Tag: Global Actions

Adalah-NY: Palestinians sue Canadian companies owned by Shaya Boymelgreen for war crimes

Adalah-NY: Lev Leviev’s Company Danya Cebus in Israeli Settlement Partnership with Boymelgreen

To view the Adalah New York website click here

New York, NY, July 10, 2008 – Evidence gathered by Adalah-NY indicates that Brooklyn-based billionaire Shaya Boymelgreen owns the two little-known Canadian companies sued Wednesday for war crimes in Canada by the West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in. Three Hebrew language Israeli media reports from 2005-2006 report that Boymelgreen owns the Green Park companies that are now being sued for $2 million in Quebec Superior Court for building and selling the Israeli settlements of Mattityahu East/Modi’in Illit on Bil’in’s land in violation of international law. The construction of Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention according to a broad international consensus.

Additional evidence gathered by Adalah-NY shows that, though not a target of the lawsuit, the Israeli company Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of Lev Leviev’s company Africa Israel, was contracted by Boymelgreen’s Green Park to execute the settlement construction. Billionaires Leviev and Boymelgreen were US partners from 2002 -2007.

Adalah-NY spokesperson Riham Barghouti explained, “We applaud the lawsuit filed by Bil’in for holding businesses accountable for settlement construction and violations of Palestinian rights. We also believe that these well-known Israeli businessmen like Boymelgreen and Leviev, who often try to hide their involvement in Israeli settlement construction from the international community, need to be made known to the public and to their business associates.”

The ownership of the two Canadian-registered companies named in the suit, Green Park International and Green Mount International, is murky, typical of many facts related to Israeli settlement construction. However, a May 8, 2005 article in Chabad On-line entitled “Boymelgreen is the controlling interest-holder in the Green Park Project” explains that Boymelgreen’s Green Park is building thousands of settlement homes in Modi’in Illit. In an April 11, 2006 article in Tsofar, Boymelgreen is quoted responding to a court petition that stopped construction by saying, “Flat buyers in my residential project, Green Park, in Modi’in Illit, will not be harmed.” A February 16, 2006 article about Boymelgreen in The Marker, the respected financial paper of Ha’aretz Daily, notes that “Of his investments in Israel, Green Park is noteworthy, a building project in Modi’in Illit…” Full English translations of these articles are available on the Adalah-NY website.

In their press release announcing the suit, Bil’in’s lawyers, Israeli Michael Sfard and Canadian lawyer Mark Arnold, noted that “the Green Park companies have… a single director who resides in the Montreal Region… it is believed that she is likely a nominal director having no direct involvement with Green Park.”

Though not a target of Bil’in’s suit, Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev is also implicated in the settlement construction in Bil’in, as well as in other parts of the West Bank. Three August 22 and 24, 2004 articles in the Israeli financial paper Globes announced Danya Cebus’ construction plans. The August 22 article noted, “Danya Cebus will build the $230 million Green Park project in the haredi (ultra-orthodox) town of Upper Modi’in… The company bought 939 dunam (234.75 acres) in the residential East Matityahu lot, zoned for the haredi community. Danya Cebus’s parent company, Africa-Israel Investments will market the project.” A May 8, 2005 Sales Agreement from Modi’in Illit between Green Park and a home buyer that was obtained by Adalah-NY notes, among many examples, that, “it is known and agreed upon among the buyers that the landscaping work and building for the project will be carried out by the Danya Cebus Company, Ltd.”

Boymelgreen and Leviev have also earned reputations in New York City as developers who abuse laborers while building expensive condos that price low-income and middle-income families out of their communities. Leviev’s companies’ human rights records in Angola and Namibia, where he mines and polishes diamonds, have also been severely criticized.

ISM London: ’60 years of ethnic cleansing is nothing to celebrate’

To view the ISM London website click here

On June 28th, members of ISM London staged an action against the ‘Salute to Israel’ rally in Londons Trafalger Square. According to the organisers website, the rally was designed to ‘celebrate 60 years of the State of Israel’ and was an ‘affirmation of solidarity with, and support of, Israel’. Hundreds of Israel supporters came to hear Jewish and Israeli music, as well as a speech from cabinet member, and possible future Labour Party leader, Ed Balls.

The activists approached the edge of the rally, then revealed a banner displaying the message ’60 years of ethnic cleansing is nothing to celebrate’, visible to all in attendance. The banner was unveiled for a few minutes before an enraged Israel supporter ripped it in half. The police then threatened the activists with arrest, moving them into the designated protest zone away from the rally. They were later joined by activists from Action Palestine, the British Muslim Initiative, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and others; together holding a loud and colourful demonstration against the rally.

1948 saw over 710,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and marked the destruction of Palestinian society as it stood. Some refugees fled out of fear of a repeat of the Deir Yassin massacre at the hands of the Zionist armies, others were evacuated as per ‘Plan Dalet’. They are still awaiting their right to return to their land, a right enshrined in international law and UN resolutions; any celebration of the birth of Israel is also a celebration of this injustice.

Early Zionists realised they couldn’t build a Jewish state in Palestine without ethnically cleansing the area, and talked openly about about using military attacks to expel the native Palestinian population. David Ben Gurion said “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population”, Moshe Sharett stated “Transfer could be the crowning achievement, the final stage in the development of [our] policy”.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues to this day. In East Jerusalem, land confiscation, denial of building permits, house
demolitions, denial of residency rights, confiscation of ID cards and underdevelopment of municipal services through discriminatory budget allocations have been used to drive Palestinians from their homes, leaving an almost completely Jewish Jerusalem. Combined with West Bank settlement activity, these practices have left Palestinians in only 12% of their original homeland. It is unfortunate that Ed Balls sees this as a reason for celebration.

PCHR submits lawsuit against Israeli officials via Spanish national court

To view original press release from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), click here

On 24 June 2008, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) filed a lawsuit at the National Court of Spain, the highest Spanish judicial council, against seven former senior Israeli military officials. These include former Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, his former military advisor, Michael Herzog, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon and Dan Halutz, former Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who are all suspected of committing a war crime in the Gaza Strip in July 2002.

PCHR filed this lawsuit on behalf of six Palestinians who survived an Israeli extra judicial execution operation in the Gaza Strip in July 2002. This is the first time survivors of an Israeli military attack have filed a lawsuit against members of the Israeli military in Spain. The National Court of Spain has accepted to examine the case, the first step towards launching a formal prosecution.

At approximately midnight on 22 July, 2002, an Israeli Air Force fighter jet dropped a 2,000 lbs. bomb on the house of Salah Shehada, Commander of Izzedeen El-Qassam Battalions, the armed wing of Hamas, who was living in the Daraj district of Gaza city. The bomb killed Salah Shehada and seventeen civilians, including his wife, his daughter, his guard, eight children (including a 2-month infant), two elderly men, and two women. In addition, seventy seven other people were injured, eleven houses were completely destroyed and thirty two houses damaged. The Government of Israel apparently confirmed to [former] Israeli Army Chief of Staff, General Moshe Ya’alon, that it was fully aware Shehada’s wife and daughter “Were close to him during the implementation of the assassination … and there was no way out of conducting the operation despite their presence.”

PCHR embarked on this ground-breaking lawsuit via the National Court of Spain after lengthy consultations with international legal experts indicted the possibility of such action with regard to lawsuits of war crimes. The Centre notes that similar cases have previously been filed in Israeli courts, but did not lead to successful prosecutions. On the contrary, the Israeli judiciary was used as a legal cover for the perpetration of war crimes, and as a tool to deliberately hinder international jurisdiction under the pretext of a “fair” national judicial system operating in Israel.

This PCHR lawsuit is part of continuing and rigorous efforts by the Centre to pursue Israeli war criminals under universal jurisdiction in courts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Britain and Spain. PCHR’s Spanish partners in this lawsuit are Antonio Segura, Gonzalo Boye, Juan Moreno and Raul Maillo, who have already worked on a number of high profile human rights cases, including representing victims of torture in Guatemala and the attempted prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet for the murder of Spanish citizens whilst he was president of Chile.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights previously filed a lawsuit in the UK against former Head of the Israeli Army Southern Commend, Doron Almog, for committing grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention during his army service, (considered a criminal offense in the UK under the Geneva Conventions of 1949) Almog arrived in the UK on 10 September 2005, after a warrant had been issued for his arrest. Having been informed of the warrant before he disembarked, Almog subsequently fled straight back to Israel on the same plane.

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Background to Lawsuit

Antonio Segura, Gonzalo Boye, Raul Maillo and Juan Moreno, are prominent human rights lawyers with extensive experience of cases concerning International Law and Humanitarian Law. In addition to attempting to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was subsequently held in Britain for more than one year, they also represented the case of Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman who was killed by US troops in Baghdad, Iraq, as well as representing victims of torture in Guatemala, and victims of the September 2004 Madrid bombing. They have subsequently become well known by human rights and solidarity groups around the world for their commitment to representing victims of human rights abuses. This lawsuit has been filed jointly with the Spanish lawyers and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) on behalf of the Centre’ Director, Raji Sourani, and is the first lawsuit of its kind to be filed in Spain.

This lawsuit is the result of more than two year’s collaborative work between Palestinian human rights organizations (including the Arab Cause Solidarity Committee and the Al-Quds Association for Solidarity with People in Arab Countries) and Spanish civil society organizations that focus on justice for Palestinians. PCHR commends the decision of the National Court of Spain to examine this case further, and welcomes Spain’s decision to join the group of countries, whose courts have accepted cases against the Israeli military. To date, Great Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States and New Zealand have also accepted cases against the Israeli military. PCHR regards this as an extremely positive step towards ensuring that victims of these war crimes eventually receive justice.

itisapartheid.org: New anti-apartheid website launched

An incredibly useful new online resource has been created to spread the word about the Apartheid system being imposed by the Israeli state in Palestine. The web site has some very simple ways for you to join the World wide anti-apartheid movement. To view the website click here

The creators of this new website have stated that, “the purpose of the ITISAPARTHEID.ORG web site is to use the tools of the internet and ingenuity of its readers to spread the word about Apartheid in the Israeli Occupied Territories. Web savvy people sometimes refer to this as Viral Marketing or a Guerrilla Marketing campaign. Since the media by and large ignore or are afraid to print the truth, the job of the web site is to get the word out in other ways. You can help by putting ITISAPARTHEID.ORG everywhere you can think of.

The facts on the web site are meticulously researched. The site is based on getting good info out to the public. When the conservatives (in the US) started to label the media as “liberal”, it stuck because they said the lie enough. So by putting the truth — www.Itisapartheid.org everywhere we can think of — it will make the truth as available as the air we breathe. Go to the web site (www.itisapartheid.org) spend 15 minutes and spread the word about Israeli apartheid.”

Indymedia UK: Carmel Agrexco’s depot shut down in commemoration of the Nakba

To view original report, published on Indymedia UK, click here

In the early hours of Saturday morning, activists occupied and shut-down the HQ and only UK freight warehouse of Carmel Agrexco – Israel’s largest agricultural exporter from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The occupation held for over 6 hours until they were forcibly removed at 12 noon.

During the occupation over 10 loading trucks intended for the warehouse were sent away. British supermarkets – accounting for 60% of Carmel-Agrexco’s total exports – had some of their orders affected. The Israeli government has a 50% stake in the company. Exports include flowers, avocados and herbs grown in illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Early in the morning activists occupied and shut down operations at the Carmel Agrexco warehouse near Heathrow Airport by D-locking themselves to gates and to a lorry within the compound. Two activsts locked to a vehicle barrier, one to a truck and one to a main gate. Others climbed on top of the truck to further immobilise any loading or unloading work, and suspended banners. The Israeli flag that usually flies over the Carmel compound was removed and replaced with a black flag in mourning for the people of Gaza.

Israeli security guards threatened and physically attacked activists repeatedly throughout the occupation. Collusion between the police and the company was apparent througout the day. While ignoring the security guard assaults the police chose instead to drag the protestors supporters away from the scene.

Yet again, the police made no arrests after the action. When asked why the sergeant said that the order came from ‘higher up.’ We can only assume that the company does not want an embarassing court case in which they would have to disclose information on their illegal business.

Agrexco’s harvesting and sale of goods from illegal settlements built in Occupied Territories has been enabled by eviction, murder and theft of resources – considered “war crimes” under the International Criminal Courts Act 2001. As such, Agrexco’s business of importing fresh produce is “unlawful business”.

Tom Hayes said ‘Agrexco is responsible for human rights crimes against the Palestinian people. The British supermarkets which buy produce from Agrexco are also complicit. Handling stolen goods is an offence whether the offender is a supermarket or an agribusiness. Agrexco must be held liable for its “unlawful business”.’

The action was timed to commemorate 60 years since the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ (Catastrophe) – the theft of Palestinian land, massacres, expulsions and creation of over 700,000 refugees with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

Many of the activists participating have spent time living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and witnessed first hand extra judicial killings, collective punishment and wilful damage of land, property and infrastructure.