Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine!

IfAmericansKnew.org Provides Flier to Distribute at Occupy WS Events; can be shared widely with anyone you know who might distribute it.

Courtesy: greanvillepost.com

(EL CERRITO, Calif.) - Are you participating in the Occupy protests? Thinking about joining? Or do you live near an Occupy protest? If so, we encourage you to share information about Palestine with protesters and passers-by.

We've created a special flier to use at Occupy events, highlighting the huge amount of US tax money sent to Israel. You can download [PDF] and print it at home.

Please share this flier widely with anyone you know who might distribute it. You may wish to hand out some of our other materials as well, and we also recommend these informational business cards from our partner organization, the Council for the National Interest.

Thank you for working for justice and peace.

Best Wishes,
If Americans Knew

If Americans Knew
www.IfAmericansKnew.org
3020 El Cerrito Plaza #157
El Cerrito, CA 94530
Phone: 202-631-4060

* We would also like to thank all of you who support If Americans Knew’s sister organization, the Council for the National Interest. These two organizations work in tandem, but our missions and approaches are distinct and both organizations maintain separate projects that we believe are critical in the struggle for justice.

Example of the PDF file below:

While people are losing jobs, homes, and hope, politicians – dominated by powerful special interests – are sending more of our tax money to Israel than to any other country on earth, even though Israel is in violation of numerous human rights conventions and UN resolutions and is maintaining a brutal military occupation over Palestinians.

In a unique arrangement, Israel (one of the world’s smallest and richest nations) receives our money in a lump sum at the beginning of the year.

Since the U.S. operates at a deficit, this means that the U.S. borrows this money and then pays interest on it long after it has been given to Israel. Israel, on the other hand, makes interest on it.

With this money Israel has created one of the most powerful and aggressive militaries on the planet.

Since fall 2000 Israeli forces have killed over 6,430 Palestinians (1,463 of them children), and in response Palestinian resistance groups have killed 1,084 Israelis (128 of them children). Our aid to Israel helps to fund this tragic violence and prevents peace.

The US also gives large sums to other countries to silence their opposition to Israeli injustice.

We send about $1.5 billion to Egypt and $843 million to Jordan annually, under diplomatic agreements in which these countries abandoned opposition to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

A report commissioned by the Army War College in 2003 found that the total cost to Americans over Israel’s 60+ years of existence has been $3 trillion.

Many analysts have demonstrated that Israel supporters were key in pushing the Iraq war. In addition to its incalculable cost in lives and suffering, the Iraq war has added substantially to the federal debt and, according to a Washington Post article by two top economists, was a cause of the global financial meltdown. [http://tiny.cc/7pj62]

For detailed information on the influence of Israel partisans in the buildup to the Iraq war, see the excellent work by Stephen Sniegoski, Kathleen Christison, Stephen Green, Jeffrey Blankfort, Grant Smith, John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt. [http://tiny.cc/7pj62]

* $8 million/day is from the Congressional Research Service – see http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html

Alison Weir's goals are peace and understanding and the realization of a real multi-cultural place where people are not continually scrutinized and referred to as 'terrorists' in order for one side to further its difficult political position. As a former journalist, Weir has traveled throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and speaks widely on this topic; in the past having given two briefings on Capitol Hill, three talks at the Asia Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur (at the end of the month she will be speaking at the Summit in Beijing), presentations in Ramallah and Bethlehem, and lectures at numerous campuses across the US, including Harvard Law School, Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, MIT, Vassar, and the Naval Postgraduate Institute.

Weir has received awards from the Council on American Islamic Relations and the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee, and she was asked to contribute a chapter to Project Censored's 2005 volume. She was inducted into membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society, founded in 1845 at Illinois College, the award citing her as a “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights." She was the first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history. Her writings on this topic have appeared in publications including The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The Link, CounterPunch, the Bay Guardian, and anthologies published in the US and abroad. She was the narrator of the award-winning documentary "Occupation 101." Weir was the subject of the Public Access program "Off the Charts," produced by Alternate Focus, and is a member of the board of directors of the Council for the National Interest and New Policy.

End Israel's Unwarranted Murder of Kids