Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 15:51:28 -0500
From: alerts@al-awda.org
To: ejoyce7@hotmail.com
Subject: Urgent Appeal To First Lady Michelle Obama - Free the Children of
Palestine!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Appeal To First Lady Michelle Obama - Free the Children of Palestine!
December 8, 2010
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition calls on all its members,
supporters and people of conscience to write to First Lady Mrs. Michelle
Obama to request that she intervene to help stop the systematic and
institutionalized abuse of Palestinian Children.
Arrested Palestinian Child BACKGROUND
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested,
interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this
year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old. Children and
teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night,
taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were
subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing
campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than
8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are
commonplace. Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100
of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense
Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found
that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in
solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including
rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language
they do not understand. Minors were often asked to give names and
incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such
institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the
state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically
contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is
supposedly a signatory.
ACTION
Please write to First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama to request that she intervene
to help stop the systematic and institutionalized abuse of Palestinian
Children. A sample letter that you may use is posted below.
Sample letter to First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama
Dear First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama,
As the loving mother of two beautiful daughters, I am sure that you would be
concerned about any systematic and institutionalized abuse of children
anywhere in the world. Therefore, I am sure also that you would not only be
shocked and disturbed to learn about the systematic arrests and abuse that
Palestinian children are experiencing at the hands of the Israeli state, but
that you would do all in your power to convince the president, your husband
and father of your children, to demand an end to their torment forthwith.
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested,
interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this
year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old. Children were
often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in
handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to
physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against
the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have now been
arrested by Israel. Further, based on sworn affidavits of 100 of these
children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children
International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69%
were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary
confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and
32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do
not understand. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of
Palestinian children by the state of Israel is contrary to international law
and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to
which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
First Lady Obama, I appeal to you to ask the president to direct Israel to
release all Palestinian children immediately from their torment of being
kidnapped at gunpoint from their homes and beds in the middle of the night,
and to the systematic and institutionalized abuse that it is directing
against them. Ask him to demand an end to the torment that the children's
parents are also suffering of having their children wrenched from their
families, and every single day not knowing what their children must endure.
No person of conscience can live with this stain on their lives. What the
Israeli state is doing to Palestinian children amounts to psychological
terrorism. I hope you can help end these terrible deeds that are being
inflicted on the Palestinian people, especially the children, with the
intention of breaking their spirits, and to shatter and fragment the very
basis of their family life.
I thank you for your kind attention to this urgent matter. I realize this
burden may weigh heavily on you. The Palestinian people are steadfast in
their determination to achieve their freedom. I hope you can assist by
bringing freedom to their children.
Sincerely
Your name
Address
Phone number
Email Address
Please contact the first lady by:
Fax: 1-202-456-2461
Mail:
Attn: First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
The White House online form: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Please be sure to keep the size of your letter below 2500 characters when
using this form to contact the first Lady.
Please inform us or cc your correspondence to child.rights@al-awda.org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-918-9441
Fax: 760-918-9442
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is a not for profit
tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under
IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible. To donate, please
go to http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the instructions. To
become a member, go to http://al-awda.org/membership.html
Replies
The US government security structure subverts true democracy. The media helps the government sustain a state of conflict because it benefits the elites who are in charge. Open our eyes to see whole truth .
Alo,
The US government security structure subverts true democracy. The media helps the government sustain a state of conflict because it benefits the elites who are in charge. Open our eyes to see whole truth .
If one reads the history of Wallace Rider Farrington one would quickly arrive to Yellow journalism in Hawaii a year after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Fortunately, our ancestors were well read in Hawaiian and English to whereas they wrote beyond two and half sentences in both languages. It’s imperative that we clearly write our points and details to our assertion.
It makes things easier or those of us that are reading on Maoliworld to understand what exactly what one is saying.
I live in Waianae and drive on Farrington Highway each day and I understand clearly that the little voices be heard and not shut down by the coldness of the academic community. I smell the sea each day, I not only create charts, and publish my description of nature in words. For me it is real, life is real and with all the technology available to me, I believe that we should hear and respond to the everyday people. This is the only agreement I have with Farrington about the ‘little voices’. However, let this be known he came here to squash anything and everything that we the little people or voices have to say and do in light of the Ku’e petition. Our ancestors were smart and they knew how to let their voices be heard and printed in the White man’s world.
Today, we have their words on paper to read and ponder upon, so I strongly believe that one should share ones words, and get beyond the two and half sentences and support ones ideas with details and if possible with experience in journalism in Hawaiian History.
At this time the way policy is written Hawaii is excepting nuclear isotopes in multi-forms with no moral understanding to how it is destructive to life. Our people don’t read or write much, therefore, it is difficult to educate on Waianae in opposition to nuclear isotopes in their environment especially when our aina did not create it! It is imported into Hawaii by the military and academic community.
If anything, it’s against human rights to assert that the little people should continue be blasted by nuclear. It took a White House wife to see Universal Human Rights be mastered by all humanitarian peoples of the world, regardless of he-man ego's.
If one reads the local newspaper in Hawaii the editorials 1948 are full of concerns over nuclear testing in the Pacific .
Amelia,
American White House insiders ceased the opportunity yesterday to attack Palestine, so I can understand why Tony Castanha wrote to me email for support.
"Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, November 1949. She was appointed UN ambassador by President Harry S Truman, and in her work there had significant impact in producing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution endorsing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In her speech before that Assembly, Eleanor Roosevelt said:
"We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation in 1789 [the French Declaration of the Rights of Citizens], the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the US, and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries."
Eleanor Roosevelt considered her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be her most important accomplishment.
More from Eleanor Roosevelt on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."