Tag: BDS

Interview: Boycotting Israel at the Arab American University in Jenin

Aaron Lakoff is an independent journalist from Montreal, Canada. He is currently volunteering with the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, in Beit Sahour, Palestine. He previous reports can be found on his blog

Ashraf is from Tulkarem, Palestine. He graduated from the Arab American University in Jenin (www.aauj.edu) in the summer of 2007 with a degree in computer information technology. With the student group Green Resistance at his university, he organized a successful boycott campaign which saw Israeli products banned from the campus.

In this interview, Ashraf talks about boycotts as a highly effective tool of non-violent resistance against the occupation, and also reflects on the campaign as part of an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.

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Interview conducted by Aaron Lakoff in Ramallah, Palestine on April 19, 2008.

Aaron: I wanted to talk about the boycott campaign at your school. Can you start from the beginning and tell me what kind of Israeli products were being sold there, and why you and other students decided to start a boycott campaign.

Asrhaf: Well first of all, in general, Israeli products are almost everywhere, inside every single Palestinian shop inside the West Bank and Gaza. In our situation at the Arab American University, we had almost no Palestinian products. It was only Israeli juice and Israeli water. So first we started by studying how many students buy Israeli juice and water. At the beginning we thought of focusing on one product which has an alternative, like water or juice, so that this would be more effective. And also for students to understand and buy the other alternative.

So we found out that everyday, 5-6 thousand shekels ($1580 US) goes to Israel only by buying only Israeli juice, which is called Tapuzina. And so if you take the sales taxes, you come up with around 360 shekels which goes directly to the Israeli army. Basically half of the Israeli government’s budget goes to the army, so we did a lot of research and tried to find out how to come up with exactly how many shekels goes to the Israeli army so that we could create an awareness amongst students.

So by gathering information and statistics from 2005-2006 on how much Palestinian buy Israeli liquids like water and juice, and we used these figures in our campaign.

Aaron: And when did the AAUJ decide to stop selling Israeli products?

Ashraf: They stopped about a year ago.

Aaron: What were some of the tactics for this campaign? How did you convince other students to get involved?

Ashraf: One of the big powerful ways to create awareness amongst students is statistics and figures on the ground, because most Palestinians are not aware of how much money we’re giving Israel through buying their products. And we don’t know how much that can really change things, when we know that the first market for Israel is the Palestinians, we can use that as a powerful weapon to change the policy of Israel against Palestinians as a part of the non-violent resistance. And it actually has been used in places like South Africa and India, and it worked. And definitely, 100%,
it can work here.

Aaron: What were some of the names of Palestinian companies whose products you could find at your school?

Ashraf: You could find the Israeli juice, Tapuzina. You could find the Israeli water, Ein Gedi. You could find some other products like ice cream, citruses, but we mostly focused on juice or water.

Aaron: I know with some of these Israeli products, sometimes they are manufactured in settlements, or using Palestinian “cheap labour”. Was that the case with any of these products?

Ashraf: Definitely with Tapuzina, on the label of the product, it doesn’t say exactly where it comes from. It just says “Israel”. And there has been a court hearing, and at the court they wanted to say exactly where it comes from, because it does come from a settlement. So far it still says Israel, but it doesn’t say where it comes from. The same thing with Ein
Gedi.

Aaron: What was the outcome of the campaign? How was it won in the end?

Ashraf: Well, our main focus was on the students. Our future plan or goal was of course to make the university stop brining Tapuzina and Israeli products on campus.

But at the same time, you can have only Palestinian products on campus, but the students can buy Israeli products outside. So basically we were focusing on students and trying to educate them with statistics and numbers – trying to make them see that we are actually supporting our occupier, supporting the Israeli army by giving them our money. And
according to Palestinian statistics in 2005, Palestinians spend around 800 million dollars only on liquids – juice and water. 800 million dollars goes directly to Israel. So focusing on this number, if we can stop giving Israel 800 million dollars every year just from their water… it’s actually water from settlements which has been confiscated and stolen from
Palestinian villages… so by stopping giving this amount of money, 100% it will change something.

Aaron: How many students are at the AAUJ?

Ashraf: This year there were around 4 000.

Aaron: And what are the conditions for people going to school there? What are some of the obstacles that the Israeli occupation has put in place for students?

Ashraf: At the beginning of the first uprising, the first Intifada, most universities were closed. For example, Birzeit University was closed for 6 years. Hebron University was closed as well. This is why I chose to study at the AAUJ. Because when I finished high school, that was the only university that was sort of available, or easy to access. Other
universities I would have had to go through checkpoints, or find an apartment. Even at our university we had curfews. The army comes to the universities and sets up checkpoints in front of the gate and stops students from getting their education. So yes, the education system in Palestine has been widely affected by the occupation.

Aaron: So now that Israeli juices and water aren’t sold at your university, are their Palestinian products which are being sold in their place? What are the alternatives?

Ashraf: Well, now they are selling Egyptian and Palestinian juice.

Aaron: This boycott campaign at your school is in a wider context of a very large movement here in Palestine for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (against Israel). Can you talk a bit about how you see the campaign at your school, and how it fits in with this larger, worldwide campaign to boycott Israeli apartheid?

Ashraf: Our university was not the only example. At Birzeit University they had a boycott campaign. At some other universities, like An-Najah University, they started a boycott campaign recently. And also in villages like Beit Sahour in the 1980’s they had a boycott campaign as well.

I personally feel it’s a very powerful way to resist the occupation in a very non-violent way. Obviously everything is about the economy. If the Israeli economy is down, they have to think about that before they do anything else. And if we are the main market for Israel, that’s something we can use to resist the occupation.

And the same thing abroad, in other countries in Europe or America or Canada, definitely the boycott and divestment definitely can create some pressure.

For more information on the global BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid, see:
www.pacbi.org
www.stopthewall.org
www.caiaweb.org

Is Dubai helping ethnic cleansing in Palestine?

From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in the Gulf emirate. According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world’s hub of Jewelry trading.

The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island. Leviev has already opened one store in Dubai in March, 2008, in the lobby of al-Qasr Hotel on Madinat Jumeirah.
The Dubai authorities were initially reluctant to grant the Israeli billionaire a license to do business in the oil-rich emirate. However, Leviev reportedly successfully lobbied “North American and European connections” to convince Dubai officials to reconsider their objections.

Leviev’s companies, including Africa-Israel and Leader Management & Development as well as several other subsidiaries, have been quite active in displacing Palestinian villagers from their homes and land in several parts of the West Bank.

The two firms have built hundreds of settler units in at least five Jewish settlements constructed on land illegally seized from its Arab proprietors. In recent years, a company called Leader belonging to Leviev built the settlement of Zufim on private Arab land seized from the village of Jayyous. Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of the Leviev-owned company Africa-Israel has built hundreds of settler units on land stolen from the village of Bilin. Numerous additional settler units were built in the two large settlements of Ma’ali Adomim, a few kilometers east of Jerusalem, and Har Homa, near the predominantly Christian Arab town of Beit Sahur.

Israel hopes that these settlements will cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, thus making the Palestinian dream of making the city the future capital of a prospective Palestinian state utterly unrealistic and outright impossible. In addition to his intensive involvement in Jewish settlement expansion, including colonies defined by the inherently unjust Israeli justice system as “manifestly illegal,” Leviev has donated undisclosed but reportedly large sums of money to the Land Redemption Fund, a land-grabbing organization affiliated with Gush Emunim, the ideological group behind Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank.

According to the Israeli newspaper, Yedeot Ahronot, the Land Redemption Fund uses fraud and strong-arm tactics to seize land from Palestinians for settlement expansion. Last year the Israeli group, Peace Now, and other settlement-watch groups, discovered that hundreds of settler units built in the settlement of Matityahu in the Salfit region, in the central West Bank, were actually built on private Palestinian land seized at gun point from its legal and rightful Palestinian owners. However, despite the discovery, the Israeli government refused to dismantle the illegal settler units, with one Israeli official saying that “this problem will be discussed with the Palestinian Authority in the context of final-status talks.”

Leviev’s companies are actually destroying the lives of thousands of Palestinians by narrowing their horizons and dispossessing them of their livelihoods.

Abdullah Abu Rahma from the village of Bilin and Sharif Omar from Jayyous told representative of the human rights group Adalah-NY (www.adalahny.org), which monitors Israeli theft Palestinian land, that “Leviev’s companies are destroying the olive groves and farms that have sustained our villages for centuries.”

“We call on people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied against apartheid South Africa.”

The mayor of Jayyous, which suffered incalculable losses due to Leviev’s destructive rampage in the northern West Bank, told this reporter that “Leveiv is indulging in ethnic cleansing against our community and our farmers.”

“He is building settlements at our expense; he is destroying our land, our farms, and our orchards, and at the same time he is opening business in Dubai in order to finance his crimes against our people. Shame on Dubai and its government.”

Some Jewish organizations opposed to the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing and apartheid have also called on the countries of the world to boycott Israeli businesses and firms involved in dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

“We call on the government and people of the United Arab Emirates to join the growing international campaign to boycott Lev Leviev’s companies due to their construction of Israeli colonial settlements,” declared Daniel Lang-Levitsky of Jews Against the Occupation-NYC.

“A major Israeli violator of Palestinian rights and international law should not be opening jewelry stores in Dubai,” said Issa Ayoub, a spokesperson for the Adalah-NY group. Adalah-NY organized eight boycott protests outside Leviev’s new Madison Avenue Jewelry store in New York City over the last five months.

The Palestinian Authority has refused to comment on the Dubai government decision to allow the settler bankroller Leviev to open business ventures in the oil-rich emirate.

One Palestinian official contacted by telephone said “I don’t know anything about this affair and I have not heard of Leviev.”

A Hamas official in the Gaza Strip said “the Palestinian people were feeling embittered and betrayed by this scandalous behavior on the part of the Dubai government.”

“We were hoping that Dubai would stand with us against the genocidal Israeli regime and its unrelenting efforts to ethnically cleanse our people from their ancestral homeland. We had never imagined that a day would come when we had to appeal to an Arab country to refrain from harming us and undermining our cause.”

Adalah-NY: New Yorkers protest Leviev’s Israeli settlements, commemorating Palestinian “Land Day”

New York, NY, March 29 – Forty New Yorkers commemorated the Palestinian national holiday Land Day Saturday with the eighth protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.

The protest included songs, theater and testimonials from villages threatened by Leviev’s settlements. Land Day marks Palestinians’ ties to their land, in defiance of Israeli efforts to displace them.

“We targeted Leviev’s New York store on Land Day because his companies have recently built Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in at least four different locations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” said Issa Mikel, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. “He has also financed the Land Redemption Fund, a settler organization accused of using fraud to secure Palestinian land for settlement construction.”

Land Day protests are being held in Palestinian towns throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories this weekend. Land Day has been commemorated annually on March 30 since 1976, marking the day when six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in their villages in the Galilee in northern Israel during protests against the confiscation of their land for Jewish settlements.

New York protesters sang a parody version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” entitled, “This Land’s not Lev’s Land”, with lyrics including:

“On this year’s Land Day, we want Lev to pay, For all he’s stolen, to make his millions,
From Angola’s miners, to Bil’in and Jayous, We won’t stop ’til everyone is free!”

The protest featured theater depicting Israeli soldiers attempting to force peaceful Palestinian protesters off their land. The Palestinian villagers ultimately marched through the soldiers’ lines, and broke through the wall, reclaiming their land. The theater was accompanied by Palestinian testimonies from 1948 to present, emphasizing the continuity of Israeli efforts to displace Palestinians. The narratives tied the Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages, to Land Day, and to the present settlements built by Leviev’s companies that are destroying Palestinian villages.

In one excerpt, Sharif Omar, from the West Bank village of Jayyous where Leviev’s company Leader is building a settlement on village farmland, explained, “Last September I was working in my olive grove near the wall, when I came across uprooted olive trees coming out of the bulldozed ground. These green young branches are soft and beautiful, deeply rooted in the ground and stronger than the wall and bulldozers. These trees refuse to die or to surrender, and send a message to all farmers and people who love the land. ‘Do not give up, and keep struggling and one day you will touch the sun.’ We have been here longer than these trees, and we will stay here longer than the stones.”

Leviev’s company Africa-Israel was established in 1934 as Africa Palestine Investments Ltd. by a group of Jewish investors from South Africa to acquire and develop real estate for Jewish settlement in Israel. Its name was changed to Africa-Israel in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “It’s important to see current illegal land theft by Israel, of which Leviev is a profiteer and ideological supporter, as part of a historical policy stretching back decades,” explained Ethan Heitner, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. “That’s the point we wanted to convey today.”

In Angola, Leviev works closely with the repressive Dos Santos regime to mine and sell the country’s diamonds, and he employs the private security firm K&P Mineira, which has been accused of torturing, sexually abusing and even murdering Angolans. In New York, Leviev and his former partner Shaya Boymelgreen came under fire for employing underpaid, non-union workers in hazardous conditions in their development schemes. This month, the New York City Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order at the Leviev-owned Met Life Clocktower, allegedly for building without permits.

Adalah-NY: 13 organizations demand Waldorf-Astoria cancel Friends of IDF fundraiser

TO: The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, NY (sent by fax)

SUBJ: Cancel March 18 “Friends of IDF Fundraiser” over Israeli human rights violations

DATE: March 11, 2008

As thirteen organizations working for human rights, social justice, and peace, we demand that The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan rescind its agreement to host the March 18 fundraiser for “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.” The Israeli military has been historically a flagrant violator of human rights and international law as demonstrated by last week’s attack on Gaza which killed over 100 Palestinians, the 2006 attack on Lebanon, and the 60-year assault on and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

We call on The Waldorf-Astoria to adhere to standards of corporate social responsibility that prohibit support for violators of laws and human rights. Among other activities, “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” explains on its website that it helps to establish and renovate facilities on Israeli army bases. We are shocked that a respected institution like The Waldorf-Astoria would host a fundraiser benefiting a foreign armed group, especially one guilty of egregious human rights violations. We question if The Waldorf-Astoria would facilitate fundraising for armed groups from other foreign countries.

The human rights violations committed by the Israeli military over the past 60 years are severe. Last week the respected Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that, “From 27 February to the afternoon of 3 March, 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the [Israeli] Chief of Staff’s contention that ninety percent were armed, at least fifty-four of the dead (twenty-five of them minors) did not take part in the hostilities. In addition, at least forty-six minors were wounded.” Furthermore, during last week’s fighting, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened Gaza’s people with “a bigger holocaust.”

As Human Rights Watch noted in a detailed 2005 report, “Promoting Impunity,” “The Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed and injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm… Israeli forces have killed or seriously injured thousands of Palestinians who were not taking part in the hostilities. However, the Israeli authorities have investigated fewer than five percent of the fatal incidents to determine whether soldiers were responsible for using force unlawfully. The investigations they did conduct fell far short of international standards for independent and impartial inquiries.”

While we grieve for all the Israeli military’s recent Palestinian and Lebanese victims, we note with sadness that the Waldorf-Astoria event falls days after the fifth anniversary, on March 16th, of the army’s killing of US civilian Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli-army-operated Caterpillar bulldozer while blocking the demolition of the home of a Palestinian family in Gaza.

The March 18 fundraiser praising a military that has conducted a 41-year occupation also falls a few hours before the fifth anniversary of the attack and occupation of Iraq by the United States, Israel’s closest ally and provider of military aid. Israel and the US’ military occupations of Palestine and Iraq and their accompanying human rights abuses are not causes to celebrate. We must pressure these governments to end both military occupations.

The Israeli military also enforces a discriminatory, apartheid system. For example, in the West Bank the army is directly involved in the seizure of Palestinian land to build colonial settlements for Jews only as well as Israel’s wall, all in violation of international law. Palestinian communities which have conducted long nonviolent campaigns to prevent the seizure of their land like Bil’in, Budrus, Biddu, Beit Liqya, Al Zawiyya, Jayyous and Um Salomona, have suffered ten deaths and hundreds of injuries at the hands of the military. Since 1948, in violation of international laws guaranteeing refugee rights, Israel’s military has prevented the return of the over 800,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, now numbering in the millions, who were driven from their homes by Jewish militias and the Israeli army.

In Lebanon, Human Rights watch reported in September, 2007 that “Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes… caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 war.” A February, 2008 report by Human Rights Watch “found that Israel violated international humanitarian law in its indiscriminate and disproportionate cluster munition attacks on Lebanon.” Israel dropped “as many as 4.6 million submunitions across southern Lebanon… the vast majority over the final three days of the war when Israel knew a settlement was imminent… causing long-term and large-scale disruption of the largely agricultural economy,” and “about 200 civilian casualties since the war’s end.”

Finally, as many of our groups have recently affirmed, Israel’s ongoing use of U.S. weapons to enforce an illegal military occupation and to commit human rights abuses places it in violation of US law, specifically the Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act.

Corporations have a responsibility to uphold human rights and international law. In light of the Israeli military’s longstanding and repeated failure to respect accepted laws and norms, we call on The Waldorf-Astoria to rescind its decision to host the March 18 fundraiser for “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.”

Signed by,

Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (www.mideastjustice.org)

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee-New York (www.adcnewyork.org/)

Arab Muslim American Federation

Combatants for Peace (www.combatantsforpeace.org)

Jews Against the Occupation-NYC (www.jato.nyc.org)

Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org)

National Council of Arab-Americans – Metropolitan New York Chapter

Palestinian American Congress – New York

Rachel’s Words (www.rachelswords.org)

Troops Out Now Coalition (www.troopsoutnow.org)

United for Peace and Justice (www.unitedforpeace.org)

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org)

WESPAC Foundation (www.wespac.org)

Ma’ariv: Leviev’s Diamonds at the Oscars

By Gal Karniel 2/24/08 | Ma’ariv on-line (Israel)
(Translation by Adalah-NY)

Human rights organizations around the world warn against wearing Angolan diamonds at the Oscar ceremony. Again Leviev is in the headlines.

Leviev is loaning Oscar nominees jewelry for the award ceremony tonight organized by the U.S. film academy (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).

Human rights activists from Adalah-NY have asked the organizers of the 80th Oscar ceremony to respond in this matter.

In their words, many of Leviev’s spheres of operation are involved in human rights violations. They refer among other things to the trade and mining of diamonds in Angola, for which the population there pays a high price in blood.

Only last year the film “Blood Diamond” with Leonardo di Caprio was nominated for five Oscar awards. ‘Blood diamonds’, the film’s subject, have funded or continue to fund the terrible civil wars in the whole of Africa, including Angola.

This year the fear is that Oscar nominees might wear diamonds that have bypassed the “Kimberley Process” designed to prevent the trade of blood diamonds.

According to the diamond industry’s annual report, the system succeeds in identifying only 89% of diamonds mined in Angola that were involved in human rights violations. This means that upwards of one million carat’s worth of diamonds per year come out of Angola onto the free market.

According to Adalah-NY, Leviev is directly involved in immoral mining of these diamonds in Angola.

Rafael Marquez, a human rights monitor in Angola, reported “humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual exploitation, and in some cases murder” of the miners.

So far, there has been no reaction from the Academy Award ceremony organizers.