Zionist horror, at Palestine human rights protests in Michigan

"Most Saturdays, a half-dozen to a dozen or more members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends hold signs against Israel ("Israel Commits Atrocities"), against U.S. policy ("Stop U.S. Aid to Israel") and against supporters of Israel ("Israel Lobby Inside"). Sometimes they videotape the worshipers as they arrive."
---

Thursday, April 12, 2007

NEWS: Counter-Protest
Non-Jews lead effort to stop Shabbat demonstrations in Ann Arbor.

Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Ann Arbor

How can a community like ours, that rightly prides itself on being a liberal and respectful one, be silent in the face of this kind of abuse of our Jewish neighbors?"

That is the question that Larry Crockett and others in the recently formed Worship Without Harassment group ask fellow Ann Arborites regarding the picketing of Beth Israel Congregation each Saturday morning for the past three years.

Most Saturdays, a half-dozen to a dozen or more members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends hold signs against Israel ("Israel Commits Atrocities"), against U.S. policy ("Stop U.S. Aid to Israel") and against supporters of Israel ("Israel Lobby Inside"). Sometimes they videotape the worshipers as they arrive.

The Ann Arbor City Council, area religious leaders and the Ann Arbor News have condemned the pickets to no avail.

In an opinion piece in the Ann Arbor News in January, Beth Israel's Rabbi Robert Dobrusin said the signs "contain false and hateful statements crafted to be provocative and offensive." As to the protesters' claim that they seek dialogue and their demand for a synagogue-hosted platform to present their views, Rabbi Dobrusin wrote that the Shabbat protests "are disrespectful, intrusive, insensitive and counter-productive to any true dialogue on this subject in this community."

Crockett, a member of First Unitarian Universalist Church of Ann Arbor, has observed the picketing a few times and found it "disgusting," saying there are proper forums and venues to demonstrate about political issues. He also suspects that Jews are being singled out in a way that other religious groups wouldn't be, and that beyond political differences anti-Semitism is likely at play.

"I think if it had happened at a mainline church, it would have been over in a month; someone would have found a way to stop it," he says.

An answer on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on the group's Web site also addresses the issue of anti-Semitism: "When Jews - and only Jews - are subjected to this kind of behavior, then what might the appropriate term to describe that be?" it says.

Crockett urges friends of the Jewish community to show support by signing an online petition, sending letters of support to the congregation and speaking out at their own religious institutions in support of Beth Israel and against protests at houses of worship. To contact the group, or sign the online petition, which had 328 signators at last count, visit the Web site

www.worshipwithoutharassment.org.

In July 2005, some Beth Israel congregants formed SPURN (Synagogue Protest Unacceptable! Respond Now) to encourage donations to the American Friends of Magen David Adom, supporters of Israel's emergency medical service, as a positive response to the protests. To date, it has raised just under $85,000. See

www.aaspurn.org for information.

URL

Taking the Resitance Underground– in Washington

Jewish Week

April 10th, 2007

Subterranean soapbox Anti-`occupation’ ads coming to Metro stations

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about to go underground– into the Washington subway system, to be exact.

Beginning May 13, some 20 downtown Metro stations will be emblazoned with posters advertising a June 10 rally and march in Washington protesting “Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.”

The event, which will be held on the west lawn of the Capitol, is being organized by the District-based U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which claims 250 member organizations around the country.

“If past events organized by this organization are any indication, it will make no attempt to present a balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and this ad is a pure reflection of that,” said Oren Segal, a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League.

The U.S. Campaign’s effort to publicize the rally ran into an early roadblock that escalated into a minor freedom of speech face-off that eventually involved the American Civil Liberties Union.

The saga began unfolding when the U.S. Campaign approached CBS Outdoor, the New York-based company that handles in-station advertising for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. A CBS Outdoor account executive refused to place the organization’s ad, claiming in a March 9 e-mail that it was “too offensive to be displayed in a public place,” according to Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area.

Jodi Senese, CBS Outdoor’s executive vice president in charge of marketing, rejected the ad, saying it appeared to violate company policy. “The ad,” she explained in an interview, “included a picture that I felt was inflammatory and was exploitative of children.”

Senese said the ad was not turned down because of its political stance. “I’m Jewish,” she added, “and I didn’t want to be seen as making a political statement.”

The ad is dominated by a photograph of a child who is facing a giant tank that looms menacingly in the near distance. The accompanying text reads in part: “Imagine if this were your child’s daily path to school. Palestinians don’t have to imagine.” In larger, bold letters, it also reads: “The World Says No to Israeli Occupation!”

Within days of being turned down, a U.S. Campaign official contacted Spitzer, who then set out to touch base with a lawyer he knows in the WMATA legal office, who, as Spitzer put it, “understands the First Amendment and can help solve this with a call.”

The issue was indeed solved with a single nonthreatening call, and a confirming e-mail. CBS Outdoor has been instructed by WMATA to place the ad as per its contract with the U.S. Campaign, and the company has not objected, according to Spitzer. WMATA spokesperson Joanne Ferreira said only: “We didn’t have any problem with the ad. It was a First Amendment issue.”

The 46-by-60-inch ads (one per designated station) will appear for one month, according to a U.S. Campaign spokesperson who declined to comment when asked how much the advertising campaign costs.

Spitzer said this case is not precedent-setting. Over the years, several highly politicized ads have run in the Metro system, espousing positions spanning the political spectrum. In some cases, the ACLU has gone to court to fend off those who sought to remove them.

Spitzer, who is Jewish, was asked if he had any compunctions about defending the rights of an organization that is publicly and harshly criticizing Israel. “This is not a case about Judaism or Israel,” he said, “but about establishing someone’s right to freedom of speech, which I agree with regardless of whether I agree with their particular political position.”

by Richard Greenberg 10 April 2007

Protestors protest against Jews protesting Israeli policies toward Palestinians

Upset resident forms group to protest the protesters Worship Without Harassment has 260 supporters

Friday, March 23, 2007

BY JO COLLINS MATHIS

News Staff Reporter

Every Saturday morning for more than three years, members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends have stood on the sidewalk in front of Beth Israel Congregation on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor holding signs protesting Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

From day one, that's upset Ann Arbor resident Larry Crockett.

"But I thought over time it would stop,'' said Crockett, a member of Unitarian Universalist in Ann Arbor. "It baffles my mind that it's still going on in Ann Arbor.''

That's why Crockett and six others have formed a group to protest the protesters. Worship Without Harassment now has about 260 supporters, including ministers, priests and rabbis who express solidarity with Beth Israel.

The group agrees there are appropriate times and places for political protest but says a synagogue at the start of a Saturday service isn't one of them, Crockett said.

Worship Without Harassment asks supporters to consider sending a letter of support to Beth Israel; lighting a candle during a worship service while expressing support of Beth Israel Congregation; giving a sermon or writing a congregational letter about the situation; and signing on at worshipwithoutharassment.org.

Marian Krzyzowski of Ann Arbor was a University of Michigan student and frequent protester back in the 1960s, but he calls the weekly vigils "outrageous.'' Krzyzozwski, a Catholic, said people go to religious services to find peace and try to deal with important issues in their lives.

"To have people out there with signs saying things about you that have no connection to what you're doing and who you are is so out of place to me,'' he said. "To target a Jewish synagogue doesn't make sense to me. And to stay there year after year and harass people as they go to worship. ...''

Henry Herskovitz, the Ann Arbor resident who began the vigils, insists members of his group would have been arrested by now if they harassed anyone.

"Harassment is against the law, and we are the most scrutinized peace group there ever was,'' he said, noting the police presence during the vigils.

No protesters have been arrested, but an elderly Ohio man who was entering the synagogue was arrested last September on an assault charge after he pushed at a video camera being used by a member of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends to videotape the congregants. Charges were later dropped.

About a dozen people join the Saturday vigils from 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. Some of their signs read: "Stop US Aid to Israel'' "Israel Commits Atrocities'' and "Israel Lobby Inside.''

Ann Arbor resident Laurel Federbush, who has participated in the vigils most Saturdays since the start, insists the synagogue is the appropriate venue because it promotes a nationalist political agenda.

"We'd like the synagogue to dissociate from Israel,'' said Federbush, who is Jewish.

Rabbi Robert Dobrusin of Beth Israel Congregation said people remain very upset about the vigils but continue to attend Sabbath morning services in large numbers.

The 60-year-old Herskovitz, who calls himself a once-a-year, cultural/religious Jew, said his position has cost him his relationship with many Jewish friends and relatives. And, he said, he's tired of spending part of every Saturday at the vigils.

Herskovitz said it was the Jewish community's refusal to talk with him about the "Israeli atrocities'' he saw firsthand on a trip to the Middle East that led to the vigils in the first place. He said the vigils would stop if Beth Israel's Board of Directors publicly supported three things: Equality of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel within Israel; the implementation of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their properties in Israel and Palestinian territories; and the end of Israeli occupation and colonization of all lands seized by Israel in 1967.

Dobrusin said the long-standing position of the congregation has been publicly stated in detail many times - it supports a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis and recognizes the importance of respectful dialogue on the issue.

"Our congregation will not respond to lists of demands from anyone, especially from those who have conducted a disrespectful, intrusive action for three and a half years,'' he said.

There has been some public opposition to the vigils.

In 2004, the Ann Arbor City Council voted unanimously to condemn political protests outside houses of worship.

In 2005, Ken Phifer, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, helped get 33 other members of the Ann Arbor clergy to sign a statement that appeared in The News condemning the vigils.

Phifer said the vigils are immoral and disrespect the right to practice one's religion in peace. He said they are also impractical because they've only served to make people angry, while pushing discussions about the issue to a back burner.

Jo Mathis can be reached at jmathis@annarbornews.com or 734-994-6849.

©2007 Ann Arbor News © 2007 Michigan Live. All Rights Reserved.

Impeachment: 'The Only Remedy That Remains

[Opinion] Thoughts occasioned by a peace march in Minneapolis

Mikael Jonathan Rudolph (MikaelMN)

The Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star Tribune accurately portrayed the local peace march and rally that took place this past Sunday and appropriately featured it as Monday morning's number one story "above the fold" on its front page along with a large photograph of the marchers similar to this one taken nearly simultaneously.

ⓒ2007 Kayakbiker

This is yet another sign of steadily growing citizen opposition to the disastrous, failed policies of President Bush, along with Saturday's march on the Pentagon and similar protests around the nation and the world. The effectiveness of citizen protest and calls for peace, however, is certainly questionable as peace advocates marched once again in what is becoming an Iraq invasion anniversary tradition.

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it abundantly clear that no matter what the new majority of Democrats in Congress pass as legislation in opposition to the war, it will be vetoed, ignored or otherwise circumvented. This war will continue. Innocent Iraqis will continue to suffer terribly -- caught in the middle between their American occupiers, the "insurgent" resistance and the battling opposing forces of the burgeoning Sunni-Shiite civil war.

By this time next year another thousand American families will have flag-draped caskets come home instead of sons, daughters, fathers, or mothers. The number of horrendously damaged souls doomed to be relegated to holding cardboard signs on our street corners over the next couple of decades goes up every day.

No amount of protesting, no amount of candle-wax burned, no amount of letter writing, calls or e-mails of complaint to our Representatives and Senators will end this war.

The war was illegal from the start as a preemptive war of aggression banned by the Geneva Accords. The Bush administration clearly knew Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States and yet ordered the attack and occupation anyway of the sovereign nation whose only real crime was having the audacity to live on top of one of the world's largest oil fields.

We American citizens were lied to. The world was lied to. Most critically, Congress was lied to. The "intelligence was fixed to justify the policy" as made clear by the Downing Street Memo.

The plans to invade Iraq were clarified in 1998 according to the "Project for a New American Century" a Neo-Conservative think tank. All that was needed was a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify it. This was made clear in an article published as: Rebuilding America's Defenses (page 51).

Participants in PNAC included:

• Vice President Dick Cheney
  
• Cheney's recently convicted former top aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby CIA leaker
  
• World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz
  
• U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad
  
• Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Not Gone?
  
• Former Florida Governor and George W. Bush's brother Jeb Bush
  
• Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton
  
• Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage CIA leaker
  
• Former "Drug Czar" William Bennett
  
• Former Vice President Dan Quayle
  
• Fellow high profile conservatives Richard Perle, William Kristol and others.
  

The authors of the PNAC document got their "New Pearl Harbor" wish on Sept. 11, 2001 and the Bush administration has failed to thoroughly investigate the financing, planning, execution and cover up of the crimes of 9/11 ever since.

Despite there not being an iota of truth to the administration's claims of Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or 9/11, they are still talking about them all in the same breath repeatedly to manipulate the uninformed. Even so, America's patience with this war is plummeting, yet public opinion holds no sway with these war criminals the Hague is considering prosecuting along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The "War on Terror" is an eternal commitment to imperialism, it isn't a conflict that can be won because the declared enemy isn't a nation state nor is it a people group. It is a quasi-military tactic. We might as well declare war against bullets.

The Iraq War is not ending, it is escalating. The next escalation is already assured. According to some media sources covert pre-op military action is allegedly already taking place across the border in Iran. (New Yorker, RAW STORY.) Iran is almost certain to be attacked by the U.S. and/or Israel within the next few months. National Democratic Party leadership pressure and American Citizen pressure may have delayed this, but it is still in the works. There is a fourth aircraft carrier group heading to the Gulf as a "replacement" to arrive very soon. The likely timing for an attack is while all four carrier groups are there and before one group is rotated out.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had the courage, the integrity and basic common sense to recognize that there is only one way to pull the plug on this American war-for-profit machine last Thursday when he spoke to the House of Representatives:

"This House cannot avoid its constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of executive power.

"The administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.

"The U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the U.N. Charter states, 'all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state...' Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.

"Article VI of the U.S. constitution makes such treaties the supreme law of the land. This administration, has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the U.S. constitution and the U.N. charter.

"This week the House appropriations committee removed language from the Iraq war funding bill requiring the administration, under article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, to seek permission before it launched an attack against Iran.

"Since war with Iran is an option of this administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran."

"Impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran." -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

If we American citizens are not working for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and the removal from office of their entire administration we are not working for peace. Other efforts are noble, well-intended and honorable but absolutely impotent in the face of this voraciously bloodthirsty evil.

Martin Luther King had to take his legion across the bridge into a bloodbath provoked by a racist police force in Selma, Alabama, and Mahatma Ghandi marched his followers to the sea in resistance to the British military in order for true change to occur. It is long past time for the citizens of this nation, so many of whom call themselves Christians, to "storm the temple" as Jesus of Nazareth did and evict the moneychangers in the White House, utilizing the authority granted us in our constitution. That authority and mechanism for accountability and justice is called impeachment.

Who is ready to march with a petition of memorial to their Representative insisting on justice through impeachment for war crimes? We've been asking nicely for peace for four years (much longer for many, I know). It is time that we demand the justice that is the only way through which peace will come:

DIY Impeachment

Parents, when "asking nice" accomplishes absolutely nothing, know the next method of healthy discipline for their children is to be more authoritative. It is time to take away their toys.

Time out Mr. Bush.

Time out Mr. Cheney.

Time out.

Peaceful marchers: See you at next year's rally or are you ready to realize "the only remedy that remains" to secure the peace you seek is impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?

A version of this article also appeared on www.ImpeachforPeace.org

2007/03/20

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who called for the end of fighting in Iraq and the impeachment of Bush

Feminist Daily News Wire
March 19, 2007

Anti-War Protestors Gathered Around the World

Anti-war protesters across the country and around the world gathered Saturday to mark the four-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. The Washington, DC march, sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), assembled at the Lincoln Memorial and crossed the Potomac to rally at the Pentagon. Among the marchers were Iraq War veterans, Gold Star families, and CodePink. Signs with titles like "Impeach Bush for War Crimes" and "Visualize Impeachment, Save the Country" were abundant.

Among the speakers at the Pentagon was Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who called for the end of fighting in Iraq and the impeachment of Bush. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan also spoke, saying, "we're here in the shadow of the war machine."

Ramsey Clark, founder of ImpeachBush.org was also among the protestors and spoke in support of impeaching President Bush, saying, "The president and vice president committed high crimes and misdemeanors. How many crimes do they have to commit? How long does this have to go on?" CNS News reports.

A similar message was sent last week during Valerie Plame's hearing, when CodePink members wearing shirts with "Impeach Bush" positioned themselves directly behind Plame, broadcasting their message to television viewers everywhere.

Saturday protests also took place in other cities; protestors marched in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, New York and Hartford, Connecticut. Overseas, thousands marched in Madrid calling not only for US withdrawal, but also for a prompt closing of the terrorist suspect prison in Guantanamo Bay. Similar protests also took place in Greece and Turkey.