Tag: Global Actions

CAIA: Protesting the JNF: Community Groups Oppose Fundraising for Illegal “Canada Park”

On December 2nd, two hundred people from a host of community organizations braved the first snowstorm of the winter to protest the Jewish National Fund (JNF) annual Negev Dinner held at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Toronto. This year’s JNF dinner aimed to raise 7 million dollars for the refurbishment of the illegal “Canada Park”. Protesters denounced fund raising for the park, which is built on the destroyed Palestinian villages of Beit Nuba, Yallu and Imwas seized and destroyed by the Israeli military in 1967. The 10,000 Palestinian residents of these villages were expelled and have been denied the right to return to their homes for the past 40-years. In 1973, the Canadian branch of the JNF raised $15-million to establish “Canada Park” as a ‘picnic area’ build on top of the destroyed Palestinian villages.

Protesters welcomed dinner guests with powerful chants denouncing Israeli Apartheid and large pictures of the
destroyed villages that “Canada Park” has replaced. Representatives of community organizations spoke against
fund raising for Israeli Apartheid. Reena Katz from the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation (JWCEO) argued that “it is unconscionable for the JNF of Canada to continue to fund raise for such a monument to ethnic cleansing and racism.” Samir Jabour, speaking on behalf of Palestine House, added “it is shameful that the JNF enjoys charitable status in Canada and that such outrages are subsidized by taxpayers – we are here to demand that the Canadian state revoke the charitable status of the JNF.”

Khaled Mouamar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation stressed in his speech to the crowd that “according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the forcible displacement of people and destruction of property belonging to those under occupation are war-crimes. Despite this the JNF of Canada continues with business-as-usual, receiving Canadian government support.” The JNF has obtained charitable status in Canada by posing as an environmentalist organization, which means that the Canadian government reimburses a portion of donations made to the JNF.

The reality is that the JNF is one of the key instruments of Israeli Apartheid. The zionist movement has always
aimed to take control of as much Palestinian land and as few indigenous Palestinians as possible. The JNF was
established in 1901 to acquire Palestinian land that would be for Jewish use only. In 1948, the JNF had control of less than 7% of the land. In that year the state of Israel was created by ethnically cleansing about 85% of the Palestinians from their homes and lands. Much of the land that belongs to Palestinian refugees was deemed
‘absentee property’ and tranferred to the JNF. The rest of the stolen land was trasferred to the Israel Land
Authority (ILA). Half of the board members of the ILA are appointed by the JNF. The JNF plants trees, (as Israel continues to uproot Palestinian olive groves), in order to hide the remains of over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed in and since the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948.

Significanlty, board members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario were present at the picket,
including CUPE Ontario President Sid Ryan. This is consistent with CUPE Ontario’s Resolution 50 , adopted
democratically at the union convention, to educate membership about the apartheid-like policies of the
Israeli state and to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

Another inspiring moment of the evening, that points to the growing movement against Israeli Apartheid, was the announcement of the new group: Highschools Against Israeli Apartheid (HAIA). Highschool students were present at the protest carrying beautiful banners with Naji al Ali’s famous Handala to signify that the JNF will not get away with the theft of refugee property.

The protest was organized by a broad coalition of community groups including Palestine House, Canadian Arab
Federation, Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation (JWCEO), Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), Not in Our Name – Jewish Voices Against Israel’s Wars (NION), Yosher-Jewish Social Justice Network, No One is Illegal, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Labour for Palestine, New Socialist Group, Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC) and Educators for Peace and Justice (EPJ).

Organizing groups will continue the campaign to strip the JNF of its charitable status in Canada. To help with these efforts contact the committee at endapartheid@riseup.net

NYC Indymedia: Glitterati at Leviev’s New York Gala Stunned by Encounter with Palestinian Rights Protest (Updated)

By Adalah-NY

Over 100 well-dressed, well-heeled New Yorkers attending the invitation-only opening of diamond mogul Lev Leviev’s Madison Avenue jewelry store this evening appeared stunned and aghast to find their evening derailed by a noisy protest against Leviev’s construction of illegal West Bank settlements. Gala attendees set down their champagne glasses and gathered by windows to view the signs and Palestinian flags, and hear protesters’ chants.

30 New York City human rights activists chanted, “You’re glitz, you’re glam, you’re stealing Palestinian land.”, and “All your diamonds cannot hide, your support for Apartheid.” Protesters called on New York City’s upscale residents to boycott Leviev’s diamonds. Disconcerted attendees hastily exited to their limousines to loud chants of, “Occupation is a drag, just say no to your gift bag.”

Lev Leviev is one of Israel’s richest men. He built his enormous fortune trading in diamonds with Apartheid-era South Africa. His company now buys diamonds from the repressive Angolan government. Leviev uses profits from diamond sales to fuel the conflict in Palestine and Israel by funding the construction of suburban developments for Israeli settlers on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, undermining the prospects for Middle East peace, and threatening farmers’ ability to survive and remain in their homes. Leviev’s diamonds are “conflict diamonds” in a broad sense of the term, funding repression in Angola and violations of international law in Palestine.

Leviev and his former US partner Shaya Boymlegreen have also angered New Yorkers with their abusive local developments schemes. Leviev has invested $1 billion in real estate in New York City over the last year. In New York City, Leviev and Boymelgreen have employed underpaid, non-union workers in hazardous conditions and violated housing codes to construct luxury apartments that displace low-income and moderate-income residents in Brooklyn, provoking local branches of the Laborer’s International Union and ACORN to launch a campaign against these abuses (www.shayaiscoming.org). Brooklynites remain concerned that Leviev and Boymelgreen are key developers in the planned Gowanus Village project.

Leviev’s real estate empire in Israel is building homes for Israelis in the West Bank settlements of Mattityahu East and Zufim, according to Gadi Algazi in the August, 2006 Le Monde Diplomatique, and in Maale Adumim and Har Homa, according to The Jerusalem Post. He has
also built homes in the settlement of Ariel. All the settlements in which Leviev has built homes seize vital Palestinian water and agricultural resources and carve the West Bank into disconnected Bantustans, destroying hopes for a viable Palestinian state. All Israeli settlements built in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violate international law.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth also reported on January 28, 2004 that Leviev is a primary donor to the Israeli organization the Land Redemption Fund, which allegedly uses fraud and intimidation to extort land from Palestinian farmers for Israeli settlement. While Leviev donates to UNICEF and OXFAM, 50% of families in the farming village of Jayyous are now on food aid, according to the Financial Times, because they are being choked by Leviev’s expansion of the all-Jewish settlement of Zufim. Leveiv and Boymlegreen are building the settlement of Mattityahu East on the village of Bil’in’s land. Bil’in has earned international acclaim for its three year campaign of nonviolent protest against the construction of settlements and Israel’s wall on their farmland.

“Leviev’s new Manhattan store hides the devastating use of its owner’s fortune underneath shimmering facets of polished diamonds. As long as Lev Leviev violates international law by building settlements in the West Bank and attacks New York’s communities with invasive
luxury development, there can be no business as usual for him,” said Daniel Lang/Levitsky of Jews Against the Occupation/NYC. Adalah-NY will hold a second protest at Leviev’s 700 Madison Avenue jewelry store on Tuesday November 20 from 4:30 – 6:00 PM.

For more info: Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East:

www.mideastjustice.org

justiceme@gmail.com

Update 17th Nov

Susan Sarandon will cross a picket line – if there are diamonds on the other side. The actress waded through a throng of picketers to get to a cocktail party for the Leviev jewelry store launch on Madison Avenue this week. A group carrying Palestinian flags was on the sidewalk protesting the Finesse Diamond Corp., which provides gems to Leviev, and Leviev’s construction of illegal West Bank settlements. They were shouting, “You’re glitz, you’re glam, you’re building on Palestinian land” and “Occupation is a drag, just say no to your gift bag.” Our source reports that Sarandon went in and “tried not to notice the yells outside.”

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Urgent Appeal for Intervention

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Help Demand Access of Seven Gaza Patients to Lifesaving Care Unavailable in Gaza.

On the 10th of October Physicians for Human Rights-Israel sent an urgent request to the Israeli army and Minister of Defense, demanding that seven patients from Gaza whose access to medical care outside Gaza had been denied for “security reasons” be immediately allowed to exit Gaza via the Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing.

The seven patients are:

1. C, in need of urgent bypass heart surgery, referred to a Palestinian hospital in Nablus in the West Bank.

2. T, 53, in need of urgent bypass heart surgery, referred to a Palestinian hospital in Nablus.

3. I, 16, congenital heart disease, referred to urgent catheterization or open heart surgery in a Palestinian hospital in Nablus.

4. I, 27, deaf, suffers from a brain tumor and is referred for surgery to Palestinian St. Joseph’s surgical hospital in East Jerusalem.

5. H, 43, a Hepatitis B patient, with a sarcoma in the jejunum and metastasis in the lung, referred to Palestinian Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem for chemotherapy.

6. I, 20, a cancer patient who was already treated in the past in Israel, is suffering from a relapse and urgently referred to care in Ichilov hospital, Tel Aviv.

7. L, 22, suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma with tumors in the chest, referred to Shiba medical center in Tel Hashomer, Israel.

Despite appeals to the Israeli General Security Service director and the Israel Medical Association, mobilization of Israeli members of Knesset, and extensive local media exposure, no results have been achieved to date.

Since June 2007 the Government of Israel has progressively worsened the conditions for granting permits to patients needing to exit Gaza for medical care unavailable in Gaza. As Rafah Crossing, the only international border with Gaza, has been sealed since 9/6/07, patients now depend totally on Israeli policy for permission to exit, whether to Israel, to the West Bank, to Jordan or to any other country.

We are asking that you urgently intervene on behalf of these individuals, by telephone, email and fax, asking that their access to urgent lifesaving care be immediately granted, and protesting the general Israeli policy of denying Palestinian patients access to medical care unavailable in Gaza:

· IDF Spokesperson, Avi Bnayahu, Telephone + 972 3 569 0797, Fax + 972 3 569 8221

· Israeli Coordinator of Government Operations in the Territories, General Yossef Mashlab. Telephone + 972 3 697 5351, + 972 3 697 7957, Fax + 972 3 6976306, mobile phone of aide Mr. Assaf Baharal: + 972 506 234 082, mobile phone of spokesperson Mr. Shlomo Dror: + 972 506 234 053

· Israeli Minister of Defense, Mr. Ehud Barak, Telephone + 972 3 697 2090, Fax + 972 3 697 6218

· Chair of the Israeli Medical Association and of the World Medical Association, Dr. Yoram Blashar: Telephone + 972 3 6100422, Fax + 972 3 5750704, email blachar@ima.org.il

For further details please contact Miri Weingarten, miri@phr.org.il < mailto:miri@phr.org.il>, +972 546995199, +972 3 6873718 ext. 115

For a previous position paper released by PHR-Israel on Israeli policies at Erez Crossing, and a related article, see: http://www.phr.org.il/phr/article.asp?articleid=480&catid=42&pcat=42&lang=ENG

Ha’aretz: Democracy is more than going to the polls

By: Amira Hass

October 2nd, 2007

“The protest wave has calmed down,” some Israeli journalists said Friday of the Burmese military junta’s success in driving thousands of demonstrators off the streets, using excessive violence.

Despite the natural sympathy for the uprisers, several editors chose the word “calm,” which embodies the rulers’ point of view: The norm is “calm,” even if it means constant government violence. The mass protest against the oppression is a disruption of order and calm.

The word “calm” was an automatic reflection of how most Israeli Jews and their media see the constant, 40-year Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is the norm one thinks of when the Palestinians disrupt the calm.

The oppression of the Palestinian people is intended to perpetuate its banishment from its land and the infringement on its rights there. But on the other side of the regime of oppression is democracy for Jews, even those who oppose the occupation.

Generally, Jewish dissidents are not risking their life, livelihood, freedom or rights. However, the demonstration against the separation fence does involve certain risks – a few hours in detention, soldiers’ fire, tear gas, or a blow from a gun. Therefore, each protester makes his or her own courageous decision to take part in the demonstration. Assisting the Palestinian olive harvest also requires courage, because it could end in an attack by the settlers (while the government’s representatives, the soldiers, stand idly by). And yet there are dozens of anti-oppression activities that do not endanger the hundreds of devoted activists (mostly women) who take part in them.

Potentially, hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis could have taken part in activities against the multi-faceted Israeli oppression – the apartheid laws and orders, military attacks, hidden
information, economic siege, land expropriation, expanding settlements, and more. Not a hair on their head would be touched. These are people who say they support peace, with a Palestinian state beside Israel. But apparently their interpretation of participation in democracy is going to the polls once every few years, and faint protest in their living room.

However, democracy also is displaying civic responsibility, by constantly supervising the political decisions and acts between elections, thus ensuring that democracy’s essence has not been eroded. Those who say they support a two-state solution are ignoring the other facet of the democracy-for-Jews – the military regime that it imposes on the Palestinians. This regime creates faits accomplis all the time, foiling the last chance for a solution (i.e. full withdrawal with slight changes to the June 4, 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state).

The Jewish citizens who enjoy their democracy are not personally harmed by its other facet. On the contrary, they gain from it – cheap land and quality housing, additional water sources, a cadre of security professionals in demand worldwide, and thriving defense industries. This is the “calm” that even self-defined peace supporters refrain from disrupting.

In the Soviet empire and racist South Africa – like in today’s Burma (Myanmar) – objecting to oppression involved a high personal price. Therefore, one could understand the objectors who chose not to act. In Israel, because it is a democracy for Jews, all those who sit idle, ignoring what is being done in their name, bear a heavy responsibility.

Chiefs of staff, prime ministers, ministers and generals are not the only ones responsible. Anyone who theoretically objects to oppression, discrimination and expulsion, but does not actively take part in the struggle and in creating a constant popular resistance to topple the apartheid regime we have created here, is responsible.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908880.html

AL-HAQ: UK High Court to hear legal challenge to UK arms sales to Israel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UK High Court of Justice to Hear Legal Challenge on UK Sale of Arms-Related Equipment to Israel

19 September 2007

A full public hearing will be held before the UK High Court of Justice in London on 10 -11 October 2007 in the case of R (Saleh Hasan) v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Following the blanket refusal by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to respond to the claimant’s request for a justification of UK policy on arms-related sales to Israel, the High Court will hear arguments in a claim filed on 15 November 2006 by UK Solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), in cooperation with Al-Haq.

PIL will argue that the UK’s sale of arms-related equipment to Israel is in breach of UK obligations under international law as well as UK statutory law, specifically, the UK Export Control Act of 2002, which incorporates the “consolidated criteria” governing the export of military equipment. According to these criteria, the UK government may not issue export licenses to countries where there is a clear risk that the export might be used for “[i]nternal repression…in violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms as set out in relevant international human rights instruments” or where export would be “inconsistent with…the UK’s international obligations”. The “consolidated criteria” also makes clear that “special caution and vigilance” should be exercised in the case of prospective arms-related sales to countries where serious human rights violations have been established by competent bodies.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest judicial authority in the United Nations, in its 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of the Israeli Annexation Wall definitively established that Israel’s human rights record is severely compromised. The Court declared the illegality of the construction of the Wall and its associated regime in the West Bank under both international human rights and humanitarian law. The ICJ called for its dismantling and found that all States have a legal obligation to neither recognise the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the Wall nor render any aid or assistance in maintaining the situation.

The claimant, Saleh Hasan, a 60-year old resident of Bethlehem, is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians who until now have found no effective remedy for Israel’s unlawful acts. In 2005, Israel used military equipment to bulldoze agricultural assets and permanently confiscate his land in order to make way for the Wall. That same year, one year after the ICJ advisory opinion on the Wall, the UK’s arms-related exports to Israel saw a two-fold increase.

PIL will argue that the UK government had and continues to have clear evidence from authoritative international bodies that Israel might use equipment imported from the UK for purposes prohibited under the “consolidated criteria.” As such PIL will seek a declaration from the High Court that in future the UK Government must be transparent about how it has satisfied itself that there is no risk of a breach of these criteria and to make publicly available information that establishes there is no risk of any arms related products from the UK being used for repressive purposes. In the absence of any legal justification for continuing its current policy, Al-Haq, PIL and Palestinians like Saleh Hasan call on the UK government to suspend all arms-related exports to Israel until such time as Israel complies in full with its obligations under international law.

This hearing is of great significance, and any support you can offer is most welcome. Aside from actually attending the hearing, it would be greatly appreciated if you could forward this letter to any other parties you think may be interested. Al-Haq is in the process of organising various public meetings prior to the hearing. Please do not hesitate to contact haq@alhaq.org if you have any questions, comments or require further information pertaining to the case.