Dear Senator, How's this for balance?

Don Bryant
Gaza Delegation www.gazadelegation.blogspot.com
4053 Akins Road, North Royalton, Ohio 44133-5354

4/8/09

Dear Senator:

I have recently returned from the Gaza Strip, Palestine. I was part of the US Gaza Delegation for Medical/Mental Health and Humanitarian Relief, sponsored by fifteen organizations in Ohio, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Our purpose was to assess the damage to the people and infrastructure since the recent Israeli invasion and 20 months siege of Gaza.

Personally, in one respect, I am trying to balance the equation in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I have been supporting the Israeli government and society for 25 years, by paying my county and federal taxes. My county real estate taxes that purchase Israel Bonds ($5,000,000 from Cuyahoga County)) helped finance Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, and helped support the construction of a thirty foot wall that separates Palestinians from each other and their livelihoods. My federal income taxes help finance the Israeli military; US military aid to Israel $3,000,000,000+ annually! As the facts of the Nakba, (the catastrophe - when Palestinians lost their home and lives in 1948) and the occupation of Palestine have been disclosed to me in the past decade, I have been moved to support Palestinian liberation with my words, my feelings and my whole self.

Every time that I contact you on this issue, you tell me that Israel has the right to defend itself against the Palestinian attacks. Israel is the aggressor here and has been for 61 years! Why do you and the US Congress choose to whitewash Israeli aggression in this unbalanced conflict?

When I went to Gaza I saw a nation of people living with less than the basic needs. The water is polluted. The electricity is intermittent. The cars and machines are without spare parts. The housing, schools, hospitals, colleges and government buildings that were destroyed by 22 days of attacks by Israeli forces, the world's fourth largest military superpower, cannot be repaired because of the blockade.

I met with people that have lost dozens of family members form Israeli bombing, shelling, sniper shooting and murder. One thousand, four hundred, seventeen Palestinians were killed in the massacre. Civilians comprised 85% of those killed. I saw children who were maimed by the attacks. I saw people, some elderly, who are in need of medical care and cannot acquire even basic medical needs due to the siege which has compromised the hospitals in Gaza.

Sixteen ambulances were targeted and destroyed by Israeli forces. Medical and paramedical aid workers were targeted, and killed. Civilians were targeted and killed in route to, and in the bomb shelters, such as schools.

Our government supplies Israel with the military arms that have slaughtered these people. This is morally reprehensible and illegal by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians in war, and the US Arms Export Control Act, which outlaws weapons shipments to states that target civilians. What will you do to bring the Israeli government to justice? What will you do to give back the lives to the Palestinians that have been stolen from them by occupation, siege, and military attacks?

I do not believe that Hamas is instigating these attacks, nor does the majority of the rest of the world. US news coverage is biased towards Israel (www.ifamericansknew.org). Hamas and Palestinians are resisting occupation and siege and they do have this right under international law. I condone no targeting of civilians.

My tax dollars and US military aid to Israel are contributing to greater civilian deaths than the Hamas rockets and other acts of violence against Israelis. Overall, deaths to Palestinians compared to Israelis since 2000 is approximately 4 to 1. The death to children ratio is over 10 Palestinian children for every one Israeli child.

Israeli security will be derived from justice for Palestinians. This requires political will, not military aid.

Don Bryant