Home > Action Alerts >
CJME Alert #20
KC Star "Gaza Pullout" Article Ignores Israeli
West Bank Settlement Expansion
Call Readers' Representative at Kansas City Star
The Issue:
Please write a letter to the editor of the Kansas
City Star or call Managing Editor Steve Shirk or Readers'
Representative Derek Donovan to complain about the Sunday, August 14
story about the Israeli pullout from Gaza. The story asserts that the
pullout is Ariel Prime Minister Sharon's effort to "jumpstart the
U.S.-proposed roadmap to peace." This is nonsense, of course. Sharon's
own chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, told Haaretz (Israeli
newspaper) in October 2004 that "the significance of our disengagement
plan is the freezing of the peace process. When you freeze the process,
you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."
Send letters to letters@kcstar.com or call the
Reader's Representative at the Star at 816-234-4487 to protest. To avoid
duplication, please let CJME know if you use one of the model letters
below or consider changing the wording slightly. Send an email to
info@cjme.org mentioning if you followed up otherwise, either by
sending your own draft of a letter or phoning the Star.
Remember: The Star does pay attention to
the quality and quantity of letters on significant issues such as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please spend a few minutes to call the
Readers' Representative or take an hour to write a letter.
Points you can make in a letter or call:
- Americans are being asked to
foot the $2 billion bill for the pullout, which was done
unilaterally instead of following the president's peace plan.
Why should Americans pay this? For that matter, why should they
pay the $3 billion annually given to Israel each year? Americans
should stop funding the conflict in Palestine.
- Sharon has never been
enthusiastic about the roadmap and only accepted it
conditionally with 14 reservations that essentially gutted its
substance.
- The Gaza pullout is to be
welcomed but is part of an Israeli effort to cement its hold
over the West Bank. Sharon has said four West Bank outposts will
be closed but Israeli will not give up six major settlement
blocks in the West Bank.
- New settlement construction on
the West Bank continues in violation of the roadmap. According
to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program yesterday
(Monday, August 15) 6,400 units are being built on the West
Bank.
- Israel's pullout from Gaza is
prompted by economics and demographics more than Sharon's love
of the roadmap. Protecting 8,500 settlers is expensive and
unpopular. A growing Palestinian population makes is unfeasible
in the long run.
- In Gaza and in the West Bank,
Israel has been constructing an apartheid state. Conditions are
particularly harsh in Gaza where for years residents have been
prohibited from either leaving or entering and where 81 percent
of the people are living in poverty.
- Settlements are against
international law and provoke violence. In addition, settlers
will be compensated up to $300 000 for the loss of their home.
Yet when the Israeli army demolishes Palestinian homes or
uproots olive groves and diverts water supplies, Palestinians
receive nothing and become homeless.
- As unarmed soldiers undertake
"Operation Brotherly Hand," they have received additional
training in how to sensitively evict families. They are helping
them to pack and move boxes.
The daily demolition of Palestinian houses and destruction of
Palestinian property is undertaken at gunpoint by a heavily
armed military, and any resistance such as stone throwing is
crushed with tear gas stun grenades and and live ammunition
rounds.
- It must also be remembered that
the disengagement of the illegal settlements in Gaza — along
with four small colonies in the West Bank — will leave a further
120 settlements in the West Bank, which will remain under
Israeli military control. These settlements are to expanded
further to more than make up for the lack of settlements in
Gaza. As about 8,000 settlers leave Gaza, a settlement of 30 000
settlers has already been created in East Jerusalem. This would
appear to challenge the viability of any future Palestinian
state.
|
| What You Can Do: 1. Write a letter to the
Kansas City Star responding to the content of the article appearing in the
Sunday, August 14, 2005 issue.
Kansas City Star -- E-mail:
letters@kcstar.com
Readers' Representative Phone: (816) 234-4487
2. Send an email to info@cjme.org and let us
know that you wrote or called the KC Star on this issue.
|