JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE: CUT AID TO ISRAEL

Jewish Voice for Peace: cut aid (JTA)
Jewish Voice for Peace joined a call to cut off military assistance to Israel.

The San Francisco-area activist group is one of about 300 groups who signed a letter this week to the relevant Senate and U.S. House of Representatives committees urging them not to approve President Bush's proposed $2.55 billion in defense assistance.

Israel uses the assistance "to enforce its illegal 40-year military occupation and siege of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip and to commit human rights violations against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and against civilians in Lebanon," says the letter, which does not cite any of the standing threats to Israel. "As long as Israel continues to violate U.S. law, the United States must cut off military aid, not increase it."

Israel is virtually guaranteed the aid, which is favored across the board by pro-Israel groups.

Jewish Voice for Peace, the only national Jewish group among the signatories, does not count out a one-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East.