Nov. 20 Major League Baseball Commissioner’s office, midtown Manhattan.
Jews Against the Occupation-NYC’s Aaron Levitt provided some background in an article called, The New York Mets and the business of terrorism published yesterday in The Electronic Intifada:
When I first learned that the New York Mets were hosting a fundraiser for the nonprofit Hebron Fund at Citi Field in support of the Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, I honestly assumed it was a joke, albeit a poor one. When I realized this was an actual, planned event, I still found it almost impossible to believe. This is because, even aside from the devastating impact of settlement expansion on the prospects for peace in the region, I have had the misfortune to see, repeatedly and at first hand, the fruits of the Hebron Fund’s labors.
During the summers of 2005 and 2006, and very briefly in 2008, I spent several weeks working as a human rights observer in the Tel Rumeida section of Hebron, home of the Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumeida settlements that are supported by The Hebron Fund. During that time, I encountered racist graffiti with such statements as “Gas the Arabs” and “Fatimah, we will rape all Arab women.” I repeatedly observed settlers throwing stones and clods of earth at young Palestinian girls on their way to elementary school; yelling racial epithets at Palestinians walking in the streets; pushing, kicking, and spitting on Palestinian children and (occasionally) adults who were quietly minding their own business; and hurling large stones down on Palestinian homes and residents from settlement balconies.
I have witnessed this behavior by men and women, boys and girls, from pre-school-aged children to middle-aged adults. I was myself assaulted, on Shabbat, by a group of six teenage settlers, when I came between them and their intended victim, an elderly Palestinian woman who also happened to be the proud mother of a US Navy fighter pilot (the picture of her son standing by his plane was prominently displayed on her living room wall). The settler youths then turned to attack my companion, a young Scandinavian woman who was videotaping the original assault. I have heard and read numerous, credible reports of far worse violence than I personally experienced from other human rights observers, who were in the area for different and/or longer periods.
The Hebron settlers engage in this violence for the express purpose of driving out Palestinian families from Tel Rumeida, site of the Cave of Machpelah, or Cave of the Patriarchs, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims. Settler leaders have said as much in at least one published interview, and a young man from the Beit Hadassah settlement confirmed it to my face in September 2006. The settlers’ efforts have been remarkably successful: of more than 600 Palestinian families originally living in the neighborhood, probably less than 100 remained when I was last there in 2008. If the settlers continue to receive free reign, and full funding, we may soon add a new chapter of completed ethnic cleansing to the troubled history of this ancient city.
Link to the remaining text above.
The Hebron Fund is now intending to use Citifield, the home of the New York Mets, to raise more funds in support of more of this kind of ethnic cleansing.
Peace activists are pissed to say the least.
I think her evil influence is only going to spread.
This may or may not be news, but it definitely warrants more watchful eyes.
~shudder~
Thanks for this link. Nothing can be more unlikely that someone like Palin supporting the colonization of Palestine. Who knows. She may have gained an inroad into AIPAC where she will be welcomed.
I think she’s more along the lines of the Rapture/armageddon crazy Christian culty types. Troutfishing on DKos has a lot of posts about that larger group, Palin being just one (overpoplar) example.
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A response by Henry Siegman to Bradley Burston’s column ‘Why do Israelis dislike Barack Obama?‘
(Haaretz) – Yes, I have repeatedly written about the deceitfulness of proclamations by Israeli governments about their commitment to a two-state solution. The relentless pursuit by these governments of the settlement enterprise can only be understood as a commitment to prevent such an outcome. For years, successive Israeli governments have solemnly promised, again and again, to remove all “illegal” outposts and settlements (which, even if they had done it, would hardly have made a dent in the settlement enterprise). They have staged the dismantlement of one or two outposts for show, and these were immediately reoccupied.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed that he removed the settlements in Gaza as a prelude to further withdrawals from the West Bank and a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But the man who negotiated the deal for President Bush’s letter of April 2004 to Sharon on the subject of settlements, Dov Weisglass, told Ari Shavit of Haaretz that Sharon’s real purpose was to “effectively remove this whole package that is called the Palestinian state from our agenda indefinitely.”
To impress President Bush, Sharon made a big show of appointing Talia Sasson to investigate alleged rogue ministerial involvement in the financing and promotion of illegal settlements, knowing that this illegal activity was ordered and orchestrated by himself. As acknowledged publicly by various of his ministers, instructions for this illegal activity came directly from the Prime Minister’s office.
And it was none other than Bradley Burston who courageously reported in one of his columns that Brigadier-General Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza division, accused Israel’s government of having failed “to take advantage of the calm [during a six-month truce agreed to by Hamas and Israel] to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip …”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."