Israeli occupation forces launch brutal assault

*Please circulate widely*

Israeli occupation forces launch brutal assault
on Palestinians in Gaza

Food, water, electricity cut off to more than a million people

Israel threatens regional war, sending war planes over Syria

Anti-war coalition calls for emergency actions:
Stop the attacks! Cut off U.S. aid to Israel!

A bridge destroyed by Israeli army warplanes
on a main road in northern Gaza (photo: AP)

Click here to demand the U.S. stop
funding Israel's war against Palestine

Using the capture of one of its soldiers as the pretext, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched a brutal assault on the entire population of Gaza in the early morning hours of June 28. U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter-bombers destroyed the main power station in Gaza and destroyed bridges on the only major roads linking the northern and southern sections of the region. The people of Gaza are now without water and electricity -- and many will die. The use of U.S. planes and other military goods against illegally occupied territories is a violation of both international and U.S. law.

Israel is also threatening to widen the war, sending war planes over Syria to “buzz” the home of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, whose government the U.S. has been actively working to bring down for more than two years.

The Palestinian population of Gaza, one of the poorest and most densely populated areas of the world, was already suffering severe shortages of food, medicine and other necessities due to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the cut-off of international aid to the West Bank and Gaza, in effect since January 2006. The new Israeli assault has resulted in the cut-off of power, water and food supplies to most of the people in Gaza. The situation constitutes a deliberately created humanitarian disaster.

Deliberately attacking the civilian population, with the intent of causing maximum suffering, is clearly a crime against humanity. What we are witnessing today in Gaza is collective punishment against the population as a whole. It is just one part of Israel’s colonial policy toward the Palestinians. In historic Palestine, whether the West Bank, Gaza or inside the 1948 borders of Israel, an apartheid system is in place, where many rights reserved for Jewish Israelis are denied to Palestinians. More than six million dispossessed Palestinians are denied the right to return to their homeland.


A field of Israeli tanks on the border of Gaza at the Rafa Crossing.

Click here to demand the U.S. stop
funding Israel's war against Palestine

Israeli apartheid and the latest assault on Gaza is supported by the Bush regime, Congress and the corporate media, because of Israel’s vital role in Washington’s project of Middle East domination. That is why Israel receives more military and economic aid from the U.S. -- over $3 billion annually -- than any other country.

While a great hue and cry is heard in the mass media about one captured Israeli soldier, the same media pays no attention whatsoever to the 9,800 Palestinian political prisoners being held illegally (it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer prisoners from occupied territory) under terrible conditions in Israeli prisons. At least 335 of these prisoners are children. Palestinian prisoners are systematically tortured after arrest. Just two days ago, the Israeli parliament gave the Shin Bet (the secret police) the right to double the time for secret “interrogation” of Palestinian prisoners -- a green light for even greater torture.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition(http://www.answercoalition.org/ ), which has organized the largest anti-war protests in Washington, DC and in other U.S. cities over the past five years, including the historic demonstration of over 100,000 people supporting Palestinian rights in Washington on April 20, 2002, is calling for and supporting protests at Israeli embassies, consulates and U.S. federal buildings, to demand:

The immediate end to the U.S.-supplied Israeli assault on Gaza
The release of all Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails
An end to all U.S. aid to Israel
An end to colonial occupation, support for self-determination for the Palestinian people including the right of return.
No new U.S.-Israeli war against Syria.

A.N.S.W.E.R is also calling on justice-minded individuals and organizations to contact Congress and the White House demanding an immediate end to U.S. aid to Israel. Click here to send your message. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/