In solidarity with the International Global Day of Action for Palestine, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel announce the endorsement of over 300 US academics and cultural workers, and the affiliation of over 20 organizations.
As educators of conscience, we have been unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine. In response to the call of Palestinian civil society organizations and in solidarity with the growing international movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, USACBI renews its call for the complete academic and cultural boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
A major element of the occupation and the blockade has been the destruction of Palestinian culture and of its institutions of education and the normalization of the occupation through academic business-as-usual and cultural “embassies”. We therefore encourage our colleagues throughout the United States to join us in pursuing this non-violent means to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and its apartheid system by:
(1) Refraining from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine;
(2) Advocating a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
(3) Promoting divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
(4) Working toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
(5) Supporting Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
We believe that non-violent external pressure on Israel, in the form of an academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel, can help bring an end to the ongoing massacres of civilians and an end the occupation of Gaza and Palestine. We therefore urge a comprehensive boycott, including divestment, political sanctions, and the immediate halt to all military aid, sales and deliveries to Israel. However, as educators of conscience, we specifically call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions as a key element in this larger action.
We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing scholasticide and to support the non-violent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions.
This boycott should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
To endorse, please e-mail uscom4acbi@gmail.com with your name and institutional affiliation.
The newly formed Advisory Board consists of internationally known scholars, artists and human rights activists: Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor, The Black Commentator and immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report Mark Gonzales, Educator, Poet, Human Writes Project Marilyn Hacker, poet Edward S. Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of History, University of Southern California Ilan Pappé, Chair in the Department of History, the University of Exeter and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. James Petras, Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at SUNY Binghamton Adrienne Rich, poet, essayist, activist Michel Shehadeh, Executive Director, Arab Film Festival Lisa Taraki, Associate Professor of Sociology, Birzeit University, Palestine and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
How can I affect what is happening and how can the world respond?
The concept of civil resistance is not new at all. This non-violent, unarmed, citizen oriented strategy of resistance in modern history played a role in the struggles against colonialism, and neo-colonialism especially in British colonies of Africa, in Apartheid South Africa, India, and the Middle East, particularly Palestine.
We live in a very imbalanced world, where language, dress, technology, education, food, media, and other aspects in post-modern life are dictated by a few and are imposed on the many, the rest of the world. This few decides the flow of politics, and dictates how the world will rotate around. This few, also, will accept no resistance, at any cost.
I come from a country that has, since 1982, the last Israeli occupation, officially founded a paramilitary resistance. Despite being an armed resistance, the Lebanese muqawama (resistance) is a resistance in many forms. It is a culture of resistance, against any form of colonialism, occupation and, most importantly, the evil of all evils, imperialism. During the war on Lebanon, another form of resistance coming from ordinary citizens managed to form. This occurred between July-August 2006, a group of activists local and international, decided to “resist” the Israeli shelling, defying it by driving a series of vehicles to the South of Lebanon to help the internally displaced. This movement was called the Civil Resistance campaign and its aim was to defy Israeli siege on Lebanon during the strikes in any way the citizens in it found possible.
During 2006, another siege was also being imposed on a population, this time more savage, and extending till this moment on. The siege on Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip came as a collective punishment imposed on almost one and a half million souls who, due to a democratically elected government that they chose. The only fault this government committed to the few dominating our world is that it was and is a resistance- it resisted those few, with their decisions, their indirect and direct forms of neo-colonialism, occupation and imperialism.
Again, on the 8th of August, 2008, the world witnessed a historical event of a group of activists from all over the world, resisting, non-violently. They resisted the Israeli Apartheid state’s collective punishment and illegal siege. The mighty illusion of power that Apartheid Israel conveyed to the world, again, as in 2006 with the war on Lebanon, was broken. On Dec. 20th, 2008, seven days prior to the Israeli genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing strategy in the Gaza Strip, a group of activists and journalists, arrived in Gaza’s port. It also included the first Arab delegation consisting of Lebanese and Qataris on board.
For seven days prior to the attacks, since my arrival on an occupied land, a besieged people, collectively punished, I listened to and saw what the blockade of the Strip has created. It created a Bantustan of the worst kind: a concentration camp with a coming wave of slaughtering. A Bantustan with underground tunnels extending to Egypt which were one of the reasons people survived and are still surviving, and one with a slow, genocide, unnoticed by the world; there were weekly if not daily Israeli attacks on civilians such as farmers and fishermen, and, if you track down those figures noted by human rights observers in the Strip, you would also read through the perpetual killing of children.
I remained with a Palestinian family during the attacks. Together, we shared one room under the bombings. On the floor we slept, in the only room far away from the front of the building so as to minimize the devastation of strikes. We were four individuals, the parents and their child, and I. At night, when no sleep was possible, we heard the surveillance plane with its frightening buzzing sound linger above us, then, we heard the F16s and F35s bomb the place near by… this would happen every night for 21 nights…
During the attacks, I accompanied the Red Crescent ambulances that were not free of attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces. 16 paramedics were killed during the IOF attacks of ambulances. There was no safe place to be in, in this largest concentration camp that modern history has noted similar. Can Auschwitz and Warsaw be repeated again? They were. No one around me was capable of understanding the extent of savagery. It was random slaughtering, with a racially discriminative tone, and a blinded, ignorant hatred. What was worse, was that the world had become so familiar with the death of Arabs, from Iraqis to Palestinians, that the increasing numbers add on to the immunity of response.
In Gaza, watching the international media report the events, many around the world thought there was an army in Gaza. “Where is the Palestinian army?” one commentator had asked. There is no Palestinian army. There are no nuclear weapons in the Strip. There are resistance fighters, with guns in their hands, and a minimal number of Grad rockets developed similar to those produced in the 1960s in the USSR, that sometimes fall back on their launchers. Does that make an army against the largest nuclear power in the region…? Apartheid Israel is not only the largest, but the most destructive nuclear power in the region.
The little boy in my house sang during the war… he sang to sleep, he sang to fight the shaking of our building and the breaking of our windows… the cold air at night and the sounds of gunboats, war planes, tanks and snipers around us… so close, death is so close.
I had no courage if it weren’t for that little boy. I had no courage in facing all this weaponry, this tragedy.
We laughed during the shelling. Yes, there was laughter. We made fun of the Israelis. When they struck, we argued what type of weapon was used. Now, we are war experts from the Palestinian Academy of 61 years of slow genocide and planned ethnic cleansing. People joked with me, and teased me, saying I, the Lebanese, brought the war from Lebanon here.
Along with other areas, Tal el Hawa, my street, was invaded by the occupation forces. They came in with their tanks into our street. Our building was bombed, on the seventh, sixth, and fifth floor. We didn’t know it was us until the next day that we were capable of stepping out. We found a street of rubble, dust and ruins. The Red Crescent building in front of ours burnt entirely, with the one-story storage adjacent compound containing medicine and tents for shelter, devastated with its contents.
I walked during the nights, under bombs. My comrades from the International Solidarity Movement and I had to constantly write. So, there was a need to visit the media agencies offices. They had electricity and internet. Walking around rubble, ruins, was like living one of the classical horror movies. A ghost town… I hid under the balcony shodows as I ran from one building to another hoping the soldier with the sniper in the surveillance plane would not see me… every noticeable walking shadow was a target. They targeted sheep, donkeys… and even pigeons.
We strived with activists in Gaza to begin a global boycott movement baring the South African experience in mind. We believed that Apartheid Israel had shot the two-state solution into pieces. What was the alternative? A one democratic state for all its citizens disregarding race, ethnicity, colour, religion and gender… this was the call to action. Zionism is a racist ideology, having a one state for Jews with discrimination against minorities is not the choice of people who support civil democracy, one person, one vote. The punishment of generals and commanders in the IOF as war criminals, and the state of Israel as an apartheid state responsible for war crimes and acts of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians is to be sought, and the creation of a one state on all of historic Palestine is the only solution after Gaza 2009. Palestinians can coexist with Jews, but not Zionism. A democratic, secular society could be established after transitional justice is sought. Nothing else can accomplish the return of the 6 million refugees scattered worldwide, some living in miserable conditions, particularly in Lebanon and other Arab countries, not to mention the drastic sense of alienation that is felt amongst all the Palestinians whether in the Diaspora, in what is now called Israel or the occupied 1967 Palestinian land.
I am in the struggle, I am living within it. But, I refuse to be subject, I am individual, I keep reminding myself. This reality creates an affect on a person making him or her feel less valuable than they really are… as humans, as citizens. The feeling that the world has abandoned you, renounced you, after all the loss, all the pain, is unbearable, is another death by itself. When one has lost a child, or a mother, or beloved one, to a sniper’s shots, to an Apaches’ impact, how could that be justified? Then, in watching the news broadcasts all over the world, we see the victims portrayed as aggressors… it doubles the pain.
After the attacks stopped, I visited a few orchards in Jabalya, 15 minutes away from where I live in Gaza city. I saw the trees plucked from their roots. What does that mean? When the aggressor plucks your trees from their roots… the aggressor wants you to know that you, and your identity, and your existence will be plucked similarly. The hate in the acts, in leveling the buildings down to sand in which they were made from, was heart wrenching. But, what was inspiring, were those families that drank tea above what used to be a home, a house. Tents were built near the rubble, and children played with what they could find of objects broken.
How can I affect what is happening and how can the world respond? The truth is that we can defy oppression and the illusion of power that the oppressor creates in our minds. I was asked once, “are you not afraid to die?” I am only afraid of what I consider the evil of all evils, repression, oppression, colonialism, and occupation, anything that can wipe my existence off, just erasing identities off the map, and this is what has been happening to the Palestinians for 61 years and on going now. What do you choose to do about it?
The people in Palestine are mobilizing for the 32nd annual commemoration of Land Day, happening March 30. Land Day marks the date of the Palestinian demonstration that occurred in the Galilee against a wide-scale land confiscation, when Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinians, injured 96 and arrested 300.
Today, the Land Day protests of the people in Palestine and around the world are focused on the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The call for a global day of action on March 30 came out of the World Social Forum in Belem (Brazil) and aims to promote BDS as the most effective tool to stop Israeli policies of land theft and colonization and the discrimination, massacres and ethnic cleansing that have been carried out against the Palestinian people in pursuit of these goals.
Actions all across historic Palestine tie the ongoing defense of Palestinian land and agriculture from the Wall and settlement project to the call for boycott of Israeli products and institutions. Where farming becomes a form of resistance, choosing Palestinian over Israeli products is an essential part of the Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom, and return. Where a people is besieged, bombed and starved with the complicity of governments around the world, the call for global BDS becomes an essential tool to break the siege.
LIST OF ACTIONS
Galilee (’48 Palestine) – organized by the Higher Follow Up Committee of the Arab citizens of Israel
March 30, Deir Hanna: Demonstration against Israeli racism and fascism. Gathering at 3 pm.
March 30, Kufr Kanna: Demonstration at 10 am
March 30, Sakhnin: Demonstration at 10 am
Jenin
March 30, Rumaneh: Tree planting along with a workshop entitled “Land Day, BDS and the struggle against the Wall”.
Qalqiliya
March 27, Jayyous: Demonstration against the Wall and for the boycott of Israeli products.
March 29, Qalqiliya city: BDS district meeting. Activists, political representatives and students will discuss the boycott strategies in the district to work towards a ‘Qalqiliya district free of Israeli products’.
March 30, Jayyous: Demonstration against the Wall and for BDS along with the planting of olive trees.
March 30, Qalqiliya city: Demonstration against against Israeli occupation and for BDS
April 6 and 7, Qalqiliya city: Workshop in al Quds Open University Qalqiliya on economic and academic boycott as a form of resistance.
Ramallah
March 27, Ni’lin and Bil’in: demonstrations against the Wall and for BDS
March 27, al-Lubban: A day for voluntary work and painting of murals for the children, political workshop on BDS, and a film screening.
March 28, Shuqba: A day for voluntary work and painting of murals for the children as well as political workshop on BDS.
March 28, Sinjil: A day for voluntary work and painting of murals for the children, political workshop on BDS, and a film screening.
March 30, Qalandiya: Demonstration at Qalandiya checkpoint against the isolation of Jerusalem and for BDS.
April 3, Ni’lin and Bil’in: Demonstrations against the Wall and for BDS.
April 4, Beit Liqiya: A day for voluntary work and painting of murals for the children, political workshop on BDS, a film screening, and a dabke festival.
Saffa, April 4: A day of voluntary work, painting of murals for the children and the planting of olive trees.
Bethlehem
March 27, al Ma’sra: Demonstration against the Wall and for BDS.
March 30, Qubbet Rahel (Bethlehem): Women’s demonstration against the Wall and for BDS.
March 30, Beit Sahour: Workshop at the Palestinian Center For Rapprochement Between People covering the topics of communication for western audiences about Palestine and activism on Palestine and abroad, including BDS. (9 am – 12am).
April 3, Irtas: Planting olive trees.
April 3, al Ma’sra: Demonstration against the Wall and for BDS.
Boycott Israel! Make it account for its crimes in Gaza!
Today, the Palestinian people scattered across the globe mark Land Day, commemorating the events of 33 years ago, when Israeli security forces shot and killed six young Palestinian citizens of Israel and injured many.
These brave youth were among the thousands protesting Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land to build new Jewish colonies and expand existing Jewish cities. Today, Land Day symbolizes Palestinian resistance to Israel’s ongoing land expropriation, apartheid, colonization and occupation. It marks as well the first Global Day of Action for Palestinian rights and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), launched at the 2009 World Social Forum in Brazil.
Israel’s racist policies of confiscating Palestinian land and forcibly displacing Palestinians have gained in intensity since the original Land Day. The policies of incremental ethnic cleansing that Israel calls “Judaization” are proceeding apace in Palestine’s historic cities, including Jerusalem, Jaffa, Acre, Lydda and Ramla, with daily home demolitions and forced evictions. Israel’s aggressive land grab continues with the construction and expansion of the Apartheid Wall and colonies on occupied Palestinian land. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face imminent displacement as their villages are slated to be erased from the map in their entirety.
Moreover, the fundamental injustices that gave rise to the original Palestinian Civil Society BDS Call in 2005 are more acute than ever today. Israel continues to deny Palestinian refugees, who were ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba and ever since, their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes of origin; it continues its institutionalized racial discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel; and its military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip is intensifying in repression and cruelty.
Land Day this year takes on further significance in light of Israel’s atrocious war of aggression against the hermetically besieged Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. The more than 1,400 deaths, 5,000 injuries, and 14,000 homes damaged or destroyed are only the latest manifestation of the contempt with which Palestinian life is regarded by Israel. The silence of powerful world governments in the face of the massacre was yet another astounding failure of the “international community” to uphold international law and to hold Israel to account for persistently and gravely violating the most basic of international norms.
Indeed, all these forms of Israeli colonial and racist oppression could not have reached this critical level without the direct or indirect support and collusion of the United States, the European Union and many other countries, including several Arab regimes. The isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS), as was done to apartheid South Africa, must become a top priority for anyone struggling for freedom, justice and the consistent application of international law and universal human rights principles.
For the martyrs of land day and the thousands of others who gave their lives for freedom, justice and self-determination, for the thousands imprisoned for their commitment to human dignity, for Gaza, for return, equality and freedom, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) calls on people of conscience around the world struggling against all forms of oppression to boycott Israel and divest from it and from companies profiting from its oppression until it fully abides by its obligations under international law and recognizes our inalienable rights on our land. We salute all the groups and individuals who heeded the call to organize BDS-related activities on this Global Day of Action for Palestine. With your support, we shall overcome.
Tristan Anderson, a 38 year old American citizen, was critically injured during a demonstration in the village of Ni’lin after being shot in the head with a tear-gas canister from Israeli forces. Being unable to visit Tristan in the hospital in Tel Aviv, Ni’lin villagers decided to dedicate the demonstration on the 20th of March in solidarity with Tristan and in protest against the continued violence of the occupation.
Residents of Ni’lin gather to protest construction of the Apartheid Wall
Palestinian protesters build a barricade at the checkpoint at the entrance of the village
A car catches fire from a tear gas canister during the demonstration.
After the Friday prayer the villagers marched in large numbers towards the town center chanting against the occupation and in support of Tristan. Several posters with pictures of Tristan was used in the demonstration, demanding engagement with the international community and protesting the violence of the occupation. From the town center the demonstrators continued on the main street towards the entrance of the village where the Israeli army were guarding roadblocks. The demonstration then stopped a safe distance away from the roadblock, since people had spotted the army preparing their weapons, and turned instead towards the construction ground of the wall around the village. Soon thereafter, the army started shooting rounds of tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and 0.22 live ammunition.
During the demonstration, one Swedish solidarity activists was lightly injured by ammunition hitting her jaw. The army also went further into the village, occupying a house by the main road from where they shot at demonstrators in the streets. Two army jeeps attempted to enter the town next to the occupied house but were prevented from doing so by roadblocks built by protesters. On one occasion, soldiers deliberately torched a car by shooting tear gas canisters into it while standing in a family’s garden.
At this week’s demonstration, no extended range tear gas canisters, the type that have injured Tristan and numerous villagers, were used. The demonstration also ended with a low number of injuries, in contrast to previous weeks.
Four residents of Ni’lin have been killed since August 2008 during these weekly demonstrations, and hundreds injured. Currently, Tristan has been taken to the neurological department and is in intensive care. He continues to be listed in critical condition.
