Merseyside Jews for Peace and Justice for Palestinians  is an independent Merseyside organisation that campaigns for peace and justice in the Middle East. We work closely with Liverpool Friends of Palestine, e.g. organising public meetings, doing educational work and participating in joint activities.

We also are in close contact with other Jewish organisations with similar aims, across the world.

Some months ago, Jewish Voice for Peace and Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Neve Gordon reported  the arrest of one of Israel’s most courageous human rights activists.

His name is Ezra Nawi.

Since then, over 11,000 people  have written 110,000 letters to the Israeli attorney general and various embassies, and 20,000 have watched the remarkable video of his false arrest for trying to stop the demolition of a Bedouin Palestinian home.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9462/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27357
The outpouring has been amazing, and has strengthened all of us working to make a moral and just world. But the message has not gotten through, not yet.

In the last month alone, Ezra has been arrested four times, twice in Susya and twice in Hebron, only to be released a few hours later with no charges. The last time he was arrested was right after this campaign began.
 
His name is Ezra Nawi

We need more letters, more media stories and more activism.

This time, we will not only direct your letters to the embassies but also to the Minister of Public Security demanding that the police stop harassing Ezra.

Ezra is just weeks or even days away from the sentencing. He may be sent to jail.

I find myself starting to imagine the unimaginable, life without Ezra.

Without Ezra, it would be extremely difficult for international activists to stay permanently in the south Hebron villages so they can help and protect families. 

Without Ezra, the school children of Tuba might still be taking the long way to school to avoid walking near the violent settlers. 

Without Ezra, the farmers of Gawawis, a small village that was occupied by settlers, would not have been able to return to their lands.

Without Ezra, the people of Tuwane might still be enduring attacks by settlers from the Ma’on outpost every Friday night, and have no access to most of their lands.

Without Ezra, many of the families in the South Hebron area would have no one to call when they are under attack, trapped at checkpoints, or worried about their homes.

Write a letter now so none of us has to imagine life without Ezra Nawi, not even for a day.

His name is Ezra Nawi.

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An article from the Jeruselem Post, Israel:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364551818&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

A taboo question for Israelis
Larry Derfner’s “Rattling the Cage” column is on Gaza this week…
30 December 2009
There’s a question we Israelis won’t ask ourselves about the Palestinians, especially not about Gaza. The question is taboo. Not only won’t anyone ask it out loud, but very, very few people will dare ask it in the privacy of their own minds.
However, I think it’s time we start asking it, privately and in public. If we don’t, I think there’s going to be Operation Cast Lead II, then Operation Cast Lead III, and each one is going to be worse than the last, and the consequences for Palestinians and Israelis are going to be unimaginable.
The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us like we’re treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?
We don’t want to go there, do we? And because we don’t, we make it our business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating the people in Gaza.
All these shocked dignitaries, all these reports, these details, these numbers – thousands of destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed that. Rubble, sewage, malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises – who can keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
IT’S NOT that we can’t imagine life in Gaza. It’s that we are determined not to try to imagine. If we did, we might not stop there. Next we might try to imagine what it would be like if our country were in the condition in which we left Gaza. And sooner or later we might try to imagine what we would do if we were living over here like they’re living over there.
Or not even what we would do, just what we would think – about the people, about the country, that did that to us and that wouldn’t even allow us to begin to recover after the war was over. That blockaded our borders and allowed in only enough supplies to keep us at subsistence level, to prevent starvation and mass epidemics.
What would we think, what would we do, if somebody, some country, did that to us?
A lot of people here, I’m sure, would reply angrily: So why won’t the Gazans try making peace?
But is that how we would react? Is that what Israelis would do if a foreign army did to this country what the IDF did to that one a year ago? If another country sent F-16s, Apache helicopters, white phosphorous, drones, tanks and battalions into Israel, if any nation bombed and killed over here like we bombed and killed in Gaza, then rubbed our noses in it afterward, would we want to make peace with them?
Forget we; does anyone know a single Israeli who would?
I’M SURE a lot of people would argue: What about Sderot? Didn’t the terrorists in Gaza bomb and kill in Sderot? Let’s the turn the question around: What would the Gazans have done if another country did to them what they did to the people in Sderot?
Fair enough. Yes, they would have hit back, too. They’re not pacifists, either, to say the least. In fact, their elected leaders are fanatical, murderous Jew-haters sworn to Israel ’s destruction. That’s extremely important to remember, and we do. But what we don’t want to remember, what we make 100 percent sure to forget, is that we do all sorts of hateful things to Gaza that they don’t do to us, and that this is the way it’s been since 1967. (correction: since 1948, nahida)

Aside from choking the flow of goods to Gaza by land, we blockade their entire coast. We don’t allow ships to sail into Gaza or out. Does anyone stop ships from coming and going at the ports of Eilat, Ashdod or Haifa? What would Israel do if anyone tried? (Think of what Israel did two weeks after Egypt blockaded the port of Eilat in May 1967.)
We also blockade Gaza’s airspace, preventing planes from flying in or out. Does anybody stop planes from flying in and out of Israel? Would we stand for it if someone did?
For 37 years, between 1967 and 2005, our soldiers and settlers were the overlords of the Gaza Strip. If foreign soldiers and settlers tried to come in and take over Israel, what would we do?
And regarding the years of rocket attacks on the people in Sderot, I’ve never been through such an ordeal, but I imagine it’s hell. However, I’ve also never been through the ordeal that people inGaza have gone through, and are still going through, yet I know – as everyone in the world knows, except Israelis – that life in Gaza is incomparably worse than life in Sderot ever was.
DURING THE 2008 US presidential campaign, Barack Obama visited Sderot, saying, “If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.”
Absolutely right. I wonder, though, what sort of empathetic reaction he might have had if he’d also visited the Jabalya refugee camp that summer. I wonder how he’d react if he visited Jabalya now.
And how would we react? If we Israelis could go to Gaza and see in person what we’ve done to that place and its people, would we be capable of empathy? If we thought of our children living in a country that was just like postwar Gaza, would we allow ourselves to think what we might do?
We can’t go to Gaza, but we have to start using our imagination. We have to dare to put ourselves in those people’s place. And we have to stop doing to them what we would never allow anyone to do to us. Otherwise, we Israelis have no conscience, and little by little we become capable of anything.

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