Tag: BDS - Page 35 - International Solidarity Movement

London: EasyJet event to encourage Israeli tourism picketed by Pro-Palestine demonstrators

11 October 2009

Pro-Palestine Supporters picketed the start of a 5 day Israeli Tourism event held in Spitalfields market, East London. Despite efforts by Israeli security to get demonstrators to move, police made no efforts to move them to the frustration of the Pro-Israel organisers.

To celebrate the new low cost EasyJet route to Tel Aviv, EasyJet are holding a five day event with a big orange bus touring the city to promote ‘Tel Avivian goodness’. It is being undertaken to further celebrate the city’s centenary. In response, Palestine activists from International Solidarity Movement, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other groups protested in front of the Big Orange bus. In solidarity with the unified Palestinian call out for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel, protestors sought to show that tourism feeds the Israeli economy which in turn supports the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

The Israeli security there were clearly frustrated with the presence of activists and the police were duly called upon for support. In an ironic twist, the police gently requested protestors to move, and when protestors decided against this, no further action was taken. Israeli security and EasyJet organisers were visibly frustrated and made numerous appeals to the police to move the protestors but failed to get the demonstrators to budge.

Most members of the public showed support with the protest and asked relevant questions with a few Israelis showing their opposition.

After a couple of hours, protestors left, pleased they had ruffled the feathers of those promoting Israeli tourism.

Please find below the promotion message for the event and the dates and locations for their five day tour.

“To present EasyJet’s new route to the Big Orange and celebrate the city’s centenary, Tel Aviv will be coming to London this October!

For 5 days, a double-decker bus crammed full of Tel Avivian goodness will tour London and give a glimpse into the many facets of Tel Aviv’s character.

Day 1 – 11th October, Spitalfields Market, 10am – 5.30pm
Market Tel Aviv- enjoy the smells & tastes of Tel Aviv’s markets in the middle of East London – craft stalls, Turkish coffee, mint tea, shakshouka, olives, baklava, and live music.

Day 2 – 12th October, Leicester Square, 1pm – 5.30pm
Bohemian Tel Aviv – Day 2 sees a typical Tel Aviv coffee shop scene, replete with mismatched sofas & chairs, stacks of books, and a soundtrack provided by street performers & musicians.

Day 3 – 13th October, Coin Street, Southbank, 12pm – 6pm
Tel Aviv, city of beaches – enjoy sunbeds, beach umbrellas, beach balls, backgammon, matkot, live music, and a surfing simulator! And hopefully some sun.

Day 4 – 14th October, Broadgate, 9am – 7pm
Tel Aviv: 100% architecture, 100% Bauhaus – more examples of which are found in Tel Aviv than any other city in the world! Architecture aficionados should not miss Day 4’s outdoor photography exhibition & lecture.

Day 5 – 15th October, Old Truman Brewery, 5pm – 10.30pm
Tel Aviv nightlife – Day 5 will finish the tour with a party open to all, guaranteed to give a glimpse into just why Tel Aviv is known as the city that never sleeps – with a little help from DJs & dancers.”

It is hoped Pro-Palestine Activists will help picket and protest these events. All Israeli tourism feeds into the Israeli economy that supports the occupation.

No celebration of occupation: 1,500 artists and writers sign letter protesting Toronto Film Festival decision to spotlight Tel Aviv

Democracy Now

14 September 2009

A protest at the Toronto International Film Festival has taken center stage after a group of artists and writers signed a letter of protest against the festival’s decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv. Activists say the TIFF spotlight plays into Israel’s attempt to improve its global image in the wake of the assault on the Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. Over 1,500 people have signed the letter, called “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation,” including Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte. We speak with journalist and author Naomi Klein, who helped draft the letter.

AMY GOODMAN: The Toronto International Film Festival is renowned as one of the world’s top cinematic events, the staging ground for the top films in any given year. But since the festival’s opening last week, a protest over the Israel-Palestine conflict has taken center stage. At issue is the festival’s decision to host a showcase on Israeli films from Tel Aviv for its inaugural City-to-City program. Palestinian activists say the TIFF spotlight plays into Israel’s attempt to improve its global image in the wake of the assault on the Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land.

In the weeks before the festival, a group of artists and writers drafted a letter of protest against the Tel Aviv spotlight. The letter is called “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation.” It says, in part, quote, “Whether intentionally or not, [TIFF] has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine…We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers…nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of…an apartheid regime,” unquote.

The declaration has attracted over 1,500 signatories, including actors Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen and Danny Glover, musician David Byrne, and the actor and musician Harry Belafonte. But it’s been met with scathing criticism and accusations of anti-Semitism. Supporters of the Israeli government have accused the Toronto Declaration members of a slew of false charges, including that they want to boycott Israeli films and even the entire festival itself.

Well, the journalist Naomi Klein was one the original authors of the Toronto Declaration. She joins us now in our firehouse studio.
Naomi, just lay out the whole conflict and how you got involved and what this declaration is.

NAOMI KLEIN: Absolutely, and I’ll just—thanks for having me back, Amy. I just want to make one tiny correction, which is that the letter doesn’t call Israel an apartheid state. It says that this is a state that many respected people have described as an apartheid state, like Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu. So it invokes them, and it quotes them.

And I think that’s an important distinction, because what we’re trying to pull out in this letter is that this is a controversial decision, and the people who have signed it are saying exactly what the declaration is called, that they don’t believe this is a time of celebration, that the forty-two-year occupation continues. But moreover, this is the year that began, in January, with bombs and missiles falling on Gaza, leading to the deaths of an estimated 1,400 people, many of them children. There’s been no accountability for those crimes. Israel continues to refuse to cooperate even with a basic UN fact-finding mission led by the respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

So, we’re very clear: this is not about whether or not there are Israeli films at the Toronto International Film Festival. Every year there are. Of course there should be. They’re welcome. If the films are wonderful, they should win honors. What’s happening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year is that not films, but a city is being honored, the city of Tel Aviv. The mayor of Tel Aviv is in Toronto being feted, because this is seen as something that’s really good for Israeli tourism. So this is really departing from the realm of arts and entering the realm of politics and industry in this decision to grant this honor and this privilege to the city of Tel Aviv, so that’s what people started objecting to it. And it wasn’t us who started it; it was Palestinians who rejected to the granting of this special status, this honored status, for the state of Israel in this year’s festival.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain why the Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating Tel Aviv.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is a very—this is a controversial question. Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the festival, says that it was entirely his decision, that there was no political interference, and we take him at his word. He’s very respected in the film community. But what we are saying is that, whether knowingly or not, this decision fits in with a campaign, a very aggressive campaign, that has been launched by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to use culture really as a weapon to distract attention from the occupation and from the allegations of war crimes in Gaza, but even before the Gaza attack.

And what’s interesting is that in—Toronto has been selected to test market something that is called “Brand Israel,” the rebranding of Israel. And this is because Toronto has really been a kind of a battleground. It has a very strong Palestinian community and solidarity community. It also has a very large and active Jewish community. And it’s been a battle zone. So, actually, Canada has more Israeli diplomats than any other country in the world, because this—including the United States, despite our relatively small population, because the Israeli government sees Canada as a very important battleground, as a very important testing ground. So Toronto has been selected to sort of test-drive this rebranding campaign for Israel.

And, you know, it’s not our imagination; it’s not a quiet conspiracy. We’ve read about this in the New York Times and Reuters reports. And I’ll just give you one example. A couple of months after the attack on Gaza, as we remember, this was really a turning point in terms of world opinion with regards to Israel. There were protests around the world. In London, there were an estimated 100,000 people in the streets condemning Israel’s actions. Opinion polls were showing a plummeting of support. And more and more people were starting to talk about using tactics like the tactics that were used against South Africa during the apartheid years, saying that there has to be strategies beyond just talk. And so, it was in this context that a top official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry said—and this was quoted in the New York Times—“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater company exhibits. This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

And so, this has been playing out at a lot of cultural festivals, and you’ve covered this on the show before. The Paris Book Fair, which is an enormously important book festival, had a special spotlight on Israel for its sixtieth birthday a couple of years ago. The Turin Book Fair also did. But this—and there were protests, but they were much quieter than what’s happened now in Toronto, and that’s because of Gaza, I would say. It’s because now, because of the year that we’re in, because of the continued impunity for Israeli war crimes, people are drawing a line and saying this is no time to celebrate.

AMY GOODMAN: Respond to Ivan Reitman, the film director, who said, “Film is essentially about telling global stories, of exploring the complexities and contradictions of the human condition. Any attempt to silence that conversation, to hijack the festival for any political agenda in the end, only serves to silence artistic voices.”

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I would actually agree with that statement, but it isn’t us who did that. We didn’t politicize the festival. We objected to the politicization of the festival. We’re not trying to silence anyone, but simply voicing our opposition to the festival’s decision to grant Israel this special status.

You know, when—we looked into this whole rebranding strategy. Jewish Voices for Peace, the terrific anti-occupation, San Francisco-based organization, jvp.org, they’ve done a—produced this great document, a fact check of all the lies that are being spread about our campaign that I really urge people to look up. But they talk about—they have some documents talking about this rebranding campaign and the goals of it. And they quote a top PR official in Israel, saying that the real goal is to create “a narrative of normalcy”—that’s a quote—“a narrative of normalcy around Israel.” So, you can have a tiny little compartment where you can criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza or the expansion of settlements, but when it comes to every other part of Israeli society, we have to act like nothing is going on; we should, of course, celebrate Tel Aviv in a film festival and at book festivals, and so on, and promote Israeli tourism.

So what has happened with TIFF is that—TIFF is the film festival—that—

AMY GOODMAN: Toronto International Film—

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah—is that they convinced themselves that it was normal just to have a celebration for the city of Tel Aviv in this of all years. And when people objected to that, led by Palestinians, they turned around and said, “You’re politicizing the film festival,” because I think they have really convinced themselves that there is nothing abnormal about this decision. And we’re saying, if this were any other country, it would be so obvious that this was a political decision that amounts to taking sides in a conflict.

And to just give you one example, imagine that this year the Toronto International Film Festival had decided to have a cinematic spotlight, a cinematic homage, as Ha’aretz described this program, on the city of Colombo, with the full blessing of the Sri Lankan government, overwhelmingly Sinhalese-dominated, not a single Tamil director, just as there’s not a single Palestinian director in this spotlight. Now, Toronto has a huge population—a huge Tamil population, very active. They would have been protesting outside, because it would have been perceived as a sort of a whitewash in a year that the Sri Lankan government rightly stands accused of war crimes.

For some reason, Israel is supposed to be the exception, and we are accused of singling out Israel. But, in fact, what we’re doing—and when you look at the people who have signed our letter, like Howard Zinn, Harry Belafonte, Eve Ensler, these are people who have devoted their lives to applying human rights standards across the board. They’re not singling out Israel. What they’re saying is, we insist on applying the same standards that we apply to every other country to Israel, as well. And just as we wouldn’t celebrate another country that stands accused of war crimes, we don’t believe it’s apolitical to celebrate Israel.

And there’s been this insistence—and I don’t think it’s a misunderstanding; I think it’s a strategy—to turn this into a debate over censorship, because everybody hates censors. You know, everybody wants to celebrate world cinema and so on. Nobody is calling for the boycott of TIFF. Nobody is trying to silence any films. But it’s much easier to sort of try to derail the conversation and turn it into a censorship battle, and that’s what the quote you just read is trying to do very deliberately.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have these quotes. You have one of the signers of the Toronto Declaration, Viggo Mortensen, who says—let’s see if I can find the quote—“The statement does not promote the boycotting or censorship of any artist or movie from Israel or anywhere else. Those who have attacked the statement with that accusation are simply spreading misinformation and, unfortunately, continuing the ongoing successful distraction from the issue at hand: the Israeli government’s whitewashing of their illegal and inhumane actions inside and outside their legal national borders.”

And then you have the award-winning filmmaker Robert Lantos, who says, “We are not talking about the West Bank or the Golan Heights here[, but] the biggest population centre in the heart of Israel, where the first neighborhood was built in 1887. If that is…‘disputed’ territory, then Ms. Klein and her armchair storm troopers are clamouring for nothing short of the annihilation of the Jewish State. They are effectively Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s local fifth column.”

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, it’s been a fun week, I have to say. Yeah, that’s actually the most powerful man in Canadian film and media saying that. And it’s an extraordinary lie, on every level. I mean, there are so many lies in that statement.
The reason why we are—we’re not singling out Tel Aviv; the festival singled out Tel Aviv, and it’s acting as if this is an apolitical decision. When you read the program, it says Tel Aviv is the economic and cultural center of Israel and doesn’t mention occupation once, actually doesn’t mention Palestinians once. It’s just this sort of light, frothy, breezy discussion of a city filled with cafes. And it even says—there’s an interview with one of the filmmakers, who talks about Tel Aviv is a place where you can go when you don’t want to think about the conflict twenty-four/seven. So it’s really this idea that you can not—you can sort of lift Tel Aviv out of the context of Israel, out of the context of the conflict, and just turn it into this apolitical space. The Defense Ministry is located in Tel Aviv. Fighter jets, during the bombing of Gaza, departed from the air force, very close to Tel Aviv. And people protested, Israeli peace activists protested, at the airbase to try to reach the pilots and tell them, you know, “What you’re going—about to do is commit war crimes.” You can’t lift Tel Aviv out of Israel. And the idea that by objecting to the spotlight we’re objecting to the existence of Tel Aviv, which is what he’s saying, is just diversion on a mass scale.

And it’s very, very unfortunate, because, as you said, you know, people like Jane Fonda have signed the letter, and the most dishonest smear campaign has been launched, directed at them. There was a headline on a bunch of gossip sites, like TMZ and Perez Hilton, last week that literally said Jane Fonda calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, which is so absurd. This is somebody who’s supported a two-state solution her whole life. And this is not a misunderstanding, once again. This is about discrediting everyone who dares to speak out on Israel, who dares to reject this narrative of normalcy. And the truth really appears not to matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, we’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Naomi Klein, journalist, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. She helped launch the “No Celebration of Occupation” protest at the Toronto International Film Festival that’s taking place as we speak. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. She has a cover story of Harper’s Magazine, as well as a big piece in The Guardian in Britain.

Naomi, you went to Gaza earlier this summer to witness the aftermath of the Israeli attack on Gaza. I wanted to play the comments of Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Last week the group released a report on the toll from the Gaza assault. The report backs Palestinian findings that over half the 1,400 Palestinian victims were civilians, including 240 children.

JESSICA MONTELL: The discrepancy between what the Israeli army has reported and what B’Tselem’s research has revealed is quite disturbing. The most blatant example, regarding children under the age of sixteen, the Israeli military has claimed that eighty-nine Palestinian children under sixteen were killed in Operation Cast Lead. B’Tselem visited families, took death certificates, testimonies, other information from the families on 240 Palestinian children under sixteen killed.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jessica Montell of B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group. Naomi, you recently came back from Gaza, and just before we go to your piece on Jews, blacks, and the, quote, “post-racial” presidency in Harper’s, I want to ask you about that trip.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, in many ways, this—for me, this is why I’m involved in this whole mess around the Toronto International Film Festival, because when I was in Gaza, I was so—I was so struck by the fact that Gazans felt that people had forgotten them.
And I was told something that really stayed with me. I was working with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. They were taking me around, and we had a discussion with a group of NGO leaders, women’s rights leaders. And one of the things that was said to me was that there was actually more hope during the attack, which seemed—than there was now, than there was in the aftermath, which just blindsided me. I mean, how could you say that? How could you say that there was more hope while bombs and missiles were falling, when those children were being killed, than there is now?

And the answer was that when Gazans turned on their televisions—you know, in any kind of war, people who can are watching television to try to get any kind of information they can, or listen to the radio—and in addition to the carnage that they were hearing about, there were also hearing reports of a world enraged. They were hearing about those protesters in London, in cities around the world, just rejecting Israel’s actions, not buying that this was a defensive war. They heard reports of women in my city, in Toronto, occupying the consul general’s office. Jewish women did this and stayed, and it was an incredible action. And so, what I was told by people who I spoke to in Gaza was that there was a feeling that if they could survive these horrific attacks, this would be the turning point, that people were seeing the lawlessness, the brutality of the occupation, and there would be a demand for a new era, that the siege on Gaza, for instance, would have to be lifted.

Here they were, six months later, now eight months later, and the illegal siege on Gaza continued. There was no justice on the way. I mean, Gaza was—it felt to me like a massive crime scene, but that was being tampered with because the police hadn’t shown up. And just the outrage that such brutality, such open brutality, hadn’t led to any kind of justice. And that’s really what struck with me.

So when I got back to the city where I live, Toronto, and found out that we were planning to throw a big party for the state of Israel at our premier cultural event, the Toronto International Film Festival, that’s what prompted me to get involved in this protest, not that I enjoy being called Ahmadinejad’s fifth column—I really don’t—but, you know, I feel a sort of moral responsibility, having witnessed this sense from so many people in Gaza that these terrible crimes that we just heard about from B’Tselem had been forgotten and that there was no justice.

And when governments fail, you know, when the international community fails, when the UN fails to bring justice, then people have to step in and fill that vacuum. And that’s happened in the past, and it’s going to happen again. And this is, I think, why there is such an incredible fear and backlash against attempts to put other kinds of pressure on the state of Israel, not to just leave it up to Obama to talk to Netanyahu and hope that it works out. You know, people are seeing the failure of just high-level moral suasion.
And we know that there are other tools in the diplomatic arsenal, besides just talk, you know, besides just Obama suggesting to Netanyahu that maybe he shouldn’t build more settlements and Netanyahu proceeding to ignore him. There’s billions in military aid. There are all of these honors that are given to countries and all of these relationships, and all of them are treated as—when it comes to Israel, as completely untouchable. And there is an international movement that’s growing that is saying, actually, they’re not untouchable. We need to use all of these levers in the case of Israel, just as we have the right to use them in the case of any other country that refuses to abide by international law.

UN must immediately adopt and act on Goldstone report

Omar Barghouti | ZNet

5 October 2009

Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority’s latest decision to delay adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of the report prepared by the UN Fact-Finding Mission, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, into the recent Israeli war of aggression against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements issued in this respect was for the UN to adopt the report and act without undue delay on its recommendations in order to bring an end to Israel’s criminal impunity and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and, indeed, all over the occupied Palestinian territory.

Succumbing to US pressures and unabashed Israeli blackmail, the president of the PA himself reportedly was himself responsible for the decision to defer discussion at the Council of the Goldstone report, dashing the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements that Israel will finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims will have a measure of justice. This decision by the PA, which in effect delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010, giving Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.

This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 that found Israel’s Wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal had presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity that could have been used to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was after a similar ICJ decision in 1971 against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered it and systematically — quite suspiciously, actually — failed to even call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.

The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and the former UN General Assembly president, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.

The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil this last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the Agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the PLO’s Executive Committee, this ratification was averted and the Brazilian parliamentary committee in charge of this file recommended that the government refrain from approving the FTA until Israel complies with international law.

In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah, where the PA government has illegally appropriated the PLO powers to lead Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against the Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

This latest forthright collusion of the PA in Israel’s campaign to whitewash its crimes and undermine the application of international law to punish these crimes came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for “permitting” a second mobile communications provider to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory. It therefore undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza: the more than 1400 killed (predominantly civilians); the thousands injured; the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants, and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.

It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society’s effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions.

It is also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel’s impunity and to uphold universal human rights.

It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.

Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted by Palestinians everywhere, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process that involves Palestinians everywhere and encompasses all the political parties that are outside the PLO structures today. In parallel with this democratic reclamation or popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must beresponsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong, to the real representative of all the people of Palestine, the revived and democratized PLO. This dissolution of the PA, however, must at all times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.

The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago from a mere — often powerless, obsequious and coerced — sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation regime, relieving it of its most cumbersome civil duties, like the provision of services and tax collection, and, most crucially, very effectively helping it safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers, into a willingcollaborator that constitutes Israel’s most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel’s hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth largest army in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from the US and European governments and its unparalleled impunity have also failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.

Even before Israel’s war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign, from Canada to South Africa, and from the UK and Norway to Brazil. After Gaza, though, the four years of preparing the ground and spreading BDS, the international shock at the sight of Israel’s white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowered in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel to account or to even end its slaughter of civilians, not to mention its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase. It finally reached the mainstream.

In February, weeks after the end of Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS against Israel to bring about its compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference later this year to discuss effective strategies for implementing the boycott.

Most recently, this last September, the Norwegian government’s pension fund, the third largest in the world, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment to the illegal Wall in violation of the ICJ ruling. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded an Israeli academic team representing a college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing over 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new chapter in the spread of BDS that reminds observers of the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their “South Africa moment.”

Amidst all this comes the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly — given the judge’s strong connections with Israel and Zionism — providing the straw that may well break the camel’s back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel’s deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcoming, this report presented Israel with the daunting and not entirely improbable prospect of standing trial at an international tribunal, a development that would effectively end Israel’s impunity and open the possibility of finally applying international justice to its crimes and persistent violations of international law. In this dire context for Israel, only one strategic weapon in its arsenal could be used to fend off the foretold crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And it did use it indeed at the right time, in a fatal way, almost killing the Goldstone report.

Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called “international community.” Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of the Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world, including Jewish refugees of World War II.

We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.

Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement (www.BDSmovement.net)

Arabs mark October 2000 with general strike

Sharon Roffe – Ofir | YNet News

1 October 2009

The Arab sector on Thursday marked the ninth anniversary of the October riots by calling a general strike across Israel. The strike is lead by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee under the banner: “For the martyrs that were killed in October 2000”.

During the riots that broke out with the start of the al-Aqsa intifada, 13 Arabs and one Jew were killed.

There was high participation in Thursday’s strike, being the third time the Arab public goes on such a general strike. The previous strikes in the sector took place on the first and third anniversaries of the riots. In recent years the committee has refrained from calling a general strike, since it believed the public would not be so responsive.

Almost all Arab cities and towns, including Umm el-Fahm, Sakhnin, Arraba, Tayibe, as well as Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities such as Haifa and Jaffa, closed their businesses, local authorities, schools and kindergartens.

Protest marches will take place during the day in the hometowns of those killed in the riots, and a central rally will be held at 1:30pm in Arraba in the Lower Galilee. In addition to Arab public figures and representatives of the families of those killed, representatives of various embassies are also slated to attend the rally.

“Representatives of nine different embassies confirmed their attendance. They are afraid of Israeli diplomatic pressure, so they say they would rather it not get out,” HAMC secretary Abed Anabtawi said.

According to Anabtawi, there was 90% participation in Thursday’s strike. “It should be taken into account that the strike is not just about the October incident. The Arab public is very aware of the institutional trends in all aspects of life, be it Lieberman, the fascist and racist legislation, discrimination and the demolition of houses,” he said.

MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List – Ta’al) said, “Our strike is a clear and lucid cry against the racism and discrimination that have become mainstream both on the streets and within the government. The poverty and unemployment are hitting the Arab towns and he who shot and killed 13 of our sons is walking free.”

Minister for Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman told Ynet Thursday morning, “It’s about time the Israeli government implement the recommendations of the Or Commission, thus beginning a stage of taking responsibility for the situation of the Israel’s Arab citizens.

“It is my opinion that a strike is not the suitable means, since its repercussions harm the citizens. On the other hand, the Arab public’s right to a democratic protest is indisputable, and I am certain the Israel Police will conduct itself with the understanding and sensitivity during the day.”

Protest rallies marking the events of October 2000 are also slated to take place abroad. Representatives of various human rights organizations responded to a letter sent to them by Balad Chairman MK Jamal Zahalka, and said they would hold rallies outside Israeli delegations in Europe.

In a statement published earlier this week, HAMC urged the Arab public to hold the strike in an “organized and civil” manner. The committee urged police not to enter Arab towns and stressed that police presence would be viewed as a provocative, unnecessary act.

“As long as the police don’t enter the towns, the protests will end in an organized manner. We know how to protest in a civilized way, but police entering will constitute a provocative act, and there will be a response to such an act,” Anabtawi said.

Spain excludes settlement university from academic competition

Global BDS Movement

20 September 2009

The “University Center of Ariel in Samaria” (AUCS) has been excluded from a prestigious university competition about sustainable architecture in Spain. With this move, Spain joins the growing number of European governments taking effective, even though preliminary, steps to uphold international law by boycotting or divesting from institutions and corporations involved in or profiting from Israel’s illegal Wall and colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land..

“Ariel University Centre of Samaria” was one out of 21 teams selected last April to compete for the Solar Decathlon-Madrid 2010, the most prestigious competition for sustainable architecture in the world, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Housing together with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid .[1]

Selected teams, formed by architects and engineering students are asked to design and build a real house entirely driven by solar energy. Every house should be built in one of the 20 sites in the “Solar Villa” planned in Madrid to host them. To facilitate participation of the various teams, the Spanish Ministry of Housing allocated a sum of 100,000 Euros to every project.

Last Wednesday,September 16th, Sergio Vega, General Director of Solar Decathlon Europe addressed all participant teams to inform them of the exclusion of AUCS:”The decision has been taken by the Government of Spain based upon the fact that the University is located in the [occupied] West Bank. The Government of Spain is obliged to respect the international agreements under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area.” It represents the first case of sanctions against an Israeli academic institution in Spain and one of the very first such actions in the West.

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) in Palestine has taken up the campaign against official Spanish support of the illegal Israeli university in occupied Palestinian territory following an initiative of the UK based professional association, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP). The support of many individuals and organizations in Spain for the cancellation of AUCS’s participation in the Solar Decathlon had culminated in a parliamentary question in the Spanish Parliament [2] and the eventual exclusion of the illegal settlement academic institution from the competition.

This move of the government of Spain follows the decision of the UK government not to rent offices from Israeli settlement builder Lev Leviev and the divestment of the Norwegian Pension Fund from Elbit Systems, an Israeli company providing surveillance equipment to the Wall.

The BNC congratulates the Spanish university teachers, parliamentarians and organizations for this principled stand with the Palestinian people and international law and calls for sustained support of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions(BDS) against Israel and all its complicit institutions, including universities, until it fully complies with its obligations under international law and respects universal human rights, specifically by ending the occupation, facilitating the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin and ensuring equal rights for all Palestinian citizens of Israel.