THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Please, please, everybody have a seat.  Well, good morning, everybody.  It is good to be with so many friends united in prayer.  And I begin by giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us together here today.

I want to thank our co-chairs Mark and Jeff; to my dear friend, the guy who always has my back, Vice President Biden.  (Applause.)  All the members of Congress –- Joe deserves a hand –- all the members of Congress and my Cabinet who are here today; all the distinguished guests who’ve traveled a long way to be part of this.  I’m not going to be as funny as Eric — (laughter) — but I’m grateful that he shared his message with us.  Michelle and I feel truly blessed to be here.

This is my third year coming to this prayer breakfast as President.  As Jeff mentioned, before that, I came as senator.  I have to say, it’s easier coming as President.  (Laughter.)  I don’t have to get here quite as early.  But it’s always been an opportunity that I’ve cherished.  And it’s a chance to step back for a moment, for us to come together as brothers and sisters and seek God’s face together.  At a time when it’s easy to lose ourselves in the rush and clamor of our own lives, or get caught up in the noise and rancor that too often passes as politics today, these moments of prayer slow us down.  They humble us.  They remind us that no matter how much responsibility we have, how fancy our titles, how much power we think we hold, we are imperfect vessels.  We can all benefit (more…)

By Stephen Zunes, June 30, 2011

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists — including a vessel with 50 Americans on board — bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would “provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.”

Clinton did not explain why a country had “the right to defend themselves” against ships which are clearly no threat. Not only have organizers of the flotilla gone to great steps to ensure are there no weapons on board, the only cargo bound for Gaza on the U.S. ship are letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave who have suffered under devastating Israeli bombardments, a crippling blockade, and a right-wing Islamist government. Nor did Clinton explain why the State Department suddenly considers the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the port of Gaza to be “Israeli waters,” when the entire international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being well to the northeast of the ships’ intended route.

The risk of an Israeli attack on the flotilla is real. Israeli commandoes illegally assaulted a similar flotilla in international waters on May 31 of last year, killing nine people on board one of the vessels, including Furkan Dogan, a 19-year old U.S. citizen. Scores of others, including a number of Americans, were brutally beaten (more…)

By Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells

Published: February 25, 2011 07:38AM

In his recent guest column (“Anti-science views of faith leaders cause concerns,” Opinion, Feb. 8), R. Dennis Hansen correctly points out that religion and science need not be at odds, but in our view draws the wrong conclusion that they are at odds to begin with, or that religion is the problem.

Alert! Alert! There is so much drivel in this ‘thesis’ that it isn’t worthy of point-by-point rebuttal. These three authors are involved with what they call the Foundation for Attraction Research. It is a transparent fraud. Go to its web page and it is readily seen that it is a very small and tight knit group of pseudo scientists who begin with a predetermined belief and set out to prove their hunches right. The problem with their hunches is that they are all based on religious fables.

They are not seeking riches or gold or the praise of the world. They are seeking the adoration of their church apostles and their devout neighbors and friends. They are looking to get praised in church every Sunday morning. They particularly want to come to the defense of one of The Twelve, Boyd K. Packer, to try (more…)

Published on Sunday, February 20, 2011

by The Independent/UK

These Are Secular Popular Revolts – Yet Everyone is Blaming Religion
(Our writer, who was in Cairo as the revolution took hold in Egypt, reports from Bahrain on why Islam has little to do with what is going on.)
by Robert Fisk
Mubarak claimed that Islamists were behind the Egyptian revolution. Ben Ali said the same in Tunisia. King Abdullah of Jordan sees a dark and sinister hand – al-Qa’ida’s hand, the Muslim Brotherhood’s hand, an Islamist hand – behind the civil insurrection across the Arab world. Yesterday the Bahraini authorities discovered Hizbollah’s bloody hand behind the Shia uprising there. For Hizbollah, read Iran. How on earth do well-educated if singularly undemocratic men get this thing so wrong? Confronted by a series of secular explosions – Bahrain does not quite fit into this bracket – they blame radical Islam. The Shah made an identical mistake in reverse. Confronted by an obviously Islamic uprising, he blamed it on Communists.

Bobbysocks Obama and Clinton have managed an even weirder somersault. Having originally supported the “stable” dictatorships of the Middle East – when they should have stood by the forces of democracy – they decided to support civilian calls for democracy in the Arab world at a time when the Arabs were so utterly disenchanted with the West’s hypocrisy that they didn’t want America on their side. “The Americans interfered in our country for 30 years under Mubarak, supporting his regime, arming his soldiers,” an Egyptian student told me in Tahrir Square last week. “Now we would be grateful if they stopped interfering on our side.” At the end of the week, I heard identical voices in Bahrain. “We are getting shot by American weapons fired by American-trained Bahraini soldiers with American-made tanks,” a medical orderly told me on Friday. “And now Obama wants to be on our side?”

The events of the past two months and the spirit of anti-regime Arab insurrection – for dignity and justice, rather than any Islamic emirate – will remain in our history books for hundreds of (more…)

Published on Sunday, February 20, 2011

by The Guardian/UK

Palestinians Plan ‘Day of Rage’ after US Vetoes Resolution on Israeli Settlements

US decision to use UN security council veto sparks furious reaction in West Bank and Gaza

by Harriet Sherwood

Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. The US decision to use its veto has sparked a furious reaction in the West Bank and Gaza.

Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. It voted in contradiction of its own policy.

This is not a good time for the United States to be antagonizing the Arab world—which is certainly what Obama’s veto did. Obama’s veto is a public embarrassment, a clear cut exposure of our hypocrisy in dealing with Israel.

We vetoed a policy that we have publicly been supportive of, and we stand absolutely alone in the entire world. The vote was 14-1. There is no credit in being number one in this instance.

The biggest mistake of the past century was the establishment of the State of Israel. There has not been a day of peace since that decision. Israel has proven to be the most intransigent partner anyone could possibly have.

In Gaza, Hamas described the US position as outrageous and said Washington was “completely biased” towards Israel.

Ibrahim Sarsour, an Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said it was time to tell the US president, Barack Obama, to “go to hell”.

“Obama cannot be trusted,” he wrote in an open letter to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “We knew his promises were lies. The time has come to spit in the face (more…)

The story behind the Palestine papers

How 1,600 confidential Palestinian records of negotiations with Israel from 1999 to 2010 came to be leaked to al-Jazeera

Seumas Milne and Ian Black The Guardian, Monday 24 January 2011

The revelations from the heart of the Israel-Palestine peace process are the product of the biggest documentary leak in the history of the Middle East conflict, and the most comprehensive exposure of the inside story of a decade of failed negotiations.

The 1,600 confidential records of hundreds of meetings between Palestinian, Israeli and US leaders, as well as emails and secret proposals, were leaked to the Qatar-based satellite TV channel al-Jazeera and shared exclusively with the Guardian. They cover the period from the runup to the ill-fated Camp David negotiations under US president Bill Clinton in 2000, to private discussions last year involving senior officials and politicians in the Obama administration.

The earliest document in the cache is a memo from September 1999 about Palestinian negotiating strategy. It suggests heeding the advice of the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you can get what you need.” The final one, from last September, is a Palestinian Authority (PA) message to the Egyptian government about access to the Gaza Strip.

The Palestine papers have emerged at a time when a whole era of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, starting with the Madrid conference in 1991, appear to have run into the sand, opening up the prospect of a new phase of the conflict and potentially another war.

In particular, they cover the most recent negotiations, before and after George Bush’s Annapolis conference in late 2007 – when substantive offers were made by both sides until the process broke down over Israel’s refusal to freeze West Bank settlement activity.

The bulk of the documents are records, contemporaneous notes and sections of verbatim transcripts of meetings drawn up by officials of the Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the negotiations.

The unit has been heavily funded (more…)

By Paul Beebe

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 19, 2011 10:53PM

Harris Simmons doesn’t want to express an opinion about the $8 million civil fine federal regulators recently levied against Zions Bank for serious deficiencies in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering controls.

But there are a few things that Simmons, chairman of parent company Zions Bancorp, wants shareholders and customers of the biggest home-grown financial institution in Utah to know.

Zions takes its obligation to comply with federal banking laws seriously, Simmons said in an interview.

He also wants to say that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network didn’t find evidence of any illegal money transfers, only that there were lapses in Zion’s compliance.

“We spend millions a year, [and] we have at last count 90 people working full time on this kind of compliance. They are monitoring about half a billion transactions year worth about $8 trillion,” he said.

Like other financial institutions, Zions is required to report suspicious money transactions to the government within 30 days. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department agency that fights money laundering, said Zions failed to file on time 132 reports representing $12.3 billion in suspicious activity (more…)

By Peggy Fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 18, 2011 10:49PM

The founder and charismatic Buddhist teacher at Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center has stepped away after acknowledging a sexual affair with an advanced Zen follower.

Dennis Merzel, known by his Buddhist name and honorific title “Genpo Roshi,” is a nationally respected Zen master who leads trainings all over the world.

He first acknowledged the affair in late January to hundreds of students in Holland. Shortly after his return to Salt Lake City, Merzel addressed an open meeting at the center, took responsibility for his actions and apologized for “the pain, anger, concerns, questions and feelings of his wife, family and sangha members,” according to a statement on the center’s website.

Merzel voluntarily “disrobed” as a Zen priest and also resigned as an elder in the White Plum Asanga, a consortium of Zen centers led by students of Taizan Maezumi.

Merzel was on retreat Friday and not available for comment. But he did post an apology on his own website, http://bigmind.org/Responsibility.html.

“My behavior was not in alignment with the Buddhist precepts. I feel ‘disrobing’ is just a small part of an appropriate response,” Merzel wrote. “Experiencing all the pain and suffering I have caused has touched my heart and been the greatest teacher.”

Since then, Merzel’s actions have been discussed and dissected (more…)

by Philip Wilcox
Foundation for Middle East Peace President Philip C. Wilcox, Jr. issued the following statement February 18, 2011

The U.S. veto in the United Nations Security Council on February 18 of a draft resolution demanding that “Israel cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” and reaffirming that settlements are “illegal,”  undermines American interests in the Middle East and prospects for a two-state peace.

We heartily agree with Philip Wilcox. Publicly we have condemned Israeli settlements as an impediment to peace, but at the United Nations we veto the very goal we supposedly are trying to achieve.

What it amounts to is that the United States has been playing games with peace for years with no intention of peace (except during the Carter years). We have been deceptive with the Palestinians. We have been pulling off a major ruse in falsely pretending to be ‘fair brokers.’

The Obama Administration, along with Hilary Clinton, are big disappointments. Our blind allegiance to Israel has caused enormous problems throughout the Middle East.

The United States of America has been a disaster for the people of the Middle East. We have propped up dictators for our own selfish purposes while they abused their people with our concurrence.

The Obama Administration has continued this tragedy and it is starting to backfire and we are going to reap what we’ve sowed.

The Obama administration has worked strenuously (more…)

Below is the pathetic offering provided as a supposed news story by The Deseret News regarding the charges and fines of $8 million against Zions Bank for ‘money laundering.’ The story came two days after the public announcement of the fines by two government agencies and a front page major headline and detailed story in the Salt Lake Tribune.

The close ties to Zions Bank by both the LDS Church and The Deseret News are well known, and for the sake of journalistic integrity one would think that the Deseret News would have made a better effort to cover the issue objectively. But NO, it tried to hide it and tried to downplay it, and in the process showed that the new ‘corporatized’ de-journalized Deseret News is apparently going to rely on ‘faith-based’ reporting out of the same mold the church deals with its own history.

(The extensive reporting of the case by the Salt Lake Tribune is posted elsewhere on this blog.)

The Deseret News Headline

Zions Bank fined $8M in lax wire transfers case
By Chi-chi Zhang
Associated Press

Published: Monday, Feb. 14, 2011 3:57 p.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah-based Zions Bank has agreed to pay $8 million to settle allegations it failed to monitor billions of dollars’ worth of illegal wire transfers.

The federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Monday the violations occurred in 2006 and 2007, when the bank opened a new wire transfer business but failed to meet anti-money laundering regulations.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network cooperated in the investigation. It says Zions failed to report 132 cases of suspicious activity worth about $12.3 billion in transactions that it says may have involved drug trafficking accounts.

Zions hasn’t acknowledged or denied the allegations.

The bank has offices in 10 Western U.S. states. It closed its foreign correspondent banking business in 2008 and has agreed to pay an $8 million lump sum penalty fee.

That’s all folks. We got five paragraphs from the Deseret News downplaying the potential laundering of $12.3 billion dollars. Because of rules and regulations regarding banking and because a couple of federal agencies actually performed their public duty we now know that Zions Bank was involved in at least 132 transactions (potential money laundering) in amounts that totalled $12.3 billion dollars.

What the public still doesn’t know, and good journalism should pursue it, is who sent what to whom and for what purpose? These numbers are so big that most of us don’t take the time to do the math. We just know it’s a helluva lot of money. Also, the public may be able to put together the pieces a lot better than a few regulators who don’t understand the connections between names and entities. Names please! Who are these guys?

Let’s do the math—132 transactions totalling $12.3 billion amounts to nearly $100,000,000 each transaction. Now, this isn’t small (more…)

By Paul Rolly

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published Feb 07 2011 04:16PM

Gay-rights activist Eric Ethington met with a group of BYU students at the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the Provo campus Thursday night to discuss efforts to get nondiscrimination ordinances passed in Provo.

When he left the meeting to drive back to Salt Lake City, he discovered the tires on his car had been slashed.

Ethington said his car bore Equal Rights Campaign and Equality Utah bumper stickers, making it obvious he was a gay-rights supporter. Word of his meeting also could have gotten around campus, he said, because the meeting with about 30 students had been planned after they expressed interest in pursuing the ordinance changes.

When he got to his car, he noticed the right front tire was completely flat. He changed the tire with a spare, then drove away. By the time he got on Interstate 15, the left front tire had gone flat. Upon inspection, he noticed both tires had been slashed.

He was towed to a tire shop in Lehi and picked up his car on Friday.

He filed a complaint with the BYU Police Department on Friday.

Maybe Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, can file a bill exempting vandals from prosecution if they are able to show religious conviction motivated their vandalism.

Interestingly, Apostle Dallin Oaks just gave a speech at Chapman University in which he declared that those with religion have a higher sense of morality–that religion is the source of moral understanding.

I guess, since we don’t know for sure, the tire slashing can be blamed on an atheist, or perhaps someone whose toe stuck up out of the water and he was not completely baptized. Without instant replay only God would know.

By Thomas l. Friedman

The New York Times

Published: February 3, 2011 01:01AM

Ramallah, West Bank • I’m meeting a retired Israeli general at a Tel Aviv hotel. He begins the conversation with: “Well, everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”

That pretty much sums up the disorienting sense of shock and awe that the popular uprising in Egypt has inflicted on the psyche of Israel’s establishment. The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone. It’s as if Americans suddenly woke up and found both Mexico and Canada plunged into turmoil on the same day.

This is a perilous time for Israel, and its anxiety is understandable. But I fear Israel could make its situation even more perilous if it succumbs to the argument one hears from a number of senior Israeli officials today that the events in Egypt prove that Israel can’t make a lasting peace with the Palestinians. It’s wrong and dangerous.

To be sure, Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s longtime ally, deserves all the wrath being directed at him. The best time to make any big, hard decision is when you are at your maximum strength. You’ll always think and act more clearly. For the last 20 years, Mubarak has had all the leverage he could ever want (more…)

Article in the Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2011

Why God Did Not Create the Universe

There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required

By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW

According to Viking mythology, eclipses occur when two wolves, Skoll and Hati, catch the sun or moon. At the onset of an eclipse people would make lots of noise, hoping to scare the wolves away. After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.

This article in the Wall Street Journal was the subject of an article in The Deseret News that is also posted on Watts Cookin’. Our comments are attached within the Deseret News commentary posted under the headline “Hawking’s New Book Dismisses God”. Hawking is widely regarded as one of the smartest men in the world, if not number one, and it is worth our time to listen and learn.

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually, people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words, modern science.

Albert Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing (more…)

In the beginning: Stephen Hawking’s new book dismisses God’s role in our universe

By Michael De Groote

Deseret News

Published: Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 7:10 p.m. MST

When British physicist Stephen Hawking came into the auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., the crowd went wild. The Los Angeles Times reported that one fan, 13-year-old Evan Hetland, even dubbed him “the nerd pope.”

Hawking was somewhat the darling of some religious people for his occasional references to God, such as one time when he said that if a complete theory of physics were discovered, then “we would know the mind of God.”

But Hawking’s latest book, “The Grand Design,” written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow, leaves little room for God — or philosophy for that matter. A Wall Street Journal article they wrote based on their book is titled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe: There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world — no gods required.”

Ouch.

“Ouch,” my eye! There is no ‘ouch’ for believers. Nevertheless, a compliment to the Deseret News for publishing this story. Hawking’s views are significant and obviously puts religious folks in a defensive posture. As expected the article by Michael DeGroote couldn’t be printed in the Deseret News without a significant counter punch that deflects the issue, and it is good and credible journalism to present opposing points of view.

Believers can take a punch better than anyone. Facts seldom hit a believer square on, they are almost always deflected. Believers are resilient beyond, no pun intended, ‘belief.’  There is no penetration. Once they have talked with God (more…)

Tribune Forum Letter by Elaine Ball

First published Jan 29 2011 01:01AM

The front-page article “Without marriage, same-sex parents unable to adopt” (Tribune, Jan. 24) was both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

I am a lesbian in a committed relationship of two-plus years. Like the family in the article, my partner and I hope to raise our children in Utah because here we have supportive and loving friends and extended family members.

I hope that people recognize that their doctrinal belief that two people of the same sex should not have the right to marry (more…)

Transcript of Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ Speech Given at Chapman University School of Law

04 February 2011 — Salt Lake City

Transcript of Elder Dallin H. Oaks speech given at Chapman University School of Law on 4 February 2011.

Preserving Religious Freedom

I am here to speak of the state of religious freedom in the United States, why it seems to be diminishing, and what can be done about it.

Although I will refer briefly to some implications of the Proposition 8 controversy and its constitutional arguments, I am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to come.

I believe you will find no unique Mormon doctrine in what I say. My sources are law and secular history. I will quote the words of Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish leaders, among others. I am convinced that on this issue what all believers have in common is far more important than their differences. We must unite to strengthen our freedom to teach and exercise what we have in common, as well as our very real differences in religious doctrine.

We haven’t had a chance to carefully and thoughtfully review this speech by Elder Oaks and we will reserve comment until then. This is the transcript as made available by The Deseret News.

I begin with a truth that is increasingly challenged: Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable (more…)

Breaking with her father, Barbara Bush voices support for gay marriage

By Holly Bailey

Tue Feb 1, 9:41 am ET

Barbara Bush, one of former President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, is appearing in a new video voicing her support for same sex marriage.

“I’m Barbara Bush, and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality,” she says in a 22-second video released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for equal treatment for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

“New York is about fairness and equality,” she says in the video. “And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.”

The video ends with Bush, who is 29, imploring viewers to “join us.”

You can watch the video after the jump, courtesy the Human Rights Campaign.

By Lindsay Whitehurst

The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Jan 30 2011 04:23PM

A Canadian judge is now considering a landmark challenge to his country’s ban on polygamy as unconstitutional — a case being closely watched in Utah.

First, welcome to the Tribune Lindsay Whitehurst. This is the first story we’ve posted with her byline, and it is a big story. We will be following with keen interest.

Polygamy has been a legal question that has bothered Mormons since before statehood. For several generations many Mormons have been dismayed that they were forced to abandon polygamy by the government. To them, it was clearly an infringement of religious freedom and the argument isn’t without merit.

Testimony ended last week in the proceeding, sparked by the Canadian branch of a polygamous sect based in Utah. Since late November, British Columbia Chief Justice Robert Bauman has heard from nearly 20 witnesses — some of them Utahns — and taken many more affidavits and video testimonies about plural marriage.

The justice is expected to issue a ruling later this year on whether an anti-polygamy law dating to 1892 violates Canada’s guarantee of freedom of religion. The Utah Attorney General’s Office will be watching that ruling, said spokesman Paul Murphy.

“I think it will inform us,” he said. “Canada is tackling the same issues we have, in that we have this law but for the most part it hasn’t been enforced by any law enforcement agency.”

Utah’s bigamy law makes it a felony to marry or co-habitate with more than one husband or wife, though Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has focused on investigating crimes within polygamous groups rather than the practice itself.

Polygamists have also been observing the “historic” proceedings, said Marlyne Hammon, a member of the action committee for the polygamous community of Centennial Park, located just south of the Utah state line in Arizona.

“If Canada were to drop that law, it would send quite an important (more…)

A Palestinian state within the 1967 borders: settlements vs. sovereignty

By Philip C. Wilcox, Jr. | President, Foundation for Middle East Peace

Today, few disagree that without massive withdrawals from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where over 500,000 settlers now live, there is no hope for a two-state peace. A majority of Israelis also agree that an end to the conflict, preservation of a democratic, Jewish Israel, and freedom and statehood for Palestinians, are impossible without a radical reversal of Israel’s misbegotten settlement adventure.

Philip Wilcox is one of the most respected Middle East experts and his suggestions and observations are always sought after by both sides of the question. Whenever you see his name you will know that there is serious constructive conversation taking place. So read on….

Most governments today believe that international law, including UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and the Fourth Geneva Convention outlawing settlements, should inform an agreement on a two-state border. The roadmap, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 1515, Quartet positions, and statements by the Obama administration concur that the starting point for creating a two-state peace should focus on the 1967 border.

Israel’s 43-year national project of settling the territory occupied in 1967 was designed to create “facts on the ground” that would maintain Israeli control and thwart Palestinian self-determination. Today, even Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says he accepts the need (more…)

Open Letter to President Obama:

Lower the Deficit! End $3B in Aid to Israel

The next federal government budget is scheduled to include a record-breaking appropriation of $3.075 billion in military aid to Israel, part of a ten-year agreement to provide $30 billion of weapons to Israel.

From moral, financial, and legal perspectives, the United States cannot afford to continue providing military aid to Israel to commit human rights abuses against and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and to deny them their rights to freedom and self-determination.

I strongly urge you to end military aid to Israel as a sanction for its obstinate refusal to abide by UN resolutions, human rights standards, and international law in its apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people.

We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel high-velocity tear gas canisters to injure and kill Palestinians civilians nonviolently protesting the theft of their land. We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel armored bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes and raze Palestinian agriculture to clear land for illegal Israeli settlements.  We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel the guns, ammunition, tanks, missiles, naval vessels, helicopters, and fighter jets used to impose an inhumane and illegal blockade on the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip.

We cannot afford to be so munificent in providing Israel with the weapons of war it needs to destroy Palestinian infrastructure, especially while our schools, roads, and other basic infrastructure (more…)