Washington Report: March 2006 Postcard

March 2006 Postcard

Cut and paste html (for emailing your Sen. or Rep.:

DEAR SENATOR:
I oppose both the U.S.-Mexico wall and Israel’s annexation wall. Both walls prevent workers from reaching their jobs. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission described the U.S. measure as “part of a tendency to criminalize migration with a wall that calls to mind the Berlin Wall.” A barrier says: “stay on your side, keep away from our side.”

Israel’s annexation wall also ends hopes for peace between neighbors. This wall pre-empts free negotiations on any final peace deal and undermines the chances of permanent status negotiations. The wall proves Israel wants to dictate and not negotiate. The International Court of Justice has ruled Israel’s wall—most of it built on Palestinian land—is illegal.

As a taxpayer I object to paying $3.6 billion for the Mexican wall or helping pay $2.1 billion for Israel’s wall. Both are awful symbols of division and separateness—a condemnation of those on the other side. It is shocking for both nations of immigrants to build such a wall in an age when walls are being torn down.

I demand of my Congress and my president:

Bring down these walls!

FROM:

Address:

City, State, Zip:

A sign painted on the Mexican side of the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Produced by the Washington Report, PO Box 53062, Wash DC 20009. (A sign painted on the Mexican side of the border between San Diego and Tijuana. Produced by the Washington Report, PO Box 53062, Wash DC 20009).

On Dec. 16 the House of Representatives authorized the building of a 700-mile-long wall along parts of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Existing barriers built along heavily crossed sections of the border have not stopped migrants from crossing. Instead those walls have pushed desperate workers to cross the border at more desolate, dangerous areas.

Israel’s 425-mile separation barrier annexes 8 percent of the West Bank, including the major Jewish-only settlement blocs, to the Israeli side of the June 1967 border. Israel’s annexation wall will also encircle Jerusalem (in order to make that city, holy to three religions, more Jewish, according to Israeli Labor party member Haim Ramon), and prevent 55,000 to 100,000 Christian and Muslim Palestinians from reaching their jobs, schools, families and places of worship.