An Interview with Aharon Shabtaï
Silvia Cattori, 6 March 2008
When the announcement that Israel would attend the "Fiera del libro" of Turin, (*) came out, an immediate wave of protest arose in Italy; and many personalities supported the boycott call, made by the Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian Writers' Associations (**). In France, strangely enough, the same invitation, to the "Salon du livre" of Paris, did not make much noise. Alone, the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtaï has refused to participate in these events, contrary to the 39 Israeli writers who accepted to be part of the Israeli delegation to these two exhibitions. Aharon Shabtaï explains here why these events –which he qualifies as "promotion of propaganda" for Israel -, must be boycotted, as well as any cultural event where this apartheid State is celebrated.
Silvia Cattori: In December 2007, learning that your name was among 40 Israeli writers invited at the "Salon du livre" of Paris where Israel is the "guest of honour", you declared that it is not possible to participate in an event where Israel, which commits daily crimes against civilians, is invited. Apparently, 39 Israeli writers do not see any problem in participating!?
Aharon Shabtaï [1]: This event will be opened by the French president Sarkozy and the Israeli president Shimon Perès. Given this situation, going to the "Salon du livre" of Paris as a writer, with the Israeli delegation, means that you are going dressed with the colour of the Israeli flag. Every day, Israel commits war crimes and imposes collective punishments on the Palestinians. There is no reason to celebrate anything.
Israel violates all international laws. Not only the Geneva Convention. The Hague International Court of justice condemned the illegal wall that Israel has built on confiscated Palestinian land. The book event, or any other kind of exhibition in which the Israeli State is invited, is not a way to promote peace in the Middle East, and not a way to bring justice to the Palestinians, but only propaganda to give Israel an image of being a liberal and democratic society. A State which maintains an occupation and commits daily crimes against civilians does not deserve to be invited to whichever cultural week. We cannot accept to be part of that. Israel is not a democratic State but an apartheid State. We cannot support that State at all.
Silvia Cattori: So, by inviting the Israeli State to celebrate its 60 years of existence, France and the organizers of the Salon are making a big mistake?
Aharon Shabtaï: It is not a mistake! It is a policy. I think that, for Nicolas Sarkozy, it is a way to take part in the Israeli occupation. There is collaboration between the European governments and Israel. The Israeli invitation is part of it. Without the help of the United States, and now the help of France, Israel could not continue such a policy against the Palestinians. This help gives Israel the green light to go on attacking and killing the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. It is very sad to see that France, Germany, European countries -which have a history of persecution against the Jews- are taking part in the persecution of the Palestinian and Muslim peoples by Israel.
Silvia Cattori: What do you answer to those who say that we must separate culture from politics?!
Aharon Shabtaï: Why to separate? In the tradition of Europe, going back to the Greeks, writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Thomas Mann, always fought against oppression and for liberty. Liberal intellectuals and writers have always involved themselves in political criticism.
Silvia Cattori: So you condemn those who will participate in the Salon, like Amos Oz, Avraham B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, David Grossman, Zeruya Shalev, Etgar Keret, Orly Castel-Bloom, and others?
Aharon Shabtaï: Yes of course! I condemn them because, in that way, they promote the Israeli propaganda and collaborate with the Israeli occupiers.
Silvia Cattori: Did you call them to join the boycott [2]?
Aharon Shabtaï: Writers like Amos Oz and David Grossmann, and others, do not want to boycott Israel! I do not expect anything from them. They are the ambassadors of Israel. They usually collaborate with the Israeli government; they are part of the Israeli propaganda. So it is very natural for them to go to any place where Israel is officially invited. They are helping the Israeli government.
Silvia Cattori: Do you consider these Israeli writers as collaborators?
Aharon Shabtaï: Yes, because these invitations are generally organised by a government who support the military occupation of the Palestinian people. I think that any intellectual, any writer has to refuse to participate in any meeting in which the anniversary of Israel is celebrated. Instead of that, they have to help the Palestinians to get their rights, their land and their water back.
What we have to do, is to fight the Israel's discriminatory acts and persecution; to have the same attitude the writers had during the struggle against the South African apartheid regime; the attitude of the radical and liberal writers like Brecht, Aragon, Breton when, during the Nazi period, they organized a Congress and tried to fight against the discrimination and persecution of the Jews.
Silvia Cattori: Is it true that the Israeli government uses the Israelis working in the field of art and literature as part of its public relations network, for its information warfare, as a way to show an attractive face of Israel?
Aharon Shabtaï: Yes, Israel's regime uses them as public relations; like when, in the Soviet Union, the Soviet writers were mobilized by the regime. So, the Israeli writers are now going to Paris like collaborators of an ugly regime, and to be part of the regime.
In such a situation, when such crimes are committed every day by Israel against the Palestinians, anybody who does not cut any link with the Israeli government -this is a matter of fact- is collaborating and doing propaganda for Israel.
Silvia Cattori: In your view, all honest and human people should boycott not only Paris and Turin exhibitions, but all "Israel at 60" celebrations? So,the only way for Israeli writers would be to have the courage to lose some privileges, to respond to the Palestinians who desperately call for a boycott and to apply to Israel the same treatment that was applied to South Africa?
Aharon Shabtaï: Yes exactly. I think that we must work for our common future with the Palestinians, and not to support the militarism of Israel. Continuing occupation and the war is a very big danger for the future of the Jews, the Israelis and our children. We can help to stop this occupation.
Silvia Cattori: One Israeli Arab writer, Sayed Kashua, has apparently accepted to go to the "Salon du livre" in Paris and Turin with the Israeli delegation!
Aharon Shabtaï: He is on the official list by Israel, like the 39 other writers. He is a good person. But, as an Israeli Arab, he is not in a comfortable position. It must be dangerous for him to boycott. He must be afraid. He might lose his work. The life of the Israeli Arabs, living in Israel, is so bad; it is very difficult for them to survive. As all the Israeli Arabs, he is considered by Israel as a second class citizen. This is not my situation. I belong to the class that dominates, I am Jew, I can boycott without any danger for myself, but an Arab has to be very careful.
Silvia Cattori: Outside of Israel also, the intellectuals, who call for the boycott against Israel, are not in an easy position!
Aharon Shabtaï: You, the Europeans, you boycott the occupied people in Palestine because they voted democratically for the Hamas government; and now you are boycotting the people of Gaza and collaborating with Israel against the Palestinian people and their government!
Gaza is a ghetto, a concentration camp! At the same time you, Europeans, are celebrating Israel without any consideration of the plight of nearly four million of Palestinians who are living in a situation similar to that of the Blacks under the apartheid regime of white South Africa.
It is difficult to find the right words to express such an absurdity. The plight of the Palestinians is even much worse than the plight of the Blacks in South Africa.
The Palestinians are starved, are bombed every day, and are killed on a large scale. The situation in Gaza, under Israeli aggressive military operations, is horrific.
When the Sarkozy government invites Israel, it knows that this will encourage Israel to go on with the occupation and its crimes against the Palestinians.
I do not think that the Europeans, with their values, can invite a State like Israel and take part in its 60 years celebrations. Paris and Turin events are purely another occasion for Israel to make propaganda and gain more support for its military occupation.
When Kosovo fought against Serbia, Europe supported Kosovo, and made war against Serbia. Serbia was the right owner of Kosovo but, in spite of that, the world fought against Serbia and bombed it. Here, it is just the opposite. Israel is sitting on an occupied territory. And you, Europeans, you are going on to help the Israeli occupiers and not the Palestinians who are suffering under the occupation? Why this double standard?
Silvia Cattori: It was so far impossible, even within the solidarity movement, to treat Israel with the same severity as the apartheid regime of South Africa. When the Swiss intellectual, Tariq Ramadan [3], simply declared that if we are coherent and respect the dignity of the human being, we must boycott this event, he was vilified and accused of stirring up "anti-Semitism". In the case of Israel, the boycott is often considered by people of Jewish religion, and by representatives of the left parties, as an "anti-Semite" act!
Aharon Shabtaï: The Jews do not want to see that nearly four million of Palestinians are living in concentration camps, in prison camps, like in Gaza.
People in Europe do not know exactly what the reality here is. It is very stupid to use the word "anti-Semite" and to call people, who call for the boycott of Israel, as being "anti-Semitic".
I was born here, I have my children here, and I am also asking for the boycott of Israel, I have the same idea. Recently, Benny Ziffer, the editor of the literary pages of Haaretz newspaper, called for the boycott of the "Salon" too.
These claims of "anti-Semitism" are propaganda claims. Until recently, Israel succeeded in Europeans being in favour of the occupation. But, after the war against Lebanon, and Gaza, European people cannot continue to support Israel. The call for the boycott has nothing to do with any racism.
Silvia Cattori: When, in British universities, it is possible to refuse to invite Israeli writers or scientists, in Continental Europe, the institutional left never gives any answer to the call of the Palestinians for a boycott.
Aharon Shabtaï: I do not know what left means when their representatives do not cut any relation with Israel. I think that many people are afraid of being accused of being "anti-Semitic". Now, the history of the Holocaust is completely falsified. There is a Holocaust industry, privatised by the Israeli propaganda; it is something disgusting.
Silvia Cattori: Do you receive support for your position?
Aharon Shabtaï: Yes I receive many letters from Europe. I know that people are concerned; they have nothing against the Jews but they are critic of Israel's brutal policy. This is something that is not mentioned by the media.
People have supported Israel for so many years! But now, from their reactions, we can see that the sentiments of grassroots people are mostly against the domination and militarism of Israel. But, in the media you cannot find it. As with the Iraq war, the media are on the side of the State which makes war. The media are pro-Israel.
Silvia Cattori
(*) Israel is guest of honour to the « Fiera internazionale del Libro » of Turin (8-12 May 2008) here and here.
(**) here.
[1] Aharon Shabtai, father of six children, he lives in Tel Aviv. He is the foremost Hebrew translator of Greek drama and the author of numerous collections of poetry. Born in 1939 in Tel Aviv, he attended the Tel Nordau School and the Educational Institute at Kibbutz Merhaviya. After his military service, he studied Greek and Philosophy at the Hebrew University, the Sorbonne, and Cambridge, and from 1972 to 1985 he taught Theater Studies in Jerusalem. He was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Translation in 1993. http://freshfiction.com/author.php?id=15399
[2] here, here, and here.
[3] here and here.
Showing posts with label boycott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boycott. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Court hearing against Swiss anti-apartheid activists turns into further show of solidarity
Media Release:
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Today the four activists that ran onto the football playground with banners ("Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid") during the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel stood accused in the court of law of Basel, Switzerland.
In front of the building around 30 supporters gathered to demonstrate their solidarity by showing banners. Half of the group of supporters was not let inside the courtroom although the court hearing was declared public.
As the judge started to read the facts of the case at the beginning of the court hearing, the spectators spontaneously started to applaud. The accused did not express themselves about their personal affairs nor about the case, they instead read a declaration towards the public about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium with their backs facing the judge.
During the proclamation of the sentence people started to demonstrate in the courtroom with banners stating "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The charge of necessitation had to be dropped, the charge of breach of domestic peace led to a monetary fine on parole.
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
November 1st, 2007
A group of activists who interrupted an Israel-Switzerland World Cup qualifier with a protest against Israeli apartheid today used their court appearance in Basle to publicly denounce the occupation again.
On September 3, 2005 the four activists ran onto the field with banners demanding "Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid". The protest was witnessed by thousands of football fans in the stadium and many more watching the game on television. (For more click here.)
At today's court hearing, around 30 supporters gathered in front of the court carrying banners to demonstrate their solidarity with the activists. Half of the supporters were not allowed into the courtroom although the hearing had been declared public.
Inside the court, as the judge began reading the facts of the case,spectators in the gallery spontaneously started to applaud. The defendants declined to present a case for their defense, insteadturning their backs to the judge and reading a declaration to the public gallery about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium.
One of the defendants told the court: "We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!"
The activists were charges with breach of domestic peace and fined, while a second charge of necessitation was dropped.
As the sentence was read out, activists in the courtroom unfurled courtroom banners declaring "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The activists' full statement is given below.
Declaration for the court-hearing in Basel of the 30th of October, 2007
Today we stand accused in a court of law because we took sides in a political conflict.
On Saturday September 3rd 2005 we used the occasion of the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel in the St. Jakob stadium of Basel for a protest action. In the 53rd minute we ran onto the playground with two banners demanding “Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid”. We did this to call attention on the situation in Palestine. We wished to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who have been oppressed, banished, tortured and killed by the police and the Israeli army for a very long time – all as part of Israeli Government policies. The year 2007 is the mournful anniversary of four decades of occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Highs.
With our action, we wanted to demonstrate clearly our solidarity with the civilian people of Palestine and the progressive forces struggling against oppression in the Middle East. Furthermore we called for a boycott of Israeli products. We are still absolutely committed to this stance.
We are now faced with a situation, in which a Swiss court of justice can decide on sanctions against us, because we expressed our opinion in an action with banners on a football field. This situation emerges out of a relation of power which is not in our favor at this present time. This is why we do not acknowledge this court of law. As a result this court of law does not have the legitimation to judge our declaration. We do not need nor acknowledge anyone who wants to interfere in our lives and in our political activities in such a way. The numerous statements of solidarity following our action encourage us in our attitude and we want to thank everyone for their solidarity and support in our political struggles; especially those who are on our side in a situation like today.
To this very day the people in the Palestinian territories are forced to live under horrible conditions. The Israeli State has fragmented and mostly enclosed the Palestinian territories by building fences and walls. The lives of the Palestinians are becoming more and more like life in prison. Limited freedom of movement, controls on roadblocks, fear and the constant threat of death are part of everyday life for the people of Palestine. In this era of imperialist warfare in the Middle East there seems to be no self-determined solution on the horizon for the Palestinians. Far from it: the people will continue to suffer under this perpetual state of war.
At this very moment the Palestinians are being attacked in new ways unlike the military war of aggression against Lebanon in July of 2006, which meant to increase the pressure on the civilian population: since Sunday the Israeli government is limiting the petrol supply into the Gaza Strip and has reserved the right to cut power supplies temporarily for the future. Through such measures the war of oppression and intimidation has also become a war of economic attrition aimed at hitting hard the one and a half million people living in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel and its confederates increasingly appear to prepare to wreak havoc on even more people: witness the continual threats issued against Syria and Iran.
The world population continues watching these crimes and carefully avoids getting involved. Not only this: Switzerland is one of the countries actively supporting Israel by supplying arms as well as importing Israeli products, mostly fruits and vegetables, as we can see in Swiss supermarkets.
We continue to believe that every war must be resisted by all means and that the people in the affected territories have to be granted the right of self determination.
We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!
Boycott Israel!
Tear down the apartheid wall!
Free Palestine!
For a society without exploitation and oppression!
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Today the four activists that ran onto the football playground with banners ("Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid") during the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel stood accused in the court of law of Basel, Switzerland.
In front of the building around 30 supporters gathered to demonstrate their solidarity by showing banners. Half of the group of supporters was not let inside the courtroom although the court hearing was declared public.
As the judge started to read the facts of the case at the beginning of the court hearing, the spectators spontaneously started to applaud. The accused did not express themselves about their personal affairs nor about the case, they instead read a declaration towards the public about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium with their backs facing the judge.
During the proclamation of the sentence people started to demonstrate in the courtroom with banners stating "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The charge of necessitation had to be dropped, the charge of breach of domestic peace led to a monetary fine on parole.
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
November 1st, 2007
A group of activists who interrupted an Israel-Switzerland World Cup qualifier with a protest against Israeli apartheid today used their court appearance in Basle to publicly denounce the occupation again.
On September 3, 2005 the four activists ran onto the field with banners demanding "Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid". The protest was witnessed by thousands of football fans in the stadium and many more watching the game on television. (For more click here.)
At today's court hearing, around 30 supporters gathered in front of the court carrying banners to demonstrate their solidarity with the activists. Half of the supporters were not allowed into the courtroom although the hearing had been declared public.
Inside the court, as the judge began reading the facts of the case,spectators in the gallery spontaneously started to applaud. The defendants declined to present a case for their defense, insteadturning their backs to the judge and reading a declaration to the public gallery about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium.
One of the defendants told the court: "We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!"
The activists were charges with breach of domestic peace and fined, while a second charge of necessitation was dropped.
As the sentence was read out, activists in the courtroom unfurled courtroom banners declaring "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The activists' full statement is given below.
Declaration for the court-hearing in Basel of the 30th of October, 2007
Today we stand accused in a court of law because we took sides in a political conflict.
On Saturday September 3rd 2005 we used the occasion of the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel in the St. Jakob stadium of Basel for a protest action. In the 53rd minute we ran onto the playground with two banners demanding “Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid”. We did this to call attention on the situation in Palestine. We wished to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who have been oppressed, banished, tortured and killed by the police and the Israeli army for a very long time – all as part of Israeli Government policies. The year 2007 is the mournful anniversary of four decades of occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Highs.
With our action, we wanted to demonstrate clearly our solidarity with the civilian people of Palestine and the progressive forces struggling against oppression in the Middle East. Furthermore we called for a boycott of Israeli products. We are still absolutely committed to this stance.
We are now faced with a situation, in which a Swiss court of justice can decide on sanctions against us, because we expressed our opinion in an action with banners on a football field. This situation emerges out of a relation of power which is not in our favor at this present time. This is why we do not acknowledge this court of law. As a result this court of law does not have the legitimation to judge our declaration. We do not need nor acknowledge anyone who wants to interfere in our lives and in our political activities in such a way. The numerous statements of solidarity following our action encourage us in our attitude and we want to thank everyone for their solidarity and support in our political struggles; especially those who are on our side in a situation like today.
To this very day the people in the Palestinian territories are forced to live under horrible conditions. The Israeli State has fragmented and mostly enclosed the Palestinian territories by building fences and walls. The lives of the Palestinians are becoming more and more like life in prison. Limited freedom of movement, controls on roadblocks, fear and the constant threat of death are part of everyday life for the people of Palestine. In this era of imperialist warfare in the Middle East there seems to be no self-determined solution on the horizon for the Palestinians. Far from it: the people will continue to suffer under this perpetual state of war.
At this very moment the Palestinians are being attacked in new ways unlike the military war of aggression against Lebanon in July of 2006, which meant to increase the pressure on the civilian population: since Sunday the Israeli government is limiting the petrol supply into the Gaza Strip and has reserved the right to cut power supplies temporarily for the future. Through such measures the war of oppression and intimidation has also become a war of economic attrition aimed at hitting hard the one and a half million people living in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel and its confederates increasingly appear to prepare to wreak havoc on even more people: witness the continual threats issued against Syria and Iran.
The world population continues watching these crimes and carefully avoids getting involved. Not only this: Switzerland is one of the countries actively supporting Israel by supplying arms as well as importing Israeli products, mostly fruits and vegetables, as we can see in Swiss supermarkets.
We continue to believe that every war must be resisted by all means and that the people in the affected territories have to be granted the right of self determination.
We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!
Boycott Israel!
Tear down the apartheid wall!
Free Palestine!
For a society without exploitation and oppression!
OneVoice - "Ours is not a message of peace and love and coexistence"
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
OneVoice but not for peace
Oh please! Only a cynic would say such a thing. So who was the cynic? Well the organiser actually. Here's the Mercury News:
"Ours is not a message of peace and love and coexistence," said Daniel Lubetzky, the 39-year-old Jewish businessman who's behind the OneVoice concerts.
"It's a message of let's not let this get worse," he said. "We are fed up. We don't love each other. You leave us alone and we leave you alone and let's just have a state and get that done before it gets ugly."
=======================
Celebrating Peace or Camouflaging Apartheid?
Boycott the Jericho-Tel Aviv Public Event on October 18th!
PACBI, 4 October, 2007
On October 18th, One Million Voices, an organization led by Israelis and international figures with the support of some Palestinians, is organizing a public event in Jericho and Tel Aviv, simultaneously. The event will include performances by renowned artists Brian Adams and Ilham Madfa'i. As stated on the organization's English webpage, the objective of the event is to “mark the first time that massive numbers of Israelis and Palestinians gather simultaneously to unite against violent extremism.”
According to the widely accepted boycott criteria advocated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the event falls under the category of normalization projects and violates the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, trade unions, political parties, and grassroots movements, for the following reasons:
1. Participants are required to join the One Voice Movement and sign a mandate -- ostensibly based on a "two-state solution," but without any commitment to international parameters -- which assumes equal responsibility of "both sides" for the "conflict," and suspiciously fails to call for Israel's full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.
2. The event is sponsored by Israeli institutions (mostly from the private sector) and endorsed by mainstream Israeli political figures from parties including the Likud, Labour and Shas. These Israeli "partners" are unquestionably complicit in maintaining Israel 's occupation and other forms of oppression.
We believe this event is being organized to promote a "peace" agreement that is devoid of the minimal requirements of justice, and that will leave the Palestinian people as disenfranchised as previous agreements have. The unfortunate and harmful support of Palestinian businessmen, religious and political figures, among others, for this event indicates either ignorance of the hidden agenda inherent in the whole initiative, deceptively camouflaged as a collective call for peace, or willingness to forfeit the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in return for advancing selfish interests.
We call on the Palestinian public and international supporters of a just peace in Palestine not to take part in this public relations charade that conceals a misleading political program that falls significantly short of international law tenets and the Palestinian national program.
We call on Arab and Palestinian artists, in particular, not to participate in this or any similar event whose real objectives have nothing to do with genuine peace.
We call on Palestinian board members of the One Million Voices to withdraw their support for this movement that only serves to blind the Palestinian public and sidetrack it from struggling, with the solidarity of its international supporters, for its UN-sanctioned rights, for justice, equality and freedom.
* Endorsed by tens of cultural and other civil society organizations in Palestine and the Arab World.
OneVoice but not for peace
Oh please! Only a cynic would say such a thing. So who was the cynic? Well the organiser actually. Here's the Mercury News:
"Ours is not a message of peace and love and coexistence," said Daniel Lubetzky, the 39-year-old Jewish businessman who's behind the OneVoice concerts.
"It's a message of let's not let this get worse," he said. "We are fed up. We don't love each other. You leave us alone and we leave you alone and let's just have a state and get that done before it gets ugly."
=======================
Celebrating Peace or Camouflaging Apartheid?
Boycott the Jericho-Tel Aviv Public Event on October 18th!
PACBI, 4 October, 2007
On October 18th, One Million Voices, an organization led by Israelis and international figures with the support of some Palestinians, is organizing a public event in Jericho and Tel Aviv, simultaneously. The event will include performances by renowned artists Brian Adams and Ilham Madfa'i. As stated on the organization's English webpage, the objective of the event is to “mark the first time that massive numbers of Israelis and Palestinians gather simultaneously to unite against violent extremism.”
According to the widely accepted boycott criteria advocated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the event falls under the category of normalization projects and violates the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, trade unions, political parties, and grassroots movements, for the following reasons:
1. Participants are required to join the One Voice Movement and sign a mandate -- ostensibly based on a "two-state solution," but without any commitment to international parameters -- which assumes equal responsibility of "both sides" for the "conflict," and suspiciously fails to call for Israel's full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.
2. The event is sponsored by Israeli institutions (mostly from the private sector) and endorsed by mainstream Israeli political figures from parties including the Likud, Labour and Shas. These Israeli "partners" are unquestionably complicit in maintaining Israel 's occupation and other forms of oppression.
We believe this event is being organized to promote a "peace" agreement that is devoid of the minimal requirements of justice, and that will leave the Palestinian people as disenfranchised as previous agreements have. The unfortunate and harmful support of Palestinian businessmen, religious and political figures, among others, for this event indicates either ignorance of the hidden agenda inherent in the whole initiative, deceptively camouflaged as a collective call for peace, or willingness to forfeit the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in return for advancing selfish interests.
We call on the Palestinian public and international supporters of a just peace in Palestine not to take part in this public relations charade that conceals a misleading political program that falls significantly short of international law tenets and the Palestinian national program.
We call on Arab and Palestinian artists, in particular, not to participate in this or any similar event whose real objectives have nothing to do with genuine peace.
We call on Palestinian board members of the One Million Voices to withdraw their support for this movement that only serves to blind the Palestinian public and sidetrack it from struggling, with the solidarity of its international supporters, for its UN-sanctioned rights, for justice, equality and freedom.
* Endorsed by tens of cultural and other civil society organizations in Palestine and the Arab World.
Friday, 28 September 2007
A conversation with Dr Victor Batarseh, Mayor of Bethlehem
‘Visit the cradle of Christianity’ – plea to world
16 September, 2007, The Catholic Weekly
The Catholic Mayor of Bethlehem, Dr Victor Batarseh, visited Sydney last month to 'twin' his ancient, multi-racial home city with the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, one of Sydney's most multi-cultural communities, and to invite Australians of all religions to visit Bethlehem. A retired surgeon, Dr Batarseh, 72, seeks in his world travels to highlight the sufferings of his city, to win as many friends as he can in an international campaign, Open Bethlehem, a core component of which is the "granting" of a Bethlehem 'passport'. His goal is to increase employment in the troubled city and to rebuild its tourist status. At the heart of the campaign is provision of free access to and from the city.
In a conversation with Brian Davies, Dr Batarseh explains the stress and hardships of life in the pilgrims' city and its first problem. “They (Israeli forces) come over looking for anyone who might do anything against Israel, try to imprison them and, if they do not give themselves up, then they take them by force or sometimes they shoot them. All this has had a terrible impact on the people of Bethlehem. It’s why tourism has come down to 10 per cent of normal tourism; even when the tourists come over they don’t stay overnight in Bethlehem. They just come to the Church of the Nativity and then go back to Jerusalem.”
--------------------------
Q. So it’s no wonder tourism has faded drastically?
Well, they used to stay in Bethlehem, but, you know, the bad propaganda propagated by outside travel agents linked with Israel puts them off. They say Bethlehem is unsafe, that it’s more expensive than Jerusalem. It has had a very bad effect on tourism to Bethlehem and with this wall Israel has built and its checkpoints – this wall is a big syndrome against tourism to Bethlehem. And, you know, tourism is the main source of income in Bethlehem, for its citizens. The other contours of income include labour in Israel proper, but this has come down, too, to about 15 per cent, because any person who wants to leave Bethlehem to go to Israel has to get a special permit from the Israeli authorities which is rarely granted to anyone; they can take days to be issued. Even on health, you have to change ambulances and that can still be a 24-hour delay. So labour in Israel for us in Bethlehem is also down to about 15 per cent. Our other income was agriculture and most of the agricultural land in Bethlehem is now cut off by the Israeli wall of separation. All of our olive trees are behind the wall so the citizens cannot go and harvest their olive trees. That’s why we have economic stress, very high economic stress. More than 55 per cent of the population in Bethlehem lives below the poverty line.
Q. How are they supported?
Non-government organisations have set up in Bethlehem and we have some international aid agency support.
Q. Just going back to the Open Bethlehem campaign and the message you take with you about the plight of Bethlehem, what sort of impact have you had elsewhere?
Well it has given a good result: we had one day in Italy where they brought along about 40 travel agents and we spoke to them for most of the day, stressing how safe Bethlehem is for tourists and how Bethlehem is much cheaper than Jerusalem. We really had a very good result after that, but a few months later the Israeli and Lebanese war started and everything went bad again.
Q. That sounds a bit like the mayor of any city wanting to promote his against rivals; what you don’t refer to is the political situation that gives rise to these problems. When do you talk to political leaders of influence?
I talk not only to travel agents, but to political leaders abroad. Some of these leaders say that it is unsafe to go to Palestine, unsafe to go to Bethlehem. This is due to the powerful Zionist lobby all over the world and you know also the media is biased all over the world against the Palestinians and this adds up to preventing tourists and pilgrims coming to Bethlehem.
Q. Can you foresee a point at which Israeli policies and the situation of Palestine will somehow or other resolve amicably or how else do we arrive at a resolution of the problems you’re describing?
We hope this conflict can be solved peacefully, resolved peacefully, because this is the only way. Palestinians do not have an army. Israel has the mightiest army in the Middle East; they are a nuclear power and the only way we can reach peace is through peaceful ways, but we have to have world support on the UN resolutions, the key words to force Israel to comply with the UN resolutions . . . if the world won’t pressure Israel to meet these resolutions then I don’t see a way to peace, the only way to peace we would have liked, the ideal solution – a one state comprising all three religions. The Israelis would not accept this; that’s why we now accept a two-state solution, but tell me, where is the Palestinian state going to be, with all these settlements dividing the Palestinian citizens among themselves and into by-roads? There is no more land to build a viable Palestinian state.
Q. What would it take to persuade Israel to make whatever concessions are appropriate – yours, too – to achieve the two-state solution?
We have given all our concessions as Palestinians. All our land has been taken by the Israelis. Whatever they are going to give in way of concessions they are giving us back part of what we owned in the historical time and this part is only 13 to 18 per cent of historical Palestine and we are ready to accept that small part of our original land, but, unfortunately, until now Israel is manipulating the whole world and playing with words and building something solid on the ground: these illegal settlements in the West Bank. And they’re still building, up and down. These settlements will be a hindrance to the future, a hindrance to peaceful solution..
Q. You obviously see the Palestinian-Israeli situation as the core of the Middle East? If it was resolved might much of the difficulties of the rest of the Middle East also be resolved? What’s your view?
The core and the centre really of this problem in the Middle East is the Palestinian-Israeli issue. If that was resolved then we would have peace in the Middle East and all over the world and I think the US and the European Union should think better; they should try to be more balanced in their policies. They should really make Israel accept all the UN resolutions. They should not use force of arms; there are other ways of forcing Israel to listen. Remember what happened to South Africa, how change was finally made there by boycotting? Boycotting Israel – this is the way. You might go for one year or so, but it is a way, a peaceful way of forcing Israel to adopt the UN resolutions.
Q. So you would turn to the UN and Europe and the Western world to follow that through ?
Yes, of course . . .
Q. Do you see a role for the Vatican and the Church generally?
A big role. Don’t forget Bethlehem for Christians all over the world is the ‘mainland’ of the faith – the cradle of Bethlehem. Bethlehem and Palestine are the cradle of Christianity so they should look after it and not abandon this land. They should use their powers, the Church’s powers, the Vatican’s powers, to try to make peace in the Holy Land. By powers, I mean moral powers – and political power.
Q. What’s your message to Australians Christians in general, Catholics in particular?
I send a message from Bethlehem that the star of Bethlehem always shines and always sends messages of peace and love to all the world. To all, I say of this small city, this cradle of Christianity, don’t abandon Bethlehem. Bethlehem is the city of all Christians all over the world – every Christian anywhere in the world is considered by us to be a citizen of this holy city. Don’t abandon your city; come over, visit the city, visit the holy Church of the Nativity, spend some time in this city. In this way you’ll stand in solidarity with the city of Bethlehem and with the citizens of Bethlehem. We need you, we need your help, we need your prayers, we need to see you among us. By coming in hundreds and thousands you will, psychological, break this wall of separation that has been built by Israel.
Q. Others would say Bethlehem is not entirely Christian; after all it’s also very important to Muslims and Jews.
We have them all living in the city of Bethlehem, OK? We have been living together as good neighbours and we will remain living together as good neighbours . . . living together in the city of Bethlehem – a model of co-existence between these religions. Palestine was a model of co-existence between the three religions before the existence of Israel, before 1948. That is what we care for. This is what we aim for – to have co-existence between all religions and all nations.
Copyright © 2007 The Catholic Weekly - Sydney
16 September, 2007, The Catholic Weekly
The Catholic Mayor of Bethlehem, Dr Victor Batarseh, visited Sydney last month to 'twin' his ancient, multi-racial home city with the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, one of Sydney's most multi-cultural communities, and to invite Australians of all religions to visit Bethlehem. A retired surgeon, Dr Batarseh, 72, seeks in his world travels to highlight the sufferings of his city, to win as many friends as he can in an international campaign, Open Bethlehem, a core component of which is the "granting" of a Bethlehem 'passport'. His goal is to increase employment in the troubled city and to rebuild its tourist status. At the heart of the campaign is provision of free access to and from the city.
In a conversation with Brian Davies, Dr Batarseh explains the stress and hardships of life in the pilgrims' city and its first problem. “They (Israeli forces) come over looking for anyone who might do anything against Israel, try to imprison them and, if they do not give themselves up, then they take them by force or sometimes they shoot them. All this has had a terrible impact on the people of Bethlehem. It’s why tourism has come down to 10 per cent of normal tourism; even when the tourists come over they don’t stay overnight in Bethlehem. They just come to the Church of the Nativity and then go back to Jerusalem.”
--------------------------
Q. So it’s no wonder tourism has faded drastically?
Well, they used to stay in Bethlehem, but, you know, the bad propaganda propagated by outside travel agents linked with Israel puts them off. They say Bethlehem is unsafe, that it’s more expensive than Jerusalem. It has had a very bad effect on tourism to Bethlehem and with this wall Israel has built and its checkpoints – this wall is a big syndrome against tourism to Bethlehem. And, you know, tourism is the main source of income in Bethlehem, for its citizens. The other contours of income include labour in Israel proper, but this has come down, too, to about 15 per cent, because any person who wants to leave Bethlehem to go to Israel has to get a special permit from the Israeli authorities which is rarely granted to anyone; they can take days to be issued. Even on health, you have to change ambulances and that can still be a 24-hour delay. So labour in Israel for us in Bethlehem is also down to about 15 per cent. Our other income was agriculture and most of the agricultural land in Bethlehem is now cut off by the Israeli wall of separation. All of our olive trees are behind the wall so the citizens cannot go and harvest their olive trees. That’s why we have economic stress, very high economic stress. More than 55 per cent of the population in Bethlehem lives below the poverty line.
Q. How are they supported?
Non-government organisations have set up in Bethlehem and we have some international aid agency support.
Q. Just going back to the Open Bethlehem campaign and the message you take with you about the plight of Bethlehem, what sort of impact have you had elsewhere?
Well it has given a good result: we had one day in Italy where they brought along about 40 travel agents and we spoke to them for most of the day, stressing how safe Bethlehem is for tourists and how Bethlehem is much cheaper than Jerusalem. We really had a very good result after that, but a few months later the Israeli and Lebanese war started and everything went bad again.
Q. That sounds a bit like the mayor of any city wanting to promote his against rivals; what you don’t refer to is the political situation that gives rise to these problems. When do you talk to political leaders of influence?
I talk not only to travel agents, but to political leaders abroad. Some of these leaders say that it is unsafe to go to Palestine, unsafe to go to Bethlehem. This is due to the powerful Zionist lobby all over the world and you know also the media is biased all over the world against the Palestinians and this adds up to preventing tourists and pilgrims coming to Bethlehem.
Q. Can you foresee a point at which Israeli policies and the situation of Palestine will somehow or other resolve amicably or how else do we arrive at a resolution of the problems you’re describing?
We hope this conflict can be solved peacefully, resolved peacefully, because this is the only way. Palestinians do not have an army. Israel has the mightiest army in the Middle East; they are a nuclear power and the only way we can reach peace is through peaceful ways, but we have to have world support on the UN resolutions, the key words to force Israel to comply with the UN resolutions . . . if the world won’t pressure Israel to meet these resolutions then I don’t see a way to peace, the only way to peace we would have liked, the ideal solution – a one state comprising all three religions. The Israelis would not accept this; that’s why we now accept a two-state solution, but tell me, where is the Palestinian state going to be, with all these settlements dividing the Palestinian citizens among themselves and into by-roads? There is no more land to build a viable Palestinian state.
Q. What would it take to persuade Israel to make whatever concessions are appropriate – yours, too – to achieve the two-state solution?
We have given all our concessions as Palestinians. All our land has been taken by the Israelis. Whatever they are going to give in way of concessions they are giving us back part of what we owned in the historical time and this part is only 13 to 18 per cent of historical Palestine and we are ready to accept that small part of our original land, but, unfortunately, until now Israel is manipulating the whole world and playing with words and building something solid on the ground: these illegal settlements in the West Bank. And they’re still building, up and down. These settlements will be a hindrance to the future, a hindrance to peaceful solution..
Q. You obviously see the Palestinian-Israeli situation as the core of the Middle East? If it was resolved might much of the difficulties of the rest of the Middle East also be resolved? What’s your view?
The core and the centre really of this problem in the Middle East is the Palestinian-Israeli issue. If that was resolved then we would have peace in the Middle East and all over the world and I think the US and the European Union should think better; they should try to be more balanced in their policies. They should really make Israel accept all the UN resolutions. They should not use force of arms; there are other ways of forcing Israel to listen. Remember what happened to South Africa, how change was finally made there by boycotting? Boycotting Israel – this is the way. You might go for one year or so, but it is a way, a peaceful way of forcing Israel to adopt the UN resolutions.
Q. So you would turn to the UN and Europe and the Western world to follow that through ?
Yes, of course . . .
Q. Do you see a role for the Vatican and the Church generally?
A big role. Don’t forget Bethlehem for Christians all over the world is the ‘mainland’ of the faith – the cradle of Bethlehem. Bethlehem and Palestine are the cradle of Christianity so they should look after it and not abandon this land. They should use their powers, the Church’s powers, the Vatican’s powers, to try to make peace in the Holy Land. By powers, I mean moral powers – and political power.
Q. What’s your message to Australians Christians in general, Catholics in particular?
I send a message from Bethlehem that the star of Bethlehem always shines and always sends messages of peace and love to all the world. To all, I say of this small city, this cradle of Christianity, don’t abandon Bethlehem. Bethlehem is the city of all Christians all over the world – every Christian anywhere in the world is considered by us to be a citizen of this holy city. Don’t abandon your city; come over, visit the city, visit the holy Church of the Nativity, spend some time in this city. In this way you’ll stand in solidarity with the city of Bethlehem and with the citizens of Bethlehem. We need you, we need your help, we need your prayers, we need to see you among us. By coming in hundreds and thousands you will, psychological, break this wall of separation that has been built by Israel.
Q. Others would say Bethlehem is not entirely Christian; after all it’s also very important to Muslims and Jews.
We have them all living in the city of Bethlehem, OK? We have been living together as good neighbours and we will remain living together as good neighbours . . . living together in the city of Bethlehem – a model of co-existence between these religions. Palestine was a model of co-existence between the three religions before the existence of Israel, before 1948. That is what we care for. This is what we aim for – to have co-existence between all religions and all nations.
Copyright © 2007 The Catholic Weekly - Sydney
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Report: Israel plundering the Jordan Valley
Adri Nieuwhof - The Electronic Intifada - September 7, 2007
The report "To exist is to Resist, Eye on the Jordan Valley" was recently published by MA'AN Development Center and the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
The report "To exist is to Resist, Eye on the Jordan Valley" was recently published by MA'AN Development Center and the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
Friday, 31 August 2007
An important marker has been passed
John Pilger, New Statesman, 23 August 2007
Those calling for a boycott of Israel were once distant voices. Now the discussion has gone global. It is growing inexorably and will not be silenced.
The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott?
Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose."
And so would the rest of us.
Those calling for a boycott of Israel were once distant voices. Now the discussion has gone global. It is growing inexorably and will not be silenced.
The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott?
Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose."
And so would the rest of us.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Irish Congress of Trade Unions calls for boycott and divestment
Press Release, Trade Union Friends of Palestine, 6 July 2007
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) -- representing trade unions and trades councils from the whole island of Ireland -- have today passed two motions on Palestine that are extremely critical of the actions of the Israeli government in its oppression of the Palestinian people. The two motions condemn Israel for its human rights abuses, its policy of ethnic cleansing and its war crimes. The motions have been proposed by Belfast Trades Council and by Derry Trades Council. Both motions go into considerable detail about the suffering endured by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.
Conference also criticizes the British and Irish governments and the European Union for the failed policy of "constructive engagement." It characterizes EU policy as one of as "appeasement," and in particular criticises the EU for failing to end the preferential trading status granted to Israel under the Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement -- as it is formally obligated to do under the human rights clause in Article 2 of that agreement.
In voting for the motions Conference has not only brought to the attention of the world the massive and enduring injustices being carried out by the Israeli state and by those who collude with it -- companies such as Caterpillar and Irish Cement Roadholdings -- but it has also authorized the leadership of the Irish trade union movement to undertake a wide range of measures to oppose such oppressive actions and to register its solidarity. These include a commitment to "actively and vigorously" promote a policy of boycott and of divestment, to make direct representations to government and to the EU, and to mobilize EU-wide trade union solidarity action. Conference also called upon ICTU to send a senior delegation to the Palestinian territories to establish solidarity links. It also welcomed the establishment by ICTU of Trade Union Friends of Palestine.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) -- representing trade unions and trades councils from the whole island of Ireland -- have today passed two motions on Palestine that are extremely critical of the actions of the Israeli government in its oppression of the Palestinian people. The two motions condemn Israel for its human rights abuses, its policy of ethnic cleansing and its war crimes. The motions have been proposed by Belfast Trades Council and by Derry Trades Council. Both motions go into considerable detail about the suffering endured by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.
Conference also criticizes the British and Irish governments and the European Union for the failed policy of "constructive engagement." It characterizes EU policy as one of as "appeasement," and in particular criticises the EU for failing to end the preferential trading status granted to Israel under the Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement -- as it is formally obligated to do under the human rights clause in Article 2 of that agreement.
In voting for the motions Conference has not only brought to the attention of the world the massive and enduring injustices being carried out by the Israeli state and by those who collude with it -- companies such as Caterpillar and Irish Cement Roadholdings -- but it has also authorized the leadership of the Irish trade union movement to undertake a wide range of measures to oppose such oppressive actions and to register its solidarity. These include a commitment to "actively and vigorously" promote a policy of boycott and of divestment, to make direct representations to government and to the EU, and to mobilize EU-wide trade union solidarity action. Conference also called upon ICTU to send a senior delegation to the Palestinian territories to establish solidarity links. It also welcomed the establishment by ICTU of Trade Union Friends of Palestine.
The ICTU is the largest mass organization of the Irish working class. It represents all sections of labor -- from low-paid to senior management -- and all sectors of industry and employment. At its last Biennial Delegate Conference in 2005 the ICTU commited itself to "campaign in solidarity with the Palestinian people." In its actions today conference has put meat on the bones of that policy. It is highly significant and it should be noted that there was no opposition at all to any of the motions, despite the fact that they represent what must be one of the strongest positions adopted by any trade union congress in the world. Today's conference has thereby demonstrated that all sections of the Irish working class and of Irish civil society continue to be appalled at the inhumanity of Israeli state policy. It demonstrates that the people of Ireland -- north and south -- are steadfast in their commitment to stand in solidarity alongside their long-suffering and heroic Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Related Links
------------------------------
RESOLUTION ON PALESTINE IMPLEMENTING ICTU POLICY ON PALESTINE
Monday, 25 June 2007
Towards a Geography of Peace: Whither Gaza?
Ilan Pappé, The Electronic Intifada, 18 June 2007
The Gaza Strip is a little bit more than two percent of Palestine. This small detail is never mentioned whenever the Strip is in the news nor has it been mentioned in the present Western media coverage of the dramatic events unfolding in Gaza in the last few weeks. Indeed it is such a small part of the country that it never existed as a separate region in the past. Gaza's history before the Zionization of Palestine was not unique and it was always connected administratively and politically to the rest of Palestine. It was until 1948 for all intents and purposes an integral and natural part of the country. As one of Palestine’s principal land and sea gates to the world, it tended to develop a more flexible and cosmopolitan way of life; not dissimilar to other gateways societies in the Eastern Mediterranean in the modern era. This location near the sea and on the Via Maris to Egypt and Lebanon brought with it prosperity and stability until this life was disrupted and nearly destroyed by the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.
In between 1948 and 1967, Gaza became a huge refugee camp restricted severely by the respective Israeli and Egyptian policies: both states disallowed any movement out of the Strip. Living conditions were already harsh then as the victims of the 1948 Israeli politics of dispossession doubled the number of the inhabitants who lived there for centuries. On the eve of the Israeli occupation in 1967, the catastrophic nature of this enforced demographic transformation was evident all over the Strip. This once pastoral coastal part of southern Palesine became within two decades one of the world's densest areas of habitation; without any adequate economic infrastructure to support it.
The first twenty years of Israeli occupation at least allowed some movement outside an area that was closed off as a war zone in the years 1948 to 1967. Tens of thousand of Palestinians were permitted to join the Israeli labor market as unskilled and underpaid workers. The price Israel demanded for this slavery market was a total surrender of any national struggle or agenda. When this was not complied with -- the 'gift' of laborers' movement was denied and abolished. All these years leading to the Oslo accord in 1993 were marked by an Israeli attempt to construct the Strip as an enclave, which the Peace Camp hoped would be either autonomous or part of Egypt and the Nationalist camp wished to include in the Greater Eretz Israel they dreamed of establishing instead of Palestine.
The Oslo agreement enabled the Israelis to reaffirm the Strip's status as a separate geo-political entity -- not just outside of Palestine as a whole, but also cut apart from the West Bank.
Ostensibly, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were under the Palestinian Authority but any human movement between them depended on Israel's good will; a rare Israeli trait and which almost disappeared when Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in 1996. Moreover, Israel held, as it still does today, the water and electricity infrastructure. Since 1993 it used, or rather abused, this possession in order to ensure on the one hand the well-being of the Jewish settler community there and on the other in order to blackmail the Palestinian population into submission and surrender. The people of the Gaza Strip thus vacillated in the last sixty years between being internees, hostages or prisoners in an impossible human space.
It is within this historical context that we should view the violence raging today in Gaza and reject the reference to the events there as a campaign in the 'war against terror,' an instance of Islamic revivalism, a further proof for al-Qadia’s expansionism, a seditious Iranian penetration into this part of the world or another arena in the dreaded Clash of Civilizations (I picked here only few out of many frequent adjectives used in the Western media for describing the present crisis in Gaza). The origins of the mini civil war in Gaza lie elsewhere. The recent history of the Strip, 60 years of dispossession, occupation and imprisonment produced inevitably internal violence such as we are witnessing today as it produced other unpleasant features of life lived under such impossible conditions. In fact, it would be fair to say that the violence, and in particular the internal violence, is far less than one would have expected given the economic and social conditions created by the genocidal Israeli policies in the last six years.
Power struggles among politicians, who enjoy the support of military outfits, is indeed a nasty business that victimizes the society as a whole. Part of what goes on in Gaza is such a struggle between politicians who were democratically elected and those who still find it hard to accept the verdict of the public. But this is hardly the main struggle. What unfolds in Gaza is a battleground between America's and Israel's local proxies -- most of whom are unintentionally such proxies but none the less they dance to Israel's tune -- and those who oppose it. The opposition that now took over Gaza did it alas in a way that one would find very hard to condone or cheer. It is not the Hamas' Palestinian vision that is worrying, but rather the means it has chosen to achieve it that we hope would not be rooted or repeated. To its credit one should openly say that the means used by Hamas are part of an arsenal that enabled it in the past to be the only active force that at least tried to stop the total destruction of Palestine; the way it is used now is less credible and hopefully temporary.
But one cannot condemn the means if one does not offer an alternative. Standing idle while the American-Israeli vision of strangling the Strip to death, cleansing half of the West bank from its indigenous population and threatening the rest of the Palestinians -- inside Israel and in the other parts of the West Bank -- with transfer, is not an option. It is tantamount to "decent" people’s silence during the Holocaust.
We should not tire from mentioning the alternative in the 21st century: BDS -- Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- as an emergency measure -- far more effective and far less violent -- in opposing the present destruction of Palestine. And at the same time talk openly, convincingly and efficiently, of creating the geography of peace. A geography in which abnormal phenomena such as the imprisonment of small portion of the land would disappear. There will be no more, in the vision we should push forward, a human prison camp called the Gaza strip where some armed inmates are easily pitted against each other by a callous warden. Instead that area would return to be an organic part of an Eastern Mediterranean country that has always offered the best as a meeting point between East and West.
Never before, in the light of the Gaza tragedy, has the twofold strategy of BDS and a one state solution, shined so clearly as the only alternative forward. If any of us are members in Palestine solidarity groups, Arab-Jewish dialogue circles or part of civil society's effort to bring peace and reconciliation to Palestine -- this is a time to put aside all the false strategies of coexistence, road maps and two states solutions. They have been and still are sweet music to the ears of the Israeli demolition team that threatens to destroy what is left of Palestine. Beware especially of Diet Zionists or Cloest Zionists, who recently joined the campaign, in Britain and elsewhere against the BDS effort. Like those enlightened pundits who used liberal organs in the United Kingdom, such as The Guardian, to explain to us at length how dangerous is the proposed academic boycott on Israel. They have never expended so much time, energy or words on the occupation itself as they did in the service of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. UNISON, Britain’s large public service trade union, must not be deterred by this backlash and it should follow these brave academics who endorsed the debate on the boycott, as should Europe as a whole: not only for the sake of Palestine and Israel, but also if it wishes to bring a closure to the Holocaust chapter in its history.
And a final small portion of food for thought. There are quite a few Jewish mothers and wives in the Gaza Strip -- some sources within Gaza say up to 2000 -- married to local Palestinians and parents to their children. There are many more Jewish women who married Palestinians in the Palestine countryside. An act of desegregation that both political elites find difficult to admit, digest or acknowledge. If despite the colonization, occupation, genocidal policies and dispossession such harmonies of love and affection were possible, imagine what could happen if these criminal policies and ideologies would disappear. When the Wall of Apartheid is removed and the electric fences of Zionism dismantled -- Gaza will become once more a symbol of Fernand Braudel's coastal society, able to fuse different cultural horizons and offer a space for new life instead of the war zone it has become in the last sixty years.
The Gaza Strip is a little bit more than two percent of Palestine. This small detail is never mentioned whenever the Strip is in the news nor has it been mentioned in the present Western media coverage of the dramatic events unfolding in Gaza in the last few weeks. Indeed it is such a small part of the country that it never existed as a separate region in the past. Gaza's history before the Zionization of Palestine was not unique and it was always connected administratively and politically to the rest of Palestine. It was until 1948 for all intents and purposes an integral and natural part of the country. As one of Palestine’s principal land and sea gates to the world, it tended to develop a more flexible and cosmopolitan way of life; not dissimilar to other gateways societies in the Eastern Mediterranean in the modern era. This location near the sea and on the Via Maris to Egypt and Lebanon brought with it prosperity and stability until this life was disrupted and nearly destroyed by the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.
In between 1948 and 1967, Gaza became a huge refugee camp restricted severely by the respective Israeli and Egyptian policies: both states disallowed any movement out of the Strip. Living conditions were already harsh then as the victims of the 1948 Israeli politics of dispossession doubled the number of the inhabitants who lived there for centuries. On the eve of the Israeli occupation in 1967, the catastrophic nature of this enforced demographic transformation was evident all over the Strip. This once pastoral coastal part of southern Palesine became within two decades one of the world's densest areas of habitation; without any adequate economic infrastructure to support it.
The first twenty years of Israeli occupation at least allowed some movement outside an area that was closed off as a war zone in the years 1948 to 1967. Tens of thousand of Palestinians were permitted to join the Israeli labor market as unskilled and underpaid workers. The price Israel demanded for this slavery market was a total surrender of any national struggle or agenda. When this was not complied with -- the 'gift' of laborers' movement was denied and abolished. All these years leading to the Oslo accord in 1993 were marked by an Israeli attempt to construct the Strip as an enclave, which the Peace Camp hoped would be either autonomous or part of Egypt and the Nationalist camp wished to include in the Greater Eretz Israel they dreamed of establishing instead of Palestine.
The Oslo agreement enabled the Israelis to reaffirm the Strip's status as a separate geo-political entity -- not just outside of Palestine as a whole, but also cut apart from the West Bank.
Ostensibly, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were under the Palestinian Authority but any human movement between them depended on Israel's good will; a rare Israeli trait and which almost disappeared when Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in 1996. Moreover, Israel held, as it still does today, the water and electricity infrastructure. Since 1993 it used, or rather abused, this possession in order to ensure on the one hand the well-being of the Jewish settler community there and on the other in order to blackmail the Palestinian population into submission and surrender. The people of the Gaza Strip thus vacillated in the last sixty years between being internees, hostages or prisoners in an impossible human space.
It is within this historical context that we should view the violence raging today in Gaza and reject the reference to the events there as a campaign in the 'war against terror,' an instance of Islamic revivalism, a further proof for al-Qadia’s expansionism, a seditious Iranian penetration into this part of the world or another arena in the dreaded Clash of Civilizations (I picked here only few out of many frequent adjectives used in the Western media for describing the present crisis in Gaza). The origins of the mini civil war in Gaza lie elsewhere. The recent history of the Strip, 60 years of dispossession, occupation and imprisonment produced inevitably internal violence such as we are witnessing today as it produced other unpleasant features of life lived under such impossible conditions. In fact, it would be fair to say that the violence, and in particular the internal violence, is far less than one would have expected given the economic and social conditions created by the genocidal Israeli policies in the last six years.
Power struggles among politicians, who enjoy the support of military outfits, is indeed a nasty business that victimizes the society as a whole. Part of what goes on in Gaza is such a struggle between politicians who were democratically elected and those who still find it hard to accept the verdict of the public. But this is hardly the main struggle. What unfolds in Gaza is a battleground between America's and Israel's local proxies -- most of whom are unintentionally such proxies but none the less they dance to Israel's tune -- and those who oppose it. The opposition that now took over Gaza did it alas in a way that one would find very hard to condone or cheer. It is not the Hamas' Palestinian vision that is worrying, but rather the means it has chosen to achieve it that we hope would not be rooted or repeated. To its credit one should openly say that the means used by Hamas are part of an arsenal that enabled it in the past to be the only active force that at least tried to stop the total destruction of Palestine; the way it is used now is less credible and hopefully temporary.
But one cannot condemn the means if one does not offer an alternative. Standing idle while the American-Israeli vision of strangling the Strip to death, cleansing half of the West bank from its indigenous population and threatening the rest of the Palestinians -- inside Israel and in the other parts of the West Bank -- with transfer, is not an option. It is tantamount to "decent" people’s silence during the Holocaust.
We should not tire from mentioning the alternative in the 21st century: BDS -- Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- as an emergency measure -- far more effective and far less violent -- in opposing the present destruction of Palestine. And at the same time talk openly, convincingly and efficiently, of creating the geography of peace. A geography in which abnormal phenomena such as the imprisonment of small portion of the land would disappear. There will be no more, in the vision we should push forward, a human prison camp called the Gaza strip where some armed inmates are easily pitted against each other by a callous warden. Instead that area would return to be an organic part of an Eastern Mediterranean country that has always offered the best as a meeting point between East and West.
Never before, in the light of the Gaza tragedy, has the twofold strategy of BDS and a one state solution, shined so clearly as the only alternative forward. If any of us are members in Palestine solidarity groups, Arab-Jewish dialogue circles or part of civil society's effort to bring peace and reconciliation to Palestine -- this is a time to put aside all the false strategies of coexistence, road maps and two states solutions. They have been and still are sweet music to the ears of the Israeli demolition team that threatens to destroy what is left of Palestine. Beware especially of Diet Zionists or Cloest Zionists, who recently joined the campaign, in Britain and elsewhere against the BDS effort. Like those enlightened pundits who used liberal organs in the United Kingdom, such as The Guardian, to explain to us at length how dangerous is the proposed academic boycott on Israel. They have never expended so much time, energy or words on the occupation itself as they did in the service of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. UNISON, Britain’s large public service trade union, must not be deterred by this backlash and it should follow these brave academics who endorsed the debate on the boycott, as should Europe as a whole: not only for the sake of Palestine and Israel, but also if it wishes to bring a closure to the Holocaust chapter in its history.
And a final small portion of food for thought. There are quite a few Jewish mothers and wives in the Gaza Strip -- some sources within Gaza say up to 2000 -- married to local Palestinians and parents to their children. There are many more Jewish women who married Palestinians in the Palestine countryside. An act of desegregation that both political elites find difficult to admit, digest or acknowledge. If despite the colonization, occupation, genocidal policies and dispossession such harmonies of love and affection were possible, imagine what could happen if these criminal policies and ideologies would disappear. When the Wall of Apartheid is removed and the electric fences of Zionism dismantled -- Gaza will become once more a symbol of Fernand Braudel's coastal society, able to fuse different cultural horizons and offer a space for new life instead of the war zone it has become in the last sixty years.
Sunday, 24 June 2007
Lisa Taraki: 'We are under siege'
Wednesday June 20, 2007
Conal Urquhart reports from Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, where moves to discuss an academic boycott of Israel have been welcomed.
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Lisa Taraki, dean of graduate studies at Bir Zeit University, is puzzled by the uproar caused by the University and College Union's decision to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics.
"There has been a great hue and cry about the academic freedom of Israelis as if the academic freedom of Palestinians is of no consequence. The Israelis are not interested in academic freedom, they are interested in the protection of their own privileges," she said.
She has taught at the institution for 30 years and cannot remember a time when Israel did anything but try to suppress Palestinian education.
"We have been under siege for more than 30 years. In spite of this we have managed to build a credible institution," she said.
Bir Zeit was founded as a girls' school in 1924, but started offering degrees 50 years later. The university's students became regular protesters against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the small peaceful countryside campus was often showered with stones and sprayed with tear gas as the army tried to crack down on peaceful dissent.
Ms Taraki said that until the 1990s, the university was regularly closed by military order. "Bir Zeit was always a target for the army.
"There would be a demonstration against the occupation, the army would come and there would be clashes. They would close the university, for a few weeks, a few months and on one occasion four years. The president was exiled for 19 years because the army accused him of inciting students," she said.
"When the university was closed we did our best to continue. We held classes in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Thousands of students were arrested or put under town arrest or house arrest. So we would try and teach them in their homes or towns. For some, degrees took 10 years to complete."
Bir Zeit sits on a hill above terraced valleys full of olive trees, outside Ramallah. It is much smaller than its Israeli counterparts but it has a similar buzz on its public spaces as students move between lectures or eat lunch in the sun.
The air of normality is deceptive. Many students have to spend more than half their day travelling to ensure they do not miss classes, and at every checkpoint there is the possibility, particularly for male students, that they will be randomly arrested.
"I have postgraduate students from Hebron. They leave their homes at 8am to get here in time for a 2pm class. The class finishes at 5pm and they get home around 10pm. The journey should only be one hour each way," said Ms Taraki.
Undergraduates stay close to the university if they can, which adds an extra financial burden, but most students are restricted to going to the university closest to them. Students from Gaza are banned from going to the West Bank although there are many subjects that are not taught at Gazan universities.
"Bir Zeit used to have a very diverse student body with students from all over the West Bank and Gaza. Now most students come from the immediate area. This means the national character of the university is compromised. We do not want it be a local institution," said Ms Taraki.
The restriction on movement means that universities cannot act as cultural centres as the majority of the population do not have the time and freedom to travel from one city to the next to hear a lecture or see a film. Even short journeys of 40 minutes require a special permit from the Israeli army, which can take hours to acquire.
As a result of the wars of 1948 and 1967 and 40 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, there is a large Palestinian diaspora all over the world. Many of the buildings in these areas were funded by expatriate Palestinians and the diaspora is a potential pool of students and teachers for Bir Zeit.
However, Israel is reluctant to allow expatriate Palestinians to return if only for a short time.
Many are denied entry at the airport, while others are restricted to a three-month tourist visa, which can only be renewed by leaving and re-entering Israel - at which point they could be denied entry.
An annual course at Bir Zeit for expatriate Palestinians in Palestinian culture and Arabic is normally attended by only half the students who subscribed for the course because of Israeli border restrictions.
Omar Qassis, a 22-year-old sociology student, said that the main problem for him was movement and the threat of arrest.
"Thirteen of my friends have been arrested. I was locked up for ten days after I was arrested at a checkpoint on the way to my final exams in 2005. I was told I was a suspect but nothing else," he said. "On the fourth day, I was brought to court where the judge was told they had nothing against me but they wanted to detain me while they continued their checks. I was then released on the tenth day but I had missed my exams and had to do another term."
The idea of a boycott of Israeli institutions is broadly supported by Palestinians, who are grateful that people in the international community are taking an interest in their plight.
Mira Dabit, 22, a student of psychology and sociology, said: "Everything else has failed. United Nations resolutions. Negotiation. A boycott is a last resort but it gets people talking about our situation and gives the world a chance to find out what is going on."
Ms Taraki has little time for the complaints from her Israeli counterparts about the prospect of a boycott. "Where have these presidents been for the last three decades when our academic freedom has been trampled on every day? The claim that Israeli academics are at the forefront of disputing government policy is very hollow indeed. There has been a handful of academics who have supported the Palestinians but only a handful," she said.
The main benefit of a boycott is not that it will provide equality of suffering but that it will provoke debate, she says.
"We are hopeful that during this year of discussion we will be able to speak at British universities and explain how we have been boycotted and besieged for the last 30 years," said Ms Taraki.
Conal Urquhart reports from Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, where moves to discuss an academic boycott of Israel have been welcomed.
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Lisa Taraki, dean of graduate studies at Bir Zeit University, is puzzled by the uproar caused by the University and College Union's decision to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics.
"There has been a great hue and cry about the academic freedom of Israelis as if the academic freedom of Palestinians is of no consequence. The Israelis are not interested in academic freedom, they are interested in the protection of their own privileges," she said.
She has taught at the institution for 30 years and cannot remember a time when Israel did anything but try to suppress Palestinian education.
"We have been under siege for more than 30 years. In spite of this we have managed to build a credible institution," she said.
Bir Zeit was founded as a girls' school in 1924, but started offering degrees 50 years later. The university's students became regular protesters against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the small peaceful countryside campus was often showered with stones and sprayed with tear gas as the army tried to crack down on peaceful dissent.
Ms Taraki said that until the 1990s, the university was regularly closed by military order. "Bir Zeit was always a target for the army.
"There would be a demonstration against the occupation, the army would come and there would be clashes. They would close the university, for a few weeks, a few months and on one occasion four years. The president was exiled for 19 years because the army accused him of inciting students," she said.
"When the university was closed we did our best to continue. We held classes in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Thousands of students were arrested or put under town arrest or house arrest. So we would try and teach them in their homes or towns. For some, degrees took 10 years to complete."
Bir Zeit sits on a hill above terraced valleys full of olive trees, outside Ramallah. It is much smaller than its Israeli counterparts but it has a similar buzz on its public spaces as students move between lectures or eat lunch in the sun.
The air of normality is deceptive. Many students have to spend more than half their day travelling to ensure they do not miss classes, and at every checkpoint there is the possibility, particularly for male students, that they will be randomly arrested.
"I have postgraduate students from Hebron. They leave their homes at 8am to get here in time for a 2pm class. The class finishes at 5pm and they get home around 10pm. The journey should only be one hour each way," said Ms Taraki.
Undergraduates stay close to the university if they can, which adds an extra financial burden, but most students are restricted to going to the university closest to them. Students from Gaza are banned from going to the West Bank although there are many subjects that are not taught at Gazan universities.
"Bir Zeit used to have a very diverse student body with students from all over the West Bank and Gaza. Now most students come from the immediate area. This means the national character of the university is compromised. We do not want it be a local institution," said Ms Taraki.
The restriction on movement means that universities cannot act as cultural centres as the majority of the population do not have the time and freedom to travel from one city to the next to hear a lecture or see a film. Even short journeys of 40 minutes require a special permit from the Israeli army, which can take hours to acquire.
As a result of the wars of 1948 and 1967 and 40 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, there is a large Palestinian diaspora all over the world. Many of the buildings in these areas were funded by expatriate Palestinians and the diaspora is a potential pool of students and teachers for Bir Zeit.
However, Israel is reluctant to allow expatriate Palestinians to return if only for a short time.
Many are denied entry at the airport, while others are restricted to a three-month tourist visa, which can only be renewed by leaving and re-entering Israel - at which point they could be denied entry.
An annual course at Bir Zeit for expatriate Palestinians in Palestinian culture and Arabic is normally attended by only half the students who subscribed for the course because of Israeli border restrictions.
Omar Qassis, a 22-year-old sociology student, said that the main problem for him was movement and the threat of arrest.
"Thirteen of my friends have been arrested. I was locked up for ten days after I was arrested at a checkpoint on the way to my final exams in 2005. I was told I was a suspect but nothing else," he said. "On the fourth day, I was brought to court where the judge was told they had nothing against me but they wanted to detain me while they continued their checks. I was then released on the tenth day but I had missed my exams and had to do another term."
The idea of a boycott of Israeli institutions is broadly supported by Palestinians, who are grateful that people in the international community are taking an interest in their plight.
Mira Dabit, 22, a student of psychology and sociology, said: "Everything else has failed. United Nations resolutions. Negotiation. A boycott is a last resort but it gets people talking about our situation and gives the world a chance to find out what is going on."
Ms Taraki has little time for the complaints from her Israeli counterparts about the prospect of a boycott. "Where have these presidents been for the last three decades when our academic freedom has been trampled on every day? The claim that Israeli academics are at the forefront of disputing government policy is very hollow indeed. There has been a handful of academics who have supported the Palestinians but only a handful," she said.
The main benefit of a boycott is not that it will provide equality of suffering but that it will provoke debate, she says.
"We are hopeful that during this year of discussion we will be able to speak at British universities and explain how we have been boycotted and besieged for the last 30 years," said Ms Taraki.
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
South Africa's largest trade union seeks to boycott Israel
Cnaan Liphshiz Haaretz May 31, 2007
South Africa's largest trade union federation will launch a campaign against "the Israeli occupation of Arab lands" this week, demanding that Pretoria impose a boycott on all Israeli goods and break diplomatic relations. South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who is Jewish, told Haaretz that he actively supported the initiative - which contradicts the policy of his own cabinet.
The president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Willy Madisha, announced the launching of the campaign last week in Johannesburg, calling on the government to cease all diplomatic relations with Israel after its attacks on Palestinian leaders.
"The best way to have Israel comply with United Nations resolutions is to pressure it by a diplomatic boycott such as the one imposed on apartheid South Africa," Madisha said. Cosatu belongs to a recently-formed coalition of organizations operating under the banner "End The Occupation."
Kasrils' anti-Israeli organization Not In My Name belongs to the coalition working toward an embargo on Israel. This runs contrary to South Africa's official stance, and to President Thabo Mbeki's decision to strengthen trade ties with Israel. Mbeki, who heads the ANC ruling party, even appeared as a guest at Israel's Independence Day celebrations in Durban last month.
Kasrils, a member of the ANC, told Haaretz that his support for severing all ties with Israel was not in opposition to his cabinet's policy. "Cosatu is an ANC ally in the coalition against the Israeli occupation. Most elements of this coalition call for boycotting Israel, although the ANC does not," he said.
"We respect their right to encourage people to boycott Israeli goods. As a South African consumer I personally will not purchase Israeli goods until Israel changes its present policy regarding the Palestinians."
Cosatu's spokesman, Patrick Craven, said Kasrils was involved in directing the campaign for imposing a political and economic embargo on Israel. "This is intended to include the diamond trade," he added.
Craven acknowledged that his organization's primary objectives did not pertain to the Middle East, noting that while Cosatu's main goal was improving the material conditions of its 1.8 million members, "it could not stand idly by as Israel perpetrated atrocities in Palestine." Adding that he anticipated "some short-term damage" to South Africa's economy following the boycott, Carven said the damage was "vastly outweighed by the importance of stopping injustice."
The campaign that Cosatu has helped mount will begin Friday, with sermons in South Africa's mosques on "the plight of the Palestinian people". The Christian organizations of the coalition will begin addressing the issue in churches Sunday.
The organizers intend to picket across South Africa next week, including a picket by members of parliament and a candlelight vigil outside the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg. The ANC ruling party has called for a parliamentary debate on "Israeli occupation."
Campaign activists will also hold pickets outside selected stores selling Israeli goods. The events will culminate in mass marches and rallies on Saturday, June 9, both in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
South Africa's largest trade union federation will launch a campaign against "the Israeli occupation of Arab lands" this week, demanding that Pretoria impose a boycott on all Israeli goods and break diplomatic relations. South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who is Jewish, told Haaretz that he actively supported the initiative - which contradicts the policy of his own cabinet.
The president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Willy Madisha, announced the launching of the campaign last week in Johannesburg, calling on the government to cease all diplomatic relations with Israel after its attacks on Palestinian leaders.
"The best way to have Israel comply with United Nations resolutions is to pressure it by a diplomatic boycott such as the one imposed on apartheid South Africa," Madisha said. Cosatu belongs to a recently-formed coalition of organizations operating under the banner "End The Occupation."
Kasrils' anti-Israeli organization Not In My Name belongs to the coalition working toward an embargo on Israel. This runs contrary to South Africa's official stance, and to President Thabo Mbeki's decision to strengthen trade ties with Israel. Mbeki, who heads the ANC ruling party, even appeared as a guest at Israel's Independence Day celebrations in Durban last month.
Kasrils, a member of the ANC, told Haaretz that his support for severing all ties with Israel was not in opposition to his cabinet's policy. "Cosatu is an ANC ally in the coalition against the Israeli occupation. Most elements of this coalition call for boycotting Israel, although the ANC does not," he said.
"We respect their right to encourage people to boycott Israeli goods. As a South African consumer I personally will not purchase Israeli goods until Israel changes its present policy regarding the Palestinians."
Cosatu's spokesman, Patrick Craven, said Kasrils was involved in directing the campaign for imposing a political and economic embargo on Israel. "This is intended to include the diamond trade," he added.
Craven acknowledged that his organization's primary objectives did not pertain to the Middle East, noting that while Cosatu's main goal was improving the material conditions of its 1.8 million members, "it could not stand idly by as Israel perpetrated atrocities in Palestine." Adding that he anticipated "some short-term damage" to South Africa's economy following the boycott, Carven said the damage was "vastly outweighed by the importance of stopping injustice."
The campaign that Cosatu has helped mount will begin Friday, with sermons in South Africa's mosques on "the plight of the Palestinian people". The Christian organizations of the coalition will begin addressing the issue in churches Sunday.
The organizers intend to picket across South Africa next week, including a picket by members of parliament and a candlelight vigil outside the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg. The ANC ruling party has called for a parliamentary debate on "Israeli occupation."
Campaign activists will also hold pickets outside selected stores selling Israeli goods. The events will culminate in mass marches and rallies on Saturday, June 9, both in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Top architects accuse Israelis of oppression
Hugh Muir, The Guardian, Saturday May 26, 2007
Leading British architects have accused their counterparts in Israel of complicity in schemes that contribute to the "social, political and economic oppression of Palestinians".
The architects, including Will Alsop, Terry Farrell, Richard MacCormac, Royal Institute of British Architects president Jack Pringle and president-elect Sunand Prasad, have signed a petition organised by the group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine.
"APJP asserts that the actions of our fellow professionals working with these enterprises are clearly unethical, immoral and contravene universally recognised professional codes of conduct," a spokesman said. "We ask the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to meet their professional obligations to declare their opposition to this inhuman occupation."
Mr Alsop told Building Design magazine that they felt compelled to act. "This is not against Israel, it's for Palestine," he said. "I think the Palestinians are living in a prison. I'd like fellow colleagues in Israel to feel some responsibility about this shabby treatment. Architects are a fairly humanitarian lot and perhaps they could help."
But the intervention was attacked by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Its chief executive, Jon Benjamin, said: "What they are saying is that they have a certain view and that Israeli architects must publicly declare that to be their position as well." Mr Benjamin said Israeli Arabs and Jews were working together on numerous low-profile but worthy projects in the occupied territories: "The two sides should be encouraged to work together."
========================
Opposing the architects of the occupation
Esther Zandberg, Ha'aretz, May 28, 2007
About 200 British and Israeli architects and academics, including people of international renown, have signed a manifesto initiated by the British organization Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, which calls on Israeli architects and planners to put an end to being "partners in social, political and economic oppression" in the occupied territories, "which violates the professional ethics acceptable to all."
The manifesto points to three representative projects currently promoted by the planning authorities: the master plan for the E1 region between the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, which will prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity; construction in Silwan in East Jerusalem, which involves the demolition of dozens of homes; and a plan to build a luxury neighborhood on the remains of the former Palestinian village of Lifta.
The organization considers participation in these projects, construction in the occupied territories and any planning in Israel that involves discrimination and repression, to be a blatant violation of international conventions, which require professional and ethical responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of planning and construction work. The organization has sent letters on the subject to the International Architects Association and to the Israel Association of United Architects. It has also turned to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski and to Minister of Construction and Housing Meir Sheetrit on the matter.
===========================
A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture
By Rafi Segal, Eyal Weizman, Meron Benvenisti, Gideon Levy, Oren Yiftachel -Thursday, 27 November 2003
The original exhibit on which this book is based was banned. When this happened, the exhibitors were invited to mount the exhibit in New York.
Censored last year by the Association of Israeli Architects, A Civilian Occupation is the first attempt by Israeli architects, scholars, journalists, and photographers to highlight the role of Israeli architecture in the Middle East conflict.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the declared aim of the Zionist project has been to build a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. From the settlement offensive of the Tower and Stockade villages in the 1930s, through the total planning of the state of Israel soon after its independence, to the colonization of the occupied territories from 1967 to the present, this book reveals how central Israeli architecture has been in securing that aim.
Leading British architects have accused their counterparts in Israel of complicity in schemes that contribute to the "social, political and economic oppression of Palestinians".
The architects, including Will Alsop, Terry Farrell, Richard MacCormac, Royal Institute of British Architects president Jack Pringle and president-elect Sunand Prasad, have signed a petition organised by the group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine.
"APJP asserts that the actions of our fellow professionals working with these enterprises are clearly unethical, immoral and contravene universally recognised professional codes of conduct," a spokesman said. "We ask the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to meet their professional obligations to declare their opposition to this inhuman occupation."
Mr Alsop told Building Design magazine that they felt compelled to act. "This is not against Israel, it's for Palestine," he said. "I think the Palestinians are living in a prison. I'd like fellow colleagues in Israel to feel some responsibility about this shabby treatment. Architects are a fairly humanitarian lot and perhaps they could help."
But the intervention was attacked by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Its chief executive, Jon Benjamin, said: "What they are saying is that they have a certain view and that Israeli architects must publicly declare that to be their position as well." Mr Benjamin said Israeli Arabs and Jews were working together on numerous low-profile but worthy projects in the occupied territories: "The two sides should be encouraged to work together."
========================
Opposing the architects of the occupation
Esther Zandberg, Ha'aretz, May 28, 2007
About 200 British and Israeli architects and academics, including people of international renown, have signed a manifesto initiated by the British organization Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, which calls on Israeli architects and planners to put an end to being "partners in social, political and economic oppression" in the occupied territories, "which violates the professional ethics acceptable to all."
The manifesto points to three representative projects currently promoted by the planning authorities: the master plan for the E1 region between the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, which will prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity; construction in Silwan in East Jerusalem, which involves the demolition of dozens of homes; and a plan to build a luxury neighborhood on the remains of the former Palestinian village of Lifta.
The organization considers participation in these projects, construction in the occupied territories and any planning in Israel that involves discrimination and repression, to be a blatant violation of international conventions, which require professional and ethical responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of planning and construction work. The organization has sent letters on the subject to the International Architects Association and to the Israel Association of United Architects. It has also turned to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski and to Minister of Construction and Housing Meir Sheetrit on the matter.
===========================
A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture
By Rafi Segal, Eyal Weizman, Meron Benvenisti, Gideon Levy, Oren Yiftachel -Thursday, 27 November 2003
The original exhibit on which this book is based was banned. When this happened, the exhibitors were invited to mount the exhibit in New York.
Censored last year by the Association of Israeli Architects, A Civilian Occupation is the first attempt by Israeli architects, scholars, journalists, and photographers to highlight the role of Israeli architecture in the Middle East conflict.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the declared aim of the Zionist project has been to build a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. From the settlement offensive of the Tower and Stockade villages in the 1930s, through the total planning of the state of Israel soon after its independence, to the colonization of the occupied territories from 1967 to the present, this book reveals how central Israeli architecture has been in securing that aim.
Sunday, 27 May 2007
Boycott: The only weapon available
An academic and cultural boycott of Israel is the only way of protecting the Palestinians.
Hilary Rose, The Guardian, Saturday May 26, 2007
I am typing this just a few hundred yards from the hall in Holborn where in 1959 the ANC, with most of its leadership in prison or exile, called for an international boycott of apartheid South Africa. Both the ANC - committed to armed struggle - and pacifists like Desmond Tutu saw boycott as their remaining weapon. As we know, this call was initially only answered by civil society - including the British university teachers' union. It took many years before governments, and the UN itself, intervened and Freedom Day finally arrived.Today it is hard to see what weapons, other than the counterproductive, though legitimate, armed intifada (though legitimacy does not extend to suicide bombers killing civilians) the even harder pressed Palestinians have. Their land is occupied, they suffer from illegal house demolitions, illegal settlements in the occupied territories, so-called targeted assassinations which kill civilians, torture and indefinite detention without charge.
Taxes are gathered by Israel, but not, as international law requires, returned. As a consequence, both education and healthcare services - the infrastructure of civil society - are utterly impoverished. On top of these abuses of human rights is the wall, declared illegal by the international court. The obligation of every state signed up to international law is to help enforce it. European governments sit on their hands, while the US vetoes action through the UN security council.
The wall claims to give security to Israelis, but it also separates Palestinian from Palestinian, farmers from their land, children from their schools, students and teachers from their universities. Students who once travelled from Gaza to Birzeit University on the West Bank were prevented from completing their studies by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Today Gazans are no longer permitted to study at Birzeit; instead they remain in Gaza, which has become a vast concentration camp. The president of Birzeit was kidnapped by Israeli forces, dumped in Jordan and not permitted to return for many years. The university was shut by the IDF for three years, and even now access is frequently denied for hours or days with sudden roadblocks.
Faced with these brutal abuses Israeli academics, excepting a handful of brave dissenters, have remained silent - less surprising if we understand that Israeli academics serve in the military. One distinguished natural scientist explained to me that he served until he was 55. This is not discussed by Israeli academics, yet for many non-Israelis the image of the small boy terrified in his father's arms deliberately shot by the IDF is printed in our memories. Even within Israel itself, the universities, sitting on occupied Palestinian land, share institutionally in the general discrimination against Arab-Israelis (20% of the population).
In these desperate circumstances it is not surprising that South African leaders, from Ronnie Kasrils, the Jewish ex-head of the armed wing of the ANC to Bishop Desmond Tutu, declare that the sufferings of the Palestinians are worse than those of black South Africans under Apartheid. Those who know apartheid at first hand are well able to recognise a racist state. And all the blustering by the Israel lobby cannot wash this away.
The call from Palestinians for an academic and cultural boycott did not come from any political party but from Palestinian civil society itself. They saw that any claim to academic freedom and even the right to education was being destroyed. As members of civil society we have to consider such a moral and political call. Some, like the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine and the solidarity movement, have accepted the challenge. But it doesn't matter that every part of civil society responds in the same way.
What matters is that pressure is put on Israel until it complies with international law and works for a just peace. Thus British doctors are questioning the legitimacy of Israel's medical association, which condones torture; artists and filmmakers have called for a boycott, and a galaxy of international architects, including several Israelis and Palestinians, published a challenge on Thursday to Israeli architects concerning their human rights record and their professional ethics. Boycotts and such professional pressures are not fast in their effects, but like water dripping on a stone, eventually the stone wears away.
· Hilary Rose is the co-convenor of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup). http://www.bricup.co.uk/
Hilary Rose, The Guardian, Saturday May 26, 2007
I am typing this just a few hundred yards from the hall in Holborn where in 1959 the ANC, with most of its leadership in prison or exile, called for an international boycott of apartheid South Africa. Both the ANC - committed to armed struggle - and pacifists like Desmond Tutu saw boycott as their remaining weapon. As we know, this call was initially only answered by civil society - including the British university teachers' union. It took many years before governments, and the UN itself, intervened and Freedom Day finally arrived.Today it is hard to see what weapons, other than the counterproductive, though legitimate, armed intifada (though legitimacy does not extend to suicide bombers killing civilians) the even harder pressed Palestinians have. Their land is occupied, they suffer from illegal house demolitions, illegal settlements in the occupied territories, so-called targeted assassinations which kill civilians, torture and indefinite detention without charge.
Taxes are gathered by Israel, but not, as international law requires, returned. As a consequence, both education and healthcare services - the infrastructure of civil society - are utterly impoverished. On top of these abuses of human rights is the wall, declared illegal by the international court. The obligation of every state signed up to international law is to help enforce it. European governments sit on their hands, while the US vetoes action through the UN security council.
The wall claims to give security to Israelis, but it also separates Palestinian from Palestinian, farmers from their land, children from their schools, students and teachers from their universities. Students who once travelled from Gaza to Birzeit University on the West Bank were prevented from completing their studies by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Today Gazans are no longer permitted to study at Birzeit; instead they remain in Gaza, which has become a vast concentration camp. The president of Birzeit was kidnapped by Israeli forces, dumped in Jordan and not permitted to return for many years. The university was shut by the IDF for three years, and even now access is frequently denied for hours or days with sudden roadblocks.
Faced with these brutal abuses Israeli academics, excepting a handful of brave dissenters, have remained silent - less surprising if we understand that Israeli academics serve in the military. One distinguished natural scientist explained to me that he served until he was 55. This is not discussed by Israeli academics, yet for many non-Israelis the image of the small boy terrified in his father's arms deliberately shot by the IDF is printed in our memories. Even within Israel itself, the universities, sitting on occupied Palestinian land, share institutionally in the general discrimination against Arab-Israelis (20% of the population).
In these desperate circumstances it is not surprising that South African leaders, from Ronnie Kasrils, the Jewish ex-head of the armed wing of the ANC to Bishop Desmond Tutu, declare that the sufferings of the Palestinians are worse than those of black South Africans under Apartheid. Those who know apartheid at first hand are well able to recognise a racist state. And all the blustering by the Israel lobby cannot wash this away.
The call from Palestinians for an academic and cultural boycott did not come from any political party but from Palestinian civil society itself. They saw that any claim to academic freedom and even the right to education was being destroyed. As members of civil society we have to consider such a moral and political call. Some, like the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine and the solidarity movement, have accepted the challenge. But it doesn't matter that every part of civil society responds in the same way.
What matters is that pressure is put on Israel until it complies with international law and works for a just peace. Thus British doctors are questioning the legitimacy of Israel's medical association, which condones torture; artists and filmmakers have called for a boycott, and a galaxy of international architects, including several Israelis and Palestinians, published a challenge on Thursday to Israeli architects concerning their human rights record and their professional ethics. Boycotts and such professional pressures are not fast in their effects, but like water dripping on a stone, eventually the stone wears away.
· Hilary Rose is the co-convenor of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup). http://www.bricup.co.uk/
On the Academic Boycott of Israel
Virginia Tilley, The Electronic Intifada, 27 May 2007
Academics don't like academic boycotts. In fact, we detest external limits of any kind. We treasure our own universities for offering precious sanctuary for critical debate (even though they rarely do) and we don't like to see any of them banned, even for ostensibly laudable reasons. Sure, universities in some countries are little more than fig leaves for their regimes. But that's not usually their fault. So we avoid the lectures of state hacks rather than denounce them and we protect the universities so that they can nurture that rare point of light.
Still, in very exceptional cases, an academic boycott comes onto our agenda. This happens when a country's universities are recognized as central players in legitimizing a regime that systematically inflicts massive human rights abuses on its own people and any pretence that the universities are independent fortresses of principled intellectual thought becomes too insulting to the human conscience. But since universities in many oppressive regimes fit those criteria, in practice a second condition is required: their faculties have the freedom to act differently.
In democratic countries where human rights abuses abound as rampantly as in Israel, it is not tenable that faculty entertain and promote the notion that their institutions -- cranking out the architects and professional foot soldiers of occupation -- have no role in those abuses and can join in mixed company as fine upstanding members of the international scholarly club. It is especially not tenable when universities themselves perpetrate discrimination in their research and their grants and admission policies. University faculties are supposed to hold their institutions accountable to basic standards of objectivity, fairness, and non-discrimination. Where they are capable of acting on those standards and refuse, the hack becomes the hypocrite. Moral paralysis becomes moral culpability.
On this reasoning, back in the 1980s offended foreign academics launched an academic boycott of apartheid South Africa, whose universities were finally rightly identified as bastions of white supremacy and whose white faculties, privileged by racial democracy, could be held accountable. Similarly, we now see a boycott of Israeli universities being urged by, among others, Britain's University and College Union. Israeli academics, naturally enough, are appalled by the idea of a boycott and the Israeli government is worried that the idea is gaining momentum. Hence an Israeli academic delegation has to come to England to wage battle against the boycott, and all the old banners once waved by apartheid's defenders -- 'academic freedom', 'balance', 'proportionality' -- are being waved again in this one.
Israeli academic arguments are indeed too reminiscent of apartheid South Africa to escape the comparison. Especially, South African academics trying to defeat the boycott typically avoided discussing the abuses of apartheid. Israeli academic arguments against the boycott also do not discuss the reason for it, which is Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and the subjugation of almost four million civilians under military rule. Instead, they stress the need for 'balance' -- which, in Israeli parlance, is a code word for shifting attention entirely away from the occupation to reiterate a tired canon of Israeli innocence, victimhood, and deniability. And because they do not discuss the occupation, they do not address their own universities' responsibility for it.
Whatever our conceits of political neutrality, academics never work in a vacuum. In conflict zones, our work is as inherently political as any other activity. For example, let us briefly suspend disbelief and accept Ben-Gurion University Professor Zvi Hacohen's claim, cited in Ha'aretz (15 May 2007) that 'there is widespread cooperation between our universities and Palestinian and Jordanian universities', although he does not specify what this 'widespread' cooperation is. His argument is hardly supported by Palestinian faculty, whose only public voice on the question has been to support the boycott.
But in any case, he cannot pretend that such collaboration is apolitical when Palestinian research partners are held captive under draconian military rule by his own government and the occupation is wrecking their families' hopes and lives, their institutions' viability, and their entire community's basic safety. Nor can he pretend that his own university is politically neutral when it subsists partly on privileges gained by such appalling human rights violations and conducts research designed to preserve and strengthen those privileges.
Ignoring such complicity is not neutral: it is enabling. It promotes a veneer of normalcy over a ghastly human rights situation and so helps shelter it from scrutiny.
Israel's defenders in this controversy also protest that a boycott violates the moral economy of academic work. 'Communication, understanding and international collaboration is what this field is all about,' said Professor Miriam Schlesinger of Bar Ilan University, who was asked to resign from the board of a translation journal because she is Israeli. Yet the ethic of communication, understanding, and collaboration with Palestinian universities is precisely what Israeli universities have unacceptably abandoned. Instead, Israeli scholars are casually allowing Palestinian institutions to crumble on their doorsteps, at the hands of their own government, while they themselves share elevated discussions in the paneled salons of Oxford and Cambridge.
A third argument is that a boycott is too sweeping, punishing Israel's intellectual progressives along with nationalist reactionaries and passive enablers. Schlesinger even calls it 'collective punishment' -- an unfortunate reference, since Israel's occupation and brutalization of some 4 million people is often denounced as collective punishment and the phrase suggests, again, that peculiar Israeli interpretation of the word 'balance'. Yet collective punishment is wrong where collective responsibility is lacking. Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp are not capable of controlling and therefore not responsible for what some militants do to resist occupation, and resisting occupation is a human right in any case. Israeli professors have the capacity to take a stand against human rights abuses furthered by their own institutions and therefore have the moral responsibility to do so.
Hence it is also false moral symmetry for Dr. Schlesinger to equate her right to serve on the board of an academic journal with the right of Palestinian students to university education. She was denied her board position not just because she is Israeli but because she is complicit, through the privileges and power she enjoys through her nationality and her job, with a brutal occupation. Palestinians are being denied their right to education solely because they are not Jews. The former ban, even if controversial, is a moral gesture; the latter ban is a racist one.
A fourth argument is that Israel is being unfairly singled out. For example, since the US and Britain have recently teamed up to kill, or cause to die or be killed, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, surely a better case can be made for boycotting them. This argument trips over the grave of South African apartheid, however, for South Africa attempted the same claim of proportionality and the world had none of it. For one thing, state sins are not measured by death counts alone, nor are they ranked by their measurable gravity. If they were, we would focus on just one conflict at a time.
For another, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip is not a foreign policy gone wrong. The entire Israeli state system -- its laws, its policies, its ideology of Jewish statehood, the privileges that serve its Jewish-national society -- is implicated in a grand demographic strategy to exclude, imprison, and subjugate some 50 percent of the state's own territorial population solely on the basis of their ethnic identity. This distinguishes Israel from other states behaving badly by casting it into the particular moral abyss of an apartheid state.
And there's the rub. The small but growing international boycott of Israel signals that the political ground is shifting -- that its occupation is sliding conceptually, if not yet legally, into an apartheid model. The UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid defines 'the crime of apartheid' as 'inhuman acts' similar to apartheid, such as 'the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups' by denying 'the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality [citizenship], the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association'. The Convention particularly prohibits any measures 'designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos'.
If this package does not sound like Israel's military rule over Palestinians, it is hard to imagine what apartheid outside South Africa would look like or how the Convention might ever be applied again.
Israel hotly rejects the apartheid analogy, of course, partly on grounds that Palestinians are not a racial group but a national or ethnic group (defined in the negative, as non-Jews). Also, Palestinians are not supposed to be Israel's citizens, but rather are considered citizens of some nonexistent state that may exist some time in the future. But no one looking at the dismembered and walled West Bank enclaves now left to the Palestinians can imagine that these prison camps are intended to constitute a state, and the distinction between ethnicity and race in this context is losing all meaning. The A-word is everywhere now, and the boycott is one signal that the apartheid paradigm is seeding broadly into international civil society. Israel's hapless academics are fast losing ground fast to its growth.
Because they are in denial about the horrors of the occupation itself, Israeli academics protesting the boycott may not grasp its real purpose, which is to force them to confront those horrors. It is not acceptable for them to insist on ivory-tower privileges with so terrible a human rights catastrophe as the occupation stark on their doorstep, perpetrated by their own government and involving their own institutions in its cruelties and deceptions. When Dr. Schlesinger protests that being treated according to her nationality rather than her individual character 'was a blow,' she misses the entire point. To claim a right to principled treatment, one must extend it to others. Israeli academics must become serious about according their Palestinian colleagues the dignity and respect they expect themselves. When they do, given their formidable talents and resources, the occupation will face its toughest opponents.
Virginia Tilley is a US citizen now working as a senior researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria. She is the author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock.
Academics don't like academic boycotts. In fact, we detest external limits of any kind. We treasure our own universities for offering precious sanctuary for critical debate (even though they rarely do) and we don't like to see any of them banned, even for ostensibly laudable reasons. Sure, universities in some countries are little more than fig leaves for their regimes. But that's not usually their fault. So we avoid the lectures of state hacks rather than denounce them and we protect the universities so that they can nurture that rare point of light.
Still, in very exceptional cases, an academic boycott comes onto our agenda. This happens when a country's universities are recognized as central players in legitimizing a regime that systematically inflicts massive human rights abuses on its own people and any pretence that the universities are independent fortresses of principled intellectual thought becomes too insulting to the human conscience. But since universities in many oppressive regimes fit those criteria, in practice a second condition is required: their faculties have the freedom to act differently.
In democratic countries where human rights abuses abound as rampantly as in Israel, it is not tenable that faculty entertain and promote the notion that their institutions -- cranking out the architects and professional foot soldiers of occupation -- have no role in those abuses and can join in mixed company as fine upstanding members of the international scholarly club. It is especially not tenable when universities themselves perpetrate discrimination in their research and their grants and admission policies. University faculties are supposed to hold their institutions accountable to basic standards of objectivity, fairness, and non-discrimination. Where they are capable of acting on those standards and refuse, the hack becomes the hypocrite. Moral paralysis becomes moral culpability.
On this reasoning, back in the 1980s offended foreign academics launched an academic boycott of apartheid South Africa, whose universities were finally rightly identified as bastions of white supremacy and whose white faculties, privileged by racial democracy, could be held accountable. Similarly, we now see a boycott of Israeli universities being urged by, among others, Britain's University and College Union. Israeli academics, naturally enough, are appalled by the idea of a boycott and the Israeli government is worried that the idea is gaining momentum. Hence an Israeli academic delegation has to come to England to wage battle against the boycott, and all the old banners once waved by apartheid's defenders -- 'academic freedom', 'balance', 'proportionality' -- are being waved again in this one.
Israeli academic arguments are indeed too reminiscent of apartheid South Africa to escape the comparison. Especially, South African academics trying to defeat the boycott typically avoided discussing the abuses of apartheid. Israeli academic arguments against the boycott also do not discuss the reason for it, which is Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and the subjugation of almost four million civilians under military rule. Instead, they stress the need for 'balance' -- which, in Israeli parlance, is a code word for shifting attention entirely away from the occupation to reiterate a tired canon of Israeli innocence, victimhood, and deniability. And because they do not discuss the occupation, they do not address their own universities' responsibility for it.
Whatever our conceits of political neutrality, academics never work in a vacuum. In conflict zones, our work is as inherently political as any other activity. For example, let us briefly suspend disbelief and accept Ben-Gurion University Professor Zvi Hacohen's claim, cited in Ha'aretz (15 May 2007) that 'there is widespread cooperation between our universities and Palestinian and Jordanian universities', although he does not specify what this 'widespread' cooperation is. His argument is hardly supported by Palestinian faculty, whose only public voice on the question has been to support the boycott.
But in any case, he cannot pretend that such collaboration is apolitical when Palestinian research partners are held captive under draconian military rule by his own government and the occupation is wrecking their families' hopes and lives, their institutions' viability, and their entire community's basic safety. Nor can he pretend that his own university is politically neutral when it subsists partly on privileges gained by such appalling human rights violations and conducts research designed to preserve and strengthen those privileges.
Ignoring such complicity is not neutral: it is enabling. It promotes a veneer of normalcy over a ghastly human rights situation and so helps shelter it from scrutiny.
Israel's defenders in this controversy also protest that a boycott violates the moral economy of academic work. 'Communication, understanding and international collaboration is what this field is all about,' said Professor Miriam Schlesinger of Bar Ilan University, who was asked to resign from the board of a translation journal because she is Israeli. Yet the ethic of communication, understanding, and collaboration with Palestinian universities is precisely what Israeli universities have unacceptably abandoned. Instead, Israeli scholars are casually allowing Palestinian institutions to crumble on their doorsteps, at the hands of their own government, while they themselves share elevated discussions in the paneled salons of Oxford and Cambridge.
A third argument is that a boycott is too sweeping, punishing Israel's intellectual progressives along with nationalist reactionaries and passive enablers. Schlesinger even calls it 'collective punishment' -- an unfortunate reference, since Israel's occupation and brutalization of some 4 million people is often denounced as collective punishment and the phrase suggests, again, that peculiar Israeli interpretation of the word 'balance'. Yet collective punishment is wrong where collective responsibility is lacking. Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp are not capable of controlling and therefore not responsible for what some militants do to resist occupation, and resisting occupation is a human right in any case. Israeli professors have the capacity to take a stand against human rights abuses furthered by their own institutions and therefore have the moral responsibility to do so.
Hence it is also false moral symmetry for Dr. Schlesinger to equate her right to serve on the board of an academic journal with the right of Palestinian students to university education. She was denied her board position not just because she is Israeli but because she is complicit, through the privileges and power she enjoys through her nationality and her job, with a brutal occupation. Palestinians are being denied their right to education solely because they are not Jews. The former ban, even if controversial, is a moral gesture; the latter ban is a racist one.
A fourth argument is that Israel is being unfairly singled out. For example, since the US and Britain have recently teamed up to kill, or cause to die or be killed, hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, surely a better case can be made for boycotting them. This argument trips over the grave of South African apartheid, however, for South Africa attempted the same claim of proportionality and the world had none of it. For one thing, state sins are not measured by death counts alone, nor are they ranked by their measurable gravity. If they were, we would focus on just one conflict at a time.
For another, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip is not a foreign policy gone wrong. The entire Israeli state system -- its laws, its policies, its ideology of Jewish statehood, the privileges that serve its Jewish-national society -- is implicated in a grand demographic strategy to exclude, imprison, and subjugate some 50 percent of the state's own territorial population solely on the basis of their ethnic identity. This distinguishes Israel from other states behaving badly by casting it into the particular moral abyss of an apartheid state.
And there's the rub. The small but growing international boycott of Israel signals that the political ground is shifting -- that its occupation is sliding conceptually, if not yet legally, into an apartheid model. The UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid defines 'the crime of apartheid' as 'inhuman acts' similar to apartheid, such as 'the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups' by denying 'the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality [citizenship], the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association'. The Convention particularly prohibits any measures 'designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos'.
If this package does not sound like Israel's military rule over Palestinians, it is hard to imagine what apartheid outside South Africa would look like or how the Convention might ever be applied again.
Israel hotly rejects the apartheid analogy, of course, partly on grounds that Palestinians are not a racial group but a national or ethnic group (defined in the negative, as non-Jews). Also, Palestinians are not supposed to be Israel's citizens, but rather are considered citizens of some nonexistent state that may exist some time in the future. But no one looking at the dismembered and walled West Bank enclaves now left to the Palestinians can imagine that these prison camps are intended to constitute a state, and the distinction between ethnicity and race in this context is losing all meaning. The A-word is everywhere now, and the boycott is one signal that the apartheid paradigm is seeding broadly into international civil society. Israel's hapless academics are fast losing ground fast to its growth.
Because they are in denial about the horrors of the occupation itself, Israeli academics protesting the boycott may not grasp its real purpose, which is to force them to confront those horrors. It is not acceptable for them to insist on ivory-tower privileges with so terrible a human rights catastrophe as the occupation stark on their doorstep, perpetrated by their own government and involving their own institutions in its cruelties and deceptions. When Dr. Schlesinger protests that being treated according to her nationality rather than her individual character 'was a blow,' she misses the entire point. To claim a right to principled treatment, one must extend it to others. Israeli academics must become serious about according their Palestinian colleagues the dignity and respect they expect themselves. When they do, given their formidable talents and resources, the occupation will face its toughest opponents.
Virginia Tilley is a US citizen now working as a senior researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria. She is the author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock.
PACBI Appeal: Boycott the Israeli Academy Now!
PACBI Appeal to British Academics, 24 May 2007
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the courage and moral consistency of British academics who support an institutional academic boycott of Israel similar to that imposed on apartheid South Africa in the past. We specifically welcome the motions submitted to the upcoming University and College Union (UCU) Council in Bournemouth that recognize the complicity of the Israeli academy in the occupation, urge academics "to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions," oppose any upgrade of Israel's EU status until it ends the occupation of Palestinian land and fully complies with EU Human Rights law, and call for the circulation of the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to UCU members. We urge UCU delegates to support these motions, fulfilling the mandate of academics and intellectuals to speak out against oppression and injustice.
Heartened by the growing international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, Palestinian academics, trade unionists, professionals, and human rights activists will be eagerly following the deliberations of the Council when it convenes on May 30. The British academics’ initiative is particularly timely due to Israel’s escalation of its oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel has continued with unprecedented impunity its indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, at least a third of whom are children; confiscation of Palestinian land and water resources; construction of the apartheid Wall, condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004; and wanton destruction of Palestinian agricultural lands, infrastructure and entire civilian neighborhoods. A report recently published by the World Bank scolds Israel for breaking up the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) into “cantons” thereby curtailing Palestinian freedom of movement through impeding access to “work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land.” These colonial and racist policies have lately prompted the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the OPT to join Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, and many others in comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa.
But why boycott the Israeli academy? Almost sixty years since the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their lands, and after forty years of Israeli military occupation and colonization of Arab land, Israeli universities, think tanks and research centers have remained an integral and complicit part of the structures of oppression in Israel. They have played a direct or indirect role in promoting, developing or supporting the state’s violation of human rights and international law. It is significant that no Israeli academic body or institution has ever taken a public stand against the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor have academic institutions or representative bodies of Israeli academics criticized their government’s longstanding siege of Palestinian education. We note in particular that the Coordinating Council of Israel's University Faculty Associations, which is touring the UK currently to try and dissuade UCU delegates from supporting the boycott, has remained silent on the serious damage the Israeli state has wrought upon the basic infrastructure of higher education in Palestine. It is indeed ironic that these representatives of Israeli academics, while pleading for respect for their academic freedom, have shown scant regard for the basic freedoms of Palestinians, including those of academics.
The Palestinian call for boycott of Israeli academic institutions (http://www.pacbi.org/campaign_statement.htm) is endorsed by the major federations and associations of academics and professionals and is supported by dozens of civil society institutions in Palestine. Like the Palestinian civil society’s widely endorsed call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), it is based on the same moral principle embodied in the international civil society campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa: that people of conscience must take a stand against oppression and use all the means of civil resistance available to bring an end to oppression. Palestinians are appealing to academics, professionals, artists and other activists in the world to work to bring an end to a regime that practices colonial oppression, racial discrimination against its Palestinian citizens, and which denies the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
PACBI hopes that the UCU will join the growing international movement by showing that no business as usual can be conducted with the Israeli academy until it takes a clear and unequivocal stand against the forms of oppression practiced by the Israeli state. Until it does so, the Israeli academy--as a major institutional upholder of the prevailing order--cannot expect exemption from the boycott. Boycott and divestment are among the most effective, morally sound non-violent forms of action available to people of conscience the world over. Palestinians are sincerely grateful to those who recognize that, since justice cannot be expected from the international centers of world power, they must organize and apply effective pressure on Israel to further the cause of justice and genuine peace. In the face of Israel’s oppression, silence means acquiescence.
Endorsed by:
- The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE)
- The Coalition of Political Parties in Palestine
- The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
- The Palestinian BDS Campaign
- The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
-------------------------
* In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian political parties, unions (including the PGFTU and the PFUUPE), associations, and organizations endorsed the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fully complies with international law: http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=66_0_1_10_M11
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the courage and moral consistency of British academics who support an institutional academic boycott of Israel similar to that imposed on apartheid South Africa in the past. We specifically welcome the motions submitted to the upcoming University and College Union (UCU) Council in Bournemouth that recognize the complicity of the Israeli academy in the occupation, urge academics "to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions," oppose any upgrade of Israel's EU status until it ends the occupation of Palestinian land and fully complies with EU Human Rights law, and call for the circulation of the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to UCU members. We urge UCU delegates to support these motions, fulfilling the mandate of academics and intellectuals to speak out against oppression and injustice.
Heartened by the growing international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, Palestinian academics, trade unionists, professionals, and human rights activists will be eagerly following the deliberations of the Council when it convenes on May 30. The British academics’ initiative is particularly timely due to Israel’s escalation of its oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel has continued with unprecedented impunity its indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, at least a third of whom are children; confiscation of Palestinian land and water resources; construction of the apartheid Wall, condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004; and wanton destruction of Palestinian agricultural lands, infrastructure and entire civilian neighborhoods. A report recently published by the World Bank scolds Israel for breaking up the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) into “cantons” thereby curtailing Palestinian freedom of movement through impeding access to “work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land.” These colonial and racist policies have lately prompted the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the OPT to join Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, and many others in comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa.
But why boycott the Israeli academy? Almost sixty years since the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their lands, and after forty years of Israeli military occupation and colonization of Arab land, Israeli universities, think tanks and research centers have remained an integral and complicit part of the structures of oppression in Israel. They have played a direct or indirect role in promoting, developing or supporting the state’s violation of human rights and international law. It is significant that no Israeli academic body or institution has ever taken a public stand against the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor have academic institutions or representative bodies of Israeli academics criticized their government’s longstanding siege of Palestinian education. We note in particular that the Coordinating Council of Israel's University Faculty Associations, which is touring the UK currently to try and dissuade UCU delegates from supporting the boycott, has remained silent on the serious damage the Israeli state has wrought upon the basic infrastructure of higher education in Palestine. It is indeed ironic that these representatives of Israeli academics, while pleading for respect for their academic freedom, have shown scant regard for the basic freedoms of Palestinians, including those of academics.
The Palestinian call for boycott of Israeli academic institutions (http://www.pacbi.org/campaign_statement.htm) is endorsed by the major federations and associations of academics and professionals and is supported by dozens of civil society institutions in Palestine. Like the Palestinian civil society’s widely endorsed call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), it is based on the same moral principle embodied in the international civil society campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa: that people of conscience must take a stand against oppression and use all the means of civil resistance available to bring an end to oppression. Palestinians are appealing to academics, professionals, artists and other activists in the world to work to bring an end to a regime that practices colonial oppression, racial discrimination against its Palestinian citizens, and which denies the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
PACBI hopes that the UCU will join the growing international movement by showing that no business as usual can be conducted with the Israeli academy until it takes a clear and unequivocal stand against the forms of oppression practiced by the Israeli state. Until it does so, the Israeli academy--as a major institutional upholder of the prevailing order--cannot expect exemption from the boycott. Boycott and divestment are among the most effective, morally sound non-violent forms of action available to people of conscience the world over. Palestinians are sincerely grateful to those who recognize that, since justice cannot be expected from the international centers of world power, they must organize and apply effective pressure on Israel to further the cause of justice and genuine peace. In the face of Israel’s oppression, silence means acquiescence.
Endorsed by:
- The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE)
- The Coalition of Political Parties in Palestine
- The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
- The Palestinian BDS Campaign
- The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
-------------------------
* In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian political parties, unions (including the PGFTU and the PFUUPE), associations, and organizations endorsed the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fully complies with international law: http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=66_0_1_10_M11
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
On Valentine's day, boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds and Israeli flowers
AUDIO: On Valentine's day, boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds and Israeli flowers
Cian O'Siochain interviews James Bowen on Clare FM, 13 February 2007
Blood up over war diamonds
Kathryn Hayes, Irish Examiner, Monday, 5 February 2007
A campaign to boycott Israeli "blood diamonds" has been launched by a group established to raise awareness of the international plight of the Palestinian people.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Campaigners to picket Israeli Company importing Valentine's Day Flowers
Report, BIG, 2 February 2007
We are asking the British public not to buy blood stained flowers for their loved ones this year. Carmel Agrexco is the largest importer of illegal settlement goods into the UK. The Valentine's day period is one of their busiest as the company deals with large amounts of fresh flowers from Israel and the settlements. In the UK Agrexco is known under the Carmel, Coral and Jaffa brands.
Second Day of Action against Israeli Company Importing Valentine’s Day Flowers
February 11th, 2007
Thirteen Palestine solidarity protesters from London and Brighton are blockading the UK base of an Israeli agricultural export company Agrexco (UK) Ltd, Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex.
This is the second day of action against Agrexco on one of their busiest weekends of the year. Agrexco are dealing with large amounts of Israeli flowers in the build up to Valentine’s Day. On Saturday over a hundred protesters stood in front of the gates of the depot and deliveries had to be rescheduled.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SOUTH AFRICA: Avocados, Diamonds at Core of Anti-Israel Trade Campaign
Moyiga Nduru Inter Press Service News Agency January 27, 2007
A call from a South African trade unionist for national supermarket chains to stop importing avocado from Israel could ultimately lead to the banning of all imports from the Jewish state, if unions and human rights activists have their way.
Youth Section of Brazilian Trade Union Congress endorses BDS
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, February 10th, 2007
The youth congress of the CUT, the confederation of Brazilian trade unions, has joined the global BDS movement. At their annual national convention, held on Saturday, February 3, 2007, the delegates approved a motion endorsing the Palestinian BDS movement and calling on the Brazilian government to cut trade relations with Israel. The motion was passed with 200 votes in favor and four against.
Cian O'Siochain interviews James Bowen on Clare FM, 13 February 2007
Blood up over war diamonds
Kathryn Hayes, Irish Examiner, Monday, 5 February 2007
A campaign to boycott Israeli "blood diamonds" has been launched by a group established to raise awareness of the international plight of the Palestinian people.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Campaigners to picket Israeli Company importing Valentine's Day Flowers
Report, BIG, 2 February 2007
We are asking the British public not to buy blood stained flowers for their loved ones this year. Carmel Agrexco is the largest importer of illegal settlement goods into the UK. The Valentine's day period is one of their busiest as the company deals with large amounts of fresh flowers from Israel and the settlements. In the UK Agrexco is known under the Carmel, Coral and Jaffa brands.
Second Day of Action against Israeli Company Importing Valentine’s Day Flowers
February 11th, 2007
Thirteen Palestine solidarity protesters from London and Brighton are blockading the UK base of an Israeli agricultural export company Agrexco (UK) Ltd, Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex.
This is the second day of action against Agrexco on one of their busiest weekends of the year. Agrexco are dealing with large amounts of Israeli flowers in the build up to Valentine’s Day. On Saturday over a hundred protesters stood in front of the gates of the depot and deliveries had to be rescheduled.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SOUTH AFRICA: Avocados, Diamonds at Core of Anti-Israel Trade Campaign
Moyiga Nduru Inter Press Service News Agency January 27, 2007
A call from a South African trade unionist for national supermarket chains to stop importing avocado from Israel could ultimately lead to the banning of all imports from the Jewish state, if unions and human rights activists have their way.
Youth Section of Brazilian Trade Union Congress endorses BDS
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, February 10th, 2007
The youth congress of the CUT, the confederation of Brazilian trade unions, has joined the global BDS movement. At their annual national convention, held on Saturday, February 3, 2007, the delegates approved a motion endorsing the Palestinian BDS movement and calling on the Brazilian government to cut trade relations with Israel. The motion was passed with 200 votes in favor and four against.
Thursday, 11 January 2007
Be consistent, Dr. Pedersen!
Be consistent, Dr. Pedersen!
Adri Nieuwhof and Jo Falk Nielsen, The Electronic Intifada, 7 January 2007
Veolia Environnement affiliated Veolia Transport is a partner in the Israeli project to build a tramway that will run on occupied Palestinian territory. This is a violation of international law. Veolia received a lot of criticism since it first announced its intentions to become involved in the illegal project. Institut Veolia is an academic institute of Veolia Environnement, aimed at creating prestige and respectability to Veolia's operations.
Dr Freddy Karup Pedersen has been involved in activities of Institute Veolia and is thus indirectly involved in this violation of international law.Dr Pedersen is also a member of the Standing Committee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the former President of the Danish Red Cross.
The Danish Palestinian Friendship Association has urged Pedersen to distance himself from the Institut Veolia, until now without success.
In the past, Pedersen said it was his duty to "shout it out loud and clear" when the rules of war are not respected or when governments fall short of their human rights pledges under the Geneva Convention. Today he is affiliated with such violations.
International experts urged to withdraw from Veolia Institute
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 8 December 2006
Adri Nieuwhof and Jo Falk Nielsen, The Electronic Intifada, 7 January 2007
Veolia Environnement affiliated Veolia Transport is a partner in the Israeli project to build a tramway that will run on occupied Palestinian territory. This is a violation of international law. Veolia received a lot of criticism since it first announced its intentions to become involved in the illegal project. Institut Veolia is an academic institute of Veolia Environnement, aimed at creating prestige and respectability to Veolia's operations.
Dr Freddy Karup Pedersen has been involved in activities of Institute Veolia and is thus indirectly involved in this violation of international law.Dr Pedersen is also a member of the Standing Committee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the former President of the Danish Red Cross.
The Danish Palestinian Friendship Association has urged Pedersen to distance himself from the Institut Veolia, until now without success.
In the past, Pedersen said it was his duty to "shout it out loud and clear" when the rules of war are not respected or when governments fall short of their human rights pledges under the Geneva Convention. Today he is affiliated with such violations.
International experts urged to withdraw from Veolia Institute
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 8 December 2006
Friday, 29 December 2006
12.12.06
Who Makes the Middle East?
Ran HaCohen, 29 November, 2006
A revealing book I have recently read about the present Middle East is Joris Luyendijk's Almost Human. Luyendijk was a Dutch journalist who spent several years (1998-2003) in Arab countries as well as in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, working for two Dutch quality newspapers and for the television. His background as a social science student, his command of Arabic and his academic research in Egypt, as well as the fact that he deserted the journalistic profession, all give him a unique critical perspective on the "Middle East," both as an actual reality and as a permanent media item. In fact, the gap between these two – between the Mideast's reality and its Western image – is the true subject of the book.
The book is currently available in Dutch only; I hope some English-language publisher will pick up the glove and translate it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elbow to Elbow, Like Cattle - The Cruel Line into Gaza
Gideon Levy, December 11, 2006
Without anyone paying attention, the Gaza Strip has become the most closed-off strip of land in the world--after North Korea. But while North Korea is globally known to be a closed and isolated country, how many people know that the same description applies to a place just an hour away from hedonist Tel Aviv?
When You Annoy a Soldier ...The Checkpoint Generation
Amira Hass, December 2 / 3, 2006
For nearly a month now, a young Palestinian has been hospitalized at Beilinson Hospital; soldiers shot him at a checkpoint in northern Nablus on Saturday, November 4. Haitem Yassin, 25, is conscious now,but he is still hooked up to a respirator. In recent days, he has been suffering from a high fever, apparently caused by an infection in his abdomen, which was wounded in the shooting. His family is still waiting for a report from the hospital about the number or type of bullets that caused the serious injury.
Cancer didn't kill my mother, the occupation did
Raed M. Sharif writing from Syracuse, U.S., Live from Palestine, 11 December 2006
Allegra Pacheco on the Israeli Policy of Closure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A shocking statement: HRW condemns Palestinians' use of nonviolence to protect homes from destruction (Human Rights Watch: "OPT: Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks"; The Associated Press : "American nun, priest join Gaza standoff") 11.23.2006
Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance?
Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too?
Jonathan Cook, November 30, 2006
UN EXPERT URGES ISRAEL TO STOP DESTRUCTION OF HOUSES AND INFRASTRUCTURES IN GAZA, CALLS FOR MILITARY SANCTIONS
10 November 2006
The following statement was issued today by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, Miloon Kothari:
"As Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, I condemn in the strongest possible terms the artillery shelling of Palestinian homes by the Israeli defence force in Beit Hanoun that killed 19 innocent civilians and injured 60, including women and children. The explanation by Israeli authorities that this wantonly criminal act was a mistake is unacceptable. The shelling and subsequent killing of civilians indicates a premeditated military tactic constituting a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ran HaCohen, 29 November, 2006
A revealing book I have recently read about the present Middle East is Joris Luyendijk's Almost Human. Luyendijk was a Dutch journalist who spent several years (1998-2003) in Arab countries as well as in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, working for two Dutch quality newspapers and for the television. His background as a social science student, his command of Arabic and his academic research in Egypt, as well as the fact that he deserted the journalistic profession, all give him a unique critical perspective on the "Middle East," both as an actual reality and as a permanent media item. In fact, the gap between these two – between the Mideast's reality and its Western image – is the true subject of the book.
The book is currently available in Dutch only; I hope some English-language publisher will pick up the glove and translate it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elbow to Elbow, Like Cattle - The Cruel Line into Gaza
Gideon Levy, December 11, 2006
Without anyone paying attention, the Gaza Strip has become the most closed-off strip of land in the world--after North Korea. But while North Korea is globally known to be a closed and isolated country, how many people know that the same description applies to a place just an hour away from hedonist Tel Aviv?
When You Annoy a Soldier ...The Checkpoint Generation
Amira Hass, December 2 / 3, 2006
For nearly a month now, a young Palestinian has been hospitalized at Beilinson Hospital; soldiers shot him at a checkpoint in northern Nablus on Saturday, November 4. Haitem Yassin, 25, is conscious now,but he is still hooked up to a respirator. In recent days, he has been suffering from a high fever, apparently caused by an infection in his abdomen, which was wounded in the shooting. His family is still waiting for a report from the hospital about the number or type of bullets that caused the serious injury.
Cancer didn't kill my mother, the occupation did
Raed M. Sharif writing from Syracuse, U.S., Live from Palestine, 11 December 2006
Allegra Pacheco on the Israeli Policy of Closure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A shocking statement: HRW condemns Palestinians' use of nonviolence to protect homes from destruction (Human Rights Watch: "OPT: Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks"; The Associated Press : "American nun, priest join Gaza standoff") 11.23.2006
Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance?
Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too?
Jonathan Cook, November 30, 2006
UN EXPERT URGES ISRAEL TO STOP DESTRUCTION OF HOUSES AND INFRASTRUCTURES IN GAZA, CALLS FOR MILITARY SANCTIONS
10 November 2006
The following statement was issued today by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, Miloon Kothari:
"As Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, I condemn in the strongest possible terms the artillery shelling of Palestinian homes by the Israeli defence force in Beit Hanoun that killed 19 innocent civilians and injured 60, including women and children. The explanation by Israeli authorities that this wantonly criminal act was a mistake is unacceptable. The shelling and subsequent killing of civilians indicates a premeditated military tactic constituting a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby
Juan Cole, November 28, 2006
The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that.
Mideast studies accused
Rebecca Weisser, November 22, 2006
Allegations of bias in Australian universities were made in federal parliament in August when Labor MP Michael Danby singled out Andrew Vincent from Macquarie University's Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and Amin Saikal of the Australian National University's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.
Video - 11.11.2006
One viewer's impression of the Norman Finkelstein - Alan Dershowitz debate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BIRZEIT STUDENTS AND LECTURERS CALL FOR ACADEMIC BOYCOTT
Right to Education Student Committee, Birzeit University, 28 November 2006
Juan Cole, November 28, 2006
The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that.
Mideast studies accused
Rebecca Weisser, November 22, 2006
Allegations of bias in Australian universities were made in federal parliament in August when Labor MP Michael Danby singled out Andrew Vincent from Macquarie University's Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and Amin Saikal of the Australian National University's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.
Video - 11.11.2006
One viewer's impression of the Norman Finkelstein - Alan Dershowitz debate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BIRZEIT STUDENTS AND LECTURERS CALL FOR ACADEMIC BOYCOTT
Right to Education Student Committee, Birzeit University, 28 November 2006
Open letter in support of Irish academics,
We, the undersigned, members of the Birzeit University' community ofstudents, teachers, faculty staff and employees, congratulate and thank the group of Irish academics who called for a moratorium on theEuropean Union's financing of Israeli academic institutions until Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories and abides by international humanitarian and human rights laws, including theright of return.
The recent attacks and re-invasion of Gaza and Lebanon expose the contempt with which Israel treats the UN, its resolution and its own bilateral agreements. We strongly condemn the death, chaos and destruction inflicted upon Gazans and Lebanese, and call upon the students, academics and staff of universities worldwide to collectively condemn these acts and take action to support us in our struggle to end Israeli military aggression and occupation.
Academic Boycott: "We do not want to continue business as usual"
Birgit Althaler, The Electronic Intifada, 8 November 2006
Jonathan Rosenhead (67) has been a member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) for the past two years. He has been a member of staff at the London School of Economics since 1967 and Professor of Operational Research from 1987.
Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University is interviewed about the Academic Boycott on Radio BBAD.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Principled Dutch ASN Bank ends relations with Veolia
Adri Nieuwhof, November 26, 2006
This week, ASN Bank, a Dutch bank based in The Hague,1 announced that it would end its relationship with Veolia Transport, and all companies that benefit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Since it first announced its intentions to become involved in an Israeli project to build a light rail / tramline system, to be constructed in occupied East Jerusalem, Veolia Transport, a French multi-national corporation, faced a lot of criticism from all over the world. The tramline aims to connect the illegally-constructed settlements in East Jerusalem with towns and cities in Israel.
Labour Youth calls for Israel Boycott to mark UN Day of Solidarity with Palestine
Labour Youth (Ireland) November 28, 2006
Labour Youth will mark November 29th, the United Nations day of solidarity with Palestine by calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods and services as well as support for the educational and cultural boycott of Israel. Speaking ahead of the UN day of solidarity, Labour Youth National Chairperson Patrick Nulty said "As an organisation, Labour Youth has a proud tradition of solidarity actions with the Palestinian people and wishes to mark this year's international day of solidarity by reiterating its call for a boycott of all Israeli goods until such time as they respect international law and norms for human rights."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A rare voice: An interview with author Ilan Pappe
Christopher Brown, 11 December 2006
I think the problem with Avigdor Lieberman is not his own views but the fact that he reflects what most Israeli Jews think, and definitely what most of his colleagues in the Olmert government think but don't dare to say, or don't think is desirable to say for tactical reasons. But I do think that we should be worried about Lieberman, not as an extreme fascist but rather as a person who represents the mood of Israel in 2006.
Peace through equality for all
Bernard Sabella, IMEU, Nov 16, 2006
In the land where Jesus once walked, Palestinian Christians face extinction. With nearly 500,000 Palestinian Christians worldwide, only 170,000 remain in the Holy Land. They belong to 15 different Churches,some still using Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. But the traditions of service and continuity of Christian communities in the very birthplace of Christianity may soon disappear.
Refugees Are The Key
Sam Bahour, The Electronic Intifada, 11 December 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As'ad Abukhalil - Thursday, November 03, 2005
Yes. Jimmy Carter has a new book out.
As'ad Abukhalil - Monday, December 11, 2006
Jimmy Carter who has just--just now--discovered the power of the pro-Israel lobby defines the state of Israel as a place "where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status."
Norman G Finkelstein: Jimmy cracks fibs, and I do care
12.01.2006
See 01 min 17 sec into the video: Jimmy Carter: "Inside Israel... Arabs and Jews both have the same priveleges. There's no allegation of any kind of discrimination."(Anderson Cooper 360, 11.30.2006)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
APARTHEID - Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped
John Dugard The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 29, 2006
Former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," is igniting controversy for its allegation that Israel practices a form of apartheid. As a South African and former anti-apartheid advocate who visits the Palestinian territories regularly to assess the human rights situation for the U.N. Human Rights Council, the comparison to South African apartheid is of special interest to me.
Two laws, one trap for family unification
Shahar Ilan, Ha'aretz, November 30, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disregard for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
AL-HAQ PRESS RELEASE FOR RELEASE ON 10 DECEMBER 2006REF.: 38.2006E
9 December 2006
Today the United Nations (UN) observes the 58th International HumanRights Day, commemorating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN General Assembly, on 10 December 1948. On this occasion, Al-Haq is compelled to note the stark contrast between the fundamental standards enshrined in the UDHR, and the situation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
U.N. group: Israel laid mines in Lebanon
Zeina Karam, Associated Press, Sat, Nov. 25, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A U.N. agency said Saturday that Israel laid mines in Lebanon during this summer's war between the Jewish state and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group - the first time Israel has been accused of planting mines during the latest fighting.
Prime suspects
Jonathan Cook, November 24, 2006
While many seem to have made up their minds that Pierre Gemayel's murder was down to Syria, the blame could still lie elsewhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
72-year-old left-wing activist decries repeated 'harassment' by B-G security
Rebecca Anna Stoil, November 21, 2006
Ingrid Steinitz, a 72-year-old Danish Jew, has alleged she was strip-searched and harassed by Ben-Gurion Airport security for hours and on a second occasion told to spread her legs and place her hands against a wall. But Ben-Gurion security officials said Monday that everything was done according to procedures, and that the treatment the grandmother and left-wing activist had received was entirely justified.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As'ad Abukhalil - Friday, December 08, 2006
I am not in the habit of defending Jimmy Carter. Never. But for Dennis Ross to make a claim of plagiarism over this? Give me a break. What? Ross invents maps of lands that do not exist except in worlds that he alone can see and in planets that he inhabits by himself? What is next? Dennis Ross claims exclusive ownership over the word "potato."? And since when Dennis Ross "makes" maps? I mean, I know that he makes great contributions to the absence of peace in the Middle East, but I never knew that he has other skills besides not knowing much about the Middle East, and merely advancing the cause of Zionist militancy.
We, the undersigned, members of the Birzeit University' community ofstudents, teachers, faculty staff and employees, congratulate and thank the group of Irish academics who called for a moratorium on theEuropean Union's financing of Israeli academic institutions until Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories and abides by international humanitarian and human rights laws, including theright of return.
The recent attacks and re-invasion of Gaza and Lebanon expose the contempt with which Israel treats the UN, its resolution and its own bilateral agreements. We strongly condemn the death, chaos and destruction inflicted upon Gazans and Lebanese, and call upon the students, academics and staff of universities worldwide to collectively condemn these acts and take action to support us in our struggle to end Israeli military aggression and occupation.
Academic Boycott: "We do not want to continue business as usual"
Birgit Althaler, The Electronic Intifada, 8 November 2006
Jonathan Rosenhead (67) has been a member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) for the past two years. He has been a member of staff at the London School of Economics since 1967 and Professor of Operational Research from 1987.
Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University is interviewed about the Academic Boycott on Radio BBAD.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Principled Dutch ASN Bank ends relations with Veolia
Adri Nieuwhof, November 26, 2006
This week, ASN Bank, a Dutch bank based in The Hague,1 announced that it would end its relationship with Veolia Transport, and all companies that benefit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Since it first announced its intentions to become involved in an Israeli project to build a light rail / tramline system, to be constructed in occupied East Jerusalem, Veolia Transport, a French multi-national corporation, faced a lot of criticism from all over the world. The tramline aims to connect the illegally-constructed settlements in East Jerusalem with towns and cities in Israel.
Labour Youth calls for Israel Boycott to mark UN Day of Solidarity with Palestine
Labour Youth (Ireland) November 28, 2006
Labour Youth will mark November 29th, the United Nations day of solidarity with Palestine by calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods and services as well as support for the educational and cultural boycott of Israel. Speaking ahead of the UN day of solidarity, Labour Youth National Chairperson Patrick Nulty said "As an organisation, Labour Youth has a proud tradition of solidarity actions with the Palestinian people and wishes to mark this year's international day of solidarity by reiterating its call for a boycott of all Israeli goods until such time as they respect international law and norms for human rights."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A rare voice: An interview with author Ilan Pappe
Christopher Brown, 11 December 2006
I think the problem with Avigdor Lieberman is not his own views but the fact that he reflects what most Israeli Jews think, and definitely what most of his colleagues in the Olmert government think but don't dare to say, or don't think is desirable to say for tactical reasons. But I do think that we should be worried about Lieberman, not as an extreme fascist but rather as a person who represents the mood of Israel in 2006.
Peace through equality for all
Bernard Sabella, IMEU, Nov 16, 2006
In the land where Jesus once walked, Palestinian Christians face extinction. With nearly 500,000 Palestinian Christians worldwide, only 170,000 remain in the Holy Land. They belong to 15 different Churches,some still using Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. But the traditions of service and continuity of Christian communities in the very birthplace of Christianity may soon disappear.
Refugees Are The Key
Sam Bahour, The Electronic Intifada, 11 December 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As'ad Abukhalil - Thursday, November 03, 2005
Yes. Jimmy Carter has a new book out.
As'ad Abukhalil - Monday, December 11, 2006
Jimmy Carter who has just--just now--discovered the power of the pro-Israel lobby defines the state of Israel as a place "where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status."
Norman G Finkelstein: Jimmy cracks fibs, and I do care
12.01.2006
See 01 min 17 sec into the video: Jimmy Carter: "Inside Israel... Arabs and Jews both have the same priveleges. There's no allegation of any kind of discrimination."(Anderson Cooper 360, 11.30.2006)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
APARTHEID - Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped
John Dugard The Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 29, 2006
Former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," is igniting controversy for its allegation that Israel practices a form of apartheid. As a South African and former anti-apartheid advocate who visits the Palestinian territories regularly to assess the human rights situation for the U.N. Human Rights Council, the comparison to South African apartheid is of special interest to me.
Two laws, one trap for family unification
Shahar Ilan, Ha'aretz, November 30, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disregard for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
AL-HAQ PRESS RELEASE FOR RELEASE ON 10 DECEMBER 2006REF.: 38.2006E
9 December 2006
Today the United Nations (UN) observes the 58th International HumanRights Day, commemorating the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN General Assembly, on 10 December 1948. On this occasion, Al-Haq is compelled to note the stark contrast between the fundamental standards enshrined in the UDHR, and the situation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
U.N. group: Israel laid mines in Lebanon
Zeina Karam, Associated Press, Sat, Nov. 25, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A U.N. agency said Saturday that Israel laid mines in Lebanon during this summer's war between the Jewish state and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group - the first time Israel has been accused of planting mines during the latest fighting.
Prime suspects
Jonathan Cook, November 24, 2006
While many seem to have made up their minds that Pierre Gemayel's murder was down to Syria, the blame could still lie elsewhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
72-year-old left-wing activist decries repeated 'harassment' by B-G security
Rebecca Anna Stoil, November 21, 2006
Ingrid Steinitz, a 72-year-old Danish Jew, has alleged she was strip-searched and harassed by Ben-Gurion Airport security for hours and on a second occasion told to spread her legs and place her hands against a wall. But Ben-Gurion security officials said Monday that everything was done according to procedures, and that the treatment the grandmother and left-wing activist had received was entirely justified.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As'ad Abukhalil - Friday, December 08, 2006
I am not in the habit of defending Jimmy Carter. Never. But for Dennis Ross to make a claim of plagiarism over this? Give me a break. What? Ross invents maps of lands that do not exist except in worlds that he alone can see and in planets that he inhabits by himself? What is next? Dennis Ross claims exclusive ownership over the word "potato."? And since when Dennis Ross "makes" maps? I mean, I know that he makes great contributions to the absence of peace in the Middle East, but I never knew that he has other skills besides not knowing much about the Middle East, and merely advancing the cause of Zionist militancy.
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