Remember Land Day by getting active for Palestine!

Remember Land Day by getting active for Palestine!

(CHICAGO 03/30/2014) – Another year. Another commemoration – it’s been 38 years since Israeli Occupation Forces killed six Palestinians defending their land against Zionist confiscation. Since then, Israel has grabbed increasingly more Palestinian land, leaving the rightful and indigenous population access to less than 1 percent of “state land” in the West Bank.

In the intervening years, the Apartheid Wall has continued to grow throughout the West Bank and the IOF has killed countless Palestinians for holding onto their land; settlements have mushroomed and now dissect the West Bank into pieces; illegal Jewish colonizers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have ballooned to more than 500,000; the 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza reside in subhuman conditions under siege, cut off from the rest of the world; Palestinians in historic Palestine continue to suffer second-class status and increasingly more Palestinians in Diaspora are denied entry to their homeland.

As we commemorate another year since Land Day, we must renew our efforts to fight Zionism and the Judaization of the Holy Land.

You can join the fight:

• Millions of Americans have seen ad campaigns highlighting Israeli apartheid and US aid to Israel in 2013 and 2014. Donate now to help us keep these successful campaigns going!

• A noted journalist and best-selling author has been commissioned to write a policy paper, focusing on the impact on Americans of US support of Israel. Donate now to help us bring this paper to all 535 congressmen and senators and policy makers.

• Join the Stop JNF! Campaign. Help us persuade the IRS to remove the JNF’s tax exempt status!

• Continue to help us stop Soda Stream, a beverage maker produced in a settlement. So far, Soda Stream’s bottom line has fallen 40 percent since 2010.

• With Ramadan approaching, help us boycott Israeli dates! AMP launched the first ever national date boycott three years ago. Donate now to help us continue the effort this Ramadan!

Land Day, or ‘Youm al-Ard’ in Arabic, commemorates March 30, 1976, when hundreds of Palestinians staged a demonstration to protest the confiscation and closure of 5,500 acres of land from their villages in the Galilee. Six were murdered, 96 were injured and 300 were arrested. The day honors Khair Mohammad Yasin, Raja Husein Abu Ria, Khader Abd Khalaileh, Khadijeh Shawahneh, Mohammad Yousef Taha, and Rafat Al Zuheiri, who died protecting their land. It has come to symbolize the resilient and defiant spirit of Palestinians who continue to demand justice, liberty and a life free from occupation.

Since 1967, occupation authorities had taken private Palestinian land, declaring it closed for ‘military use’ and then opening up the area for Jewish-only settlements. In 1979, Zionist authorities began confiscating Palestinian property and making it “state land.” The West Bank has about 325,000 acres of this so-called state land, and more than 99 percent of it has been given to Jewish settlers, according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.

The United States enables Israeli authorities to act with impunity, mainly because of our more than $3 billion per year in US foreign military aid. We can ameliorate our culpability in America’s complicity in the occupation by continuing to raise our voices about the occupation, Israeli apartheid and US foreign aid.