtectPalestine@gmail.com including your name and country. Also, please feel free to circulate this letter as widely as possible. We need your support to protect the Palestinian people and make our voices heard.

Salamat,
Lubna

To Secretary General Kofi Annan and the United Nations Security Council:

The United Nations was founded “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace . . . .” The ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine has thrown into stark relief the need for the United Nations to live up to this duty.

Since the Palestinian people have time and again signaled their refusal to acquiesce in their own subjugation, the inexorable march of Israeli human rights violations continues with renewed savagery. The Israeli military has escalated its assault upon the Palestinian people, with dozens of Palestinians killed and wounded in recent months. Since the so-called Israeli redeployment from Gaza, Israel has continued to attack unarmed Palestinian civilians. On June 9, seven people of the same family were killed by Israeli shelling on a beach in the Gaza Strip. Nearly three dozen Palestinian children have been killed in the first six months of 2006 alone, with the world community looking on. As of June 27, the Israeli Occupation Forces have launched a large scale attack on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, punishing over one million Palestinian civilians for the legitimate exercise of the inherent right of self-defense against Israeli combatants preparing a wide-scale assault on heavily populated areas.

Meanwhile, these forces continue illegally to arrest and detain thousands of Palestinians, confiscate Palestinian land, demolish homes, impose a deadly economic blockade, and build its annexationist Apartheid wall. The historic policy of “Hafrada” (the Hebrew word for Apartheid) has reached its apex, and the international community is confronted more vividly than ever with the fruit of its inaction. It is thus time for the United Nations to discharge its historic obligation.

We therefore call upon the United Nations to intervene to defend the Palestinian people by immediately undertaking the following actions:

forming an international force to protect Palestinian lives against violent attacks by the Israeli military; calling for the immediate release of Palestinian prisoners held in violation of international law; holding Israel accountable for its war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and countless UN resolutions and other norms of international law. Such actions would form the necessary beginnings of a just policy on Palestine that is long overdue. The Palestinian people are under brutal assault, and the moral failure of the international community cries out for rectification.

Signatories:

Again; Please send your personal or organization�s endorsement of the above letter to: ProtectPalestine@gmail.com including your name and country.

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