||| FROM SANDY STREHLOU |||


You may already know that I am organizing a Palestine Solidarity rally and march. It starts at 11 a.m. next Saturday, May 29, at the SJC courthouse lawn. I hope, pray, beg that you will come. 90 minutes, that’s all I ask.

Why
The recent brokered truce in no way means that the oppression will end. To the contrary, there have been many so-called truces in the past, but nothing changed.

Background
The Palestinians have been under occupation and exile for 70 years. The similarities to apartheid South Africa are unforgivable, but unlike that struggle, the United States is a partner in the cultural and human genocide—and I do not use that word casually–in and out of Gaza. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. Since its inception in 1948 (the transfer of what was already a colonized land by the British to the Zionists), the U.S. has supported the occupation. All told, $146 billion American tax dollars for bilateral assistance and missile defense funding has been allocated for Israel by a succession of administrations. (Adjusted for inflation this sum equals $1.6 trillion in today’s dollars.) At present almost all U.S. aid is in the form of military assistance and is under favorable terms offered no other nation in the world. In 2021 The United States will give Israel $3.8 billion dollars. (Source: Congressional Resource Service, report published in 2020.)

The recent bombing of Gaza and the ongoing settler and Israeli military attacks on Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, in Gaza, the West Bank and toward Israeli Palestinians has been almost, but not entirely unprecedented.

Under the Trump administration the Israeli government was given a green light to provoke and escalate a multi-front strategy of oppression, including residential demolitions, destruction of olive groves and agricultural lands, a further constriction of goods and services in an out of Gaza, the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the control over essential services like electricity, medical supplies, building materials and even humanitarian aid from foreign nations. The Biden administration has not altered the U.S. position on Israel and Palestine.

Right Here, Right Now. Saturday, May 29
The only way to change U.S. foreign policy toward peace and justice for Palestine and the end of the occupation is for ordinary Americans to stand up and say “no more!” To do this our electeds need to see and hear us. Each one of us is a vote and a possible campaign contribution. It is the source of our power to make change.

If you live in or near the San Juan Islands, please join me this coming Saturday to do just that. 90 minutes. We will rally, sign some petitions destined for representatives Larson, Murray, Cantwell, Biden and members of his administration. We will take a group photo to prove that we are real people, citizens of the United States, voters. Then we will do a short march through town, past the holiday weekend tourists, and by the farmers market to demonstrate peacefully that a change is coming, that a change must happen.

If you intend to participate, send me an email or a DM on Facebook. Or call 360.298.8008. If you can, please help in the following ways: we need a drummer to lead the silent march. We need two photographers. We need black arm bands to mourn for the casualties from the recent bombing, we need a large banner for the courthouse lawn. We need signs on sticks for the march. We need participants from the other islands to come. We need a religious leader to speak in support of the Palestinians. Most of all, we need you to come. We need you to contact as any people as you can to
encourage them to be there with you. Let me know how you can help with these tasks.


 

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