Bar Ben-Gvir from Yale's Campus
Media Release: For Immediate release
April 21, 2025
The Middle East Crisis Committee is calling the Yale Administration to bar a Minister in the Israeli government from campus this week. Itamar Ben-Gvir is slated to speak before Yale's Shabtai society on Wednesday, April 23. He is a Minister in a government that is committing what that the International Court of Justice has declared to be plausibly the crime of genocide. He personally has been convicted by Israeli courts on many occasions including on a charge of giving support to a terrorist organization. On April 21 Stanley Heller sent a letter to Yale President McInnis with further reasons why Ben-Gvir should not be allowed on campus. See the letter below. The Middle East Crisis Committee is a human rights organization founded in New Haven in 1982. Our website is TheStruggleVideo.org
President Maurie McInnis
Yale University
Provost Scott Strobel
Via web email https://provost.yale.edu/contact-us
Dear President McInnis and Provost Strobel:
We call on Yale to prevent any access to Yale buildings by the notorious Israeli political figure Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Israeli press says he’ll be speaking for the Shabtai society at Yale on Wed. April 23, 2025. The main reason for our call is that Ben-Gvir is a Minister in a government that the International Court of Justice has declared plausibly is committing the crime of genocide. The Israeli Prime Minister is under indictment of the International Criminal Court and additionally many human rights group believe that the Israeli government is practicing the international crime of apartheid.
Ben-Gvir personally is infamous for his extremism. He was first seen on television screens as a teenager threatening the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, mere weeks before his assassination. He was filmed in 2012 harassing Rabin’s granddaughter. Ben-Gvir was a follower of Rabbi Kahane an extremist who called for all Arabs to be expelled from Israel. He has had many convictions by Israeli courts including support for a terrorist organization. For years he had a picture in his home of Baruch Goldstein who killed 29 worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. In December of 2021 he pulled a gun at a security guard in Tel Aviv who had told him he had parked in a prohibited space. He and his security people may be a direct threat to any student who calls him to account.
We know a university is a forum for all kinds of ideas, but we are not writing about ideas. We are warning about the actions of his government and his personal actions. We are seeking to prevent Yale from disgrace.
The Middle East Crisis Committee is a human rights organization founded in New Haven in 1982.
Our website is TheStruggleVideo.org
Sincerely,
Stanley Heller
Executive Director
Middle East Crisis Committee
New Haven Billboard says “Stop Arming Israel”
Media Release: For Immediate release
Coalition to Stop Arming Israel
February 13, 2025
Contact:
Stanley Heller, Media Coordinator, ********, mail@thestruggle.org or Stop-Arming@USA.com
New Haven, CT
A number of groups and individuals have rented time on an electronic billboard in New Haven over I-95 highway to spread the message, “Stop Arming Israel.” The billboard is 48 feet wide and can be seen on the stretch of highway as I-91 empties onto I-95 South towards New York. It will be visible through March 9 alternating with 7 other billboard ads. It calls on viewers to go to its website: StopArmingIsrael.us.
(click here for a photo of the billboard. You are free to use it.)
Its sponsor is a new group with the name “The Coalition to Stop Arming Israel.” It’s made up at present of the Middle East Crisis Committee, Palestine Solidarity Committee of Danbury, Health Care Workers 4 Palestine – Connecticut, CT for a World BEYOND War, Veterans for Peace Chapter 18 , Connecticut Palestine Alliance (CTPA) , Tree of Life Education Fund, and Promoting Enduring Peace
The website connected to the billboard claims that Israel’s warfare amounts to a genocide against Palestinians and the only way to stop it is to cut the weapons to Israel. The U.S. sends Israel $3.8 billion a year in regular payment and since October 7, 2023 has sent tens of billions in special funds for weapons.
John Miksad, representing Veterans for Peace and World BEYOND War, said, “The apartheid State of Israel is now seen by the vast majority of the world as a rogue state that flagrantly violates international law and human rights. It is apparent that it will not change voluntarily and, as a result, it will suffer the same fate as apartheid South Africa…worldwide condemnation, boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It is our job as people of conscience to continue applying pressure to our elected officials on a local, state and federal level to demand they get on the right side of history, regardless of how resistant they may be today. This billboard is just one of the many ways we are saying loudly and clearly, Not in Our Name!”
Omar Antar of "The Connecticut Palestine Alliance is proud to be a member and co-sponsor of the Stop Arming Israel Coalition and its billboard project, to bring attention to the complicity of our governments in the ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid of Gazans, West Bank citizens (Jenin especially lately), and Palestinians generally in the region. As citizens of the United States, and Connecticut in particular, we have the power to influence our governments to stop the relaunching of the genocide by blocking arms shipments/sales to and diplomatic cover for Israel, and divest from all investments by the Connecticut State Treasurer Eric Russell in the apartheid state of Israel, just as the state of Connecticut divested the apartheid state of the Republic of South Africa in 1981."
Stanley Heller, Executive Director of the Middle East Crisis Committee said, “President Trump said his goal is to take Gaza and to remove two million Palestinians from the area, a clear international crime. We call instead to restore Gaza and the livelihood of the people who live there. Stop the river of weapons fueling Israel’s genocidal attacks.”
On behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of Danbury, Dr. Justine McCabe said,
“The imperial and immoral actions of the US--in arming Israel’s genocide as well as in its support for autocratic regimes in the region—dangerously collide with the persistent striving for democracy by ‘decolonized’ people who overwhelmingly identify with Palestinians.” She continued, “While working as an anthropologist and psychologist in Gaza and West Bank, I witnessed the intense frustration and disgust among Palestinians for US unconditional support for Israel—long before this genocidal war. In fact, US support for apartheid Israel as its geopolitical proxy to control the Middle East makes both Israelis and Americans less safe, less secure. Tragically, in their ‘special relationship’ as hyper-militarized cultures, the US and Israel dehumanize their own citizens by their brutalizing dehumanization of Palestinians.”
Dr. Phil Brewer from Health Care Workers 4 Palestine (HCW4P) said, “Over the past 15 months the United States has shipped $26 billion in military supplies to Israel enabling it to conduct a massive genocide in Gaza with the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, the wounding and maiming of tens of thousands more, and leaving behind a catastrophic landscape devoid of the shelter, sanitation, food, medical care, and social programs necessary for life in Gaza. As an American physician whose first commandment is to do no harm, I demand that my country stop arming Israel in order to bring an end to the genocide.”
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Remembering the Holocaust January 27, 2024
This is a statement from the Middle East Crisis Committee (CT):
On this International Holocaust Day, we, a multi-ethnic group of peace activists, including Jews, Christians, Muslims and others, acknowledge the Nazi Shoah (“catastrophe”) that killed 6 million Jewish civilians. The Nazis also killed 5 million non-Jewish civilians. The latter included Roma people, Serbs, resistance fighters, Poles and anti-Nazi Germans, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, so-called "anti-socials" and "undesirables" such as beggars, vagrants, and mentally retarded people.
As history shows, these horrors began in earnest when Adolph Hitler became German Chancellor on January 30, 1933, and continued until the Allies in WWII were victorious in Europe and liberated the last of the concentration camps in the spring of 1945. All the aforementioned groups—Jews and non-Jews--were regarded as enemies of the Third Reich. However, only Jews were singled out for total annihilation.
Thus, in pursuit of peace, we express our deepest sympathy for the Nazi genocide of Jews. We join Jews worldwide and their descendants in saying “never again”--never again for anyone.
We salute groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now and individuals like Masha Gessen, Naomi Klein, Sara Roy, Judith Butler and Peter Beinart who speak out and act in this spirit.
The Middle East Crisis Committee was founded in Connecticut in 1982. Its website is: TheStruggleVideo.org. Stanley Heller is its Executive Director.
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Alaa Abd El-Fattah's Life at Stake
Demonstration Monday 11/7 - President Biden, Press Egypt’s Ruler to #FreeAlaa
Press Release: for immediate release
The Middle East Crisis Committee is calling for a rally in front of the Federal building at 450 Main St. at noon on Monday November 7 to call for President Biden to press Egypt’s ruler Abdul Fattah El-Sisi to free Egyptian political prisoners in particular well-known activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Biden is going to Egypt this weekend to attend the COP 27 climate conference.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been in prison for years for peaceful protests that demand basic democratic rights. He has been on a partial hunger strike for months and is starting a total hunger strike this Sunday. Egypt has tens of thousands of people in al-Sisi’s prisons for the “crime” of standing up for human rights. The Human Rights Watch estimate is 60,000 political prisoners.
Stanley Heller, Executive Director of MECC said, “Alaa ate his last bit of food Friday and will stop drinking water Sunday. We must do all we can to free this man. We’re directing our message to President Biden and Congress since Biden will be in Egypt Sunday for the COP27 climate conference and because the U.S. gives the Egyptian dictatorship about $1.5 billion in aid each year. Certainly the U.S. has means of leverage.”
To see the bright yellow banner we’ve created for this event go to:
https://thestrugglevideo.org/the-struggle
The Middle East Crisis Committee was founded in 1982 in New Haven and has interest in working for human rights especially in Middle Eastern and north African countries. Our website is https://TheStruggleVideo.org 203-444-3578
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The Signs are Very Worrying
Very Concerned about a Possible Immediate Mass Execution of Saudi Prisoners
I’ve been in touch with a number of Saudi dissidents, principally those part of the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights. They are worried that the Saudi regime is preparing a new mass execution. The last one was in March of this year when 81 prisoners were executed on the same day.
They say the same pattern is developing, an increased number of death sentences, but no executions and handing out of “ultra-long” prison sentences. Then several score are executed at once. In April 2019 some 37 were executed at once. This is the regime way. It is also the regime way to tell families of the executions only after they have been done and to often not release the bodies of the executed prisoners.
I ask you to use your influence to get the president and the State Department to press the Saudis not to execute prisoners.
In particular some of the “crimes” for which the death penalty has been ordered to are actions that are protected by human rights principles, for instance “attending funerals of human rights activists”, sending tweets calling for fundamental freedoms in the kingdom and in one case attending a demonstration in Bahrain. Human Rights Watch notes that one crime that can get the death penalty is the vague “inciting strife and spreading chaos”. ESOHR says it is monitoring the cases of 7 minors. The Saudi courts sometimes order executions for minors that are delayed until they reach the age of 18.
For more information you can contact the ESOHR hereor via this email. Their most recent information is posted here on Twitter(in Arabic).
Stanley Heller
Executive Director
Middle East Crisis Committee
203-444-3578
The Middle East Crisis Committee was founded in New Haven in 1982.
A Connecticut Rifle Killed Abu Akleh
[ It appears the Palestinian Attorney General was incorrect and a different rifle was used to murder Shireen Abu Akleh. We leave the release here for the record. ]
Sunday, May 29, 2022
CONTACT: Stanley Heller 203-444-3578
Slain Palestinian Journalist Killed by
Gun Produced by Connecticut Company
Al Jazeera and Reuters report that the Palestinian Attorney General has concluded that Shireen Abu Akleh, the reporter who was killed on May 11, 2022 in Jenin on Palestine’s West Bank, was killed with a bullet from a Mini Ruger gun. Palestinian Attorney General Akram Al-Khatib said tests showed that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military. The Mini Ruger is produced by Sturm Ruger and Company whose headquarters is in Southport (Fairfield), Connecticut.
Abu Akleh was a prominent Arab journalist, known all over the Middle East, who worked for Al Jazeera for 25 years. CNN described her as “a household name across the Arab world for her coverage of Israel and the Palestinian territories.” The Palestinian foreign minister announced that the Palestinian Authority had formally asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Abu Akleh’s killing.
Stanley Heller Executive Director of the Middle East Crisis Committee said, “For years we’ve been calling attention to sales of Ruger guns and ammunition to the Israeli military which is a serial human rights violator. We’re part of a coalition called “No Rugers to Israel” ( website NoRugers2Israel.org ). We can document over 200 Palestinians killed or injured by Rugers though we believe the true number to be far higher.
“Now Ruger has got its most infamous kill, a reporter doing her job, well-known by the Israeli military, shot while wearing an outfit clearly marked ‘Press’. We repeat again, Sturm Ruger should not be selling its weapons or ammunition to the Israeli government.
“Sturm Ruger, the U.S.’ largest firearms company, is known to have given millions of dollars to the National Rifle Association, which after the Uvalde Massacre has itself has come under harsh criticism for its rejection of gun control measures and its promotions of gun sales.
“We’ve written to town officials of Fairfield calling on the Board of Selectmen to ‘call on Sturm Ruger to break all ties with the National Rifle Association, to stop selling its products to Israel and to make a full public accounting of how its weapons were used by Israel and the times its weapons were used deliberately to kill innocent people in the United States.’”
The Middle East Crisis Committee was founded in New Haven, CT in 1982.
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