Outlandish & Sami Yusuf "Try not to cry" 4 Children of Adam
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Dear Senators Obama and McCain
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=2906
Dear Senators Obama and McCain,
We were disturbed by your remarks at the AIPAC conference. We implore you to respect internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem, to hold not just Hamas but also Israel accountable for its use of weapons against civilian populations, and to support including Hamas in negotiations. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live in safe and secure societies. Please commit to working for justice and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe the future status of Jerusalem must be negotiated. Since declaring at the AIPAC conference that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," Senator Obama has backtracked and indicated he is open to a shared Jerusalem. We welcome his new statement, because the first one undermines the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Obama promises to promote. Indeed, declaring Jerusalem as Israeli-ruled-only violates U.S. policy and international standards, ignores Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem and the more than 240,000 Palestinian residents there, while implicitly supporting Israel's continued land expropriation, demolition of Palestinian homes, and expansion of settlement building, such as the 900 tenders just issued to new housing for Jewish Israelis in East Jerusalem.
Both Senators McCain and Obama promised enormous sums of unconditional military aid to Israel.
We believe the U.S. must hold Israel accountable for using U.S. weapons against civilians. Numerous human rights organizations have documented Israel's use of U.S. weapons against civilian populations - from the basic maintenance of the Occupation of Palestinian Territories to the bombing of civilian areas in Gaza to the use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians in 2006. The use of weapons against civilians is in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act; even the U.S. State Department itself believed it likely that Israel's cluster bombs in Lebanon violated U.S. law. We implore the Senators to hold Israel accountable to U.S. law and prevent the use of our weapons against civilians.
Both Senators McCain and Obama continued to demand the exclusion of Hamas from the negotiating table.
We believe peace agreement cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. While we, too, deplore any and all violence against civilians, we stand behind former President Jimmy Carter when he says that Hamas must be included in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 64% of Israeli citizens want their government to speak to Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinian people. Peace agreements are negotiated with enemies, not friends. For the sake of achieving a just peace, we ask the Senators to support the inclusion of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Dear Senators Obama and McCain,
We were disturbed by your remarks at the AIPAC conference. We implore you to respect internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem, to hold not just Hamas but also Israel accountable for its use of weapons against civilian populations, and to support including Hamas in negotiations. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live in safe and secure societies. Please commit to working for justice and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe the future status of Jerusalem must be negotiated. Since declaring at the AIPAC conference that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," Senator Obama has backtracked and indicated he is open to a shared Jerusalem. We welcome his new statement, because the first one undermines the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Obama promises to promote. Indeed, declaring Jerusalem as Israeli-ruled-only violates U.S. policy and international standards, ignores Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem and the more than 240,000 Palestinian residents there, while implicitly supporting Israel's continued land expropriation, demolition of Palestinian homes, and expansion of settlement building, such as the 900 tenders just issued to new housing for Jewish Israelis in East Jerusalem.
Both Senators McCain and Obama promised enormous sums of unconditional military aid to Israel.
We believe the U.S. must hold Israel accountable for using U.S. weapons against civilians. Numerous human rights organizations have documented Israel's use of U.S. weapons against civilian populations - from the basic maintenance of the Occupation of Palestinian Territories to the bombing of civilian areas in Gaza to the use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians in 2006. The use of weapons against civilians is in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act; even the U.S. State Department itself believed it likely that Israel's cluster bombs in Lebanon violated U.S. law. We implore the Senators to hold Israel accountable to U.S. law and prevent the use of our weapons against civilians.
Both Senators McCain and Obama continued to demand the exclusion of Hamas from the negotiating table.
We believe peace agreement cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. While we, too, deplore any and all violence against civilians, we stand behind former President Jimmy Carter when he says that Hamas must be included in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 64% of Israeli citizens want their government to speak to Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinian people. Peace agreements are negotiated with enemies, not friends. For the sake of achieving a just peace, we ask the Senators to support the inclusion of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Eye to Eye
by: Gihad Ali
Look into my eyes
And tell me what you see.
You don't see a damn thing,
'cause you can't possibly relate to me.
You're blinded by our differences.
My life makes no sense to you.
I'm the persecuted Palestinian.
You're the American red, white and blue.
Each day you wake in tranquility,
No fears to cross your eyes.
Each day I wake in gratitude,
Thanking God He let me rise.
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay.
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day.
Your biggest fear is getting ticketed
As you cruise your Cadillac.
My fear is that the tank that just left
Will turn around and come back.
American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?
The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.
Yet do you know the truth
Of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth that no one knows?
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of Zionists.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And I'm the terrorist?
You think you know all about terrorism
But you don't know it the way I do,
So let me define the term for you,
And teach you what you thought you knew.
I've known terrorism for quite some time,
Fifty-five years and more.
It's the fruitless garden uprooted in my yard.
It's the bulldozer in front of my door.
Terrorism breathes the air I breathe.
It's the checkpoint on my way to school.
It's the curfew that jails me in my own home,
And the penalties of breaking that curfew rule.
Terrorism is the robbery of my land,
And the torture of my mother,
The imprisonment of my innocent father,
The bullet in my baby brother.
So American, don't tell me you know about
The things I feel and see.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And the blame is put on me.
But I will not rest, I shall never settle
For the injustice my people endure.
Palestine is our land and there we'll remain
Until the day our homeland is secure.
And if that time shall never come,
Then we will never see a day of peace.
I will not be thrown from my own home,
Nor will my fight for justice cease.
And if I am killed, it will be in Falasteen.
It's written on my every breath.
So in your own patriotic words,
Give me liberty or give me death.
Look into my eyes
And tell me what you see.
You don't see a damn thing,
'cause you can't possibly relate to me.
You're blinded by our differences.
My life makes no sense to you.
I'm the persecuted Palestinian.
You're the American red, white and blue.
Each day you wake in tranquility,
No fears to cross your eyes.
Each day I wake in gratitude,
Thanking God He let me rise.
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay.
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day.
Your biggest fear is getting ticketed
As you cruise your Cadillac.
My fear is that the tank that just left
Will turn around and come back.
American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?
The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.
Yet do you know the truth
Of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth that no one knows?
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of Zionists.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And I'm the terrorist?
You think you know all about terrorism
But you don't know it the way I do,
So let me define the term for you,
And teach you what you thought you knew.
I've known terrorism for quite some time,
Fifty-five years and more.
It's the fruitless garden uprooted in my yard.
It's the bulldozer in front of my door.
Terrorism breathes the air I breathe.
It's the checkpoint on my way to school.
It's the curfew that jails me in my own home,
And the penalties of breaking that curfew rule.
Terrorism is the robbery of my land,
And the torture of my mother,
The imprisonment of my innocent father,
The bullet in my baby brother.
So American, don't tell me you know about
The things I feel and see.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And the blame is put on me.
But I will not rest, I shall never settle
For the injustice my people endure.
Palestine is our land and there we'll remain
Until the day our homeland is secure.
And if that time shall never come,
Then we will never see a day of peace.
I will not be thrown from my own home,
Nor will my fight for justice cease.
And if I am killed, it will be in Falasteen.
It's written on my every breath.
So in your own patriotic words,
Give me liberty or give me death.
FreePalestine
[FreePalestine] My thoughts on the campaign
Cenida Jones
Hello Everyone,
I'm new to the website but I'm a long time Obama supporter. I just wanted to introduce myself to all and say I am so proud of this country for having a candidate that really connects with the American people and seems to understand that we need to change how we're doing things. One of my fav quotes from "Obama is that you can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different result."
This is true in so many ways, I am in line mostly with many of the campaign beliefs but I really hope that Mr.Obama would rethink his position on Israel and Palestine. I am in touch with a couple of Jewish volunteers who are working inside Palestine and they send me updates to share about what's going on over there. So I just wanted to share this with you because I know a lot of people don't know what's going on over there and also because many people don't get to hear the Palestinians side of the story. I'm and approaching this subject in leui of the speech Barack gave in front of AIPAC so this is relevant to the campaign. If you have any questions or concerns please email me or message me from my profile. Remember you can't keep doing the same old thing and expecting a different result:
Dear friends,
I've been thinking about the urgency of 1948. One of Ben Gurion's
most repeated quotes among Palestinian refugee communities is, "The
old will die and the young will forget." The young have not
forgotten. Everywhere I have traveled in the Arab world - Palestine,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria - Palestinian children tell me the names of
their original villages that they still hope to see someday. Even the
youngest of children will say things like, "If I don't return to my
village, then my children or their children will."
Perhaps this is the nature of displacement, that the desire to return
is compounded as long as the right to return is denied. But how to
explain the urgency? Those who were young at the time of the Nakba,
60 years ago, are dying. Just as the Holocaust generation of Jews is
slowly passing away, so is the Nakba generation of Palestinians. The
difference is in the collective world memory of each tragedy. The
Nazi Holocaust is denied by very few today (and even fewer with any
kind of world power), whereas the Nakba continues to be denied by the
powerful, as it has been for 60 years. Each time I visit with Nakba
survivors who currently live inside '48 (Israel) and have Israeli
citizenship, I am astounded that the desperation in their voices far
exceeds most of what I hear from Palestinians in the West Bank (Gaza,
currently, is another story). Why is this? In all superficial ways,
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have a better standard of life
than those in the West Bank. West Bank Palestinians, however,while
continuously besieged and attacked, rarely find themselves face to
face in conversation with people who deny their identities, their
histories, and their experiences. Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship face this every day.
We visited last week with a man who lives just a few miles from his
original village. He showed us a map the survivors have made, in
Hebrew, with each person's name and house and land marked. "We were
here," he kept saying, "and we farmed, and we went to school, and we
had a bus station, and we owned land. We were here. This is my
father's name. We were here." He kept offering tidbits of proof, as
though he expected us to doubt his story.
When he took us to the land, as he has so many times before, I
couldn't help but think about the number of Israelis, foreigners, and
perhaps even Palestinians who drive by there each day without
realizing there was
ever anything there before the Jewish National
Fund planted a pine forest. The remains of houses can easily be
mistaken for stone paths. Not one house remains, but that doesn't
stop our guide from taking us to a spot on the land that to me looks
like any other, and saying, "Welcome to my home. Someday you will
come back here and visit me in my rebuilt house and I will serve you
tea."
The urgency is in the living memory, the denied reality, the willful
invisibility. The Nakba is not something that happened 60 years ago.
It is a process that continues to this day, and it is a process that
can and must end if we are ever to see a true solution for the people
of this land.
Cenida Jones
Hello Everyone,
I'm new to the website but I'm a long time Obama supporter. I just wanted to introduce myself to all and say I am so proud of this country for having a candidate that really connects with the American people and seems to understand that we need to change how we're doing things. One of my fav quotes from "Obama is that you can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different result."
This is true in so many ways, I am in line mostly with many of the campaign beliefs but I really hope that Mr.Obama would rethink his position on Israel and Palestine. I am in touch with a couple of Jewish volunteers who are working inside Palestine and they send me updates to share about what's going on over there. So I just wanted to share this with you because I know a lot of people don't know what's going on over there and also because many people don't get to hear the Palestinians side of the story. I'm and approaching this subject in leui of the speech Barack gave in front of AIPAC so this is relevant to the campaign. If you have any questions or concerns please email me or message me from my profile. Remember you can't keep doing the same old thing and expecting a different result:
Dear friends,
I've been thinking about the urgency of 1948. One of Ben Gurion's
most repeated quotes among Palestinian refugee communities is, "The
old will die and the young will forget." The young have not
forgotten. Everywhere I have traveled in the Arab world - Palestine,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria - Palestinian children tell me the names of
their original villages that they still hope to see someday. Even the
youngest of children will say things like, "If I don't return to my
village, then my children or their children will."
Perhaps this is the nature of displacement, that the desire to return
is compounded as long as the right to return is denied. But how to
explain the urgency? Those who were young at the time of the Nakba,
60 years ago, are dying. Just as the Holocaust generation of Jews is
slowly passing away, so is the Nakba generation of Palestinians. The
difference is in the collective world memory of each tragedy. The
Nazi Holocaust is denied by very few today (and even fewer with any
kind of world power), whereas the Nakba continues to be denied by the
powerful, as it has been for 60 years. Each time I visit with Nakba
survivors who currently live inside '48 (Israel) and have Israeli
citizenship, I am astounded that the desperation in their voices far
exceeds most of what I hear from Palestinians in the West Bank (Gaza,
currently, is another story). Why is this? In all superficial ways,
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have a better standard of life
than those in the West Bank. West Bank Palestinians, however,while
continuously besieged and attacked, rarely find themselves face to
face in conversation with people who deny their identities, their
histories, and their experiences. Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship face this every day.
We visited last week with a man who lives just a few miles from his
original village. He showed us a map the survivors have made, in
Hebrew, with each person's name and house and land marked. "We were
here," he kept saying, "and we farmed, and we went to school, and we
had a bus station, and we owned land. We were here. This is my
father's name. We were here." He kept offering tidbits of proof, as
though he expected us to doubt his story.
When he took us to the land, as he has so many times before, I
couldn't help but think about the number of Israelis, foreigners, and
perhaps even Palestinians who drive by there each day without
realizing there was
ever anything there before the Jewish National
Fund planted a pine forest. The remains of houses can easily be
mistaken for stone paths. Not one house remains, but that doesn't
stop our guide from taking us to a spot on the land that to me looks
like any other, and saying, "Welcome to my home. Someday you will
come back here and visit me in my rebuilt house and I will serve you
tea."
The urgency is in the living memory, the denied reality, the willful
invisibility. The Nakba is not something that happened 60 years ago.
It is a process that continues to this day, and it is a process that
can and must end if we are ever to see a true solution for the people
of this land.
Dear Senators Obama and McCain
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=2906
Dear Senators Obama and McCain,
We were disturbed by your remarks at the AIPAC conference. We implore you to respect internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem, to hold not just Hamas but also Israel accountable for its use of weapons against civilian populations, and to support including Hamas in negotiations. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live in safe and secure societies. Please commit to working for justice and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe the future status of Jerusalem must be negotiated. Since declaring at the AIPAC conference that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," Senator Obama has backtracked and indicated he is open to a shared Jerusalem. We welcome his new statement, because the first one undermines the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Obama promises to promote. Indeed, declaring Jerusalem as Israeli-ruled-only violates U.S. policy and international standards, ignores Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem and the more than 240,000 Palestinian residents there, while implicitly supporting Israel's continued land expropriation, demolition of Palestinian homes, and expansion of settlement building, such as the 900 tenders just issued to new housing for Jewish Israelis in East Jerusalem.
Both Senators McCain and Obama promised enormous sums of unconditional military aid to Israel.
We believe the U.S. must hold Israel accountable for using U.S. weapons against civilians. Numerous human rights organizations have documented Israel's use of U.S. weapons against civilian populations - from the basic maintenance of the Occupation of Palestinian Territories to the bombing of civilian areas in Gaza to the use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians in 2006. The use of weapons against civilians is in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act; even the U.S. State Department itself believed it likely that Israel's cluster bombs in Lebanon violated U.S. law. We implore the Senators to hold Israel accountable to U.S. law and prevent the use of our weapons against civilians.
Both Senators McCain and Obama continued to demand the exclusion of Hamas from the negotiating table.
We believe peace agreement cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. While we, too, deplore any and all violence against civilians, we stand behind former President Jimmy Carter when he says that Hamas must be included in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 64% of Israeli citizens want their government to speak to Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinian people. Peace agreements are negotiated with enemies, not friends. For the sake of achieving a just peace, we ask the Senators to support the inclusion of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Dear Senators Obama and McCain,
We were disturbed by your remarks at the AIPAC conference. We implore you to respect internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem, to hold not just Hamas but also Israel accountable for its use of weapons against civilian populations, and to support including Hamas in negotiations. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live in safe and secure societies. Please commit to working for justice and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe the future status of Jerusalem must be negotiated. Since declaring at the AIPAC conference that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," Senator Obama has backtracked and indicated he is open to a shared Jerusalem. We welcome his new statement, because the first one undermines the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that Obama promises to promote. Indeed, declaring Jerusalem as Israeli-ruled-only violates U.S. policy and international standards, ignores Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem and the more than 240,000 Palestinian residents there, while implicitly supporting Israel's continued land expropriation, demolition of Palestinian homes, and expansion of settlement building, such as the 900 tenders just issued to new housing for Jewish Israelis in East Jerusalem.
Both Senators McCain and Obama promised enormous sums of unconditional military aid to Israel.
We believe the U.S. must hold Israel accountable for using U.S. weapons against civilians. Numerous human rights organizations have documented Israel's use of U.S. weapons against civilian populations - from the basic maintenance of the Occupation of Palestinian Territories to the bombing of civilian areas in Gaza to the use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians in 2006. The use of weapons against civilians is in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act; even the U.S. State Department itself believed it likely that Israel's cluster bombs in Lebanon violated U.S. law. We implore the Senators to hold Israel accountable to U.S. law and prevent the use of our weapons against civilians.
Both Senators McCain and Obama continued to demand the exclusion of Hamas from the negotiating table.
We believe peace agreement cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. While we, too, deplore any and all violence against civilians, we stand behind former President Jimmy Carter when he says that Hamas must be included in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 64% of Israeli citizens want their government to speak to Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinian people. Peace agreements are negotiated with enemies, not friends. For the sake of achieving a just peace, we ask the Senators to support the inclusion of Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Dear editor
Dear editor
I am writing in response to your coverage of news in the media. As an Arab-American who has lived in the West Bank during the second intifada, I have seen and experienced much. After moving to the states, I learned that the American people are very much unaware of the horrible acts taken upon Palestinian people everyday by the Israeli government. This is because of news channels that are “biased and uninformative”.
Some of the most popular news channels such as CNN, FOX, BBC, and SKY NEWS are extremely biased when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Often, I’d turn on the news and hear about an Israeli soldier who had been killed by Palestinians. They would give his full name, talk of his accomplishments, tell of his dreams and say he died doing his job; forgetting to mention that his job included killing innocent civilians, blocking roads that didn’t belong to his government, and demolishing Palestinian people’s homes built on their own lands. Important information is left out which changes the whole story and its meaning leaving people with the wrong idea.
I find it very hard to trust the news nowadays. I mean if people in the states know nothing of the large numbers of innocent civilians being killed, the number of homes being demolished, and the kind of humiliation the Palestinian people have been enduring for so long, then I must say, there is something seriously wrong. When the news chooses sides, or doesn’t give full information then that can lead to great misunderstanding. If people aren’t aware of wrong in the world then how can they make it a right?
In conclusion, if the news continues to carry on with false and biased information then this can and probably will lead to ignorance, non tolerance, and extremism. The news will become a fuel of hatred to many. Furthermore, people will continue to suffer, and however loud their cries are for help, the world will never be able to hear them and help them because their news will not let them know the truth.
I am writing in response to your coverage of news in the media. As an Arab-American who has lived in the West Bank during the second intifada, I have seen and experienced much. After moving to the states, I learned that the American people are very much unaware of the horrible acts taken upon Palestinian people everyday by the Israeli government. This is because of news channels that are “biased and uninformative”.
Some of the most popular news channels such as CNN, FOX, BBC, and SKY NEWS are extremely biased when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Often, I’d turn on the news and hear about an Israeli soldier who had been killed by Palestinians. They would give his full name, talk of his accomplishments, tell of his dreams and say he died doing his job; forgetting to mention that his job included killing innocent civilians, blocking roads that didn’t belong to his government, and demolishing Palestinian people’s homes built on their own lands. Important information is left out which changes the whole story and its meaning leaving people with the wrong idea.
I find it very hard to trust the news nowadays. I mean if people in the states know nothing of the large numbers of innocent civilians being killed, the number of homes being demolished, and the kind of humiliation the Palestinian people have been enduring for so long, then I must say, there is something seriously wrong. When the news chooses sides, or doesn’t give full information then that can lead to great misunderstanding. If people aren’t aware of wrong in the world then how can they make it a right?
In conclusion, if the news continues to carry on with false and biased information then this can and probably will lead to ignorance, non tolerance, and extremism. The news will become a fuel of hatred to many. Furthermore, people will continue to suffer, and however loud their cries are for help, the world will never be able to hear them and help them because their news will not let them know the truth.
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