SIGN THE LETTER TO BETHLEHEM(The letter below will be given to the Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh, and a representative of Bethlehem's City Council, Zoughbi Zoughbi, during the week of Christmas.)
Dear Friends in Bethlehem, We write you today from the United States with a message of solidarity.
We write you to let you know that you and your town are in our thoughts during this holiday season. We write you to let you know that Americans across our country and men and women across our world feel pain at your plight, but pride in your perseverance. We know that you have lived under Israeli military occupation for more than 40 years and that your town is now disfigured and encircled by Israel’s massive wall. We know that the wall has separated Palestinians from Israelis, and Palestinian children from their schools, workers from their jobs, farmers from their fields, elders from their doctors, and families from their kin. We know that this situation has severely damaged your industries, particularly your tourist industry, depriving many of your townspeople of incomes and causing many of your family members, friends and neighbors to leave. We stand with you because we can no longer silently accept this unacceptable state. We stand with you because the birthplace of Jesus must not be made into a burial place of brotherhood and sisterhood. We stand with you because the symbol of human coexistence that is Bethlehem must not be transformed into the symbol of inhuman separation that is segregation. We pledge to make your plight known among our fellow Americans, this holiday season and beyond. We pledge to make to make your liberty our labor and your cause our campaign.
We pledge to press our government to adopt a just policy toward Palestine that upholds the highest ideals of our nation -- that every human being is born equal and is endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We will succeed because, in an age of information, the truth cannot be forever hidden from the eyes of men and women of conscience. We will succeed because, as more such men and women learn of your people’s plight, they will join our movement for your freedom, equality and human rights. We will succeed because the future belongs not to the physical power of arms, but to the moral power of love, as represented in our noble and righteous movement. And when we do, the promise of Bethlehem will be born anew, both as an earthly town and as a universal symbol of what human beings can achieve when united in the service of justice.
Sincerely, |
