WASHINGTON, May 24, 2011 (WAFA) - During the Joint Session of Congress while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking on Tuesday, Rae Abileah stood up from the gallery and shouted “stop Israeli war crimes.”

From the peace group CODEPINK, Rae is a 28-year-old Jewish American of Israeli descent. She has traveled to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and witnessed firsthand the reality of occupation and oppression.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. But what is really indefensible is the occupation of land, the starvation of Gaza, the jailing of dissenters and the lack of equal rights in the alleged Israeli democracy. As a Jew and an American taxpayer, I can’t be silent when these crimes are being committed in my name and with my tax money,” she said.

This protest is part of the week-long series of actions, organized by CODEPINK as part of a coalition of groups gathered in Washington D.C. for a campaign named Move Over AIPAC. During Netanyahu's speech to AIPAC on Monday, five individuals interrupted Netanyahu and were removed from the building.

Move Over AIPAC Protesters used the same language that Netanyahu has used repeatedly in recent days and recontextualized it, inverting its intended meaning to make a point. After Netanyahu told AIPAC that the borders that Israel occupied until the 1967 war are militarily “indefensible,” protesters riffed on the word, using it to mean unjustifiable.

M.A.