On October 26th, Brooklyn For Peace, CODEPINK NYC, Adalah-NY, Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other local groups will bring the Stolen Beauty Ahava boycott campaign to Brooklyn for a third time. Local activists, some dressed in spa attire, and others wearing monster masks to convey the message that Occupation is an Ugly business, will gather on Montague Street to tell Ricky’s NYC: No More Ahava Cosmetics.
BDS
British director Mike Leigh has canceled his scheduled visit to Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved a controversial amendment to the Citizenship Law last week requiring non-Jews to pledge allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.”
ADL’s Foxman: “These groups are not promoting peace, they are spreading propaganda to assault Israel’s legitimacy. We want to Americans to know who these groups are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state.”
IOA Editor: From one of Israel’s propaganda chiefs, himself. We’d be honored to join the list.
Architecture and planning are instruments of the occupation, and constitute part of a continuing war against a whole people… Since this involves dispossession, discrimination and acquisition of land and homes by force, against the Geneva conventions, it can be classified as participation in war crimes.
Norway’s foreign ministry advised that it will no longer allow us[ing] its territory for naval experiments on submarines intended for the Israeli navy. This is not Norway’s first security boycott on Israel. A year ago the Norwegian State Pension Fund announced it was dropping Elbit Systems due to the manufacturer’s involvement in building the West Bank separation fence.
Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation… By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation.
Israeli bloggers have recently released a new Android application that informs users whether their potential purchases were manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
A report by the Electronic Intifada covering the most recent BDS activities against Israel’s settlement program.
The BDS campaign continues to pick up steam.
World-renowned architect Frank Gehry and the legendary pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim joined the international campaign in support of the Israeli actors’ refusal to perform in the new cultural center of Ariel, according to the website of Jewish Voices for Peace.
“The Local Councils are led by mayors from all over the political spectrum for Israel’s citizens. These kinds of actions only hurt the cause of advancing peace…”
IOA Editor: This would be accurate if you substituted the word “colonization” for the word “peace.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry: “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits… This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” While efforts to promote a positive image of Israel abroad persist, Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli state policies.
The motion called for the General Council to work closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to actively encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and construction of the Apartheid Wall.
In a recent, quietly circulated letter from the desk of Yaacov Ellis, CEO of Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories—a company at the center of a growing international boycott campaign—and directed at the company’s retail partners, Ellis deploys specious information about his own company’s business practices, contradictory claims about Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and unfounded innuendo about boycott campaign supporters.
Folk music icon Pete Seeger has been urged by over 40 organizations, along with musicians close to him, to cancel his participation in a November internet event organized by Israeli groups, including the Jewish National Fund.
A conversation with Noam Chomsky on Palestine/Israel, covering Zionism, the nature of statehood, bi-national / one-state / two-state solutions, the right of return, and the BDS movement – its actions, and their impacts on the Palestinian people. Filmed September 2nd, 2010.
Zionism in its present meaning, in its common meaning, is contradictory to human rights, to equality, to democracy, and [Zionist leftists] don’t recognise it. It’s too hard for them to recognise it, to realise it. And therefore their position is an impossible position, because they want everything: they want Zionism, they want democracy, they want a Jewish state, but they want also rights for the Palestinians… it’s very nice to want everything, but you have to make your choice and they are not courageous enough to make the choice.
I have often spoken out in opposition to cultural boycotts … but in the political arena, artists make a statement by their presence or their absence.
It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis an Palestinians alike. They’ve made a wonderful decision, and they deserve the respect of people everywhere who dream of justice. We stand with them.
More than 150 American actors, writers, directors and other artists signed a letter of support for the Israeli actors who declared they would not perform in the West Bank.
IOA Editor: Read letter and view list of signatories HERE.
The time has come for those planning the red-roofed facts on the ground to refuse to design any more buildings in the settlements.
We will know the answer in the coming weeks: Is there genuine theater in Israel, or is it just puppet theater? Are our theater artists really actors, playwrights and directors, or are they marionettes? Israeli theater presents “Moral Blindness” – a play with infinite acts.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Sunday the theater figures’ boycott of a new theater in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, saying that the government doesn’t need to fund a group promoting a boycott of Israel from within.
Fifty-three Israeli theater professionals, including performers, playwrights and directors, have signed a petition stating they would not appear in the West Bank settlement Ariel… Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat said Saturday that the actors’ protest was a serious matter, and was causing a rift in Israeli society.
“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”
Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense.
Part II of a two-part essay. Read Part I HERE
“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”
Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense. (Part I of a two-part essay.)
Among those surveyed … was Ofra Ben-Artzi, a left-wing activist and the sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. “I told the pollster, ‘Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.’ It testifies to the level of racism we’ve reached,” she said.
Harvard University has insisted that the sale of shares in Israeli companies is not driven by pro-Palestinian boycott and divestment campaign.
ALSO
Globes (Updated): Harvard denies divestment from Israel
Foreign Policy: Harvard not divesting from Israel
IOA Editor: Harvard’s sale of all its Israeli holdings will remain a bit of a mystery, at least for a while. The manner in which it was done – an entire country-portfolio, sold at once – during the second quarter of 2010 which, coincidentally or not, was also when the Berkeley BDS struggle culminated, suggests it may be more than just a matter of investment management.
If the Harvard Corporation wanted to avoid becoming embroiled in a BDS struggle connected to the Israeli Occupation – say, the next time Israel commits war crimes on sea or land – its best strategy would be to make a ‘business decision’ to pull out of Israel, quietly and without fanfare: not to make a principled, morally-based and publicly explained University policy decision, one that would be controversial and may cause some of Harvard’s donors to put their money elsewhere. And this is exactly what it did. Only time will tell.
In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.
IOA Editor:The Harvard Management Company — a subsidiary of Harvard University charged with managing the university’s endowment, pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts — is best known for managing the university’s $26 billion endowment, the largest endowment in US higher education. Historically, the HMC has been the leading university investment management company, receiving a great deal of attention from all other university funds.
This is probably the first reported university endowment divestment from all Israeli holdings. Coming from Harvard, it sets a very important precedent: it is likely to be reviewed, scrutinized, and possibly followed, by other universities. Because Harvard, or HMC, has yet to make a public statement on the decision, one can only assume that it took place as a preventive measure, to avoid becoming the “next Berkeley.”
Despite Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the escalating displacement in the Negev and East Jerusalem, Palestinians have some reason to celebrate. In Washington [state] a food co-op has passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli products, confirming that the boycott movement – five years old last month – has finally crossed the Atlantic.
A primer on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), its history, participants, and recent successes.
IOA Editor: An Appeal from April 2001, which predates by several years actions covered in the summary presented here by IMEU, can be found on the Matzpun website. A co-author of the Matzpun Appeal reports that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first call for boycott of Israeli products and tourism, covering both Israel and the occupied territories. At the time, the initiative was very isolated, not receiving support from organizations that now support BDS.
For 62 years, the Palestinian people have been misunderstood and oppressed, and in a small way, we hope to change that. It is in the spirit of justice that we found the inspiration to compile The Veritas Handbook.
FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE VERITAS HANDBOOK
Boycott is the primary tool of those engaged in nonviolent resistance to systematic injustice. Boycott targets unjust policies. It is not about ‘the right to exist’; Everyone has the right to ‘exist’… Israel inside the green line is the agency of occupation and [it] conducts, plans, prepares and executes aspects of the occupation from inside the green line.
Tony Blair’s term as envoy of the Quartet (US, UK, Russia, UN) has been marked by many photo opportunities but few, if any, accomplishments. Indeed, research shows that Blair’s relationship with one of the world’s richest men poses a clear and significant conflict of interest with his duties as Quartet envoy.
It is not our right or responsibility to lecture the Palestinian leadership on what they should do. That is up to the Palestinians to decide. But it is very definitely our responsibility to focus attention on what we should be doing. Of prime importance is to educate and organize the American public and to develop popular forces that can overcome the dominant propaganda images that sustain the US policies that have been undermining Palestinian rights.
IOA Editor: And much more from Noam Chomsky on the US and Israeli dynamics of the Occupation, and on approaches available to the anti-Occupation movement, including detailed comments on BDS.
The basic conflict can be understood in very conventional terms of people enduring and trying to resist an occupation. I don’t think it requires much more profundity in order to understand why Palestinians are opposed to their current condition, and I think Israel is behaving like most occupying powers behave — specifically, it is very hard to evict them.
