The Israeli Parliament approved the first of three readings of a new law which, if passed, will make it illegal to declare a boycott on Israel or Israeli companies, participate in a boycott, or provide aid in the form of information to anyone who is part of the BDS campaign. The bill also penalizes the PA for its decision in May 2010 to ban the use by Palestinians of settlement products. The law even affects international citizens who will be banned from entry into Israel for 10 years and will be effective retroactively.
BDS
This movement is taking upon itself what governments have failed to do: to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. The dockworkers’ refusal to deal with Israeli ships is part of this vibrant movement and comes in response to the appeal in 2005 from Palestinian civil society. Other initiatives include campaigns for the boycott of Israeli products, divestment from companies aiding Israeli war crimes, and cultural isolation, so as to not entertain Israeli apartheid.
Board member: “I am trying to be realistic – the Olympia Food Co-Op boycott is not going to change the Israeli policy, but I believe that these small drops will eventually have an effect. I would like to see more co-ops joining the boycott and more voices involved.”
Almost immediately, Shapira related, she began talking about his activity in Global BDS Movement: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine, which supports measures against Israel… The agent reminded Shapira the Knesset was expected shortly to outlaw calls for sanctions against Israel.
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
Under the new law [if enacted], any group could sue damages of up to NIS 30,000 from anyone who launched a boycott against them, or incited a boycott, without having to prove that damage was indeed caused. An additional sum could then be demanded once damages were proven.
Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he threatened to “punish” any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.
Neve Gordon: “I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen.”
Hollywood actors Meg Ryan and Dustin Hoffman backed out of attending this year’s annual Jerusalem Film Festival, which is set to kick off this coming Thursday, following the international outcry over Israel’s attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.
“Israeli academia will suffer great damage if politicians dictate to it what is right and wrong to say, think, research and teach, and force it to adopt that kind of criteria for admitting, promoting or rejecting researchers and professors. Your statement about intending to use your authority to act against professors who support an academic boycott of Israel are causing just such damage.”
This week we will join with other groups using the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign to pressure the Israeli government to respect human rights & international law, and to raise money for an important documentary film about Operation Cast Lead, the assault on Gaza.
[B]anking sanctions impact quickly upon financial elites who have the clout to pressure governments to concede political change. Trade sanctions, by contrast, impact hardest on the poor or lower-paid workers, who have virtually no political influence. SWIFT will, however, only take action against Israeli banks if ordered to do so by a Belgian court, and then only in very exceptional circumstances. Such very exceptional circumstances are now well-documented by the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.
A new “anti-boycott bill”, the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.
The bill was introduced by 25 Knesset members, of both coalition and opposition parties. The bill would outlaw a wide range of BDS activities, both inside and outside of Israel and in the Occupied Territories, heavily penalize participants, and be applied one year retroactive to its effective date. Also, this proposed law would require the state of Israel to monitor the views and actions of activists abroad.
Each of us, each of you, can draw the line through BDS and act as a caring, responsible citizen of the world. To end Israel’s 43-year-old occupation. To end the unacceptable, criminal siege of Gaza. To end racist laws and policies inside Israel, openly targeting the Palestinian citizens of Israel. To end more than sixty years of ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.
A Swedish Dock-workers union week-long blockade of goods to and from Israel is underway. The ongoing nation-wide blockade in Swedish harbors, based on the request of the united Palestinian union-movement, is the Swedish Dockworkers Union’s attempt to contribute to pressuring Israel on: Lifting the blockade on Gaza, and allowing an independent, international investigation of the Israeli boarding of the Freedom Flotilla.
A new bill, the third in a series of proposed laws seeking to restrict the activities of peace activists and human rights organizations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), has been proposed by a group of Members of the Israeli parliament.
In France, the campaign to boycott Ahava Dead Sea cosmetics has entered a new phase with boycott, divestment and sanctions advocates taking legal action against the Sephora cosmetics retail chain’s contract with the company.
Divestment is a nonviolent form of economic protest long-used… to encourage companies to end unjust practices. By selling its investments in Caterpillar, General Electric, and Terex, the NIC expresses its commitment to do no harm with its investments and affirms the call of the UMC Book of Discipline to “avoid investments that appear likely, directly or indirectly, to support violation of human rights.”
BDS initiative is a moral strategy which has demonstrated its potential for success. Most recently, German Deutsche Bank became the latest of several European institutions to divest from Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems; two main Italian supermarket chains announced a boycott of produce from illegal Israeli settlements; performers Elvis Costello and Gil Scott-Heron cancelled appearances in Israel.
A number of local supermarket chains are taking a political stand: They have decided to boycott products manufactured in Turkey.
IOA Editor: Israel can boycott the world, but won’t tolerate the world boycotting it.
Will Palestinian soon pay price for boycott? A new bill submitted by 25 Knesset members Wednesday would see money slated for transfer to the Palestinian Authority used to compensate Israelis hurt by the PA’s settlement boycott… According to the bill, Israeli citizens must not initiate, encourage, or aid a boycott against the State of Israel. Anyone who violates the order will be forced to pay compensation to those undermined by the embargo.
IOA Editor: First the Flotilla massacre; then the massive propaganda campaign filled with lies, and more lies, and then some more lies; then the attempted explanations, and the retractions; then the racist joking about murder and starvation, followed by more retractions, and now an official Israel government apology. What do you know… Aren’t we all thankful to the Israeli government for clearing it up?
And to think that all of this is supported and financed by hard-earned US tax-dollars and by tax-deductible contributions… under the presidency of a Nobel (Peace!) Laureate who has yet to criticize Israel for carrying out all these actions that his administration, like all previous ones, is so very generously financing. Not a pretty picture, any way you look at it.
On the other hand, kinder and better people decided to vote with their feet this week, to show their disapproval of Israeli actions: the Occupation, the Gaza Siege, the attack of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
They include: Best-selling authors Alice Walker and Iain Banks [and Henning Mankell] who have backed the boycott campaign; three international performance groups that canceled their scheduled Tel Aviv appearances; Dockworker unions in Sweden and South Africa who refused to handle Israeli ships;
a UK union that passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies.
Now, this is Hope, this is Change!
UPDATE: Max Blumenthal’s Nailed Again: IDF Description of Suspicious Photo It Distributed Is Retracted
LVMH-owned Sephora has been taken to court by the Palestinian rights organisation CAPJPO-EuroPalestine over the sale of cosmetics brand Ahava, according to press reports. Separately, the US women’s peace organisation, CodePink, organised a boycott of the products.
How can we rely on those Palestinians? For 43 years, they have been building the settlers’ homes with the sweat of their brows, paving roads for them and building their fences, and then suddenly, out of the blue, a boycott? Is that the way for partners to behave? Is that how they pay us back after we educated them for so many years to be our hewers of wood and drawers of water?
Please consider adding your name to the protest of Israel’s barring Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank in order to deliver a speech at Birzeit University.
Two Italian supermarkets have announced that they plan to stop selling all Israeli products as they could not differentiate whether they came form West Bank settlements or inside the Green Line.
It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July. One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament.
I have never heard of a democratic state denying entry to thinkers… who neither call for violence or break local or international law. So what on earth is happening to Israel? … If anything, barring Chomsky gives ammunition to those who say that Israel is infringing on academic freedom in the Palestinian Authority, and that a boycott against its universities is therefore justified.
Noam Chomsky: “The government did not like the kinds of things I say and they did not like that I was only talking at Bir Zeit and not at an Israeli university too,” he said… I asked them if they could find any government in the world that likes the things I say.”
It would be possible to identify with these intolerant reactions were it not for the fact that Israel itself is one of the world’s prolific boycotters. Not only does it boycott, it preaches to others, at times even forces others, to follow in tow. Israel has imposed a cultural, academic, political, economic and military boycott on the territories. At the same time, almost no one here utters a dissenting word questioning the legitimacy of these boycotts. Yet the thought of boycotting the boycotter? Now that’s inconceivable.
Senior academics from Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute, and other top institutions around world denounce Boston Science Museum’s sponsorship of Israeli exhibit, calling it propaganda campaign. ‘This is an attempt to distract from Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations,’ they say.
An MIT grad student has introduced a new internet platform to help activists deepen and expand their campaigns to boycott products made in Israeli settlements. The website, Boycott Toolkit, is a resource where users can generate lists of specific products and companies targeted for boycotts. Right now the site lists wines, food products, and cosmetics made in settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights.
Irish Senators and Members of Parliament are leading the way in explicitly calling on the Irish government to VETO Israel’s membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an exclusive club of 30 of the richest industrialized states.
The northern branch of the Islamic Movement [in Israel-Palestine] on Wednesday joined Arab states and the Palestinian Authority and called for a boycott of settlement goods. The call was directed at both Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, and the main justification was that the settlements undermine the peace process.
“Economic, political, cultural and institutional normalization legitimize Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people by giving the appearance of normalcy to the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. This relationship is hardly one between equals as Israel continues to violate our inalienable rights, steal our land, and prevent refugees from our right of return in contravention of international law and numerous UN resolutions.”
