Free Abdallah Abu Rahmah: Organizational Endorsements

Here's the text of the letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, followed by a partial list of organizational endorsements.

Dear Madam Secretary,

It was with great sadness and outrage that we learned that an Israeli military court has convicted Palestinian civil society activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah of incitement and organizing illegal marches. This conviction concludes an eight-month-long, politically motivated trial, during which Abu Rahmah was kept behind bars. Abu Rahmah was convicted based only on the forced testimonies of minors who were seized from their beds and arrested in the middle of the night; not a single piece of material evidence was presented during the entire trial.

In July 2010 in Krakow at a meeting of Community of Democracies, you saluted “civil society activists around the world who have recently been harassed, censored, cut off from funding, arrested, prosecuted, even killed,” and you called for coordinated international efforts to defend them. Abdallah Abu Rahmah is one of these activists who, in pursuit of human rights, have been unjustly imprisoned.

Abdallah Abu Rahmah is from the West Bank village of Bil‘in, where the community has suffered tremendously because of Israel’s illegal construction of its wall and Jewish-only settlements on village land. Bil‘in has become a symbol of peaceful Palestinian resistance to the occupation, and Abu Rahmah is one of the most visible faces, and a key organizer, of this growing grassroots movement. Israel's attempts to crack down on this nonviolent movement and its symbols are both dangerous and unjust.

As believers in justice, we cannot sit idly by as Abu Rahmah and his fellow villagers are denied even the basic right to protest the illegal seizure of their land. It is expected that Abu Rahmah will be sentenced in only a few days.

The EU, the Spanish Parliament, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu have all called for Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s release. How can the US government remain silent over such an obvious miscarriage of justice by a close ally?

We implore you to submit an official letter of inquiry about Abu Rahmah’s conviction and to demand his release now, before he is sentenced to a long period of imprisonment.

We will continue to contact you about this urgent matter and await your reply.

Partial list of organizational endorsements

Jewish Voice for Peace
Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East

14 Friends of Palestine, Marin
Birthright Unplugged
Brooklyn For Peace
Cambridge Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK)
Central New York Working for a Just Peace in Palestine & Israel
CODEPINK
Committee for Palestinian Rights (formerly Howard County Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation)
Fellowship of Reconciliation USA
Grandparents for Peace in the Middle East
Jews Say No!
Just Foreign Policy
Kalamazoo Nonviolent Opponents of War
Lutheran Group - Jemez Springs, NM
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project
MADRE
Middle East Crisis Response - Hudson Valley
Middle East Peace Now (Minnesota)
MidEast: Just Peace
Nonviolence International
NYC War Resisters League
The Olympia Friends Meeting (Quakers)
Palestine Israel Working Group (Nevada County, CA)
Peace Action Montgomery
Peace Action of San Mateo County
The Middle East Committee of Women Against Military Action
Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East
United States Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
WeAreWideAwake.org
WESPAC Foundation
Women of a Certain Age

You can give us an organizational endorsement by emailing antonia at jewishvoiceforpeace.org.
You can sign this letter to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton as an individual here.
Not in the U.S.? Click here.

Want more information about Abdallah Abu Rahmah's case?
Go here or go to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.

Read more about human rights defenders under attack here.

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