Stand with Palestine!

Stand with Palestine!

Collective Punishment is Genocide! The People of Palestine Have A Right to Choose Their Own Leaders! They Have A Right to Resist Occupation!

Feb. 10, 2006--The Bush regime and Israel have told the world that they plan to starve out the people of Palestine. They aim to punish them for the "crime" of electing leaders of whom the U.S. and Israel do not approve. They aim to commit yet another act of genocide against a long-oppressed people.

For decades U.S. tax dollars have armed Israel to the teeth. U.S.-made bombs and missiles have destroyed Palestinian villages and refugee camps. U.S.-made tanks have reduced Palestinian homes to rubble. Israeli soldiers have gunned down children with U.S-made rifles. For most of that time, both U.S. and Israeli politicians denied the very existence of a Palestinian nation.

It was only after decades of struggle that the U.S. and Israel signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The accords were supposed to lead to Palestinian independence. But 13 years later the conditions of occupation have grown ever worse and the Palestinian people are still denied a state of their own. They are still terrorized day and night by brutal occupying troops, they are still incarcerated without trial, and their homes are still stolen by settlers. Over a million still live in refugee camps. Millions are denied the basic right to return to their homes.

Sanctions are murder

On Jan. 24, 2006, Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, in an internationally monitored, free and democratic election voted for the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, to represent them. The Bush regime, Israel and the European Union immediately threatened them with economic sanctions. Sanctions, by the UN’s own estimates, killed nearly 2 million people in Iraq between 1991 and the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Withholding of the Palestinian’s own tax revenues, aid and credits in an economy destroyed by occupation is a dire threat. The Palestinian people depend on international assistance because Israel has locked down and systematically strangled the Palestinian economy. Meanwhile the U.S. has given tens of billions to arm Israel.

This is an issue of outright colonialism against the right of self-determination. It is part of the bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Bush regime's rising war threats against Iran. Neither Washington, Tel Aviv, London or Paris has the right to tell the Palestinian people how to vote or to choose their leaders.

This is a time when all forms of people’s mobilizations in solidarity with the Palestinian people are urgently needed. The defense of the full rights of the Palestinian people should be incorporated into every struggle for social justice.

The International Action Center calls on justice-loving people everywhere to show solidarity with the people of Palestine in this desperate hour. We must not allow the Bush regime and the U.S.-funded Israeli occupying power to try and starve them into submission. Sixty years of war, terror and genocide are enough. The people of Palestine and the entire Middle East have a right to decide their own future.

International Action Center
39 West 14th St, #206, NY, NY, 10011
212-633-6646
www.iacenter.org,