Israeli Actions in Palestine
& Lebanon Condemned
Anaheim, CA: The Islamic Shura Council
of Southern California, a federation of more than 70 mosques
and Muslim organizations has said that "Israel's continued
targeting of the Palestinian and Lebanese people and their
countries infrastructure is a war crime that should be condemned
by the Bush administration.
In a statement release, the Islamic Shura Council, said:
1. The Israeli army has been waging a full-fledged war against
the Palestinian population, killing scores of civilian men,
women and children. These crimes followed an unprecedented
act of kidnapping dozens of democratically-elected Palestinian
officials and cabinet ministers, including the deputy prime
minister. Such acts are nothing short of state-terror.
2. The Bush Administration must strongly condemn these war
crimes and demand that Israel stop using American taxpayer-funded
weapons to carry out attacks that will only serve to intensify
the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon.
3. Israeli aggression against a defenseless civilian population
is also a violation of the US Arms Export Control Act, which
mandates that American weapons can only be used for defensive
purposes and not for violations of human rights. The State
Department has documented human rights violations by the
Israeli military against Palestinian civilians in its annual
report.
4. Shura Council also believes that any attempt to solve
the Palestinian/Israeli conflict must be based on the full
implementation of all relevant UN resolutions, particularly
194, 242, and 338, return of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian
lands currently occupied by Israel, and the establishment
of a viable, independent and sovereign state of Palestine.
5. The international community must not allow the Israeli
government to use this crisis to remove the democratically-elected
Palestinian government and thus strike a devastating blow
to the nascent democratic process in the region.
6. That, the re-occupation of Lebanese land must stop immediately.
Shura Council firmly believes there is neither a military
nor a militant solution to the Middle East crisis but a
political one.
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