[R-G] [Fwd: It Is About Time To Boycott the US]

[tchilds at resist.ca]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: It Is About Time To Boycott the US
From:    "Hanna Kawas" <hkawas at msn.com>
Date:    Wed, December 24, 2008 8:35 pm
To:      "Info CPA" <info at cpavancouver.org>
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Following is a Christmas Message from Canada Palestine Association,
Vancouver www.cpavancouver.org.Please forward widely to your
contacts.Groups and individuals who would like to endorse the message can
send their endorsement to info at cpavancouver.org and bcc hkawas at msn.com.
Endorsers names will appear on our website.
In SolidarityHanna Kawas, Chairperson,
CPA------------------------------------------------------
Christmas Message 2008
To the U.S. Government: Where is the Promised Palestinian State?
The Palestinian people were promised an independent state 3 times in the
last 15 years by successive U.S. government – first in 1998, then 2005,
and most recently by the end of 2008.  In all three cases, the promises
went unfulfilled, and were intended to be unfulfilled when declared.  In
fact, all that resulted from these promises was more oppression, more
killings, more prisoners, more theft of land, more separation walls, more
check points, more apartheid segregation, more illegal settlements and
more prejudicial facts on the ground. This has been the theme of U.S.
policy towards Palestinian aspirations: engage in endless non-productive
talks while supporting ruthless acts of expansion and aggression that
ensure a viable Palestinian state will never come to fruition.  It is time
for the Palestinian and Arab people to clearly express to their own
leaders and the U.S. establishment that “business as usual” is no longer
an option.

We also call on the American people to take action and insist their
government act immediately to rectify the injustices carried against the
Palestinian people for over sixty years. These injustices have impacted
not just the livelihood of the Palestinians, but humanity in general and
also the American people in specific.

On September 20, 2001, in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and
the American people,  U.S. President George W. Bush stated "Americans are
asking, why do they hate us?  They hate what we see right here in this
chamber -- a democratically elected government.  Their leaders are
self-appointed.  They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our
freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each
other."  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush insists on hiding the facts and the truth from the
American people, and he is not alone in doing so among recent US
presidents.  The US economic collapse, which will result in a US military
collapse and eventually the end of the US empire, has its roots in this
very question. Why do many people hate the U.S. government?  Simply put,
they hate it because they hate the hegemonic polices of the US government,
the policies that brought U.S. occupation to Iraq and sustain Israeli
occupation in Palestine.Following is just a few highlights of the over
sixty years of U.S. meddling and intervention to control the Middle East
and perpetuate Israeli aggression.

Successive U. S. governments played a major role in supporting the Israeli
dispossession of the Palestinian people.  Since 1947 the Zionist terrorist
gangs and later the Israeli government wiped out over 400 Palestinian
towns and villages from the world map (see All That Remains By Prof. Walid
Khalidi
 http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story661.html),
thereby ethnically cleansing Palestine from two thirds of its people. 
These war crimes were the result of UN General Assembly resolution 181,
called the Partition Plan, which the US government played a major role in
getting passed by pressuring other UN members to vote in favour of the
resolution. Then US Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal stated: "The
methods that have been used ... to bring coercion and duress on other
nation in the General Assembly bordered closely onto scandal".  And US
Congressman Lawrence H. Smith stated, "The pressure by our delegates, by
our officials, and by the private citizens of the United States
constitutes reprehensible conduct against them and against us."  During
the debates in the U.N. on the Partition Plan in 1947, the representative
of Pakistan, Zufrallah Khan, warned the Western powers that pushed for the
partition plan "to remember that you may need friends tomorrow, that you
may need allies in the Middle East. I beg you, not to ruin and blast your
credit in these lands."  Words that were obviously ignored.

In May 1948 when Israel declared its so-called independence, the US
government recognized it after just ten minutes, highlighting the level of
coordination and complicity of the US government with the Zionist project.

On June 5, 1967, with US financial, intelligence, military and political
support, Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan with the aim of crushing
the progressive, nationalist and socialist policies of the Syrian and the
Egyptian governments. By doing so the US dashed the aspirations of the
whole Arab nation for self-reliance, independence, progress and unity.
In September 1970, the US built a military bridge between Washington and
Amman to help King Hussein in liquidating the Palestinian national
movement in its infancy.  This was accomplished with the assistance of
other local agents such as Pakistani Brigadier Muhammad Zia-al-Haq, who
later became president of Pakistan, and Hardan El-Tikriti, then Iraqi
Defence Minister, who ended up with two suitcases full of CIA dollars as a
reward for neutralizing the 12,000-strong Iraqi "Saladin Force" stationed
in Jordan at the time.

In the October war of 1973, the US shipped 22,325 tons of military
hardware in a strategic airlift operation called "Operation Nickel Grass"
to save Israel from what many viewed as impending defeat by the Arab
armies

In 1978, under then-president Jimmy Carter, the US succeeded in
negotiating the Camp David Accords that was signed at the White House by
Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin on Sep. 17, 1978.  This effectively froze
Egypt out of the Arab-Israeli conflict, thus ensuring the balance of power
in favour of Israel.

In June 1982, the US Secretary of State Alexander Haig gave the green
light to Israel for its invasion of Lebanon (this resulted in his
resignation after it became public in July 1982). At the end of the war,
the US envoy Philip Habib guaranteed the safety of the Palestinian refugee
camps and promised that Israeli forces won't enter Beirut, all in exchange
for the evacuation of the Palestinian resistance forces from the capital
city.  Both promises were broken and the final result was the horrible
Sabra and Chattila massacre.

The US- Israeli objectives of the Oslo accords in 1993 were to again
liquidate the Palestinian national struggle and stop the growing Arab and
international support for the first Palestinian intifada. The Oslo accords
promised a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by 1998, at the end
of that first so-called interim period.  However, instead of fulfilling
this promise, we saw more oppression, more brutality and more than
doubling of the illegal Israeli settlement units.
Similar to June 1982, in March 2002, the Israelis got the green light from
U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney to re-occupy the Palestinian cities in the
occupied West Bank, in what is known as area A in the Oslo accords. This
was in direct violation of the Oslo accords that were signed in front of
US President Clinton. The Washington Post reported on March 25, 2002 that
"Shimon Schiffer, arguably Israel's best-connected political reporter,
wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth today that when Vice President
Cheney visited Israel last week, Sharon ‘reached an agreement’ with him
that if Zinni's mission fails, Washington would support Israeli strikes on
the Palestinians. U.S. officials did not deny the report." (see: Israel
Plans Big Assault If Truce Talks Fail
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A11927-2002Mar24&notFound=true)
"Long-time and now recently deceased confidant to former Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, Uri Dan, published a book in France
titled Ariel
Sharon: An Intimate Portrait in which he accused the former prime minister
of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat by
poisoning him. Dan claimed Sharon got approval from George Bush [our
emphasis] by phone early in 2004 to proceed with his plan".  (Stephen
Lendman in Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/lendman12302006.html)
The U.S. supported the 2006 war on Lebanon politically, diplomatically and
militarily, Israel devastated the Lebanese infrastructure, committed
unspeakable war crimes and dropped four million cluster bomblets near the
end of the war.

While the U.S. government uses the weapon of boycotts frequently against
any country that does not comply with U.S. dictates, nonetheless the
United States adopted two "antiboycott" laws in the 1970s, primarily to
protect Israel from any boycott campaigns (see:
http://www.bis.doc.gov/antiboycottcompliance/oacrequirements.html#whatscovered
). Aside from the massive US military and economic assistance given to
Israel on a yearly basis, the US also grants tax-deductible status to many
of Israel's institutions, including the racist and supremacist “Jewish
National Fund” via the “United Jewish Appeal”.

The U.S., Israel and other Western countries decided in early 2006 to
punish the Palestinian people for practising their democratic rights and
electing a government the West and Israel did not favour. They imposed
sanctions, cut humanitarian aid and then in July 2007 imposed a total
siege on the Gaza Strip, locking up 1.5 million Palestinians in a huge
ghetto, committing crimes against humanity in the process, according to
the UN and various human rights organizations.