East End Report

Chomsky on Obama's Israel/Palestine Policy

....... Also near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but are steadily implementing those policies. Or that unlike the two rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly........

from chomsky.info

Week of February 5, 2009 - click here for updates

Who can protest and does not is an accomplice in the act _The Talmud

February 12 (Thursday): Eastern LI NAACP Celebrates 100th Anniversary of NAACP Across the East End with Clare Coss and Blanche Wiesen-Cook

LI Wins Blog: Suffolk Legislature Passes Hate Crimes Task Force Bill

LI Wins Blog: Thoughts on the Hate Crimes Task Force

Tidings from Hazel Kahan: Making Sense of Our World in Crisis
Thursday at Noon - WPKN 89.5/WPKM 88.7 / wpkn.org

upcoming events:

NAACP Long Island Awards Luncheon _ February 7 in Brentwood

Vigil for Dead Construction Worker _February 8 in Southampton

School of Americas Watch Presents Film, Talk, Brunch February 15 in Huntington

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Darwish: In Jerusalem

Chomsky: Obama on Israel/Palestine

Open Letter to the President of Israel - "remove my grandfather's name from Yad Vashem Memorial"

Blog: A Palestinian Mother - Laila El-Haddad - Gaza: Hearing is Not Seeing - What you can do to help, more

Voices for Creative Non Violence - Kathy Kelly Reports from Gaza

From Zatoun to Zatoun - Aid for people in Gaza City

Middle East Children's Alliance Notes from Palestine

We can help in Gaza: message from East Enders

We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon - WPKN program may be downloaded

Palestinian Legislator Mustafa Barghouthi: Palestinian Guernica and Myths of Israeli Victimhood

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions: A Call to End Attacks and Their Cause

Let’s be crystal clear. Israel’s massive attacks on Gaza today have one overarching goal: conflict management. How to end rocket attacks on Israel from a besieged and starving Gaza without ending the impetus for those attacks, 41 years of increasingly oppressive Israeli Occupation without a hint that a sovereign and viable Palestinian state will ever emerge.

LA Times: They attacked from three sides

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Peace and Justice Calendar

Suffolk Peace Vigils

Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

Letter from French Jewish Writer:

Open letter to the President of Israel, by Jean-Moïse Braitberg: *

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you, to ask you to contact those who are authorized to do so, to remove the name of my grandfather from the memorial at Yad Vashem, which is dedicated to the Jewish victims of National Socialism. It says "Moshe Brajtberg, gassed in 1943 in Treblinka."

The rest of my family also perished in the various of the camps to which they were deported. I beg you. Mr. President, to do this, because that which has happened in Gaza, and in other places, and has defined the fate of the Arab peoples of Palestine for 60 years now, disqualifies - to my mind - Israel to be the center which is dedicated to remember the suffering of the Jews, and by extension, that of all of mankind.

Understand me: ever since I was a child I have lived among survivors of the death camps. I saw the numbers tattooed on their arms and heard the stories of their tortures. I experienced the unbearable mourning and shared the nightmares.

I learned that these crimes shall never again take place, that no person, ever again, shall despise another for his ethnicity or religion, and rob him of his elementary Human Rights, just as he has a right to a life lived in decent circumstances, with the hope of better things for his family.

Still, Mr. President, I have noticed that despite innumerable Resolutions of the international community, despite the obvious injustices to which the Palestinians have been heirs since 1948, despite the hopes of Oslo, and despite the repeated recognition on the part of the Palestinian authorities that Israeli Jews have the right to live in peace and security, the only answer of successive Israeli governments has been brute force, blood shed, incarceration, constant controls, colonization and expropriations.

You will tell me, Mr. President, that it is legitimate for a country to defend itself
against rockets aimed at its people, or kamikazis who take many innocents with them in death. To which I will answer that my human sympathies do not ask after the nationality of the victim.

You, on the other hand, lead a nation that means to represent the Jews in their entirety, but also claim to preserve the memory of the victims of National Socialism. That is what touches me and is unbearable to me. While you write the names of my loved ones at Yad Vashem, in the heart of Israel,the state holds the memory of my family prisoner behind the barbed wire of Zionism, in order to make them hostages of a so-called authority which - day after day - practices injustice.

So I beg you to take away the name of my grandfather from the memorial that testifies to the horrors suffered by the Jews, so that it can no longer be used to justify the horror which is visited upon the Palestinians.

Veuillez agréer, monsieur le president, l'assurance de ma respectueuse considération.

_____________________________________________________________
* Published in Le Monde, Paris on 28 January 2009

http://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2009/01/28/effacez-le-nom-de-mon-grand-pere-a-yad-vashem_1147635_0.html

February 15(Sunday): LI School of Americas Watch Presents Film, Talk and Brunch

Come and learn about the mobilization in Colombia of indigenous people for their rights and against the consequences of neoliberal policies.

Benefit for Indigenous Community Station Radio Payu’mat ( Cauca , Colombia )

Mario Murillo, Associate Professor at Hofstra University

Tiokasin Ghosthorse, WBAI Producer of First Voices: Indigenous Radio

Film: We are Raised with the Staff of Authority in Hand

Award winning documentary about the resistance of the indigenous population of Colombia to the repression by the U.S.-backed regime of President Alvaro Uribe.

T. Ghosthorse will talk about the media solidarity among indigenous communities.

M. Murillo, back from six months in Colombia , will introduce the film and give the background about the causes of the mobilization of the indigenous people.

Sunday, February 15. Brunch (included) at 11:00 am (doors open at 10:30am).
Program starts at 11:30 am

Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave. Huntington , NY 11743

$25 All Tickets

For tickets: 1-800-838-3006 and ask for event 54041, or go to:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/54041

For tickets at the door no credit cards will be accepted.

For more information: www.nycsoaw.org

Tidings from Hazel Kahan on WPKN 89.5 / WPKM 88.7 / wpkn.org

March 5 (Thursday): WPKN 89.5 / WPKM 88.7 Presents "Tidings from Hazel Kahan" at 12 noon

Mattituck resident, artist, psychologist and activist Hazel Kahan presents the third of a three part series "Making Sense of Our World in Crisis".

In part 1 a Zen abbot and a scholar of the mind and consciousness gave their views of the current state of the world.

Part 2 with Michael Harvey, a sacred activist aired on February 26 at 12 Noon.

Part 3 with Dr. Michael Conforti, a Jungian psychoanalyst is scheduled for March 5 at Noon.

WPKN streams live on the internet at wpkn.org

Past Tidings programs are available on the web at as podcasts at

http://web.me.com/hzelkahan/Tidings/Podcast/Podcast.html