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Friday, May 13, 2005
Call for May 23rd Protest of AIPAC Annual Conference
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The Council for the National Interest hopes that hundreds of people will join us in protesting outside the Washington, DC, Convention Center on Monday, May 23rd, from 6 to 8 pm. All the main actors in the Middle East peace process will be here from Israel and be joined by a phalanx of important Americans to greet Ariel Sharon, who is scheduled to speak on Tuesday morning after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and Natan Sharansky, who is now out of government and working against the disengagement. In effect, he is undermining the Road Map of his great friend, George W. Bush. (Click here for the full conference schedule.)
The drumbeat against Iran will be a main theme at the AIPAC policy conference. They claim Iran is only months away from a nuclear weapon, an amazingly similar charge to that made by Israeli strategic thinkers before the current Iraq war. (Click here to see an animation hyping their multimedia presentation on Iran, which will be a cornerstone of the conference.)
Join in protesting the very presence of numerous Israeli defense specialists, generals, and defense analysts who are featured at the AIPAC conference. AIPAC should be renamed the Israel Political Action Committee (IPAC) and be forced to register as the agent of a foreign government. As one activist with a major Jewish group admitted in a report in the Forward today, "It is routine for us to say: This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think. We as a community do it all the time."
Come join the rally and take back America's foreign policy!
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The following call was initiated by the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) and finalized by representatives of several groups, six of whom already have signed on. We hope you will join us in endorsing this very important event. We will keep you updated on further developments. Email us to endorse, to attend a Sunday May 15 evening planning meeting on Capitol Hill or if you have questions or comments. Please feel free to circulate this call.
CALL FOR MAY 23RD PROTEST OF AIPAC ANNUAL CONFERENCE
A coalition of organizations is calling for a peaceful demonstration on Monday, May 23 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the 2005 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference being held May 22 to 24th at the DC Convention Center. We will gather on Massachusetts Avenue at 7th Street NW.
We do so to protest Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, its building of a separation wall through the West Bank and its current expansion of settlements, which will cut off an additional 250,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine and implement a system of de facto apartheid in the occupied territories. We protest any appearance by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, who for over 50 years has been involved in a series of war crimes, including the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla.
We also protest AIPAC's role in supporting Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials' threats to take military actions against Iran's nuclear energy facilities and their efforts to involve the United States in such attacks. Two AIPAC officials, recently fired after months of vigorous public support by AIPAC, have been implicated in press reports as having received "highly classified" information on Iran from Defense Department analyst Larry Franklin, who has been arrested in the case, and possibly passing the information on to the state of Israel.
We believe that AIPAC's support of Israeli aggression in Palestine, funded by billions of U.S. tax dollars in military aid to Israel each year, and its support for possible new Middle East wars makes the world less safe for Israel, its neighbors, and the world. We believe that AIPAC does not speak for all American Jews and, by supporting current Israeli policy, is working against America's national interest.
The organizations below represent a wide range of Americans who call for an end to tax-funded military aid to Israel and ask that AIPAC join us in demanding the best of Israel, in that it should:
end the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
tear down the "separation" wall which the International Court of Justice has declared illegal because of the resulting Human Rights Violations.
remove all the settlements and stop all settlement construction in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.
stop home demolitions and land confiscations in Israel and the occupied territories and guarantee equal rights of all people living in Israel.
comply with international law including the right of return for all Palestinian refugees.
stop threatening and promoting Israeli or American wars against Syria and Iran.
support peaceful efforts to remove all nuclear weapons from the Middle East, including Israel.
On April 22, 2002 over 1500 peace and progressive activists protested outside the AIPAC annual conference during Israel's devastating military attacks on the West Bank and Gaza. On May 23, 2005, let's make our voices heard outside the Washington Convention Center to protest Israel's continued expansionism and its calls for new wars on Syria and Iran.
To endorse this call and be listed in the press release e-mail aipacprotest@earthlink.net by close of business Monday, May 16, 2005. Feel free to include a web page link, e-mail or phone contact for email announcements.
Current Endorsers:
Council for the National Interest http://cnionline.org
DC Anti-War Network http://dawndc.net
StopTheWarNow.Net http://stopthewarnow.net
Washington DC Area Chapter American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee http://adc.org
Washington DC Area Stop U.S. Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now! (SUSTAIN) http://sustaincampaign.org
Women for Peace and Justice in Iran http://women4peace.org
posted by Somebody @ 9:36 PM Permanent Link
 
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