Yesterday Seham posted about an appeal by Florida Congressman Alan Grayson at Huffpo to hear from the grassroots so as to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. Susie Kneedler sent Grayson, who was defeated last month, a letter.
Dear Representative Grayson,
Thanks for asking for ideas. As a life-long liberal Democrat, I ask you to defend liberal values and at long last rescue the Democratic Party from its ridiculous enslavement to the extremist right-wing government of Israel and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Otherwise, people of conscience will have no choice but to turn away from the “neo-conservative Dems” to form a truly progressive alternative, for propping up reactionary aims in one area perverts all. Two years ago, newly-elected President Barack Obama had a mandate to achieve an historic realignment of the United States against wars of aggression. Instead, he betrayed every campaign pledge by pursuing (neo-conservative, Pro-Israel) Bush-Cheney military and civic repression.
Please support equal rights and equal self-determination for the people of Palestine and Israel. Please cease your inexplicable support for Israeli-government Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. Please introduce a resolution to stop the U.S. government’s terrible donations of billions for illegal Israeli theft of Palestinian lands and water, as well as Obama’s unconscionable offer of $3 billion in new fighter aircraft, a gift that would enable an Israeli nuclear first-strike.
Remember our U.S. Founders’ cry: “No taxation without representation!” Please work for “one person, one vote” in all Palestine and Israel, rather than the current system in which Palestinians pay taxes not only without representation, but without services, and–most cruelly–for their own imprisonment.
Please stop catering to the Israel lobby’s fetish with making the world safe for Israeli expansion through its targeting of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon–after destroying Iraq. Iran, unlike Israel, has not attacked its neighbors–or the U.S. Israel, however, has done both. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has disgraced itself and violated its oath of office by refusing to probe Israeli-government assaults on American citizens: the U.S.S. Liberty, Rachel Corrie, Tristan Anderson, Furkan Dogan, and Emily Henochowicz–as well as on countless Palestinian civilians.
Our representatives are obliged to defend our own people rather than the crimes of an alien nation. Rep. Grayson, while you remain in Congress–yet are free from the AIPAC puppeteers–you’re uniquely able to press for Congressional hearings on Israeli-government breaches of International Law, including the findings of the Goldstone Report about Israel’s bombardment of imprisoned Gaza.
Please ensure that representatives of Israel register as a agents of a foreign government, as required by law. Please investigate the Israeli government’s repeated transgressions of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Please urge President Obama to push for Israeli compliance with International Law, rather than vetoing resolutions that properly condemn illegal Israeli aggression and human rights’ violations. Defend Americans by making friends with the world rather than siding with the Israeli war-machine.
I tell you sadly, Rep. Grayson,–as a former admirer–that flattering yourself that you are a “person with a conscience,” while defending Israeli ethnic cleansing under a mendacious claim of “security,” is beyond hypocrisy. It is a lie.
Please stand up for peace and peace of mind for all–not just for one religio-ethnic group of a foreign country. Please do your duty to defend the United States by loving all people in all places, including Palestine. Thank you.
Sincerely, Susie Kneedler
