proposal to create a Palestine Solidarity Movement in India.

Dear Friends,

Invitation for a meeting wherein we will discuss the
proposal to create a Palestine Solidarity Movement in India.

Venue: Press Club of India, C.S.T., Mumbai.
Date: 22nd April, 2008 (Tuesday) / Time: 4pm-6pm.

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine on 14th May 1948, we stand mute witness to the ever deepening ties between the ruling elite of India and Israel. The growing and unambiguous shift in our foreign policy towards an Indo-US-Israeli axis has resulted in the betrayal of our solidarity with the Thirld World, which was built upon the principles of our anti-colonial struggle. Thus our historic support to the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli colonialism has been abandoned by successive governments.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is the central geo-political issue of our times. The Palestinian people courageously continue to struggle against all odds, taking on the combined might of the Israeli-US axis. The victory of the Palestinian nation will lead to freedom for the entire region and for much of the world as well.
Moreover the US designs for South Asia are to convert India into the Israel of South Asia and thus our solidarity for Palestine is built on the common foundations of our struggle against US-Israeli Imperialism.
Today India is the biggest buyer of Israeli weapons and it is our taxes that pay for the bullets that kill Palestinian children. Israel is basically a state built on the Zionist principles of racial and religio-ethnic exclusivity and superiority and is a far more advanced and brutal version of South African Aparthied.
Thus there is a growing global movement for boycott, divestments and sanctions against Israel !!
The Apartheid policies of the Israeli state is leading to the strangulation of the Palestinian people. Gaza is a veritable prison for its 1.4 million residents and the West Bank has been reduced to myriad bantustans due to the Aparthied Wall which has created the largest open air prison-cum-concentration camp encompassing more than 2.5 million men, women and children.
And the world continues to silently watch the holocaust of the Palestinian nation.
But the Palestinian resistance, the Intifada, refuses to surrender !!
Moreover a growing global Palestinain Solidarity movement continues to mobilise and oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine in their own countries.
In India though there exists a latent support for Palestine and though we have been organizing programmes for solidarity, unfortunately we have been unable to build a sustained movement and campaign at the National level.
We thus propose a meeting wherein we will discuss the proposal to create a Palestine Solidarity Movement in India, as well as its aims, objectives and programmes.

Feroze Mithiborwala, Meena Menon, Dolphy D'Souza, Jatin Desai, Aslam Ghazi, Kishore Jagtap, Dilip Bansode, Uday Choudhary, Irfan Engineer, Syed Iftikhar Ahmad, Daniel Mazgaonkar, Vinod Nikhalje, Asif Khan, Sunil Kadam, Shakeel Ahmad, Varsha Rajan Berry, Sayeed Khan, Amol S B, Varsha V V, Asad Bin Saif, Mulniwasi Mala, Mohammad Anis, Shridhar Shirsagar, Sanjay Shinde, Munawwar Khan, Ghazala Azad, Jagdish Nagarkar, Reshma Jajtap, Chetna Birje, Arif Kapadia, Jyoti Bedekar, Lynne Henry and Avinash Kamble.

We thus request you to be present at the meeting with your active participation and proposals for the same.