Correspondence - #19 - Laserfiche WebLink

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December 4, 2023 Stanton City Council members Stanton City Hall 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92701 Dear Councilmembers Phan, Vazquez, Lopez, Bacerra, Hernandez, Penaloza, and Mayor Amezcua, We write to you to express our solidarity with Palestinian, Jewish, and Arab -American activists pushing for this ceasefire resolution. Orange County Environmental Justice, along with the undersigned, condemns the recent murder of civilians, including those by Hamas in Israel, those by the State of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, and those by Israeli armed settlers in the West Bank. The atrocities committed thus far have resulted in over 23,000 Palestinian deaths, including over 9,000 children, and the displacement of 1.8 million civilians in Gaza, which surpasses the total casualties of the Nakba of 1948, when half of the entire Palestinian population was forced out of their ancestral villages and into the open-air prison known as Gaza in order to create the state of Israel. In addition to mass murder and displacement, the Israeli government continues to deny food, water, electricity, fuel, and medicine to Gaza as a weapon of war, resulting in the United Nations declaring this collective punishment to be a war crime. As an environmental justice organization, we cannot ignore the impact of military polluters and their role in poisoning our communities in Stanton and bombing Palestinian Gaza and the West Bank. Companies like Raytheon supply military equipment to the Israeli government AND contribute to the high levels of pollution across Stanton. Companies like Boeing have helped to accelerate the delivery of bombs to Israel to aid in the suppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians AND contribute to huge swaths of pollution across the city of Huntington Beach and the neighboring cities of West Orange County. In addition, according to the UN environment program, "destruction of environment during conflicts not only affect public health directly in the immediate aftermath - through air and water pollution - but also affects long term recovery due to the destruction of livelihood depending on environmental resources," according to Muralee Thummarukudy, Director of the G20 Global Land Initiative. In addition, explosive weapons with wide area effects can have a devastating impact on civilians and civilian objects in populated areas. Blast and fragmentation effects cause immediate deaths and injuries. Beyond these direct effects, civilian populations can also be exposed to severe and long-lasting indirect effects - also referred to as reverberating effects'. When critical civilian infrastructure is damaged or destroyed, such as energy networks, water and sanitation systems, the provision of essential services such as healthcare is disrupted. These services are often interconnected and, as a result, damage to one can negatively affect services elsewhere, causing harm to civilians that can extend far beyond the weapon's impact area.