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ICall 2006 englishI |
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Together against International Al Quds Day! In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini called for an annual event on the last Friday of the Islamic fast month of Ramadan to demonstrate for the "liberation" of Jerusalem and the destruction of Israel. Since then, the so-called Al Quds-Day, a state-organized propaganda demonstration, has been held annually in Teheran, a Hezbollah military parade has been held in Beirut and demonstrations have been held worldwide – this year on October 20. In Berlin, where the demonstration is planned for Saturday, October 21, the organizers have in recent years traded in their anti-Semitic messages for more measured slogans, due to public protests. But on Al Quds Day 2005, the new Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, repeated vociferously Khomeini's call for the destruction of Israel, and has emerged as a Holocaust denier and new worldwide hero of radical Islamists and neo-Nazis. We the undersigned have different opinions on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But we join in rejecting all attacks on the rights of Israel to exist and we stand up for a peaceful, two-state solution acceptable to both sides. The Iranian regime is doing everything it can to prevent such a solution. It not only verbally calls for the destruction of Israel but supports and finances suicide attacks against Israelis and arms Hezbollah with rockets. The Iranian regime shamelessly instrumentalises the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the backs of the Palestinian people, in order to stabilize its own dictatorship and build an international basis of power. We condemn the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli baiting of the Iranian regime as well as the extreme human rights abuses committed in and by Iran for 27 years: • The torture and murder of tens of thousands of dissidents, including in the 1992 attack on the Berlin Restaurant „Mykonos" and recently with the 200 prisoners on a hunger strike, Iran is an Islamist dictatorship. We are standing with those Iranians who long for democracy and human rights and who want to live in peace with the world community. We also oppose all discrimination against people of Muslim belief or immigrant background. This is no cultural war against Islam, but a common political opposition to Islamic extremism and religiously justified violence. Al Quds Day and the Islamist ideology are also an attack on the universality of human rights and thus an attack on us all – whether in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Israel and the Palestinian territories, in Turkey or in Berlin. We are therefore calling for a protest demonstration on October 21 2006 against International Al Quds Day in Berlin and request broad support for this appeal. For more information: www.gegen-al-quds-tag.de Contact in support of the appeal: info@gegen-al-quds-tag.de The Berlin Alliance against the international Al Quds Day: Maja Loeffler (Coordination) |
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