By March 16th, make one call or send one email to the White House!
President Obama is reportedly traveling to Israel with a stop in the West Bank March 20-22. News reports indicate that a good many people are trying to influence what he will see and hear. Let’s make sure our voices are counted!
Send your email here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
Call the White House Comment line: 202-456-1111
Monday-Friday, 9-5 Eastern Time
Send a typed or hand-written snail-mail letter with your return address to:
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500
Send your own message! Choose your talking points!
- Tell President Obama if he ever hopes to be “an honest broker,” he must see more on this visit than Israel and Ramallah and meet with more than Netanyahu and Abbas.
- Urge the President to visit East Jerusalem and the West Bank and Gaza communities you wish he could see. Tell him what you know and why his visit matters.
- Remind the President that on March 16th it will be 10 years since Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza.
- Remind the President that the U.S. position remains that Israeli military police investigation of Rachel’s case was not “thorough, credible, and transparent.”
- Remind the President that testimony in the civil trial in Israel in Rachel’s case confirmed a flawed investigation. The lead investigator testified that he believed they were at war with all in Gaza including the peace activists.
- Remind the President that lack of a proper investigation and accountability on the part of the Israeli Government in Rachel’s case breaks a promise made to President Bush in 2003.
- Remind the President that Amnesty International, the Carter Center, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, and many more have condemned the August 2012 verdict in Rachel’s case (being appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court).
- Remind the President that a petition with over 18,000 signatures was delivered to the Department of State in November calling for further U.S. action in Rachel’s case.
- Remind the President that there has been no accountability in the cases of U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan and others killed on the Mavi Marmara, other U.S. and Palestinian nonviolent protesters harmed, and countless Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli military operations.
- Tell the President that he must expect and demand accountability for all civilians – both U.S. citizens and others – killed by foreign militaries with U.S. funded weapons.
- Remind the President that U.S. funding provided without accountability is harming the “peace” for Israelis and Palestinians, and damaging the U.S. reputation in the world.
- Ask the President to tell the Israelis that use of our funding must comply with our laws – the Arms Export Control Act, Leahy Amendment, and Foreign Military Finance law.
- Tell President Obama that our funding must not support Israel’s misdeeds – home demolitions, settlement building, oppression of a civilian population, and an ever-expanding occupation.
- Tell President Obama that our U.S. tax dollars must be spent constructively and lawfully in the name of peace rather than to fuel conflict.
- Tell President Obama that Equal rights for Palestinians is the path to peace!
