Your voice is needed now. Israel is amassing a massive military force on the border of the Gaza Strip in reaction to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. The Prime Minister has ordered a "comprehensive and ongoing military action." This is sure to be a bloody attack that will result in widespread civilian casualties. Please use your voice to urge Israel to negotiate rather than add to the violence.

While I am opposed to Palestinian violence, as it is counterproductive to the goal of a viable Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution, certainly you are aware that Israeli violence against Palestinians has led to this point. Hamas had kept a promise of no violence for 18 months until recent Israeli killings of civilians. Surely you are aware of the state-based terrorism of Israel against the Palestinian people that led to this escalation of violence, including:

- The weeks of shelling by the Israeli army in Gaza. This has included the firing of hundreds of missiles into the crowded Strip resulting in the destruction of Palestinian lives and property, and terrorizing the civilian population.

- The killing of more than 30 Palestinian civilians, and dozens of injuries to Palestinian civilians, in the past few weeks at the hands of the Israeli military, including three children killed in an air strike last week, as well as a pregnant woman and her brother, a doctor, killed a day later as a missile slammed into the room where they were eating dinner.

- The blockade of Gaza's "borders" by the Israeli army for months on end, which has prevented Palestinians in Gaza from trading goods and receiving vital supplies of food and medicine. As a result of the Israeli action the civilian population of Gaza is facing a humanitarian crisis.

- Israel's bullying of the international community, including the United States, to deny the starving of the Hamas-led government of funds and diplomatic options, thereby making it impossible for the elected Palestinian leadership to run the Gaza Strip.

- The violation of Palestinian territory by Israeli commandos who infiltrated Gaza a day before the Palestinian attack to kidnap two Palestinians who Israel claims are 'terrorists.' They are now missing, no doubt held in detention, without access to lawyers, and the courts.

Certainly, you understand how these actions of Israel have provoked the current dispute that is leading to a likely slaughter of Palestinians. It is as if Israel's policies are designed to create opportunities for further destruction of the Palestinian people. This has been the long-term reality of Israeli policy. The front-line members of the reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who refuse to fight in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories described this reality vividly in their "Combatant's Letter" saying:

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

While you are only one voice, as a long-term stalwart supporter of Israel, someone who has never been a critic, your voice right now could make a difference in saving lives and stopping the escalation of violence. It is important for Israel to see that not everyone in Washington, DC -- especially a long-term supporter of Israel like you -- dances to the Israeli tune no matter how abhorrent.

Please speak out before violence begets violence in a never-ending spiral of bloodshed.

Sincerely,
Kevin B. Zeese

www.ZeeseForSenate.org
www.Zeese.US (wiki Campaign site)
301-996-6582

Their lawyer called the arrests "kidnappings" designed to weaken the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

An Israeli military official said a total of 64 Hamas officials had been arrested in last Thursday's early morning roundup. Of those arrested, eight were ministers in Hamas 23-member Cabinet and 26 others were legislators in the 72-seat parliament.

Israeli military announced that they would be indicted for terrorism.

David Baker, an official of the Prime Minister's Office, also defended the operation in the strip as an act with the aim of removing Palestinian rocket threat.

Meanwhile, army spokesman Jacob Dallal said that the operation was a limited incursion in a bid to ensure the release of an abducted Israeli soldier and stop rocket fire into Israel.

The Israeli army expanded its ground operation into northern Gaza Strip early Thursday by sending 15 tanks into the former settlements of Nissanit, Dugit and Elei Sinai.

As ground forces edged forward, Israeli artillery and airstrikes also struck Palestinian militant bases and groups in northern Gaza Strip.

Three Palestinians, including a Hamas activist, were killed and eight others wounded in an airstrike early Thursday.

After Qassam rocket for the first time hit the southern coastalcity of Ashkelon Tuesday evening, Israeli political-security cabinet approved on Wednesday to step up operations in Gaza.

"We won't sink in the Gaza swamp, but will enter any necessary area to carry out our missions," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Wednesday.

At the same time, Lavrov stressed that "Israel must act with the highest degree of restraint and circumspection, not placing the lives and security of the civilian Palestinian population in danger and not resorting to extrajudicial reprisal," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The discussion came two days after Lavrov met with Livni in Moscow and called for Palestinians to release Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was seized June 25. Israel subsequently launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli leaders Wednesday authorized troops to move into residential areas of Gaza.

Rice called on the parties who have influence on Hamas to use their good office to convince Hamas to end the abduction ands to stop launching missile attacks on Israeli targets.

"Hamas government needs to respond to the root cause of this problem, and the root cause of this problem was the attack that took place and the Israeli soldier that was abducted .... It is high time for Hamas to return that soldier. It is high time, then, for everybody who has any influence on Hamas to make sure that that happens," she said.

"This is the new fashion in the market," says Shorah. "It's a show of force, because the US army is powerful. It's a symbol of strength and of our refusal to put down arms."

The US army knock-offs are part of a broader trend here. After six years of an uprising against Israel and with Gaza heading once again for confrontation with the Israeli army, militancy has become a dominant theme in Palestinian culture.

Particularly now, as Gaza's 1.4 million inhabitants sit up each night waiting anxiously for an Israeli invasion aimed at rescuing a captured soldier, air strikes and tank shells are woven into the fabric of daily life.

The masked, fatigue-clad militants who roam Gaza's streets in the name of resistance to the Jewish state are lionized by Palestinian youth.

On their television sets these young people see images of US soldiers in Iraq, and they view them as the ultimate symbol of military might.

"People look in the streets and they see gunmen, they watch TV and see the US Army, and they say, 'I want to be a militant, too. I want that shirt,'" says Omar Bilbaysi, who owns three clothing shops in downtown Rafah.

"The word 'US Army' doesn't matter," he adds. "What matters is that they're wearing military clothes."

Across Gaza, retailers say demand for military wear, US Army and otherwise, is booming.

Nearly every clothing store in Gaza is well-stocked with the sort of fashions one would expect to find at an army surplus store: camouflage shirts and pants and black paramilitary vests with pockets for ammo cartridges and hand grenades.

"The culture in Gaza now is very militant," says Ayman Jarbua, another clothing retailer here. "The youth admire the militants who are fighting in the resistance and they want to dress like them."

The trend is not limited to clothing. At barber shops across the
West Bank and Gaza young Palestinians are demanding what's known as a "Marines," meaning a high and tight crew cut, the kind that is mandatory for US Marines.

Similarly, Abu Sim, a rank and file gunman in the Popular Resistance Committees' armed wing, has wrapped the barrel of his Kalashnikov with desert camouflage padding, another nod to US military fashion.

"I saw a US Marine sniper on TV doing the same thing," he says. "It's natural to copy the US military because they are powerful and so are we."

Still others, unable to read the English words emblazoned across their chest, don US Army garb without a clue.

"I just bought it because I like the way it looks, but I'll burn it now as soon as I go home," says Ibrahim Abu Zarif, 20, when told during a pro-Hamas rally that the patch on his left breast pocket says US Army.

In the 1990s, when peace with Israel seemed imminent, Palestinian youths looked elsewhere for role models. They emulated pop singers such as Iraqi legend Kazem Saher. Like the dapper vocalist, stylish young Palestinians once preferred dark suits with wide collared shirts unbuttoned at the top.

"Then, it wasn't the time of intifada," says Wasim al-Fagawy, a thoughtful 21-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University as he watches a Hamas rally rumble down a back street in southern Gaza.

"Now, times have changed and militancy is in the air everywhere."

Even women's and baby clothing stores stock generous racks of camouflage.

"It's normal in a land that knows only wars to find people attracted to this style," says Abu al-Hassan, a customer in Jarbua's store.

Hassan says he is a Hamas loyalist who hangs propaganda posters for the organization in his free time. Today, however, he's shopping for his wife: pink camouflage pants with a US Air Force logo on the front pocket.

At Baby City, a children's apparel shop owned by Bilbaysi, a poster of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin hangs on the door while the display window lures shoppers with tyke-sized fatigues, a US Army patch across the front.

"The people love their little kids to be dressed in military clothes," says Bilbaysi. "They want to teach the children and prepare them so they will be ready for the battle that lies ahead when they grow up."

Chabad-Lubavitch culminated a two-day commemoration of the 12th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's death with meetings Wednesday with Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary, and Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff. Both men are Jewish.

Bolten and other White House officials assured Chabad representatives that President Bush would never force Israel to concede territory to the Palestinians without a quid pro quo, participants said.

Bolten said Bush would follow Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's lead in deciding what concessions to support.

"This is actually proof that people realize that the center of Jewish life is in Israel," agency chairman Zeev Bielski told Reuters. "To be part of the creation of the Jewish state is something you can do only by living in Israel."

Nearly 250 North Americans landed in Israel on Thursday on the first of seven planeloads that will bring an expected 3,400 new immigrants from the United States and Canada, the most since 1983 and well above last year's 2,987.

Immigration from France is also expected to reach 3,500 people in 2006, the highest level since 1971, the agency said.

Immigration earlier in the decade had dropped sharply from about 70,000 per year in the 1990s, mostly from former Soviet states, due to Palestinian-Israeli violence. It posted its first yearly gain in 2005 since 1999.

"You are showing Israel's enemies ... no one will stop Jews from calling Israel their home," Tony Gelbart, a co-founder of the Nefesh B'Nefesh private immigration agency, told the immigrants at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav said rising immigration was a signal to Israel's Arab neighbors that making peace was a far better option than trying to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel's government places great significance on immigration amid concerns that without an influx of foreign Jews the country's Arab minority, which has a far higher birth rate, could eventually outnumber the Jewish population.

Jews constitute 76 percent of Israel's population of 7.04 million people, while Arabs make up some 20 percent.

Among those who immigrated to Israel on Thursday was Ben Kurtzer, brother of former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, with his wife and five children from Dallas.

"Whenever we came to Israel in the past, we always felt that this is home and that we were temporarily living in the United States," said Kurtzer.