[van-announce] No Time to Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakba - Launch of U.S. ad Canadian based Campaign

[mia amir]

>>Please Forward<<

*Calling all Jews of Conscience!
Join "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba"*
  "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba" is a campaign organized by
anti-Zionist Jews from around the U.S. and Canada to coordinate and make
visible Jewish response to Israeli Independence Day celebrations and Jewish
participation in commemoration of the Nakba.  We invite you to join us in
this effort:

   1. Sign the NO TIME TO CELEBRATE statement and pledge of action (text
   below).  Click
here<http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/>to sign!
All signatories will be sent additional information about how to
   get involved in the campaign.
   2. Participate in NO TIME TO CELEBRATE's call for coordinated actions
   across North America by organizing an action or event in your city, such as
   peaceful disruption of Israel celebration events or Jewish participation in
   Nakba events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine
   solidarity movement.  Please contact
   notimetocelebrate+localaction at gmail.com
<notimetocelebrate at gmail.com>to let us know what you are planning and
to request resources/ideas for
   action compiled by the campaign.
   3. Incorporate the Nakba remembrance Haggadah supplement into your
   Passover Seders.  E-mail
   notimetocelebrate+haggadahsupplement at gmail.com<notimetocelebrate at gmail.com>to
request the supplement be sent to you.
   4. Take action in other ways to challenge the perceived Zionist
   consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader
   communities about the Nakba; about the colonial nature of Zionism; and about
   the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.
   5. Spread the word about "NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the
   Nakba"!  Pass this call on to your organizations, friends and family. Join
   the facebook group at
   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13109589953.

In solidarity with 60+ Years of Palestinian Resistance to Zionism,
NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
notimetocelebrate at gmail.com
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notimetocelebrate/

******************


*NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba*
*Statement and Pledge of Action*

NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews Remember the Nakba
Statement and Pledge of Action

This May, Israel will mark 60 years of statehood. In cities across the U.S.
and Canada, major Jewish organizations will sponsor celebrations of "Israeli
Independence Day." Meanwhile, Palestinians around the world will mourn 60
years since the Nakba - Arabic for "catastrophe" - of 1948. Sixty years ago,
Zionist militias destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and made more than
800,000 Palestinian people refugees in order to create a Jewish state in a
land where the majority was not Jewish. This does not deserve to be
celebrated.

Today the Palestinian Nakba continues. In order to maintain Israel's
artificial Jewish majority, the Israeli government has continued campaigns
of ongoing displacement, violence, and occupation. Inside of the 1948
borders of Israel, Palestinian citizens are denied equal rights to Jews
under the law. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are
denied access to land, water, healthcare, and other basic resources.
Palestinians throughout historic Palestine experience international
isolation, economic devastation aided by the erection of a 730-kilometer
wall, and continued closures and invasions including the current horrific
siege of Gaza. Today there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees
around the world, all of whom are denied their internationally recognized
Right of Return to their homes and land. Meanwhile, we are invited to live
on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this "right" to
"return" given to us by Israeli law.

In addition to 60 years of occupation and dispossession, this anniversary
marks decades of creative and powerful Palestinian resistance to Israel's
violence. With this statement, we support this struggle, which is so often
ignored or vilified in the U.S. media.

As Jews committed to justice, we imagine an "independence" that does not
depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the
displacement of indigenous people. As North American Jews, we refuse to
celebrate the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Palestinian lives
and communities funded by U.S. foreign aid. There has never been Jewish
consensus around Israel: not in 1897, not in 1948, and not today. We reject
the notion that we have been chosen to displace others. We support
Palestinian people's right to return, individually and collectively, to the
homes they lost in 1948 and in the violent decades since then.

In response to these historical events and a call from Palestine to mark
their significance, we refuse to celebrate "Israel 60." We will take action
to make our shared position clear and visible. In cities across the U.S. and
Canada this year, we pledge to participate in or to support:

- Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;
- Peaceful disruption of these events;
- Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the
Palestine solidarity movement;
- Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover seders;
- The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
- Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American
Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba,
about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish
dissent and Palestinian resistance.

As North American Jews, we stand together with Palestinians in mourning 60
years of al-Nakba and in honoring 60 years of vibrant resistance.