Raz Bar-David Varon is an 18-year-old Israeli who just graduated from 12th grade. And as I write this, she’s sitting in jail in Tel Aviv because she refuses to join the Israeli army.

In my day we called them the “refuseniks” and here in the U.S. they’re “conscientious objectors.” In Israel, they’re still in high school and they are the Shministim. Get used to that word because I’m going to ask you to know it, to say it, to use it. You see, Raz Bar-David Varon and another dozen or so  Shministim have asked Jewish Voice for Peace for our help and this is one request we can’t refuse.

The Shministim - all about ages 17, 18, 19 and in the 12th grade - are taking a stand. They believe in a better, more peaceful future for themselves and for Israelis and Palestinians, and they are refusing to join the Israeli army. They’re in jail, holding strong against immense pressure from family, friends and the Israeli government. They need our support and they need it today.

They have asked people like us to let the Israeli government know we are watching, and that we support their courage. They’re hoping to receive hundreds of thousands of postcards to be delivered to the Israeli
Minister of Defense on December 18th, when they will hold a huge rally and press conference. They’re hoping to stand strong on the steps of this majestic building - and on the steps of history - representing not only the thousands of refusers who came before them, not only the many young people to whom they are an example of a better world, but also to represent us.
They have asked you, me, and every person who strives for peace to be on those steps with them, on that day. I will be there. See: www.december18th.org

Will you join me? It’s simple. Sign a letter now. And don’t stop there ask your loved ones to join you. During this week of giving thanks, signing a letter is the least we can do to give thanks for the courageous among us.Raz is a Shministit. Raz is Courage. And with our support of her today,  you and I are Shministim too.

Thank you - and go sign that letter.
http://www.december18th.org

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
29^th November

In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly called for the annual observance of the 29^th of November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. On the 29^th of November 1947 the United Nations adopted resolution 181 which stated that the British mandate of Palestine was to be partitioned. The original idea was that the partition would be a solution to the conflict which had arisen from several waves of Jewish immigration before, and after, the Second World War. In what had once been a territory with a large Arab Palestinians majority, there were now to be two states, with 55% of the land given to the quickly expanding Jewish minority.

When the dust settled by 1948 the Jewish minority had seized 78% of the former Palestinian territory and the State of Israel was declared. The new Israeli state ethnically cleansed its new territories, destroying 450 Palestinian villages and turning the Palestinian nation into a Diaspora people. Today the Palestinians number more than eight million and are scattered throughout world, including inside Israel and the Occupied Territories, the surrounding Arab states and other countries.

This was followed by the seizure of the remaining Palestinian territories (22%) in 1967, and is presently being heavily colonized by Israeli settlements and infrastructure, with mass land seizures and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. This is a policy of changing facts on the ground and when this process is complete the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to have their own state, as laid out by numerous United Nations resolutions, will be lost forever.

On December 1^st 2005, the Assembly requested the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights, as part of the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29^th, to continue to organize an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights or a cultural event in cooperation with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the UN. It also encouraged Member States to continue to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the Day of Solidarity.

On the International Solidarity Day with the Palestine People, the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA of Palestine is calling for stopping the usage of double standard of international law enforcements and commitments concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and encouraging our partners, friends, groups, and individual peacemakers all over the world to take serious practical actions to advocate an end to the Israeli occupation and all injustice and to work actively for the establishment of Free and Independent Palestinian state.

Suggested actions to commemorate this day
(http://www.jai-pal.org/content.php?page=101)

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