Tag: BDS

Boycott Israel – Don’t Play another “Sun City”!

An open letter to the Rolling Stones regarding their planned gig in Israel
from PACBI

Dear Rolling Stones,

The Palestinian arts community received in disbelief media reports of your upcoming performance in Israel, at a time when Israel continues unabated with its colonial and apartheid designs to further dispossess, oppress, and ultimately ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland. If the news is accurate, and we sincerely hope it is not, we strongly urge you to cancel your plans to perform in Israel until the time comes when it ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and respects fundamental human rights as well as the relevant precepts of international law concerning Palestinian rights to freedom, self-determination and equality.

Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era. We all remember how leading Rolling Stones musicians played a prominent role in enforcing a cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1980’s, and participated in recording the timeless song, Sun City, which had a singular influence on raising public awareness about apartheid and its injustices. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof. John Dugard, and South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils have repeatedly declared, Israel has created a worse system of apartheid than anything that ever existed in South Africa.

Indeed, Israel’s policies throughout its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, which have surpassed their South African counterparts, include house demolitions; Jews-only colonies and roads; uprooting hundreds of thousands of trees; indiscriminate killings of civilians, particularly children; incessant theft of land and water resources; denying freedom of movement to millions under occupation, cutting up the occupied Palestinian territory into Bantustans, some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks. Sixty years since the Nakba, Israel’s planned campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and 40 years into its military occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territory, Israel has consistently and relentlessly violated basic human rights and relevant precepts of international law with utter impunity. Moreover, Israel’s war of aggression against Lebanon last year caused more than one thousand civilian deaths, not to mention massive destruction to infrastructure and decimation of entire residential neighbourhoods.

The resounding failure of the international community to date in ending Israel’s occupation, collective punishment, and other forms of oppression was what prompted Palestinians to appeal to international civil society to bear its moral responsibility to put an end to injustice, just as it did against apartheid South Africa. To this end, Palestinian civil society has almost unanimously called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fully complies with international law and recognizes the fundamental human rights of the people of Palestine. A specific call for cultural boycott of Israel was issued last year, garnering wide support. Among the many groups and institutions that have heeded the Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel are the Church of England; the US Presbyterian Church; a group of top British architects; the British National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger; and Palme d’Or winner director Ken Loach. Is it too much, then, to expect conscientious artists like the Rolling Stones to similarly uphold the values of freedom, equality and justice for all by supporting the growing boycott against Israel?

We appeal to your moral principles and your record of standing up for human rights and human dignity. If the reports are true, we sincerely hope that you shall cancel this ill-conceived and particularly harmful concert in Israel. If they are not true, we urge you to issue a statement to clarify where you stand on this issue of principle.

Sincerely,

PACBI
List of signatories is in preparation and will be posted shortly

(VIDEO) “We Need an International Anti-Apartheid Campaign”

“We Need an International Anti-Apartheid Campaign”
presented by Jeff Halper, posted by Kathy,

Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University. Originally from Minnesota (US), he has lived in Israel since 1973. Jeff has researched and written extensively on Israeli society and is the author of the book Between Redemption and Revival: the Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, (Westview Press, 1991).

Halper gave this speech at the 2nd Bil’in International Nonviolence Conference, 19 April 2007.

QUIT: Victoria’s Secret Weapon Fashion Show, SF

from Indybay, Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, 15 May 2007

Photo by Kate R, QUIT

Victoria’s Army, a division of Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), delighted Mother’s Day shoppers in San Francisco on Saturday, May 12, with a fashion show outside Victoria Secret’s Union Square storefront. The fashion show was the second outing for the bold Victoria’s Secret Weapon Line, underwritten by generous grants from the Pentagon.

Tammy worked her Push ’Em Out Bra, made popular by the late Golda Meir (“there is no such thing as Palestinians), while Danielle showed off the wonders of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s own Total Control Boundary Reshaper (checkpoints and apartheid walls give you the contours you want).

Three types of Razor Wire bras help separate the welcome from the unwelcome and let you decide who gains access to your cleavage. Sarit modeled the bulletproof Secret Armor set, keeping soldier girls safe and sexy from Falluja to Nablus.

A crowd favorite was Secret Support, with it’s red, white and blue pullout option, offering you the security that the world’s only superpower can provide.

“Nothing’s more American than Mom, apple pie, and support for Israel,” intoned popular announcer DeeGee, to roars from captivated bystanders. “Who says apartheid can’t be sexy?”
It’s a little known fact that Mother’s Day is one of the busiest times of year for lingerie retailers. Another little known fact is that many of Victoria’s Secret’s bras, cotton panties and sleepware are made by an Israeli company called Delta Galil. Most of the cotton they use is grown in Israel or Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. The “Shop Israel” website administered by the Israeli embassy in the U.S. urges people who support Israel to buy Victoria’s Secret products. The Victoria’s Secret Weapon brochure includes a card shoppers can deliver to Victoria’s Secret staff, asking the company to stop contributing to the Israeli economy until Israel fulfills its obligations under international law.

QUIT!’s full-color catalogue is available for download, along with photos from the action and more information about Delta Galil and Victoria’s Secret, at http://www.QuitPalestine.org.

PACBI: UK Physicians call for Boycott of Israeli Medical Assoc.

130 UK Physicians Call for a Boycott of the Israeli Medical Association and its expulsion from the World Medical Association
from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, 21 April 2007

In a letter appearing in the Guardian on April 21, 2007, prominent UK physicians have called for a boycott of the IMA and its expulsion from the WMA. The letter follows:

“…..Persistent violations of medical ethics have accompanied Israel’s occupation. The Israeli Defence Force has systematically flouted the fourth Geneva convention guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access to medical services and immunity for medical staff. Ambulances are fired on (hundreds of cases) and their personnel killed. Desperately ill people, and newborn babies, die at checkpoints because soldiers bar the way to hospital. The public-health infrastructure, including water and electricity supplies, is wilfully bombed, and the passage of essential medicines like anti-cancer drugs and kidney dialysis fluids blocked. In the West Bank, the apartheid wall has destroyed any coherence in the primary health system. UN rapporteurs have described Gaza as a humanitarian catastrophe, with 25% of children clinically malnourished.

The Israeli Medical Association has a duty to protest about war crimes of this kind, but has refused to do so. Appeals to the World Medical Association and the British Medical Association have also been rebuffed. Eighteen leading Palestinian health organizations have appealed to fellow professionals abroad to recognize how the IMA has forfeited its right to membership of the international medical community. We are calling for a boycott of the Israeli Medical Association and its expulsion from the WMA. There is a precedent for this: the expulsion of the Medical Association of South Africa during the apartheid era. A boycott is an ethical and moral imperative when conventional channels do not function, for otherwise we are merely turning away.”

Dr Derek Summerfield, Professor Colin Green, Dr Ghada Karmi, Dr David Halpin, Dr Pauline Cutting And 125 other doctors are calling for the boycott.

Ma’an News: “Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign triumph over French multinational involved in Israeli tram project”

by Ma’an News

Jerusalem – Ma’an – The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) has successfully exerted pressure on an Irish transport organisation, Veolia, leading them to cancel a contract to train Israeli drivers for a light railway system in East Jerusalem. The railway system will link several Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem; the settlements include Pisgat Ze’ev, French Hill, Neve Ya’akov and Gilo.

Veolia is a constituent of Connex, the rail company that is currently building the tramline in East Jerusalem. Connex was awarded the $500 million US contract to build and operate Jerusalem’s light rail system.

Israel had been holding negotiations with Veolia to train Israeli engineers and drivers on the Dublin Luas tramline system. But Irish trade union representatives, in response to the IPSC, exerted pressure on Veolia to withdraw from the proposed project.

British charity, War on Want, reported an IPSC spokesperson as saying that: “This is a small but significant victory for the Palestinian right to self-determination. This tramline, like the Apartheid Wall, is an integral component of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. You would expect a tramline to be fairly innocuous, but the lesson is no: when you do business with Israel, you invariably do business with the Occupation. Veolia clearly understand that there is a growing awareness of this within Irish society. People are realising that diplomacy has utterly failed to curb Israeli crimes. We must cut ties with Israel in order to force it to end its Occupation,”

The spokesperson further stated, “Veolia’s position, however, is extraordinary. In cancelling this contract, Veolia acknowledge that the Israeli line is illegal and unsupportable. Yet it is they who are building it! The hypocrisy is inexcusable, and their attempts to deny that they bowed to pressure are laughable. Since the Minister for Transport and the Railway Procurement Agency have ultimate control over who runs the Luas, the IPSC now calls on Martin Cullen and the RPA to cancel Veolia’s contract unless they cease building this illegal tramline on occupied Palestinian territory.”

The IPSC concluded by stating that: “If human rights groups and Palestinian solidarity campaigns can ensure that no country will train Israeli engineers and drivers, then perhaps we can help to ‘derail’ this criminal project entirely.”