Tag: BDS

La Carrau cancels Israeli sponsored visit to Acre

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

22 May 2009

After having talks with the platforms promoting the boycott of Israel and with representatives of Catalan institutions and gathering as much information as possible about the events taking place on 24-25 May at Acre, Israel in which La Carrau has been invited to participate, we feel that we should make the following public statement:

La Carrau is canceling its visit to Acre

First of all we would like to make very clear our total respect for the people of Israel and their different ethnic groups and cultures. We would also like to point out that we did not intend to take part for profit; we were invited to go, not hired. Our reward, rather than economic, was to be the chance to visit some wonderful places and get a close look at ways of life that are very different from our own, due not only to their cultural characteristics but also to the obvious incongruities of a problem that is still unresolved: the imbalance of cultures and religions.

Having said this, the reasons that finally led us to take our decision were:

– That in spite of the efforts we have made to contact different people, entities and media organisations, we have not been able to determine the exact nature of the events in which we are invited to take part.

– That we understand and agree with the arguments given by the network of platforms for the cultural boycott of Israel, as long as this boycott is not aimed at personal initiatives and only affects events orchestrated by the institutions of the Israeli state.

– That we do not wish to have anything to do with an event that could be used as propaganda by the official institutions of the state of Israel, and this seems especially likely when the promoter is the town council of Acre, which is extremely right wing and xenophobic in character.

New York Activists to Singer Leonard Cohen: “Don’t Play Apartheid; Don’t Play Israel!”

Adalah-NY

17 May 2009

Activists urge Cohen to cancel Israel concert
Activists urge Cohen to cancel Israel concert

New York activists gathered in front of Radio City Music Hall Sunday night during a Leonard Cohen concert to call upon the singer/songwriter to cancel his scheduled September concert in Israel. The protesters sang songs, chanted, handed out leaflets to concert attendees and produced sidewalk art. The call comes in support of earlier calls by Jews, Palestinians, Israeli citizens and residents of the UK, and coincides with the publication of an open letter by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) calling for protests throughout the cities Cohen is touring.

“With the construction of the Apartheid Wall and Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and on the heels of the brutal Israeli attack on Gaza that killed over 1,400 Palestinians and injured 5,000 more, the Palestinian Catastrophe continues and we demand that artists start taking a courageous and principled stand by refusing to entertain occupiers and oppressors,” said Riham Barghouti, Palestinian-American activist with Adalah-NY. This week Palestinians around the world commemorate the 61st Anniversary of the Nakba of 1948, when Israeli forces expelled 800,000 Palestinians and destroyed 531 villages.

Protesters chanted “Leonard, Leonard Have A Heart, Don’t Help Apartheid With Your Art” and sang “Ain’t Gonna Let Occupation Turn Me Round, Gonna Keep On Walkin’, Keep Boycottin'” to the tune of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round”. A particular crowd favorite was, to the tune of Frere Jacques,

Are you sleeping, Are you sleeping,
Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen
While your songs are so fine
Israel’s taking Palestine
Don’t go there, Don’t go there

Activists passed out fliers to ticket-holders on the back of which was written “Don’t Play Israel”. Concert-goers were asked to hold them up during the concert so that Cohen could see a visual call to join the growing cultural and academic boycott of Israel by canceling his upcoming concert in Tel Aviv on September 24, 2009. Since over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations issued their call for boycott in July 2005, Palestinian groups have focused on cultural events as a key tool in the Israel government’s campaign to legitimize its ongoing occupation and oppression of Palestinian people.

Before the show, protesters chalked “Leonard: Don’t Play Israel” on the sidewalk in front of the stage entrance. Radio City Music Hall staff quickly mopped the sidewalk. “They can wash away these words, but they can’t wash away the growing boycott movement,” said Hannah Mermelstein, an activist with NYCBI, the New York Campaign to Boycott Israel. NYCBI recently launched its own campaign against Motorola for its development and production of bomb fuses and communications equipment for the Israeli military. “We are proud to be a part of the growing boycott and divestment movement called for by Palestinians. Concerted effort to isolate Israel is the only means to end the ongoing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians by Israel.”

Norwegian MP: If investment in occupation acceptable, we must revise ethics guidelines

Ma’an News Agency

15 May 2009

A Norwegian ethics committee is due to travel to Israel and the West Bank in two weeks to assess the investment of the world’s largest government pension fund, The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, in Africa Israel Investments.

In advance of that visit, a delegation of seven members of the Norwegian Socialist Left Party travelled to the West Bank and Gaza Strip this week to see for themselves the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, siege on Gaza and the destruction wrought following Israel’s war on the area last winter.

After under a week in the area Member of Parliament Ågot Valle, spokesperson on foreign affairs for the party, spoke out about Norwegian investment in the Africa Israel Investments company. “No doubt we as a party cannot support investment in a company that violates human rights, contributes to an occupation and war,” Valle said in a telephone interview.

The company, owned by Israel’s richest businessman, Lev Leviev, invests in settlements and owns construction companies involved in building both the separation wall and illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Valle’s party is encouraging the ethics committee to be thorough in its assessment, but added that if it finds investing in Africa Israel Investments ethical, “then the ethics guidelines must be re-written.”

The visit was, in part, to solidify the Socialist Left position over the ethics committee findings and over Norwegian investments in the Israeli company, but it was also a chance to “see for ourselves” the realities in the area.

Delegates who had never been to the area were “shocked” at the “strategically planned settlements,” checkpoints and 30-foot-high border wall snaking across the West Bank, as well as “some heavy destruction” in the Gaza Strip. The delegation, including three members of Parliament, was denied entry to the coastal area Tuesday without explanation. A second attempt was successful.

Following the tour, which will finish this week, MP Valle noted that the delegation could not help asking themselves, “After seeing the situation here; does Israel really want peace?”

Israeli organizations call on Norway to divest from the Israeli Occupation

Twenty different Israeli organizations send an appeal to the Norwegian people to withdraw Norwegian national pension fund’s investments in all Israeli and international corporations which are involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

“We, Israeli organizations …, call upon the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.”

In an unprecedented way, a wide array of Israeli civil society and grassroots organizations has sent a letter to the Norwegian Pension Fund, addressed to its Council on Ethics, urging it to support their efforts for a just peace and equality in Israel/Palestine by divesting from all companies involved in the Israeli occupation.

These Israeli organizations include feminist organizations and community centers, peace and human rights organizations, organizations concerned with civil rights and equality within the state of Israel and organizations dedicated to ending the occupation of Palestinian territories, to the benefit of all people living in Israel/ Palestine.

This appeal follows and expands a previous call on the Norwegian fund, by two Palestinian West Bank villages and eleven other organizations from around the world to divest from Africa-Israel, an Israeli corporation involved in building Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

But Africa-Israel is not the only settlement-builder on the fund’s investment portfolio. As shown by a recent report by Who Profits from the Occupation research, at least 30 other companies have a continuous involvement in the occupation: some build illegal Israeli settlements or provide vital services to them; some provide specifically designed equipment for the surveillance and repression of Palestinian population through restrictions of movement and collective punishments; some exploit Palestinian labor and natural resources.

The examples listed also include international corporations such as the Belgian Bank Dexia, which finances Israeli illegal settlements’ municipalities by long term loans, or the Mexican Cemex and the German HeidelbergCement, both giant construction materials’ suppliers that own and operate Israeli plants and quarries on occupied land, and thus both contribute to the Israeli illegal colonization of Palestinian lands, and exploit the Palestinian nonrenewable natural resources, for the needs of the Israeli economy and in violation of international law.

The letter is framed as a general appeal to the Norwegian people, mentioning the Norwegians’ “long-standing commitment to peace, justice and democracy” in Israel/Palestine, and presenting the current investment in corporations that “support and maintain the Israeli occupation” as contradicting the Norwegian governments’ own policies, as well as the pension fund’s own ethical guidelines, which preclude investments in companies involved in gross violations of human rights or humanitarian principles. Copies have been sent to Norwegian civil society organizations, ministers and parliamentarians.

Anti-Israel activists urge Leonard Cohen to nix T.A. show

Cnaan Liphshiz | Ha’aretz

11 May 2009

Anti-Israel activists are stepping up efforts to dissuade Leonard Cohen from performing in Israel in September.

The activists urge supporters to “apply pressure during his tour by local groups along his path,” in their most recent appeal, which was circulated on Monday in various pro-Palestinian mailing lists.

They added that letters “and various actions” might prove “instrumental in helping him take the decision to cancel his last concert.” This, they explain, is because “it is obvious the situation in Palestine and Israel is quite clear to Leonard Cohen, to judge by his song entitled Questions for Shomrim.

The poem begins with the words “And will my people build a new Dachau and call it love, security, Jewish culture.” It also reads: “You were our singing heroes in ’48, do you dare ask yourselves what you are now” and: “now my son must die for he’s an Arab.”

The anti-Israel activists called on supporters to write to Cohen’s manager and leave messages on his official online forum. They published a list of destinations on Cohen’s tour, ending with Israel “if we are not successful.”

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Leonard Cohen flew to Israel to perform before reserves and regular soldiers fighting in the Sinai desert.

Two main letters of protest against the concert have been circulated so far. The most recent one was co-signed by a hundred Israelis and Palestinians, who wrote that Israel’s “ruthless, criminal bashing of the Palestinians has met with little international criticism.”

Addressing Cohen and urging him to cancel, the Israelis said: “We cannot envision you cooperating with continued Israeli defiance of justice and morality; we cannot envision you playing a part in the Israeli charade of self-righteousness.” They included the poem Questions for Shomrim in their appeal.

The first letter of protest was published last month by Pro-Palestinian professors from the U.K. from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, who warned Cohen that he would be performing “for a public that by a very large majority had no qualms about its military forces’ onslaught” in Gaza.

The scholars – Haim Bresheeth, Mike Cushman, Hilary Rose and Jonathan Rosenhead, added: “You will perform in a state whose propaganda services will extract every ounce of mileage from your presence. They will use it to whitewash their war crimes.”

The authors of the letter explained that Cohen needs to cancel the show in Ramat Gan lest it be attended by Arab-killing Israeli soldiers who are “drinking beer” and “playing backgammon with their mates and going to discotheques.”