Posted on June 30, 20 by Marivel Guzman, US and Omar Karem, Gaza

The Non-Violent Movement started by the conscience objectors of the world, the peace and social activists of the world has started an invisible revolution. One revolution that can not be stopped, because can not be seen, can not be attacked with soldiers or guns.

This revolution is the revolution of the ideas, the evolution of humanity where we the people have finally awaken, we can not be duped, lied or entertain with cheap propaganda any longer. We the people are shaping now our reality. We have taken the lead of the affairs of our world, we are walking the path to peace, using Non-violent channels. The governments  of our countries are trying their best tactics, intimidation, false accusations incarcerations , and some other methods known too well from our history books, but they know that no matter how  much they exert their power over some activists at the end we win.

We have the examples of the heroes of our time; Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Gandhi, John Lennon, Rachel Corrie, Vitorrio Arrigoni and hundreds other around the world that were physically terminated, their message was not stopped with their departure, their message got stronger, it took life in its own, the governments know that once the wheels of revolution are in motion nothing can stop them. And with the peace movement shaping our world in a direction that they did not imagined, they are using their last cards. Now we can not stop we are the precursors of this invisible revolution, be proud of your role in these changing times, be ready.

I know many has asked the same question, when confronted with our new reality, they think that back in the 70’s during the Vietnam war the anti-war grass movements and the many individuals such singers and writers, did not achieved their goal. I say that we live in a different moment in time, first and all we are more mature as a society, the movements are unstoppable, we count with channels that our peace activists of the 70’s could never dream off will exist, we have them, we are using them and we know the tremendous reach of these channels, the Internet has open the doors for us to Unite and get stronger, where our message travel with the velocity of the light.

It is our duty to help our brothers. Enough of waiting for our leaders to “Do” anything, they have never have our best interest in mind.
Thank you all for your participation in this humanitarian mission that is a mission of Love.

It is not easy to embark in this process of peace, it’s not easy to leave your comfort zone and go to the unknown, but we find inner energy and courage to count ourselves in the every growing number of compassionate humans that we are. One day the world will flourish with peace all over, and the men and women that made it possible is you, the world citizen, part of the same family. With your simple thought of justice and peace for all

U.S. BOAT TO GAZA

The Audacity of Hope will sail as a human rights mission to help end the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza.

The U.S. Boat to Gaza Campaign is collecting thousands of personal letters to the people of Gaza from people like you in the U.S., in an act of friendship and solidarity. These letters will be carried as our cargo on the U.S. Boat to Gaza when it sets sail in June 2011 in the next International Freedom Flotilla “Stay Human”.

Interview with Chris Hedges, author, journalist and former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. During fundraising cruise in the New York City harbor on August 5th to raise funds for a U.S. ship to join the next International Flotilla to break the blockade of Gaza.

Hagit Borer (right) moved from Israel to the United States to study in 1977. She became an American citizen in 1992 and is currently a professor of linguistics at USC and a passenger on the Audacity of Hope.  She self-identifies as an Israeli Jewish American.  Yesterday the LA times published an Op-Ed by Borer titled “Getting on board with peace in Israel” in which she shares some experiences of her youth growing up in Jerusalem as well as reflecting on Israel today.

Here’s a brief segment:

A soldier helped me sneak into the Old City. Snipers were still at large and the city was closed to Israeli civilians. By the Western Wall, a myth to me until then, the Israeli army was already evicting Palestinian residents in the dead of night and demolishing all houses within 1,000 feet. Eventually, the area would turn into the huge open paved space it is today, a place where only last month, on Jerusalem Day, masses of Israeli youths chanted “Muhammad is dead” and “May your villages burn.”

It is a different Jerusalem now. It is not their Jerusalem, for it has been taken from them. Every day the Palestinians of Jerusalem are further strangled by more incursions, by more “housing developments” to cut them off from other Palestinians. In Sheik Jarrah, a neighborhood built by Jordan in the 1950s to house refugees, Palestinian families recently have been evicted from their homes at gunpoint based on court-sanctioned documents purporting to show Jewish land ownership in the area dating back some 100 years. But no Palestinian proof of ownership within West Jerusalem has ever prevailed in Israeli courts. Talbieh, Katamon, Baca, until 1948 affluent Palestinian neighborhoods, are today almost exclusively Jewish, with no legal recourse for the Palestinians who recently raised families and lived their lives there.

In his speech on Jerusalem Day, Yitzhak Pindrus, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, assured a cheering crowd of the ongoing commitment to expanding the Jewish neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik, as Sheik Jarrah has been renamed.

every single one of these people on the audacity of hope has a personal story of what drove them to break the blockade.

thank you Hagit Borer

Crew member Yonatan Shapira talks about why he is going aboard the US Boat to Gaza with the Stay Human Flotilla at the end of the month.

I was a captain in the Israeli Air Force and a Black-Hawk Pilot until 2003 when together with other pilots I initiated the pilots’ letter and refused to take part in the crimes of the occupation. Today I am a member of Boycott from Within, a group of Israeli citizens who are actively supporting the Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. I have a Master degree in Peace and Conflict Studies, I facilitate dialogue groups and volunteer as a sailing instructor for children with disabilities. I’ve been sailing since I was a child and in September of 2010 I was a crew member on the Jewish boat to Gaza that was intercepted by the Israeli Navy. I work as a commercial pilot in the US and am still dreaming to be a musician.

Dear Yonatan, You are an amazing human being. It takes exceptional courage in the way you have stood up to your own country to protest against its’ injustices on Palestinians. Israelis should be proud of you. Some day you will be recognized as a national hero. I sincerely hope many in the IDF will move over the line to join you as I believe there are many soldiers who hate what they are doing in following orders. I am sure you and your friends will continue to inspire defections.
Many Regards.

endruns

Hedy Epstein was born in Germany in 1924. She was 8 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933. In 1939, she left on a Kindertransport (children’s transport) for England. Her parents and other family members perished during the Holocaust. After World War II she returned to Germany and worked as a research analyst at the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi doctors who performed medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Epstein came to the U.S. in 1948, and quickly became involved in civil rights, human rights and peace related issues, both professionally and in her personal life. In 1989, she visited Guatemala, Nicaragua and Cambodia as a peace delegate. Since 2003, she has visited the Israeli occupied West Bank five times, and has made four attempts to visit Gaza by land and sea. She has written and traveled extensively in the U.S. and Europe to speak about social justice issues, with an emphasis on the Israel/Palestine issue. In 1999, her autobiography — “Erinnern ist nicht genug” (Remembering is Not Enough) was published in German, in Germany.

Epstein will be on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, part of Flotilla 2, her fifth attempt to reach Gaza.

Passenger Robert Naiman talks about why he is going aboard the US Boat to Gaza with the Stay Human Flotilla at the end of the month.”I am the Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy (www.justforeignpolicy.org), which works to reform U.S. foreign policy to reflect the values and interests of the majority of Americans so the U.S. complies fully with international law and supports peace, diplomacy, and negotiated resolutions of conflict.. The blockade of Gaza violates international laws and norms in regards to collective punishment against a civilian population—a crime in which the U.S. is complicit. Furthermore, the U.S.-led diplomatic embargo of Hamas is an obstacle to Palestinian self-determination as well as a just and lasting negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’m also concerned that the present U.S. policy could lead to yet another war in the region. I’m participating in this mission to call attention to the suffering faced by the civilians in Gaza under the blockade and to press for change in U.S. policy on the conflict.”

Kathy Kelly, 58, co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. Since May of 2010, she traveled to Afghanistan four times, with delegations intent on learning more about conditions faced by ordinary people in Afghanistan, a country afflicted by three decades of warfare. Voices for Creative Nonviolence has been working closely with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in search of non-military solutions to end the war. In 2009, she lived in Gaza during the Operation Cast Lead bombing. She was also in Lebanon during and after the 2006 Israeli assaults on southern Lebanon.

From 1996 — 2003, Voices activists formed 70 delegations that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing. She was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and spent three months in prison, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. She and her companions at the Voices home/office in Chicago believe that non-violence necessarily involves simplicity, service, sharing of resources and non-violent direct action in resistance to war and oppression.

Ken Mayers was commissioned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps upon his graduation from Princeton in 1958. He resigned that commission at the end of 1966 in disgust with American foreign policy and returned to the University of California at Berkeley where he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science. His doctoral dissertation was a policy analysis of minority business enterprise. He has been a peace and justice activist ever since, at the same time progressing through four successive careers. He taught political economy at Bennington College for six years, then worked in an interdisciplinary “skunk works” at Digital Equipment Corporation for 13 years followed by eight years as an independent consultant. For the past 12 years he has been the director of member relations for two international professional alliances. In the early 1980′s he and his late wife founded the Bennington VT chapter of the Beyond War Movement. In 1986 he joined Veterans for Peace (VFP) and in 2002 he founded the Santa Fe Chapter of VFP. He served on VFP’s national board of directors from 2004 to 2009, including five years as national treasurer. In December of 2009, Ken was part of the international Gaza Freedom March that got stuck in Cairo and protested in Tahrir Square and other Cairo locations for a week. He is currently a member of VFP’s Israel-Palestine Working Group. Ken is a fourth generation American of Jewish descent (non-practicing). His mother’s extended family lost at least 17 members in the holocaust. Ken is convinced that the Israeli government has learned the wrong lessons from those tragic years. He wants to demonstrate to his Palestinian brothers and sisters that even someone in his situation supports their desire for freedom. Since the government of Egypt turned him back from Gaza a year ago, he is determined to try again now.