SIMONA SHARONI
Executive director of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development, Sharoni is an Israeli Jew living in the United States. She recently returned from leading a delegation to the Mideast. Sharoni said today: “The ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians and infrastructure flagrantly contradict Israel’s proclaimed commitment to a negotiated, let alone just, solution to the conflict. The targeted assassinations campaign against Palestinian leaders is likely to provoke a violent response. In fact, one wonders if Israel is using these illegal attacks to provoke such a response and then use that as a pretext to reoccupy the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
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PENNY ROSENWASSER
Author of Voices From a “Promised” Land: Palestinian and Israeli Peace Activists Speak Their Hearts and events coordinator for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Rosenwasser has just returned from the Mideast, where she worked with Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peace groups. She said today: “We have to understand the nature of the Israeli occupation. I saw mountains of rubble which just hours before had been 18 Palestinian homes in Rafah refugee camp, which Israeli forces destroyed…. It’s difficult to overstate the effects of the checkpoints that make a 45-minute trip last over three hours — the level of frustration and humiliation that comes from that. Imagine that when I travel from one U.S. town to an adjacent one, there’s a checkpoint with soldiers allowing only those with non-Jewish passports to enter — while those with Jewish passports are interrogated, often detained for hours or not even allowed to cross. That is what’s happening to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.”
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JACK SHAHEEN
Author of the just-released Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Shaheen said today: “Violence committed against some people is accepted, tolerated, and justified because of stereotypical images. For more than a century, Arabs have been negatively depicted in nearly 1,000 motion pictures. Only Native Americans have been so vilified on the silver screen. Ever since the movie ‘Exodus,’ there have been hate-filled images of Palestinians; the impact of these images is basically that they are subhuman and deserve to die.”
PAUL FINDLEY
Findley, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years, is the author of the newly-released Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images Of Islam. He said today: “American Muslims are becoming more involved in the electoral system, and that could help provide some balance to U.S. Mideast policy…. All our officials seem to be able to do is call for an end to violence. What they should do is call for an end to occupation. We have been the financier of the illegal occupation of Palestine and the creation by Israel of Bantustans for Palestinians.”
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LINDA MALONE
Professor of law at the College of William and Mary, Malone is author of the law review article “The Kahan Report, Ariel Sharon, and the Sabra/Shatilla Massacres: Responsibility under International Law for Massacres of Civilian Populations.” She said today: “As yesterday’s conviction of a Bosnian Serb has demonstrated, there must be criminal responsibility under international law for the massacre of civilian populations. Absent the establishment of a tribunal, it is left to the domestic courts of individual countries to enforce these requirements of international law. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s role in the Sabra/Shatilla massacres in 1982 — as found in Israel’s own Kahan report — makes him subject to being served in any country where charges have been filed, as has been done in Belgium.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
