Humanity For Palestine

Humanity For Palestine

By Peter Cohen
Via - Facebook
February 22, 2015

Dear Friends,

Those of you who are real friends of mine and not just Facebook
‘Friends’ know that last summer I fell off the face of the earth
during the horrific Israeli attack on Gaza.

I realized that I was surrounded by thousands of people who were
as appalled as I was but had no idea of how to take action.

If all that potential could only be canalized into effective action,
I realized that we could flip public opinion in the West and make
Palestine the South Africa of our time.

I realized that my social position as a Jewish American gave me an
edge in effecting the discourse that I didn’t have on other issues.

I believe that each one of us has to stand up as a global citizen and
take responsibility as an individual for the tremendous mess we’re
all in, of which the brutal occupation and siege of Palestine is only
a part and lead our ‘leaders’, rather than waiting for them to lead
us.

As a Jewish American, I also felt a special obligation to oppose a
system of racist oppression justified in my name and paid for with
my tax dollars.

Humanity for Palestine was my answer to my obligation as someone
who has been to Palestine and seen the brutal reality that is hidden
from most of Western publics.

I always wanted to give back to the wonderful people I met there
and Protective Edge was the moment I finally plunged into making
good on that commitment.

H4P was a social experiment to see if we could turn social media
from a massive waster of our time into an effective tool for
mobilizing people into concrete positive actions for change.

Now the dream has come true and H4P is an actual organization
that is having an impact in the real world right out of its
headquarters on Facebook.

And it so happens we are busy preparing our biggest action ever
right now:

A 4-day program of ‪#‎ShutDownAIPAC‬ events in DC with some of the
most important organizations and figures in this movement starting
this Saturday.

The information being circulated against us now is false – no true
hack by.

Anonymous as claimed, but simply a few photo shopped screen
shots and invented emails intended to discredit us, accompanied
by personal threats to and harassment our members intended to
demoralize and scare us.

This is cowardly and unseemly behavior, and it’s saddening
to see how little it is questioned.

There are legitimate ways to criticize and question.

Publicly slandering individuals with accusation is not one
of them – and even less so when the accusations are false.

We know who’s behind this and I refuse to hate or attack them.

I would rather see H4P go down remaining true to its ideals
than survive while betraying the.

Hatred, anger and revenge are never good and we must all respect
everyone, no matter how much we disagree with their actions.

This latest attack has now lasted two days now and I cannot keep responding to each new slander.

I have an obligation as founder of H4P to ensure that #ShutDownAIPAC is a success and that we do right by all the people who have worked so hard to make it happen, to all of our partner organizations and leaders in the movement who have supported and believed in us, and above all to the Palestinian people, for whom we are all doing this.

We are an action group and we will ultimately be judged by our actions.

If #ShutDownAIPAC is the last thing H4P does, let us do it as well as possible and leave the biggest dent we can in AIPAC’s hold on Congress, the mainstream media, and. US public opinion.

That’s all that really matters.

A big splash in DC may inspire more people to try new and better
things until the racist and murderous system that is crushing the
Palestinian people finally goes the way of Apartheid, Jim Crow,
and all the other ethno-religious supremacist movements before
it.

So I implore each and every one of you: please let us work.

We are a tiny organization of volunteers, we’re all overstretched,
we’re all doing our best to focus on our work, and there is simply
no way we can fight on two fronts simultaneously.

To have such a major attack on our group literally one week
away from such an important action is potentially disastrous.

Even if you don’t like us, why sabotage a multi-institutional
event designed to counter AIPAC?

Given that this is not only about a dozen other organizations
and the Palestinian cause, I only ask that we all unite and
focus our energies for the next 9 days to shut down AIPAC.

After that, feel free to go ahead and shut down H4P
if that’s what you want.

May Palestine be free of racist and brutal occupation and
may humanity be free of hatred and ego in all its forms,
so that we can get to the real work of healing the world
at this most critical moment in our history as a species.

Thank You for Your Understanding,

Peter Cohen