| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 4:05 pm Post subject: Attack on USS Liberty-40th Anniversary +In solidari |
| Subject: Attack on USS Liberty-40th Anniversary +In solidarity with Palestinians
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 20:09:56 -0400
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Attack on USS Liberty - June 8th, 1967
40 Anniversary
June 8, 1967 the USS Liberty, a virtually unarmed American navy ship was attacked for two hours by Israeli planes and torpedo boats. 34 American sailors were killed and 172 injured that day, a casualty rate of 70%. This is among the highest casualty rates ever inflicted upon a U.S. naval vessel. The USS Liberty is the most decorated US Navy ship since WW 11
Immediately following the attack, the ship's survivors were threatened with "court martial, imprisonment or worse" if they did not remain silent. However, as time has passed, many have stepped forward to say that the attack was undeniably deliberate and that justice must be served.
Israel claims they did not know it was a U.S. naval vessel for the duration of the attack. It is the only time in U.S. history that there has not been a full Congressional inquiry when an ally has attacked a U.S. ship.
Despite numerous attempts to be heard, no previous inquiry has taken public testimony from surviving crew members under oath to this date.
The USS LIBERTY is having its 40th anniversary reunion at the Marriott Courtyard in Tyson's Corner, McLean, VA June 7th - 10th in memory of the attack on their ship and loss of shipmates.
On June 8th, 2005 the crew filed a War Crimes Report with the Secretary of Defense which according to US and International law should be responded to. To date the Secretary of Defense has not responded.
The Department of the Army has indicated that an investigation is unnecessary as the 1967 Navy Inquiry is the official legal investigation into the incident.
"The 1967 Navy Court of Inquiry report as published was modified by the White House to compliment the Israeli position that the attack was accidental," says Ernie Gallo, Vice President Liberty Veterans Association.
"Details about the attack such as the fact given during testimony:
* that an Israeli Motor Torpedo boat was seen machine gunning a inflatable life raft.
* that there were 12 Israeli reconnaissance over flights the morning of the attack
were left out of the published report etc."
Captain Ward Boston, legal counsel for the above mentioned 1967 Court of Inquiry signed a sworn statement to that fact in January 2002.
He is available for interviews.
There will be a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery at Liberty Mass Grave site on June 8TH, 12 noon. A service organized by No Greater Love will include prayers for the deceased soldiers, taps being played, laying of a wreath by families of the deceased ... followed by a luncheon at the Officers Club at the Fort Meyers Officers Club next to Arlington Cemetery.
A memorial service will also be held on June 8th, 4:00 pm at the Navy Memorial at 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue.
There will be a plaque dedication and ceremony at Annapolis on June 9th at 11:15 am in memory of the Annapolis graduates, class of 53, 54 and 63 that were killed or wounded on board the Liberty.
We welcome all news media outlets to our events.
In solidarity with Palestinians
John Chalcraft
May 30, 2007
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_chalcraft/2007/05/boycotty.html
An international, non-violent movement supporting divestment, sanctions and boycott of Israel is gathering strength. While progress has been made in Northern Ireland and South Africa, Israel continues to settle and occupy Palestinian land in defiance of international law.
The question for British academics is whether they should join this international movement, and refuse to do business as usual with Israeli academic institutions. At stake is not the boycott of individual Israelis, nor their subjection to some political test, but the withdrawal of institutional collaboration with Israeli universities. The boycott implies the refusal to participate in conferences or research sponsored by Israeli authorities or universities; withdrawal from institutional level cooperation; opposition to the award of grants by the EU to Israeli institutions, and refusal to serve as referees for publications based at Israeli universities.
Academics are unlikely to be persuaded by the erroneous claim that Palestinians themselves are against the boycott. In fact, the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees and many other organisations have endorsed the call for boycott in general, and the specific motion before the University and College Union in particular.
Also feeble is the notion that Israeli universities have been trenchant critics of Israeli violations and supporters of Palestinian rights. In fact, no Israeli academic institution has ever taken a public stand against the military occupation of East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza, now in its 40th year. Indeed, the courageous few Israeli scholars who have dared to challenge conventional Zionist narratives have been hounded and harrassed. The reality is that the Israeli academy has long provided intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and human support for an ongoing military occupation in direct, long term violation of international law. In particular, Israeli universities have never seriously opposed the infrastructural degradation of Palestinian education at all levels, the destruction by Israel of educational buildings and equipment, the killing and injuring of students and others, or the checkpoints, border controls, land seizure, and the illegal separation wall which place significant obstacles on academic and educational activity.
Academics sincerely wrestling with their conscience will not be impressed by opponents who resort to calling them anti-semitic. The movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions includes Jews and non-Jews, stands against racist prejudice of all kinds, and refuses the determinist and anti-semitic notion that all Jews by nature must be linked to Zionism and its atrocities. The movement's charge is simple.
Israel is a state founded on discrimination. Israel privileges Zionist-Jews, and subordinates and dispossesses Palestinians and Arabs. The latest phase of this discrimination has been compared by many - former US President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond among them - to the South African system of apartheid.
More challenging is the argument that the boycott is counter-productive because dialogue and scientific collaboration are more effective than a divisive boycott. The example of South Africa tells otherwise. The international boycott movement had a tremendous impact in breaking down apartheid by raising consciousness and disrupting international business as usual. Crucially, Israel now, like South Africa then, considers itself part of, and has multiple ties to the west. This means that unlike in Iran, say, the boycott cannot plausibly be viewed simply as western imperialism. When western civil society says enough is enough, Israelis, not to mention western governments, will take notice.
Is it unfair to single Israel out? It is not clear that there are other heavily militarised, nuclear-armed, expansionist apartheid states with extensive illegal settlement, land seizure and wall-building activity. There are certainly other violators of international law, and the case for boycotting each must be made on its merits. That does not weaken the case for a nonviolent, international movement regarding Israel. To say that it does is simply special pleading.
As for academic freedom, it should be remembered that the situation has long involved the denial of Palestinians' academic freedom. The point of the boycott, which will certainly involve forms of institutional disruption, is to end this vicious discrimination and the massive and structural violation of academic freedom involved. The boycott, moreover, will encourage and give protection to Israeli academics critical of academic complicity and occupation, and stands in solidarity with Palestinians whose freedoms have long been repressed.
..........................................................................................
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
(PACBI) salutes the historic decision by the University and College Union
(UCU) Congress today to support motions that endorse the logic of academic
boycott against Israel, in response to the complicity of the Israeli
academy in perpetuating Israel's illegal military occupation and
apartheid system.
Academic boycott has been advocated in the past as an effective tool in
resisting injustice. In the 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi called for boycotting
British-run academic institutions, to increase Indian self-reliance and
also to protest the role of those institutions in maintaining British
colonial domination over India. In the 1950s, the African National
Congress (ANC) called for a comprehensive boycott of the entire South
African academy, as a means to further isolate the apartheid regime. To
their credit, British academics were among the very first to adopt the
latter boycott. Moral consistency makes it imperative to hold Israel to
the same standards.
Israel is now widely recognized as a state that actually practices
apartheid, as evidenced in recent declarations by international figures
from Jimmy carter and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof. John
Dugard to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South African government minister
Ronnie Kasrils, among many others. During the ongoing occupation of
Palestinian land, Israel's policies have included house demolitions;
Jews-only colonies and roads; uprooting hundreds of thousands of trees;
indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians, particularly children;
relentless theft of land and water resources; and denying millions of
their freedom of movement by slicing up the occupied Palestinian territory
into Bantustans -- some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of
roadblocks.
Throughout forty years of Israeli military occupation of the Gaza Strip
and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Israeli academics have duly
continued to serve in the occupation army, thereby participating in, or at
least witnessing, crimes committed on a daily basis against the civilian
population of Palestine. No Israeli academic institution, association, or
union has ever publicly opposed Israel's occupation and colonization, its
system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens, or
its obstinate denial of the internationally- sanctioned rights of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties. Furthermore,
the Israeli academy has been in direct or indirect collusion with the
military-intelligen ce establishment, providing it with "academic"
research services to sustain its oppression.
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