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Times Argus, April 16, 2002:
Stop
Sharon Now
Burlington Free Press, May 12, 2002:
End The Occupation
by Miriam Ward, RSM
Sharon marches on. Israeli tanks have pulled out
of a few Palestinian cities, but only to the outskirts of towns. The brutal
Occupation continues. 3.3 million Palestinians are prisoners.
Desperate cries come out of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus,
Qalqiya, Jenin, from the refugee camps of Dheisheh, Aida, and more--cries
of Palestinians for help from the outside world: dehydrated children screaming
for water, silent cries on the faces of refugees traumatized at the sight
of their humble homes now a mass of rubble and corpses around them, cries
of mothers devastated by seeing their teen age sons and husbands beaten
and taken off by the Israeli soldiers.
Cries from desperate Jewish Israelis horrified at the
destruction and devastation carried out against a civilian population.
In the words of Israeli Gila Svirsky, "In my history of activism, I
recall no parallel sense of urgency, but I also recall no parallel feeling
that a calamity of our own making is unfolding before our eyes.
I implore you to contact relevant officials. If you are Jewish, make a
point of saying that."
Cries from Israeli reserve combat officers who
refuse to participate: "We shall not fight beyond the 1967 borders in
order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people."
Cries from physicians for the right of access
of ambulances to reach the victims, for medicines.
Cries from internationals working in the Occupied
Territories.
Cries from anguished Jews throughout England,
Europe and the United States, some Holocaust survivors, saying, "Not in
our name."
Cries from Arab Americans learning of the deaths
of relatives.
Cries of Israeli victims of suicide bombings,
telling us Sharon's
incursion is simply going to push more Young Palestinians to the depths
of despair.
Twenty years ago a professor at Tel Aviv University
said to me, "Sharon wants to become prime minister. If ever he does, God
help us all." Sharon is now prime minister, now completing the pattern
he set at Qibya in 1953 where he led his military Unit 101 in slaughtering
70 villagers, mostly children and women and demolishing homes (per
Ben Gurion's biographer), was reprimanded by his own government. Sharon
went on as the architect of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon where
thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians died, and where the savage
massacre of an estimated 3000 Palestinians took place in the refugee camps
of Sabra and Shatila by the Phalangists with Sharon's complicity and assistance.
On to the villages and refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza in 2002.
Are we listening? Can we say, "We didn't know"?
For the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, please contact our Congress
people who hold the answer--stop all military aid to Israel until Israeli
forces are completely out of the Occupied Territories.
Miriam Ward, RSM, Burlington, VT 05401
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