ACTION for GAZA: Email Congress NOW — and we'll put Gazans on the phone briefing
In this time of crisis, I am writing to ask for your urgent action:
Gazans are standing by to join teleconference briefings with Congressional staff — As soon as you and two more from your district send your email, our team at Rebuilding Alliance will schedule the briefings and invite you to join the calls.
Each teleconference will each include the following speakers: a representative of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a leader of a Palestinian Non-Governmental Organization, and a young writer from the NGO group, We Are Not Numbers. With black-outs lasting 20 hours daily, UNRWA-Gaza will provide the connection from their office with Rebuilding Alliance paying for taxis to get them there at night to join the line with us — I was able to work all this out during my recent visit.
Congress takes action when constituents ask — but first they must see what is happening. Rebuilding Alliance has been working in Gaza since 2003. In all my efforts to advocate for lifting the brutal blockade, now in force for 11 years, I could hardly get traction, not even for meetings with Dr. Yasser Abu-Jamei, head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program when Rebuilding Alliance brought him and Ran Goldstein, head of Physicians for Human Rights, to Congress.
Your email to Congress is vitally important because Congress promises to take action on your behalf when you face an urgent issue with a Federal agency. The crisis in Gaza is urgent:
- President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem collapsed any hope of peace talks;
- His punitive decision to freeze approximately US$ 300 million earmarked for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) means that basic services such as primary education for some 500,000 students - of whom over 270,000 are in Gaza - and healthcare for millions of Palestine refugees across the Middle East are put at high risk. In Gaza, UNRWA food aid to some 1 million vulnerable Gaza residents might soon run out due to lack of funding;
- Gazans, seeing the collapse of dreams and living conditions, are surging forward in nonviolent protests only to be met with live-fire by Israeli soldiers.
Congress members are able to get a response from the State Department. As friends of Israel, are uniquely able to express your concern to the Israeli Embassy.
Please,
And please share this email with three friends who live in your Congressional district. Ask them to use this link to send their emails: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/avert-starvation-in-gaza
Thank you for all that you do.
Sincerely,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Founder and Executive Director, Rebuilding Alliance
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