New Yorkers call for boycott of Motorola over dealings with IDF

Grace Wermenbol | Ha’aretz

23 July 2009

Protesters in the New York borough of Queens held a rally last week to call for a boycott of Motorola over the firm’s business dealings with the Israel Defense Forces.

At the demonstration, which was organized by the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, protestors waved Palestinian flags and signs saying: “Goodbye Moto, Goodbye Apartheid,” and “Boycott Motorola, Free Palestine.”

The group also wrote songs and conducted street theater to draw the attention of passersby.

The organization’s spokesperson, Aaron Levitt, told Haaretz this week that over 300 people have signed a petition for a boycott of Motorola after just four events in New York City.

“Every time we go out to flyer, we meet many people who express support for the campaign and even sign our pledge to boycott Motorola,” said Levitt. His organization has more events planned for the coming month.

In June 2007, the New England United Methodist Church named Motorola as one of a number of firms that supported Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Who Profits, a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace, also lists the company as profiting from Israel’s activities in the Palestinian territories.

Motorola has been active in Israel since 1964; it currently provides the IDF with a cellular network through a subsidiary, MIRS.

MIRS provided the IDF with a military-encrypted cellular communication system, nicknamed “Mountain Rose,” which is worth $100 million and was especially constructed for field conditions.

The company’s radar detectors’ and surveillance systems have been reportedly installed in West Bank settlements. Both of these systems had a price tag of more than $90 million.

The department responsible for installing these systems was sold in April 2009 to an Israeli company, Aeronautics Defense Systems, after Motorola had come under fire from several groups in the U.S. over its activities in Israel.

Motorola spokesman Rusty Brashear said the sale of the unit was not triggered by the protests, but because “it primarily doesn’t fit in our portfolio.”

The groups the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Palestinian National Committee and other organizations worldwide also support a boycott of the phone company.

Motorola was previously boycotted due to its support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. The company supplied South African police with mobile radio transmitters used to suppress demonstrations against the government

Bil’in vs. Green Park

Corporate Watch

24 July 2009

The Green Park construction company is engaged in building illegal settlements in the West Bank, notably, the settlements of Mattiyahu East and Modi’in Illit, which have been built on land annexed from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, by the Israeli apartheid wall.

The village of Bil’in has been struggling against the construction of the wall for over five years, holding weekly demonstrations, first at the construction site and then at the gate in the apartheid wall separating the villagers from their land. The Israeli army has often responded by attacking demonstrations with water cannons, sound bombs, plastic bullets and live ammunition. Bil’in has also been used as a testing site for new weapons. Demonstrators have been subjected to high-pitched screeching and doused with nerve agents, blue dye and, most recently, a foul-smelling ‘skunk’ weapon. In March 2009, an American activist, Tristan Anderson, was critically injured after a new brand of tear gas canister was fired at his head. He remains in a coma. In April 2009, Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah was killed by a plastic coated bullet while demonstrating against the wall. Despite this weekly demonstrations continue unabated and have been successful in saving some of the village’s land.

For years international campaigners from all over the world have been attending the weekly demonstrations in Bil’in. Three international conferences on non-violent resistance to the wall and the occupation have been held in the village. The residents of Bil’in have brought several cases to the Israeli supreme court against the seizure of their land for the construction of the wall. Now the village is extending its resistance from the contractors building the wall and the soldiers protecting it to the international companies profiting from the building of the settlements the wall is designed to benefit.

Last year Bil’in’s village committee, with the help of Israeli human rights group Yesh Din (‘There is Law’ in Hebrew), began work on a case against two Canadian companies linked to Green Park. Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc. are both registered companies in the Province of Quebec. Lawyers for the village claim both companies are involved in building residential and non-residential units for settlers on land belonging to the village. They further claim that the village is due the protection of the Geneva conventions as it is based in territory subject to military occupation.

In what appears to be a deliberate attempt to evade restriction of its business, Green Park has nominally registered itself in Canada. Green Park has a token Canadian director who has little to do with the company’s operations in Palestine.

The Bil’in committee claims that Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc. have violated international law and Canadian domestic law and that the village has a right to protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Both statutes prohibit an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into territory that it has occupied as a result of war. Bil’in also relies on the Canadian Geneva Conventions Act and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which contain the same prohibition. The acts have jurisdiction over Canadians regardless of where in the world the offence has taken place.

Lawyers for Bil’in are claiming damages as well as attempting to obtain an order for settlement construction to cease. If successful, they plan to try to force the Israeli supreme court to enforce the Canadian court’s order.

Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc have lodged motions in the court for the claims to be thrown out on the grounds that the court did not have jurisdiction. Bil’in’s Canadian lawyers argue that, as the companies are registered in Canada, the court does have jurisdiction. The judge’s decision is likely to come after September 2009.

The case of Bil’in vs Green Park is similar to the case lodged by the Association France Palestine Solidaritie against Veolia and Alstom, two French companies engaged in building a tramway on illegally occupied territory (see Corporate Watch Newsletter 43 – www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3400). In that case, it was accepted that the French court did have jurisdiction to hear the case.

Lebanese urged to help break Gaza siege

Josie Ensor | The Daily Star

24 July 2009

A Lebanese human rights worker with the Free Gaza Movement made a plea on Thursday for Lebanon to show solidarity over the issue of the Palestinian right of return and play a more active role in breaking the siege. Natalie Abou Shakra, who returned Wednesday from the Gaza Strip after an eight-month humanitarian mission, said it was Lebanon’s duty to help ease the situation in the Palestinian territories.

The plea comes a week after President Michel Sleiman told Russian Mideast envoy Alexander Saltanov that any attempt to achieve peace in the Middle East must include the Palestinian right of return.

Shakra, the only Lebanese activist currently on the ground, said the resettlement of Palestinians from countries offering refuge is one of the most important issues that Lebanon should support.

“A Lebanese initiative is also needed to break the siege,” Shakra told The Daily Star. “The last one was not a total failure and I think it should be followed up – and more creative and daring ways should be thought of.”

Shakra defied Israeli orders for Lebanese citizens not to enter Gaza and was able to get in with the Free Gaza movement’s SS Dignity boat on the December 20 last year. She has since been working with Free Gaza Movement (FGM) and International Solidarity Movement to bring medical and food assistance into the Gaza Strip.

Shakra drew on the relationship between Lebanon’s struggles and Gaza’s own, saying that there was a lot of commonality yet support was lacking.

She added that, as an Arab country with a history of struggle with Israeli occupation, Le­banon had a duty to help be­sieged Gazans – 80 percent of whom are currently dependent on food assistance.

“As activists, we need to deal with people who support civil resistance, culturally. It is easier to deal with people, like the Lebanese, who we don’t have to explain the ABCs to, as they already have that political discourse in them,” Shakra added.

She said that living through Israeli occupation during her childhood in the south of Lebanon gave her an appreciation of the plight of Palestinians. “Living there we had to endure a lot and as a result we hold a lot in common with the Palestinian people – we have a common enemy.”

On Tuesday, fellow Gaza aid worker FGM’s chief Gaza coordinator Caoimhe Butterly, gave a talk in Beirut to create greater awareness of the current situation in the Gaza Strip.

Butterly has organized several boats to be sent to Gaza carrying medical and food aid and urged on Tuesday that Lebanon join the efforts. “We want more activists from the Arab world on the boats, we don’t want it to be West-centric. We want the Lebanese to come on these boats,” Butterly, an Irish national, said during the talk in Hamra’s T’Marbouta.

Butterly said in Tuesday’s talk that the situation in Gaza today is hermetic: “There are an estimated 4,000 aid items banned from entering Gaza at present; from cancer treatment medicines, to anesthetic, to footballs. And Israel won’t give out a list because it could be used by humanitarian groups.

“We had to try to negotiate pasta onto the list for three weeks – they said while rice was an essential, pasta was not. Shampoo is allowed in, but shampoo with conditioner is banned.” Butterly said that such decision on the list were deliberately calculated by the Israeli authorities: “That is the most terrifying thing – the seige is deliberately created to bring an entire people to their knees.”

The Free Gaza Movement has successfully made five aid deliveries by boat to the Gaza Strip since August of last year, defying a blockade that was imposed by Israel due to Hamas rocket attacks.

However, Butterly says that Israeli forces have intercepted many more. “The last four boats have been stopped, inclu­ding the one from Lebanon earlier this year. We believe that there was a decision to block these voyages.

“We want to bring in cement and steel; building materials but they’re being blocked, which cripples any ability to reconstruct the 12,000 homes that have been destroyed,” Butterly added.

In December of last year, she was on a Free Gaza Movement boat that was intercepted by Israeli ships as it headed to Gaza with medical supplies.

Sleiman ordered that the boat be rescued and it was welcomed at the port city of Tyre. “We received wonderful hospitality from the Lebanese and it was a great sign of support, but it shouldn’t stop there – the country needs to be much more active in its support for the cause,” Butterly said.

The organization is now planning to send convoys and passenger boats into Gazan waters to create greater international pressure. “We anticipate Israeli security trying to board the boats, but we will withstand as long as we can – we will try for five days.”

Butterly said that the idea was to have these initiatives happening on a more regular basis so that the situation in Gaza is not forgotten.

Internet users paid to spread Israeli propaganda

Jonathan Cook | Electronic Intifada

22 July 2009

The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback and comment sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook may not be all that it seems.

Israel’s foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel.

Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilized soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government’s line on the Middle East conflict.

“To all intents and purposes the internet is a theater in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” said Ilan Shturman, who is responsible for the project.

The existence of an “internet warfare team” came to light when it was included in this year’s foreign ministry budget. About $150,000 has been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year.

The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term “hasbara,” officially translated as “public explanation” but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organizations and initiatives that promote Israel’s image in print, on TV and online.

In an interview this month with the Calcalist, an Israeli business newspaper, Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry’s hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.

“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”

Rona Kuperboim, a columnist for Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, denounced the initiative, saying it indicated that Israel had become a “thought-police state.”

She added that “good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved.”

Her column was greeted by several talkbackers asking how they could apply for a job with the foreign ministry’s team.

The project is a formalization of public relations practices the ministry developed specifically for Israel’s assault on Gaza in December and January.

“During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers,” Shturman said.

“We gave them background material and hasbara material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the internet.”

The Israeli army also had one of the most popular sites on the video-sharing site YouTube and regularly uploaded clips, although it was criticized by human rights groups for misleading viewers about what was shown in its footage.

Shturman said that during the war the ministry had concentrated its activities on European websites where audiences were more hostile to Israeli policy. High on its list of target sites for the new project would be BBC Online and Arabic websites, he added.

Elon Gilad, who heads the internet team, told Calcalist that many people had contacted the ministry offering their services during the Gaza attack. “People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the internet.”

He suggested that there had been widespread government cooperation, with the ministry of absorption handing over contact details for hundreds of recent immigrants to Israel, who wrote pro-Israel material for websites in their native languages.

The new team is expected to increase the ministry’s close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a program called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel.

Nasser Rego of Ilam, a group based in Nazareth that monitors the Israeli media, said Arab organizations in Israel were among those regularly targeted by hasbara groups for “character assassination.” He was concerned the new team would try to make such work appear more professional and convincing.

“If these people are misrepresenting who they are, we can guess they won’t worry too much about misrepresenting the groups and individuals they write about. Their aim, it’s clear, will be to discredit those who stand for human rights and justice for the Palestinians.”

When this reporter called the foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman, denied the existence of the internet team, though he admitted officials were stepping up exploitation of new media.

He declined to say which comments by Shturman or Gilad had been misrepresented by the Hebrew-language media, and said the ministry would not be taking any action over the reports.

Israel has developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to new media since it launched a “Brand Israel” campaign in 2005.

Market research persuaded officials that Israel should play up good news about business success, and scientific and medical breakthroughs involving Israelis.

Shturman said his staff would seek to use websites to improve “Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity.”

David Saranga, head of public relations at Israel’s consulate-general in New York, which has been leading the push for more upbeat messages about Israel, argued last week that Israel was at a disadvantage against pro-Palestinian advocacy.

“Unlike the Muslim world, which has hundreds of millions of supporters who have adopted the Palestinian narrative in order to slam Israel, the Jewish world numbers only 13 million,” he wrote in Ynet.

Israel has become particularly concerned that support is ebbing among the younger generations in Europe and the United States.

In 2007 it emerged that the foreign ministry was behind a photo-shoot published in Maxim, a popular US men’s magazine, in which female Israeli soldiers posed in swimsuits.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

Bil’in demonstrates against Israeli night raids

22 July 2009

The Bil’in Popular Committee organized a night demonstration on Wednesday to protest ongoing nightly raids and arrests that have taken place for the past 3 weeks. On the course of the past weeks, over 17 people have been arrested and 13 of those are still being held in detention.

About 120 protesters—Palestinian, international and Israeli solidarity activists—started to march toward the Apartheid Wall shortly before midnight holding up small flashlights in various colors. They were chanting while proceeding. At a certain point near the Wall, the Palestinian activists lit several fires to emphasize our presence. About 3 army jeeps started to patrol the road near the Wall observing our actions. They shot several illuminating shells to get a clearer view of what was going on, and to see how many demonstrators were present.

The road the demonstrators were marching was in safe distance from the army outpost and the road near the Wall. The group gathered around the fires for about half an hour chanting and whistling while the army jeeps remained stationary. Apart from shooting illuminating shells, there was not intervention from the occupation forces. The protesters then returned peacefully back to the village.