Tag: Tel Aviv

ISM Week of Action Against Eurovision

May 2019 | International Solidarity Movement| occupied Palestine

ISM’s week of action against the Eurovision in Tel Aviv In coordination with the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC) and The Palestinian campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and in collaboration with Israeli anti zionist groups has been a huge success! From before the opening ceremony until the Eurovision final there was not a Eurvison event that was not protested and their was no coverage of the Eurovision that did not at least mention the calls to Boycott the competition in Tel Aviv often bringing images from the protests that took place on the ground.

Photo by Activestills

The Week of action started rocking the Eurovision boat before it began. The international media reported on the campaign announcement: “Pro-Palestinian activists have urged supporters to “join us in disrupting Israel’s latest PR stunt” and to participate in a ‘Week of Action Against Eurovision in Tel Aviv’. The Israeli authorities were quick to state that it would not allow the activists in. The activists were prepared to remain in Israeli custody if they were denied and thus highlighting Israel’s policy of denial of access to Palestinians, their family members and human rights defenders to Palestine. But, we managed to enter!

While preparations for the international contest where underway Israel committed yet another massacre against the besieged population of the Gaza strip. Bombing the densely populated strip from the air, tanks and gun boats, Israeli soldiers killed to 25 including a family – mother, father and 4-month old baby, and two pregnant women and a twelve year old child. On May 5th, with bombs still raining on Gaza, Eurovision events and the protests against them began. Activists descended on Tel Aviv, postering pictures of slain Palestinians in the city centre, graffitiing slogans and opening a banner calling to Liberate the Gaza ghetto at a Eurovision event.

From the day that the Eurovision opened on the 15th of May we were there Blindfolded and handcuffed at the Eurovision in Tel Aviv to remind the participants of the stolen lives of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons. We projected images of the occupation taken by activestills, during one Eurovision party and held a die-in at another in solidarity with the Palestinian Great march of Return. And hung posters at the venue to bring the faces of the children murdered in Gaza to these parties were held on the beach the land of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Manshiya in solidarity with the great march of return. At the semi final and ISM activists unfurled a banner inside the venue that read “We dare to dream an end of Apartheid”

We also brought our banners and joined forces with Israeli Anti Zionists at their protests on the 14th at the Eurovision finals on the 18th and highlighted the alternative events organised by our Palestinian comrades across Palestine in Haifa, Gaza, and Bethlehem as part of the International “Global vision.”

Video: Israelis in Tel Aviv chanting, “There’s no school tomorrow, there’s no children left in Gaza! Oleh!”

29th July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Tel Aviv, Occupied Palestine

Israelis in Tel Aviv, on 26.7.2014, the 19th day of Israel’s massacres in Gaza, cheer the genocide on: “There’s no school tomorrow, there’s no children left there [in Gaza]! Oleh!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7qFACSfd_k

Every evening, in Tel Aviv, right wing marchers flood the streets, waving Israeli flags and chanting hate-slogans, such as the most common, “death to the Arabs” and many others. Often, these are counter-protests to the anti-war demonstrations that have begun since Israel’s latest onslaught on the Gaza strip, but these are also independent initiatives, which aim to encourage the State of Israel to continue the bombardment with full force.

Israeli activists who oppose the war have become the victims of these rallies, as they turn into full-fledged riots. One of the activists testified that after the rally in the video, “a few of them started kicking and throwing punches, someone tried to beat us with a flag stick, and one rioter in an IDF uniform pepper sprayed me in the face…friends who stayed in the area told me that the cops shook the soldier’s hand.”

The day of this particular rally, OCHA reported: Approximately, 1000 Palestinians have been bombed to death, over 200 of them children. Over 6200 have been injured, 2000 of them children. Over 215,000 displaced people- schools have turned into refugee camps. 130 schools have been bombed.

This is Israel’s third such operation on the Gaza Strip in the past 6 years, which it besieges from land, air and sea. Gaza is 360 km² , about twice the size of Washington DC. It is one of the most crowded places in the world, with a population density of 4,505 persons per square km. 52% of its population are children.

A few Welcome to Palestine activists arrived yesterday

8 July 2011 | Alternative Information Center

Others are in flight and hundreds more prevented from boarding

The first international activists participating in the Welcome to Palestine campaign arrived yesterday to Ben Gurion airport from Europe. This morning hundreds more tried to board planes to Tel Aviv to join the week of activities in the West Bank, but they were prevented by airlines, like Lufthansa, Easyjet, Air France and Malev. On Thursday the Israeli authorities sent hundreds of names to these companies telling them to deny travel to individuals identified as activists.

One of these activists was Cynthia Beatt, a British researcher living in Berlin. She was supposed to fly today, but she received a call yesterday from the Lufthansa office to inform her that the Israeli authorities would not let her fly to Tel Aviv. Despite this, she decided to go to the airport and demand a written justification from the airline. The company didn’t comply. “There’s no reason for this. I have never done anything and I want an explanation as to why I was put on a blacklist”, she explained to the AIC. Beatt and other participants will hold a press conference in the theater Filmbühne am Steinplatz, (Hardenbergstr 12, Berlin Charlottenburg), in the center of Berlin, at 13, local time.

French activists were also prevented from boarding planes to Tel Aviv and are staging protests at the airports in Paris, Lyon and Nice. In some cases, the airlines even prohibited them to make local connections. Activists were also prohibited from checking in for their flights in Brussels and Geneva. The AIC received information that some participants are currently en route to Ben Gurion airport.

Palestinian refugees supporters protest Canada Park

21 February 2011 | The Alternative Information Center

Palestinian, Israeli and international activists gathered in front of the Representative Office of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Embassy of Canada to Israel in Tel Aviv for protest vigils on Monday (21/2) organized by the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Latrun Villages.

A Memorandum to the Representative of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Ambassador of Canada in Tel Aviv respectively was submitted, protesting on behalf of families of the Latrun villages, who were forcibly expelled from their villages in the 1967 war by the criminal action of ethnic cleansing, classified as a crime against humanity under international law.

Canada Park, built in cooperation with the Jewish National Fund, now occupies the site of the villages of Imwas, Yalo and Bayt Nuba, which were were completely destroyed in 1967. Their residents are now refugees in the West Bank and Jordan.

“Canada Park was planted and funded with the support of the Jewish National Fund of Canada over the lands and over the ruins of three ethnically-cleansed villages: Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, occupied and ethnically cleansed in the course and the wake of the 1967 war,” Dr. Uri Davis told the Alternative Information Center (AIC) outside the Canadian Embassy.

“The ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by the Israeli army, not the JNF, but the JNF is complicit in this crime against humanity by veiling and covering up the crime, planting the Canada Park over the lands and over the ruins, and presenting itself as an environmentally-friendly organization concerned with public will and recreational welfare of all citizens of Israel.”

Participants carried banners reading: “CANADA PARK IS COMPLICIT WITH A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY PERPETRATED IN OUR VILLAGES,” “WE DEMAND THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA RECOGNIZE AND ACT TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE LATRUN VILLAGES,” and, “WE DEMAND THE NULLIFICATION OF THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (JNF) IN CANADA.”

The village defense committee has repeated requested that the Representative Office of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah meet with the Ambassador of Canada to Israel in Ramallah and together tour the Latrun area and the visiting the remains of the destroyed villages over whose ruins the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has planted “Canada Park.”

“Most representatives of the destroyed Latrun villages are not able to come to Tel Aviv to meet the Ambassador, it is our request that the Ambassador arrive in Ramallah, meet the people concerned and with a delegation of the destroyed, ethnically cleansed villages, visit Canada Park and submit an official report of his fact-finding to his government,” Dr. Davis said.

He continued saying, “Canada Park represents a blatant violation of international law, but it also represents a blatant violation of official Canadian policy condemning any intervention of settlement or occupation or change of demographic composition or any other alteration in the 1967 occupied territories.”

Don’t be complicit in Israel’s apartheid: boycott the 2010 Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival

A Joint Statement by PACBI and PSCABI

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Students‘ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) call on students, lecturers and film-makers to boycott the 13th International Student Film Festival, scheduled for June 2010 in the city of Tel Aviv. PACBI and PSCABI believe that this festival, as with similar cultural initiatives supported by the Israeli government, is openly designed to whitewash the crimes of Israeli apartheid.

Festival organizers have highlighted the aim of the festival, noting that it is “a unique cultural and social means to presenting a different Israel to the world, [an] Israel which supports and invests in pluralism, culture and equal opportunity.” This language reveals – as did similar endeavors by the South African Apartheid regime – a cynical and systematic attempt at manipulating world opinion. It aims to obfuscate the real nature of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and to divert attention from its ongoing war crimes by portraying Israel as a vibrant, cultural and artistic hub. It is for this reason that the festival is heavily funded and supported by the Israeli government.

In 2009, this policy of using culture to whitewash Israeli violations of international law was openly confirmed by the Israeli government with the launch of a global ‘Brand Israel’ campaign. According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the objective of this rebranding campaign, which “could include organizing film festivals” is to convey the message that “a better image for Israel and a better performance of that image is part and parcel [of] Israel‘s national security. Contrary to popular belief, national security is not just based on military power, it‘s also a strong economy and a strong image.”

This attempt to create a ‘better image for Israel’ through film, dance, music and literary events is all the more horrendous given the bloody military assault conducted in 2009 against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured. The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroying Gaza’s leading university and scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. A UN Fact Finding Mission headed by the prominent South African judge, Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of deliberately and indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes in this war of aggression.

The orders for this assault came from Tel Aviv, a place the festival organizers hope to honour as “the city that never sleeps – an even more turbulent, energetic and lively place. Could we ask for a warmer home for a Festival dedicated to young artists, to young art?” Moreover, this offensive hubris ignores the fact that the city itself is built on the remains of the homes of Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948, and to which any Palestinian ‘young artist’ from Gaza or the West Bank, let alone from the large Palestinian refugee community in exile, is barred from visiting.

Today, the siege on Gaza continues, and the festival organizers are apparently oblivious to these war crimes – preferring to pretend that a festival supported by the Israeli government can “bridg[e] cultural gaps and develop tolerance through cinema”.

It should be noted that in the lead up to the previous Tel Aviv festival in 2008, the renowned French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard canceled his participation following PACBI’s request to boycott the event. He had been due to participate as an honorary guest and to hold master classes with Israeli film students.[vi]

Because of the Festival’s open ties with the Israeli state, and its clear aim to normalize Israeli apartheid and whitewash Israel‘s persistent violations of international law and human rights in the minds of filmmakers, students and other cultural workers, PACBI and PSCABI view any participation in this event as a form of immoral complicity and call for a its complete boycott. We urge filmmakers, lectures and students to heed the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions, as they did in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This is the bare minimal form of solidarity that we expect from any people of conscience around the world to support our struggle for freedom, justice and a meaningful peace in our region.