Take Action: Tell U.S. to Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements

[ckaihatsu]

Take Action: Tell U.S. to Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements


Dear Chris,

On Jan. 27, an Israeli settler shot dead Odai Qadous, an 18-year-old shepherd tending his flock of sheep near his West Bank village of Iraq Bourin. The very next day, more than 100 Israeli settlers stormed the West Bank village of Safa; during the melee that ensued, a settler killed 15-year-old Yousef Ekhlil with a gunshot to his head.

As the UN Security Council prepares to debate a resolution on Israel's settlements, the tragic deaths of Odai and Yousef serve as a stark reminder that not only are Israel's 150 settlements in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal. Not only do they prevent Palestinian statehood, freedom and self-determination...

...Odai and Yousef's killings also remind us that the half million Israeli settlers, protected by the U.S.-equipped Israeli army, are responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses suffered by Palestinians day-in and day-out.

The draft Security Council resolution reaffirms that Israel's settlements "are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace."

Chris, we're sure that you agree and want to see the Obama Administration support this resolution.
Please add your name right now to our petition to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, asking her to vote in favor of this resolution.


One would expect the Obama Administration to support this resolution as the President himself "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," as stated in his June 2009 Cairo address.

But instead, the Obama Administration is threatening to use its veto in the Security Council once again to protect Israel from abiding by international law. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that "New York is not the place to resolve the longstanding conflict and outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

We disagree.

As we argued recently in the LA Times (Good Riddance, 'Peace Process'), the United States is not capable of being an honest broker. A forum such as the UN, anchored in human rights and international law, is exactly the right place to achieve a just and lasting peace.

Let the Obama Administration know that you want our country to support the upcoming UN vote condemning Israel's illegal settlements.

If more than 10,000 people sign our petition before the vote, we will hand-deliver it to the U.S. Mission to the UN. Add your voice and help us spread the word now!

As the Obama Administration appears to be supporting human rights in Tunisia and Egypt, and their citizens' demands for freedom, the United States will lose credibility if it vetoes a UN resolution that supports those same rights for Palestinians.

The State Department told us on Human Rights Day last December that "there is a single universal standard that applies to every country, including our own. We apply it to the Israelis, and we also view…Palestinians as being human beings under the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] and entitled to those rights."
Sign our petition today and press the United States to live up its word.


In the memory of Odai and Yousef, and in support of a just and lasting peace based on human rights, international law, and equality.

Sincerely,

Josh Ruebner
National Advocacy Director
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
If more than 10,000 people sign the petition before the vote, the US Campaign will hand-deliver it to the U.S. Mission to the UN. Join me in adding your voice and helping to spread the word now!

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/unvote

Thanks for taking action!

[MarxistMan]

Obama and the US government are puppets of Israel. Read this article. Man the USA is doomed, it has many problems at the same, capitalism, imperialism, racism, and US gov. being controlled by Israeli Capitalists. Read this article related to your post:

The Veto and the Case for Impeaching President Obama

By Alan Hart

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27537.htm

February 21, 2011 "Information Clearing House (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/)" -- Never before has an American President’s fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress been so exposed as it was by Obama’s decision to veto the Security Council resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank and demanding that Israel “immediately and completely cease” all such activities. In a different America – an informed America – some might think, I do, that Obama should be impeached. The charge? TREASON.

After she had exercised the Obama administration’s first veto, the plea made by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for understanding of America’s position could not have been more absurd. “Our opposition to the resolution before this Council today should not be misunderstood to mean that we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity.”

So why the veto? Ambassador Rice said:

“The United States has been deeply committed to pursuing a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, In that context, we have been focused on taking steps that advance the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, rather than complicating it. That includes a commitment to work in good faith with all parties to underscore our opposition to continued settlements.”

What nonsense! If the Obama administration really wanted to underscore its stated opposition to Israel’s on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem, there was no better or more effective way of doing so than voting for the resolution or abstaining. In either case the resolution would have passed and that would have opened the door to real global pressure on Israel if it continued to defy international law.

As for advancing the goal of a two-state solution, the Obama administration has done the opposite. By allowing Israel to continue its illegal settlement activities and consolidate its occupation, it, the Obama administration, has helped to guarantee that there can never be a viable Palestinian state living side by side with an Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war.

In the context of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, the only thing to which the Obama administration has been deeply committed is not provoking the wrath of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media. For all practical purposes Obama has surrendered policy making on Israel-Palestine to this lobby. (The veto marked the complete surrender).

The essence of the problem this presents can be simply stated. The Zionist lobby’s agenda – unquestioning support for Israel right or wrong – is not in America’s own best interests. (In reality it is not in anybody’s best interests including those of Israeli Jews and the Jews of the world).

As I pointed out on I February in my post Crunch time coming for America in the Middle East?, what all Arab peoples want is not only an end to corruption and repression and a better life in their own countries. They also want an end to the humiliation caused by Israel’s arrogance of power and American support for it.

It is clear that the manifestations of Arab people power the world is witnessing were not instigated by Islamist extremist groups and are spontaneous protests with demands by citizens from all sections of civil society. So at the present time that is no evidence to suggest that change brought about by people power in Arab states will create more cover, more scope and more popular support for extremist and violent forces which use and abuse Islam in much the same way as Zionists use and abuse Judaism. But this could change, in my view will change, if America goes on supporting Israel right or wrong. In other words, the more the administration in Washington D.C. is perceived by the Arab street as being complicit in the Zionist state’s defiance of international law and crimes, the more American interests and citizens are likely to be targeted and hit.

The American Constitution states that a president can be impeached and removed from office for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours.”

In my view a president who allows a lobby group to put the interests of a foreign power above those of the country of which they are citizens, and who by doing so puts his fellow citizens more in harm’s way than they otherwise would be, is guilty of treason. (And all the more so when the American-Jewish lobby in question does not speak for more than about a third, and possibly only a quarter, of America’s mainly silent and deeply troubled Jews)

Footnote:

The admirable and courageous Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism, has a
brilliant article (which I have tweeted) in today’s Ha’aretz with the headline With settlement veto resolution, Obama has joined Likud.
And this is how Gideon concluded his piece:

“If the U.S. had been a responsible superpower, it would have voted for the resolution on Friday to rouse Israel from its dangerous sleep. Instead, we got a hostile veto from Washington, shouts of joy from Jerusalem and a party that will end very badly for both.”



Take Action: Tell U.S. to Support UN Resolution on Israeli Settlements


Dear Chris,

On Jan. 27, an Israeli settler shot dead Odai Qadous, an 18-year-old shepherd tending his flock of sheep near his West Bank village of Iraq Bourin. The very next day, more than 100 Israeli settlers stormed the West Bank village of Safa; during the melee that ensued, a settler killed 15-year-old Yousef Ekhlil with a gunshot to his head.

As the UN Security Council prepares to debate a resolution on Israel's settlements, the tragic deaths of Odai and Yousef serve as a stark reminder that not only are Israel's 150 settlements in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal. Not only do they prevent Palestinian statehood, freedom and self-determination...

...Odai and Yousef's killings also remind us that the half million Israeli settlers, protected by the U.S.-equipped Israeli army, are responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses suffered by Palestinians day-in and day-out.

The draft Security Council resolution reaffirms that Israel's settlements "are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace."

Chris, we're sure that you agree and want to see the Obama Administration support this resolution.
Please add your name right now to our petition to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, asking her to vote in favor of this resolution.


One would expect the Obama Administration to support this resolution as the President himself "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," as stated in his June 2009 Cairo address.

But instead, the Obama Administration is threatening to use its veto in the Security Council once again to protect Israel from abiding by international law. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that "New York is not the place to resolve the longstanding conflict and outstanding issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

We disagree.

As we argued recently in the LA Times (Good Riddance, 'Peace Process'), the United States is not capable of being an honest broker. A forum such as the UN, anchored in human rights and international law, is exactly the right place to achieve a just and lasting peace.

Let the Obama Administration know that you want our country to support the upcoming UN vote condemning Israel's illegal settlements.

If more than 10,000 people sign our petition before the vote, we will hand-deliver it to the U.S. Mission to the UN. Add your voice and help us spread the word now!

As the Obama Administration appears to be supporting human rights in Tunisia and Egypt, and their citizens' demands for freedom, the United States will lose credibility if it vetoes a UN resolution that supports those same rights for Palestinians.

The State Department told us on Human Rights Day last December that "there is a single universal standard that applies to every country, including our own. We apply it to the Israelis, and we also view…Palestinians as being human beings under the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] and entitled to those rights."
Sign our petition today and press the United States to live up its word.


In the memory of Odai and Yousef, and in support of a just and lasting peace based on human rights, international law, and equality.

Sincerely,

Josh Ruebner
National Advocacy Director
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
If more than 10,000 people sign the petition before the vote, the US Campaign will hand-deliver it to the U.S. Mission to the UN. Join me in adding your voice and helping to spread the word now!

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/unvote

Thanks for taking action!

[ckaihatsu]

Obama and the US government are puppets of Israel. Read this article. Man the USA is doomed, it has many problems at the same, capitalism, imperialism, racism, and US gov. being controlled by Israeli Capitalists. Read this article related to your post:


The article you're referencing, and the position you're taking, are both *libertarian* in nature. The flaw is in "putting the cart before the horse" in not recognizing the vast differential in size between the respective economies, and populations.

The issue can be easily confused because of the symbiotic relationship that the two nations enjoy -- Israel functions as a convenient outpost in the Middle East for U.S. hegemonic interests.





The economy of the United States is the world's largest national economy. Its nominal GDP was estimated to be nearly $14.7 trillion in 2010,[1] approximately a quarter of nominal global GDP.[2][11] Its GDP at purchasing power parity was also the largest in the world, approximately a fifth of global GDP at purchasing power parity.[2] The U.S. economy also maintains a very high level of output per capita. In 2009, it was estimated to have a per capita GDP (PPP) of $46,381, the 6th highest in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Economy





GDP $217.1 billion (2010 est.)
GDP growth 4.5% (2010)
GDP per capita $29,500 (2010 est.)
GDP by sector agriculture (2.7%), industry (31.7%), services (65.6%) (2008 est.)
[...]
Labour force 3.01 million (2008 est.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel