In Montreal on Saturday, protestors marched through the streets carrying a symbolic coffin with the writing ‘United Nations’ to represent the international community’s failure to condemn the Gaza atrocities. A vigil was held after the march.
Since the Israeli “redeployment” from Gaza on August 20, 2005, Israeli occupation troops have killed over 700 Palestinians and wounded four thousand others. Israeli is literally starving the Gaza strip. Israel has also taken advantage of the western media’s preoccupation with the US midterm elections to commit new war crimes including large scale home demolitions, indiscriminate firing on peaceful demonstrators and the massacre of civilians in their beds. The atrocities of the last few days could intensify unless we focus attention on them and insist they be exposed by the media and stopped immediately. Palestinians have also called for an international week of action against the Apartheid Wall, and against the ghettoization of Palestine for November 9-16: http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1328.shtml.
Please write about this subject to all national and local media outlets as well as to all elected officials (including newly elected officials). The following two links are lists of media contacts:
People across the world are taking action against the atrocities in Gaza and the Apartheid Wall.
In London there was a protest on Thursday evening at the Prime Minister’s home at the UK government’s silence. A protest was held in the centre of the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Friday evening and other protests are planned worldwide this weekend. Today, a joint Israeli-Palestinian protest is taking place at the Erez checkpoint into Gaza.
To kick off the international week against the Apartheid Wall, the Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network erected a 3 metre-high wall in the centre of Melbourne containing photos and information about the Wall: http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1334.shtml
For more about events taking place worldwide visit:
http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1332.shtml
Take action against the Gaza atrocities at Israeli embassies, consulates and other institutions supporting Israeli brutality, and join the events taking place worldwide against the Apartheid Wall.
As the Lebanese people are reeling from Israel’s illegal bombing campaign, and the people of the West Bank and Gaza are suffering a continuous onslaught by the Israeli military, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign (BIG) activists joined a nationwide Boycott Day of Action against Israel on 7 October, 2006. A similar day of action was organised on 24 June, 2006, and a further day of action was held by the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
During the day of action, pickets and demonstrations took place at stores selling Israeli products across the UK. Concerned individuals took part in creative actions to persuade the public not to buy Israeli goods and demand that retailers do not stock them. Pickets, street theatre and demonstrations took place in Bradford, Camden, Whitechapel, Hackney, Brighton, East London, Oxford, Slough, Cambridge, Halifax, Exeter, Brent, Cardiff, Reading and Leeds.
The PSC and the BIG campaign are responding to calls from Palestine and calling for a boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. On 9 June, 2005, a coalition of Palestinian Civil Society Organisations issued a “call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law’.
Over the summer, the movement for a boycott of apartheid Israel has been gathering momentum. Concerned individuals have taken action to show their anger over Israeli actions in Lebanon and the occupied territories. Many activists have targeted the supply of arms to Israel by invading bases being used to transport weapons components to Israel or taking action against arms companies dealing with Israel. In Derry, during the bombing of Lebanon, activists broke into US arms manufacturer Raytheon’s main office burning thousands of documents, while in Brighton protesters have caused major disruption to EDO MBM, supplier of electrical weapons components to Israel, throughout the summer.
Since the bombing of Lebanon began in June this year, Palestinians have renewed calls for a cultural boycott of apartheid Israel. Several international film festivals, including those at Lussass and Edinburgh have handed back Israeli embassy sponsorship. On 19 September, the Irish group, Academics for Justice, followed in the footsteps of British academic trade unions NAFTHE and the AUT and called for an academic boycott of apartheid Israel.
In addition to its brutal occupation and theft of Palestinian land, the Israeli state also operates an entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian civilians, which is, among the reasons, why many South African activists label it an apartheid state.
Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights in 1967 in contravention international law. Since then, Israel has moved over 380,000 settlers into these occupied territories in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention (article 49), the Hague Regulations and United Nations Security Council Resolutions.
Israel continues to build an illegal apartheid wall inside the West Bank despite the Advisory Ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2005 that the wall is illegal. Fifty five illegal Israeli settlements will be on the Israeli side of the wall separated from the West Bank.
Since 2000, Israel has demolished 628 Palestinian houses, home to 3,983 people, in acts of collective punishment. These demolitions constitute a war crime. 3,808 Palestinians have been killed as a direct result of Israeli military actions and 29,456 injured during the current upraising, which began in September 2000 (above statistics confirmed by the Israeli human rights group Btselem).
Over 600 people attended the landmark conference, Boycotting Israeli Apartheid: The Struggle Continues, held from 6-8 October in Toronto, Canada. The conference represents a watershed moment in the Palestinian solidarity movement, with leading anti-apartheid activists from Palestine, South Africa, Canada and England addressing the way forward in the global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, told the opening night that the burgeoning boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement represents a powerful and practical act of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. He emphasized that this movement would succeed as it had in South Africa, “We promise you we will not give up. We will stand firm on our land; Israeli apartheid will fall.”
Salim Vally, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, gave a powerful analysis of Israeli apartheid and its resemblance to the South African situation. He stressed that the solidarity movement to isolate the South African apartheid regime was built by grassroots and popular forces organized throughout the world. That same challenge faces the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions movement today.
Betty Hunter, General Secretary of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and member of the British Committee for Universities in Palestine, spoke to the conference on the lessons of Palestine solidarity work in England. Discussions focused on the boycott campaign launched by British academics against Israeli apartheid as well as the growing support amongst British trade unionists for a BDS campaign.
The conference was organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), a broad movement formed in response to the call by 171 Palestinian civil-society organizations in July 2005 for the international community to implement a comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) strategy against apartheid Israel as the focal point of solidarity efforts with the Palestinian people.
The conference developed a detailed program to move the BDS campaign forward in different sectors. Over 75 people attended a lively session on labor and the campaign against Israeli apartheid, in which veteran anti-apartheid activists from the South African struggle presented lessons on how to build support for the campaign among workers and in trade unions. A Canada-wide student network was launched to deepen the BDS movement on campuses across the country. Individuals from different areas throughout Toronto formed neighborhood committees to carry the campaign forward at a local level. Workshops were also held on media, research, art and cultural boycott, and faith-based communities.
Robert Lovelace, Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, closed the conference with a powerful comparison of the experience of colonialism in Canada and Palestine. He expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian movement for self-determination, and pledged to continue to strengthen the links between indigenous activists in Canada and the Palestine solidarity
movement.
To become involved in the campaign against Israeli apartheid, contact CAIA at endapartheid@riseup.net or visit their website: http://www.caiaweb.org
Protesters shut down the Brighton, UK, arms factory EDO-MBM in the early hours of September 21st. Using barrels filled with concrete and bicycle locks they closed all the gates to the factory, effectively stopping anyone from entering the building.
EDO MBM manufactures weapons components for the Israeli army, who slaughtered over a thousand Lebanese civilians this summer and who are engaged in a murderous assault on the people of Gaza. Andrew Beckett, press spokesperson for the campaign said ‘we have shut down this factory so that it cannot go on producing armaments to be used against the people of Gaza. We will keep on causing disruption to the factory until it closes down permanently’.
The workers began arriving at around 6am. By 7.30 there were over 100 workers with their cars outside the factory. They were met by protesters who used megaphones to make the workers listen to details of the carnage that their weapons wrought in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq.
Later that morning the protesters bore witness to the surreal sight of the managing director, Paul Hills, having to climb the fence of the factory in order to get inside. He then returned brandishing an angle grinder, which he instructed an employee to use to cut a hole in the company’s own fence through which employees were eventually able to get inside the factory.
The factory was completely blockaded from 6am to 9.30am, stopping production for several hours. Having achieved this aim, the blockaders decided to unlock themselves before the police intervened. There were no arrests.
Smash EDO demonstrate every Wednesday at EDO MBM, Home Farm Road from 4pm to 6pm.
See smashedo.org.uk or contact smashedo@hotmail.com for more details of the campaign.
