FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 22, 2014

Press contacts:

Medea Benjamin, 415.235.6517, medea.benjamin@gmail.com

Ret. Colonel Ann Wright, 808-741-1141, microann@yahoo.com

CODEPINK Projects Photos of Carnage from Israeli Military Attack on Gaza on Walls of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Office in Washington DC

Washington, DC – Tonight, July 22, at 8pm, CODEPINK activists will project photographs of the carnage of the Israeli military attack on Gaza on the walls of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) office at 251 H Street, NW in Washington DC. Activists will also have a 30-foot lighted banner spelling out “No US $$ to Israel".

AIPAC is a powerful lobby group for the state of Israel and strongly supports Israel in its 15-day military attack on Gaza that has killed over 600 Palestinians, including over 100 children, and has wounded over 3,500. Some 100,000 Palestinians are now displaced from their homes in Gaza, living with relatives or in United Nations schools. Israeli military forces have used American-supplied F16 aircraft and Apache Helicopters and drones to bomb and rocket hospitals and homes. One bomb reportedly killed four patients in the surgical ward of the Al-Aqsa hospital and injured 30 medics. It is the third medical facility to be bombed by Israel in the past two weeks.  

Ann Wright, a retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war, said, “I have travelled to Gaza eight times in the past five years, including after the 2009 and 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza. As a military officer I am stunned by the disproportionate force used by the Israeli military. The numbers of women and children killed by Israeli bombardment is evidence of the purposeful targeting of civilians--in their homes and in their hospitals."

"We will be showing the images of this carnage on the very walls of AIPAC to same 'Shame on AIPAC for supporting this massacre,'" said Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK. "As a Jew, I think it's important to call out AIPAC and to say that there are many of Jews, like myself, who call for an end to the violence and a lifting of the siege of Gaza."

Thousands of concerned Americans, including numerous CODEPINK chapters in cities across the country (including Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle and Atlanta) have engaged in protests and acts of civil disobedience to demand an end to violence being perpetrated by the Israeli government and army against Gaza and the underlying causes of that violence. The US enables this violence with upwards of $3 billion a year in unconditional military aid to Israel. Activists are calling for an immediate end to that military aid.

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The action is sponsored by CODEPINK. CODEPINK (www.codepink.org) is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S. funded wars and occupations, to challenge militarism globally, and to redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities.

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