Letters for Palestine
This is the Current Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) letter
Background:
Last week 7-year-old Rayyan Yaser Suleiman died of heart failure after being chased by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. The report is here.
Last week 7-year-old Rayyan Yaser Suleiman died of heart failure after being chased by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. The report is here.
After school on Thursday, Rayyan and his brothers were returning to their home in the village of Taqoua, east of Bethlehem, when Israeli soldiers began chasing them.
The boys were wanted for questioning over stone-throwing, but the chase, which went on for about three kilometres, ended with a heart attack for the frightened child after soldiers came to his home.
“When the soldiers arrived at the house, they started knocking on the door violently and shouting, demanding that Rayyan be handed over,” Yasser Suleiman, the boy’s father, told Middle East Eye.
“I opened the door and started explaining to them that Rayyan is a child no more than seven years old, but they insisted that I bring him to them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rayyan, who had made it home, shook in fear as he listened to the soldiers. He ran quickly towards the back door of the house. When his father went to get him, he found him lying on the ground, unconscious.
A medical autopsy confirmed that Rayyan suffered a shock that led to his sudden heart attack. His family said that an otherwise healthy child was scared to death by Israeli soldiers.
Rayyan’s death is a small symbol of what life is like for Palestinian children and their families living under Israel’s brutal military occupation. (The BBC and other news outlets would typically describe Rayyan as a “Palestinian militant” – a label they would never give to a Ukrainian child throwing stones at Russian occupation soldiers)
It is also an example of the escalating Israeli oppression of Palestinians over recent months. We are not helpless – please act now.
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Something you can do now with just a few clicks…
Send this letter to the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and send a copy to your local MP. You can find their email here
The boys were wanted for questioning over stone-throwing, but the chase, which went on for about three kilometres, ended with a heart attack for the frightened child after soldiers came to his home.
“When the soldiers arrived at the house, they started knocking on the door violently and shouting, demanding that Rayyan be handed over,” Yasser Suleiman, the boy’s father, told Middle East Eye.
“I opened the door and started explaining to them that Rayyan is a child no more than seven years old, but they insisted that I bring him to them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rayyan, who had made it home, shook in fear as he listened to the soldiers. He ran quickly towards the back door of the house. When his father went to get him, he found him lying on the ground, unconscious.
A medical autopsy confirmed that Rayyan suffered a shock that led to his sudden heart attack. His family said that an otherwise healthy child was scared to death by Israeli soldiers.
Rayyan’s death is a small symbol of what life is like for Palestinian children and their families living under Israel’s brutal military occupation. (The BBC and other news outlets would typically describe Rayyan as a “Palestinian militant” – a label they would never give to a Ukrainian child throwing stones at Russian occupation soldiers)
It is also an example of the escalating Israeli oppression of Palestinians over recent months. We are not helpless – please act now.
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Something you can do now with just a few clicks…
Send this letter to the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and send a copy to your local MP. You can find their email here
Email addresses:
j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz
n.mahuta@ministers.govt.nz
Please BCC Secretary@PSNA.nz so PSNA can track how many emails the minsters receive.
You can look up your local MP's email address here - https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/
j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz
n.mahuta@ministers.govt.nz
Please BCC Secretary@PSNA.nz so PSNA can track how many emails the minsters receive.
You can look up your local MP's email address here - https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/
Subject line:
Please create a subject line that fits with your thinking
Please create a subject line that fits with your thinking
Email content:
Kia ora Ms Ardern kōrua ko Ms Mahuta,
Israel has stepped up its brutal oppression of Palestinians in the last few months. This is symbolized in the situation of 7-year-old Rayyan Yaser Suleiman who died of heart failure after being chased by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. The report of his death is here.
Kia ora Ms Ardern kōrua ko Ms Mahuta,
Israel has stepped up its brutal oppression of Palestinians in the last few months. This is symbolized in the situation of 7-year-old Rayyan Yaser Suleiman who died of heart failure after being chased by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. The report of his death is here.
- According to the United Nations, over the past three months in the Occupied West Bank alone, Israeli occupation forces have invaded Palestinian urban areas and refugee camps, killing more than 29 Palestinians including at least a dozen children, while 1,813 Palestinians, including 27 women and 194 children, have been injured. 1206 injuries were due to tear gas while 202 were injured by live ammunition. More than a dozen Palestinians have been killed over the past week in these raids.
- Israel has dramatically expanded its “administrative detention” whereby Palestinians are held indefinitely without charge or trial, for years on end. They are not permitted to see the evidence against them, if such evidence exists. The number on administrative detention has now reached 800 – 20% of the total Palestinian prisoner population.
- The Israeli police and army have even begun to arrest former prisoners, those who have been released after serving sentences, holding them without charge or trial as a “preventative measure”.
- Reports of Israeli torture of prisoners, mistreatment, isolation, overcrowding, and deliberate medical neglect are well documented by human rights groups. These problems have been exacerbated by Israel’s latest round of brutality.
- Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues with the latest abuses occurring at Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. Here there are eight Palestinian villages under immediate threat with the occupation army backing up Israeli settlers in direct violent attacks on Palestinian farmers and their families. The government has spoken out in defense of Masafer Yatta but it must speak out consistently.
- Israel has stepped up attacks on the six Palestinian civil society organisations it designated as “terrorist” last year – a designation not recognized by anyone outside Israel. These attacks include harassment of staff, seizure of equipment and records and stripping offices of records, computers and equipment.
- The purpose of declaring these groups “terrorist was to silence and isolate the groups, evade accountability for Israeli war crimes and human rights violations and to pressure donors to defund the organisations”.
- The establishment of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land is also escalating along with associated violent attacks on Palestinian farmers and residents, by Israeli settlers, backed up by the Israeli military, killing of Palestinian farmers along with destruction of Palestinian farm equipment and property. These attacks have grown more common with the onset of the olive harvest season.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s government must take action against Israel for its racist policies and brutal oppression, it’s ethnic cleansing and land annexations, its murderous brutality and abuses of Palestinian human rights. We have called out similar abuses by Russia. We must do the same for Israel.
Palestinians are suffering under the longest military occupation in modern history and deserve the government’s wholehearted support. Hypocrisy should never the guiding principle of foreign policy.
Please respond quickly. The situation we have described here needs immediate action and urgent intervention from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Looking the other way is not an option.
Nā,
<your name>
<your city>
