Showing posts with label Boycotts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boycotts. Show all posts

University Students In Ontario Canada Do Not Want To Remain Complicit In Israeli War Crimes

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Ontario university students' union joins BDS

The Canadian Federation of Student's Ontario branch decided to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel in its annual general meeting.
The branch, which represents over 300,000 university students in the province of Ontario, has passed the decision unanimously, said executive member Anna Goldfinch.
The resolution "endorses a number of solidarity tactics that have been called for by Palestinian civil society," Goldfinch told theCanadian Press.
Rajean Hoilett, the president of the Ryerson Students' Union, which put the resolution forward, urged schools in the province to not "remain complicit" with "Israeli war crimes."
The students' union will hold several panels where students will be able to voice dissenting opinions.
Adapted from:‘Ontario university students' union joins BDS  and published on-line at:http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.611948
               
            
Distributed by PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity)
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Gaza: There can be no peace without justice. Former NDP MP Jim Manly makes the case for boycott and sanctions against Israel

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After weeks of the Israeli assault on Gaza, people in Canada and around the world have been shocked into a state of awareness. They have seen images of mutilated children, a father carrying parts of his son’s body in a plastic bag, whole neighbourhoods reduced to rubble and hospitals and schools used as UN refugee centres being bombed.
Protests against this war are a global phenomenon. In the UK, a government minister has even resigned to protest British complicity and called for a ban on weapons exports to Israel. The world is crying out: This carnage must stop. Everyone is holding their breath now, in the midst of a 72-hour ceasefire.
Many people also find it deeply distressing that in spite of the slaughter and mayhem, most people in Gaza support the Hamas position that there can be no permanent ceasefire until Israel ends its blockade; they are upset to learn that support for Hamas is growing, rather than diminishing, as the death toll mounts. Hamas has been consistently dismissed by Western leaders as nothing but a terrorist organization. These leaders and their followers should consider the claim of Jimmy Carter, former US president, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and United Nations high commissioner for human rights, that they should recognize the legitimacy of Hamas “as a political actor—one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people.”
The conscience of the world would be greatly eased by a truce, any kind of somewhat permanent truce, so that people could forget this tragic business and move on. However, Palestinians in Gaza say, in a voice of quiet desperation, We cannot agree to any ceasefire that abandons us to the slow but sure strangulation of the blockade. There can be no ceasefire and no peace until the blockade is lifted.
In other words, there can be no peace without justice.

Making Gaza unlivable

The Palestinians realize that the eight-year blockade of Gaza and the present military assault are simply different aspects of the same struggle, as were the military offensives of 2008-09 and 2012. Netanyahu and his government also know this, even if many people in Israel don’t know or don’t care. Netanyahu is probably just as happy to keep his people in ignorance, and he would like nothing more than for the rest of us to remain unaware as well.
Even before the blockade, Israel consistently imposed serious restrictions that made it difficult for the Palestinian people of Gaza to carry on with business as usual. Since the blockade began in 2007 they have found that what used to be difficult is now almost impossible. Israel has been shown to count the calories they allow into the territory “to put the Palestinians on a diet”, and classified cables recently released by Wikileaks show that the Israeli government has been pursuing a deliberate policy of economic sabotage, designed to keep the Palestinian economy on the perpetual verge of collapse, since at least the 1980s.
In August 2012, the UN Country Team in Occupied Palestinian Territory issued a publication called Gaza in 2020: A Liveable Place? based on a wide-ranging series of reports by the UN and other organizations. It points out that Gaza, already one of the most densely populated areas of the world, will by 2020 have increased its population by another half-million people to a total of 2.1 million in an area of 365 km2. Already high food insecurity among 60 per cent of the population will become even worse: “In a densely populated, largely urban territory, food self-sufficiency is not an option. Such a territory will always depend on trade, services, and worker movement, all of which remain limited as a result of the closure.”
An unemployment rate of 29 per cent (47 per cent for women and 58 per cent for youth between 20 and 24 years) will also worsen because the blockade prevents normal exporting business; fishing has been confined to a three-mile limit, and 35 per cent of Gaza's agricultural land cannot be accessed because of the "buffer zone" separating Gaza from Israel. Because of the blockade, “Gaza’s economy is largely dependent on external aid, the tunnel economy . . . and remittances.”
In 2012 the coastal aquifer that Gaza relies upon for its water was already overtaxed; due to salinization from the ocean and nitrates from uncontrolled sewage, only 10 per cent of the water was safe for drinking. By 2016 the aquifer may become totally unusable, and by 2020 the damage could become irreversible.
The lack of adequate electricity and frequent interruptions also has a strong negative impact on all aspects of life in Gaza.
Two hundred and fifty new schools were needed in 2012, and with the increased population this need will increase to 440 new schools by 2020. An urgent need for safe and adequate medical services will also require an increase in the number of doctors, nurses, medical equipment and hospital beds by 2020.
As the report’s conclusion states,
“[Without] sustained and effective remedial action and an enabling political environment . . . the daily lives of Gazans in 2020 will be worse than they are now. There will be virtually no reliable access to sources of safe drinking water, standards of healthcare and education will have continued to decline . . . and the vision of affordable and reliable electricity for all will have become a distant memory. . . . The already high number of poor, marginalized and food-insecure people depending on assistance will not have changed and in all likelihood will have increased. . .
It is essential that the inhabitants of Gaza are able to exercise and enjoy the full range of fundamental human rights to which they are entitled. They must be able to live safe and secure lives free from the various forms of violence which afflict them at present . . . and have ready access to the world beyond Gaza for religious, educational, medical, cultural, commercial and other purposes.”
The report makes clear that the people of Gaza need the blockade to end and in its place have long-term sustainable help to overcome the damage. Instead they have been subjected to a ruthless process of ethnic cleansing using methods that vary from restrictive regulations, to blockade, to violence by a dehumanized military force against an unarmed civilian population.
As the death toll spirals towards 2,000, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, has called for "the conquest of the entire Gaza strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters." In a letter to Netanyahu he outlines an elaborate plan to ship survivors to tent encampments in the Sinai until arrangements can be made for them to emigrate to other parts of the world. His objective is to rebuild Gaza and its suburbs "as true Israeli touristic and commercial cities."
It becomes obvious that as long as the blockade of Gaza continues, the Palestinian people of Gaza will not be free from this sadistic Israeli dream of ethnic cleansing.

What we can do

Now is the time when the people of the world must stand with the people of Gaza and demand an end to the blockade, an end to all oppression and an end to military aggression.
People around the world must show support for Palestine financially and politically. We can stand with the Palestinians of Gaza by supporting the proposal for a new international Flotilla for Peace, which will send peaceful boats to Gaza with crews from all over the world. The Flotilla will once more use the power of non-violence against the violence of the blockade.
Another non-violent method for putting pressure on Israel, one in which we can all be active participants, is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. This movement consists of refusing to buy Israeli goods, divesting investments in companies that support the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and pushing government to impose sanctions.
We must stand with the Palestinian people of Gaza and call for an end to the blockade. Only then can there be peace. Peace with justice.

About the author

Jim Manly was born 1932 in Saskatchewan, and moved with his family to Nanaimo in 1943. Ordained by the United Church in 1957, Jim served as minister in northern B.C., Vancouver Island, Ottawa and Vancouver before retiring in 1997. From 1980 to 1988 Jim Manly was the NDP Member of Parliament for Cowichan-Malahat-the Islands. He was NDP critic for Indian Affairs, Fisheries and Oceans, and International Development. Jim and his wife Eva continue to be active in their community with a focus on First Nations issues, the environment and Palestine/Israel with Mid-Islanders for Justice & Peace in the Middle East and United Network for Justice & Peace in Palestine/Israel.
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Irish Artists Pledge to Boycott Israel

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by Chris Carlson
European solidarity movement grows
As the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip continues to leave nearly 2,000 Palestinians dead and over 7,000 injured, there has been an upsurge in artists signing on to the Irish Artists' Pledge to Boycott Israel.
 The Palestinian News Network (PNN) reports that the pledge, originally launched by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 2010, has now been signed by more than 300 creative and performing artists, including Stephen Rea, Donal Lunny, Damien Dempsey, Andy Irvine, Sharon Shannon and many more. 

The pledge states:

“In response to the call from Palestinian civil society for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge not to avail of any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel, nor to accept any funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.” The full list of signatories can been viewed here: http://www.ipsc.ie/pledge. 

Israel’s latest attack on the Gaza Strip, which began between July 7th and 8th, has, as of today, left approximately 1,803 dead with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reporting a ratio of 85% civilian casualties.

Schools, homes, hospitals and essential infrastructures have been destroyed in Israeli attacks by air, sea and land, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the tiny coastal strip.

The area, no bigger than county Dublin, is home to 1.8 million people, according to the PNN.

Reports are now surfacing that flechette munitions and white phosphorus, weapons which are illegal to use on civilian populations, are once again being used in the current assault. Targeting of captive civilian populations qualify as collective punishment and is illegal under international law.

Related info: http://imemc.org/article/68579

The boycott pledge was initiated by Dr. Raymond Deane, who said, “By its own admission, the Israeli government ‘sees culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…does not differentiate between propaganda and culture.’" 

Since 2010, over 300 artists have signed onto the pledge as an act of resistance against such propaganda. PNN further reports that over 60 of these artists have signed since Israel began its current offensive against the defenseless population of Gaza, thus demonstrating that artists cannot and will not stand aloof in the face of oppression and genocide.”

IPSC Spokesperson Freda Hughes said, “Boycotting is an extremely effective way for individuals to collectively apply the necessary pressure to isolate Israel for its apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people, blatant disregard for human rights and flagrant abuse of international law. Israel acts with impunity because the international community allows it to. Where governments fail to act civil society must. We need to emulate the methods that isolated apartheid South Africa to help to end the brutal occupation of Palestine.”

See related: The Growth of the Palestine Solidarity Movement in Europe

Though Americans have been increasingly active with the international community in demonstrating their outrage against the atrocities committed by the Israeli regime, most who claim and cling to any sort of European descent remain largely ignorant of the crisis, due to corporate media propaganda distributed to them via affiliated sports and entertainment agencies.
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Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith groups demand the United States stop arming Israel

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More than two dozens faith groups representing Christians, Muslims and Jews are calling for an arms embargo on Israel and an end to the $3.1 billion a year in military aid the US gives to the country.

The statement comes as the death toll from Israel’s horrific bombardment of Gaza reached 1,437, surpassing the total from “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s assault on the besieged territory in 2008-2009.
“We deplore and condemn the use of violence by anyone, anytime, anywhere,” the faith groups say, “For each of these casualties is a child of God.”
“The current onslaught takes place within the context of a seven-year old Israeli and Egyptian imposed blockade of Gaza and the forty-seven year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza,” the statement says.
It also notes that most of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinian residents “are from families that were driven from their homes in Palestine in 1948, when the state of Israel was created, and have since not been permitted by Israel to return.”
“Palestinians everywhere,” including those within Israel facing institutionalized discrimination and mounting racism, “must struggle for their dignity, human rights, and equality. Right now in Gaza, every Palestinian is literally struggling to stay alive,” the groups say.
The statement takes pains to be even-handed; the faith groups say they also “support efforts to prevent the distribution of weapons to Gaza.”
“We will continue endorsing this call until the current bloodshed, blockade, occupation, and exile come to an end,” they conclude.
Last week, the Obama administration approved an Israeli request for a resupply of mortar shells and grenades despite the soaring death toll from Israel’s attacks which, human rights groups say, specifically target civilians.
The full statement and the names of all the groups endorsing it are published by theIsrael/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church USA.

Join the call

The faith groups urge the public to sign a petition calling for an arms embargo on Israel, organized by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee.
The petition will be presented to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in September.
Earlier this month, dozens of international cultural and political figures, including six Nobel Peace Laureates, endorsed a similar call, urging an and to the arms trade with Israel.

Ali Abunimah wrote the above post:

Ali Abunimah's picture
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.
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New campaign launched to boycott Israeli products in West Bank

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WEST BANK, (PIC)-- Dozens of young activists launched on Wednesday a campaign to boycott Israeli products under the slogan “Do not support Gaza aggressions.”
The campaign’s organizers urged the Palestinian people to boycott the Israeli products in protest at Israel’s Judaization and confiscation policies and its crimes and massacres against Palestinian children, women and elderly persons in Gaza.
The organizers said that the Israeli profits are estimated at billions of dollars from Palestinian markets, adding that the profits are used in waging wars against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The campaign was launched under the slogan “Do not support Gaza aggression”, in response to those who refuse to boycott Israeli products.
They called on the Palestinian Authority to cancel the Paris Convention which they described as an “unfair treaty”, as it works to flood the Palestinian markets with Israeli products.
They appealed to the Palestinian consensus government to take the necessary measures to boycott all Israeli products so to pressure the Israeli government to halt its massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
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Thank you, Sinead O’Connor, for boycotting Israel

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Sinéad O’Connor, an artist willing to put principles ahead of money. (Man Alive!)

  David Cronin
I vividly recall the first time I saw Sinéad O’Connor live. She looked shy and fragile as she walked onstage. And then she began her song “Troy,” whispering to us one second; screaming at us the next. It was enchanting and haunting.
That was 26 years ago. Ever since then, I’ve admired O’Connor as a woman of talent and courage. So I felt a bit hurt when she rejected me in a distinctly twenty-first century manner last month: by blocking me on Twitter.
All I had done was to ask politely that she cancel a gig in Israel.
This morning my admiration was fully restored when I read in the Irish magazine Hot Press that O’Connor had decided towithdraw from her Israel show.
“Nobody with any sanity, including myself, would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight,” she said. “There’s not a sane person on earth who in any way sanctions what the fuck the Israeli authorities are doing.”
O’Connor’s interview suggests that concert promoters are offering enormous fees to musicians willing to ignore the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. O’Connor was promised “100 grand” (she didn’t specify the currency) to play Caesarea — a town between Tel Aviv and Haifa — next month. Normally, she would only expect one-tenth of that amount for a show.

Timely

Her decision is a timely gesture of solidarity. Caesarea (known as Qisaryia in Arabic) was conquered by Zionist forces headed by Yitzhak Rabin, a vicious military commander who later became prime minister, in 1948. Benny Morris, the Israeli historian, has written that the Palestinians of Qisaryia suffered from “outright expulsion.”
Today, the Palestinians are still being terrorized by Zionist forces. Israel is bombing schools, mosques and hospitals inGaza.
To its eternal shame, the Irish government abstained from a vote in the UN Human Rights Council calling on Israel to respect international law this week.
With a few exceptions, I have long been ashamed of Ireland’s politicians. I would prefer not to share the same nationality as these lickspittles, so eager to please their masters in Brussels and Washington.

Vindicated

I am proud, though, to hail from the same island as Sinéad O’Connor. Her cancellation of a gig in Israel is by no means the first time that she has put principles ahead of financial considerations.
In the US, she is best known for tearing up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on the entertainment program “SaturdayNight Live.”
That protest undoubtedly had adverse consequences for her record sales. Yet she has been vindicated in moral terms: it has been proven that the Catholic Church’s hierarchy engaged in a massive cover-up of child abuse.
My aforementioned first encounter with O’Connor was at an anti-apartheid concert in Dublin, marking Nelson Mandela’sseventieth birthday.
Later in that 1988 gig, she performed a duet with Christy Moore, a balladeer with a deeply soulful voice. Unaccompanied by musical instruments, they delivered a poignant version of “Irish Ways and Irish Laws.”

Empathy

Their message was readily understood: the oppression that Ireland has endured gave us some insight into what the black majority in South Africa was experiencing. One verse reads: “Eight hundred years we have been down/The secret of the water sound/Has kept the spirit of man/Above the pain descending.”
A “die-in” held outside the Irish foreign ministry this week made a similar point. No matter how supine our government may be, ordinary Irish people empathize strongly with the Palestinians.
Thank you, Sinéad O’Connor, for boycotting Israel. You have given the Palestine solidarity movement a boost at a very depressing time.
And I have forgiven you for blocking me on Twitter.
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Statement by Israeli academics July 2014

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Statement by Israeli academics July 2014


The signatories to this statement, all academics at Israeli universities, wish it to be known that they utterly deplore the aggressive military strategy being deployed by the Israeli government. The slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people, is placing yet more barriers of blood in the way of the negotiated agreement which is the only alternative to the occupation and endless oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel must agree to an immediate cease-fire, and start negotiating in good faith for the end of the occupation and settlements, through a just peace agreement.

If you are an Israeli academic, working in Israel, and would like to sign this statement, please send an email toProf. Rachel Giora rachel.giora@gmail.com with your name, title and affiliation.

Academics in Israeli universities who have signed the statement above:


Prof. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University
Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Hebrew University
Dr. Kobi Snitz, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University
Dr Efrat Ben-Zeev, Ruppin Academic Center
Prof. As’ad Ghanem, Haifa University
Prof. Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Adi Ophir, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Ovadia Ezra, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Zvi Tauber, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Vered Kraus, Haifa University
Dr. Yuval Yonay, Haifa University
Prof. Oded Goldreich, Weizman Institute
Prof. Dana Ron, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Gadi Algazi, Tel Aviv University
Professor Mira Ariel, Tel Aviv University
Professor Idan Landau, Ben Gurion University
Professor As’ad Ghanem, Haifa University
Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Haifa University
Prof. Micah Leshem, Haifa University
Dr. Ilan Saban, University of Haifa
Dr. Avishai Ehrlich, TAU
Dr. Ivy Sichel, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, TAU
Dr. Hannah Safran, The Academic College for Society and the Arts
Dr. Yael Ben-zvi, Ben-Gurion University
Prof. Dudy Tzfati, Hebrew University
Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass, Jerusalem
Professor David Blanc, University
Dr. Haim Yacobi Bezalel, Ben Gurion University
Elizabeth Ritter, Ben-Gurion University
Paul Wexler, Professor Emeritus, Tel-Aviv University
Prof. Tal Siloni, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Amatzia Weisel, Tel Aviv University (retired)
Prof. Tamar Katriel, Haifa University
Dr. Haim Deuelle Luski, Tel Aviv University & Bezalel Academy of Art
Prof. Matania Ben-Artzi, Hebrew University
Dr. Roy Wagner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Uri Hadar, Tel Aviv University
Professor Shlomo Sand, Tel Aviv University
Professor Yuri Pines, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Amira Katz, Hebrew University Jerusalem
Prof. Julia Horvath, Tel-Aviv University
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Thanking the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and the African Literature Association for Endorsing the Academic Boycott of Israel!

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USACBI Congratulates and Thanks the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and the African Literature Association for Endorsing the Academic Boycott of Israel!
As Palestinians residing in Gaza are faced with yet another brutal Israeli war that has killed than 500 Palestinians dead, and amidst the ongoing dispossession and erasure of the Palestinian people within historic Palestine and the Shatat, the international community must raise their voices and take action to pressure Israel.
We thank the membership of the African Literature Association, who passed a resolution endorsing the boycott at their 2014 meeting in Johannesburg. Their eloquent statement extends the spirit of the past boycott of Apartheid South Africa to highlight the many ways in which Palestinians and Palestinian students and academics are impacted by ongoing dispossession, racism and colonial violence.
We thank the ongoing engagement of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, which produced this resolution in support of academic boycott. The robust CESA statement lifts up various questions at the core of  Ethnic Studies scholarship about decolonization and liberation.
In response to the Palestinian call for the international community to engage in and utilize the tactics of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, US-based academics and student organizers have brought critical discussions on Palestine, Israel and US complicity to campuses across the country through boycott and divestment resolutions.
These historic motions follow other associations -
As well as
We encourage others to continue to organize within their academic institutions at this critical moment and to join more than one thousand academics in endorsing the academic boycott of Israel by signing on to USACBI.
*The US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has organized to challenge growing ties between Israeli and US academic institutions and to challenge the Brand Israel project of normalizing Israel through cultural events.
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Israeli Basketball Players Forced To Quit Game In Turkey As The Crowds Chant Killers

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Post by ‎وليد أبوعبده‎.
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Naomi Klein: Enough. It’s Time for a Boycott of Israel

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It’s time. Long past time. 

 The best strategy to end 

 the increasingly bloody 

 occupation is for Israel to 

 become the target of the 

 kind of global movement 

 that put an end to apartheid in South Africa
by Naomi Klein, Guardian UK

Credit Image: Palestine solidarity activists occupy London Government Building demanding arms sales embargo on Israel
Credit Image: Palestine Solidarity Activists Occupy London Government BuildingDemand Arms Sales Embargo on Israel
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era”. The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause – even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for “the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions” and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. “The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves … This international backing must stop.”
Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can’t go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren’t good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counter-arguments.
Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.
The world has tried what used to be called “constructive engagement”. It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures – quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel’s exports of processed food. And in December European ministers “upgraded” the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
CNI-Billboards
It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s flagship index actually went up 10.7%. When carrots don’t work, sticks are needed.
Israel is not South Africa.
Of course it isn’t. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, backroom lobbying) fail. And there are deeply distressing echoes of apartheid in the occupied territories: the colour-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said the architecture of segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was “infinitely worse than apartheid”. That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.
Why single out Israel when the US, Britain and other western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.
Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.
This one I’ll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus’s work, and none to me. I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.
Our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, emails and instant messages, stretching between Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Paris, Toronto and Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start a boycott strategy, dialogue grows dramatically. The argument that boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at each other across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.
Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don’t I know that many of these very hi-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel’s Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax:
“As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company.”
Ramsey says his decision wasn’t political; he just didn’t want to lose customers. “We can’t afford to lose any of our clients,” he explains, “so it was purely commercially defensive.”
It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it’s precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.
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64 Public Figures, 7 Nobel Laureates, Call for Arms Embargo on Israel

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Tutu, Chomsky, Waters, Pappe, others accuse country of 'war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.'

By Haaretz
July 20, 2014 "WIP" - "Haaretz" - - - Sixty-four public figures, including seven Nobel Peace Prize winners, have called for an international arms embargo on Israel for its "war crimes and possible crimes against humanity" in Gaza. The statement came in a letter published in Britain's The Guardian on Friday.

"Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel's ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world," read the statement.

"We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid," the letter concluded.

Among the signators were Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu, Betty Williams, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Jody Williams, Adolfo Peres Esquivel, Mairead Maguire and Rigoberto Menchu.

Also signing were academics Noam Chomsky and Rashid Khalidi, filmmakers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, musicians Roger Waters and Brian Eno, writers Alice Walker and Caryl Churchill, and journalists John Pilger and Chris Hedges. Two Israelis, academics Ilan Pappe and Nurit Peled, signed the letter as well.
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Avaaz: The Lobbyist that Masquerades as Online Activism

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In the digital era, activism has turned into clicktivism and Ricken Patel, founder of Avaaz.org has capitalized on the globalization of the world through the internet. Avaaz claims to be a “world in action” that brings the campaigning community together by empowering people through “decision-making worldwide”.
Avaaz has given a “voice” to those who do not want to join in actually protesting injustice in the world, but would rather organize within the comfort of their own home with online petitions that allegedly pressure elected officials are governments; similar to other websites like ResPublica, GetUp! and MoveOn.org.
Avaaz has become so influential that they were involved in disseminating propaganda with the proxy war in Syria. In fact, Avaaz has been supportive of the manufactured uprising in Syria that has made the Free Syrian Army (FSA) so successful.
Alice Jay, campaign director for Avaaz, claims that the Houla massacre was the work of the Syrian government by stating:
“Dozens of children lie covered with blood, their faces show the fear they felt before death, and their innocent lifeless bodies reveal an unspeakable massacre. These children were slaughtered by men under strict orders to sow terror. Yet all the diplomats have come up with so far is a few UN monitors ‘observing’ the violence. Now, governments across the world are expelling Syrian ambassadors, but unless we demand strong action on the ground, they will settle for these diplomatic half-measures.”
The response expected by Avaaz is explained in that occupation of Syria would stop such violence. Jay says: “The UN is discussing what to do right now. If there were a large international presence across Syria with a mandate to protect civilians, we could prevent the massacres while leaders engage in political efforts to resolve the conflict. I cannot see more images like these without shouting from the rooftops. But to stop the violence, it is going to take all of us, with one voice, demanding protection for these kids and their families. Sign the urgent petition on the right to call for UN action now and share this campaign with everyone.”
The FSA is made up of recruits found by the CIA-created al-Qaeda all over the Arab world, then trained in a facility in Turkey that is controlled by the CIA. These newly trained “freedom fighters” are shipped across the Turkish/Syrian border to become proxy terrorists. And Avaaz is there to offer support and facilitate the propaganda surrounding the mission in Syria to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The Salafi terrorist cells are given different names depending on their location geographically (such as al-Qaeda, FSA, etc. . . ) so that the idea that they are separate is purveyed to the general public. However, they are subscribing to an extreme form of Islam that is encompassing in Saudi Arabia.
The Salafis being used in Syria are exceptionally violent and adhere to sectarianism with complete abhorrence for the US. This ideal is fostered because it helps to facilitate the psychological mindset necessary for manipulation.
In October it was discovered that the FSA are being armed by Saudi Arabia. The attack in Aleppo was actually funded with ammunition and weaponry from the US-aligned Middle Eastern nation. The FSA denies knowledge of how they came to obtain this shipment from Saudi Arabia; however it is fairly obvious that the Salafi extremists in their country are supporting the US-backed terrorist faction. Saudi officials have also declined comment thinking that refusal to speak will correspond with their ignorance. Yet, Saudi ammunition has been used since the inception of the CIA-trained “rebels” paid for my “foreign aid” from the US and British governments.
Avaaz also showed their support of European Union sanctions imposed onto Syria for the purpose of devastating their economy, impoverishing their citizens and facilitating an uprising that would justify more violent reactions from the CIA-terrorist faction FSA.
Patel believes in using the exponentially growing number of internet users to his advantage with online petitions and propaganda slogans; as well as the ability to syphon donations from ignorant members to the tune of $13.5 million annually and $3 million during fund-raising events. While Avaaz claims to facilitate the individuality of protesters, it uses mob-mentality tactics to create a large online community of people who will defend the organization.
Patel also consults with the UN; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Gates Foundation; globalist-colleges like Harvard University, Oxford University; and CARE International.
In February, Avaaz began a petition against the BDS Movement, a “global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights was initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005.”
BDS supports the efforts of the Palestinian people to be free of the genocidal tyranny imposed over them by the Zionist-controlled Israeli government. And Avaaz is against this fight for freedom. Avaaz’s online petition promised to pressure elected officials in favor of Israeli settlers who were being “discriminated” against by the Palestinian people. The backing of the occupation of Israel in Palestine is foremost to Avaaz.

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