The following paid advertisement was signed by 300 Jews in Britain and placed in The London Times on July 7: WHAT IS ISRAEL DOING? A CALL BY JEWS IN BRITAIN
WE WATCH WITH HORROR the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit’s safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorise an entire people.
DESTRUCTION OF THE FRAGILE Gaza infrastructure will not release Shalit. Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis. It brings the threat of epidemics and starvation.
AS GIDEON LEVY WROTE in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, this is “not only pointless, but … blatantly illegitimate”. Gilad Shalit has become a pawn in the Israeli government’s ongoing battle to topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.
PRESENTING THIS AS AN ISOLATED hostage-taking incident ignores Israel’s regular snatching of Palestinians from their homes.Thousands are held in ‘administrative detention’ without trial, women and children amongst them. A doctor and his brother – civilians – were kidnapped from their home in Al Shouka, near Rafah, the day before Corporal Shalit was captured. Like him, they need to be returned to their families in the established practice of prisoner exchange. And all elected MPs, punitively imprisoned by Israel in recent days, must be immediately released.
FOR THE US AND ITS ALLIES merely to call for “restraint” is desperately inadequate – and evidently ineffective. This is a situation that requires determined action by the international community.
SUPPORT THOSE ISRAELIS protesting against their government’s destructive actions.
WRITE TO YOUR MP to demand that the British Government act to achieve an immediate ceasefire.
WRITE TO THE ISRAELI EMBASSY. Make them understand their actions are wrong, their explanations unconvincing.
– Jews for Justice for Palestinians
