Stop the War demo - London, 15 March 2008

Stop the War Demonstration - London, March 15th 2008

Troops out of Iraq

Don't attack Iran

Free Gaza / End Israeli Occupation

Emergency Gaza demonstration - London, Parliament - 05/03/08

EMERGENCY ACTION:

End Israel 's killing of Palestinians now!

Lift the siege on Gaza !

Wednesday 5 March 1-2pm Parliament Square - Emergency protest.

Called by PSC, BMI, PFB, supported by Stop the War, Association of the Palestinian Community UK and Friends of Al Aqsa.

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/

Comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto

Sydney Morning Herald, Letters page : 22-24 January

January 22 2008
Lesson unlearnt
Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear. Warsaw Ghetto 1941 - Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.
Zaid Khan Blakehurst

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January 23 2008
Slight difference
I am not as familiar as Zaid Khan (Letters, January 22) with Europe 70 years ago but, to the best of my knowledge the oppressed minority in Warsaw were not firing Katyusha rockets indiscriminately into the surrounding area and neither were their kids being wrapped in explosives and sent out to blow up the neighbours.
David Calvey Vaucluse

...................

January 24 2008
Warsaw and Gaza a difference of means and ends
What we can never know, David Calvey (Letters, Jan 23), is whether the oppressed in Warsaw would have retaliated had they been given the means with which to do so.
Rachel Merhebi Turramurra

You're right, David Calvey, the oppressed minority in Warsaw before World War II did not protest with rockets and suicide bombs. But I believe most of them ended up in the Nazi gas chambers.
Paul Sadler Newtown

The reason, David Calvey, that the oppressed minority were not fighting back with weapons and explosives is that they didn't have them. I am sure Polish Jews would have used anything available and done anything possible to disrupt the German war machine. I am sure what Zaid Kahn was getting at is the massive hypocrisy of Israel; it was oppression back then when done to them, but it is somehow OK to do it to someone else now.
Daniel Gardiner Camperdown

Maybe I'm not as familiar as David Calvey with Europe 70 years ago but, if the oppressed minority suffering in Warsaw was subjected to the same oppression for 50 continuous years or more, they, too, would take more extreme measures. Also, to the best of my knowledge, like the people in the occupied territories, the oppressed in Warsaw did eventually revolt against the oppression, and justifiably so.
Brad Spencer Ljubljana (Slovenia)

I don't need to visit Gaza to tell David Calvey that 99 per cent of its population don't have rockets in the back shed and bomb vests in the bedroom.

Like the Jews in Warsaw, most Palestinians in Gaza are being held captive with the barest of essentials purely on the basis that they were "accidentally" born of the wrong blood in the wrong place. How can an average Palestinian Joe hope to stop the actions of a few mad militants? And why should the Israelis or we expect them to do so? The current policy effectively holds every man, women and child responsible for any act of terrorism.

Last thing I heard, there are quite a few unsolved murders in Sydney. I say we lock the whole place down until people there realise that the rest of the country won't tolerate it. After all, if they are prepared to murder their fellow Sydneysiders they might come after the rest of us.
Anura Samara Geneva (Switzerland)

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British MPs compare Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
Press Association
Thursday June 19, 2003
Guardian Unlimited
Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was today compared to the Nazis' creation of the Warsaw ghetto by MPs who recently returned from the region. The controversial comparison, drawn by Oona King and Jenny Tonge, will anger the pro-Israel lobby and the visiting Israeli finance minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, who met Tony Blair at Downing Street this morning.

Labour MP Ms King, who is Jewish, said Gaza was "the same in nature" as the infamous Polish ghetto.

British Jewry Again Finds Itself Embroiled in a Labor Party Scandal

The Forward : Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Manchester, England — When the political scandal that is dominating Britain's front pages broke last week, the man at the center of it, David Abrahams, was at a charity dinner in London for Israel's Technion Institute of Technology.

Abrahams, a British real estate magnate, is one of the leading British donors to Jewish and Israeli causes, but on Sunday, November 25, all eyes were on his donations to the Labor Party. Earlier that day, The Mail on Sunday first reported that Abrahams had secretly funneled political donations through much less wealthy intermediaries. Abrahams had turned a small-time construction worker named Ray Ruddick into the third-largest donor to Britain's governing party.

When asked about the scandal before the Technion event, Abrahams told the Forward that his method of donation was linked to being taught "that you do things on the quiet and don't make a song and dance of it," adding, "This is my own ethos, influenced by my Jewish background."

Abrahams's explanations have not placated critics, and the scandal has since gone on to consume much of the top ranks of the Labor Party. Last Monday, the party's general secretary, Peter Watt, resigned, admitting he knew about the arrangement.

For Britain's Jewish community, the scandal has implications that are similarly broad. Further reporting has indicated that one of the key players on the receiving end of Abrahams's donation was also a prominent Jewish philanthropist and communal leader.

"There is wide concern in this story, and clearly there is a potential for it to turn against us," Jon Benjamin, chief executive of Board of Deputies of British Jews, told the Forward. "We have been there before." The Board of Deputies is an umbrella group for British Jewish organizations.

As Benjamin suggested, this is only the latest Labor Party scandal to involve major Jewish communal leaders. Last year, Tony Blair's envoy to the Middle East, Michael Levy, came under criminal investigation for allegedly trading peerages for donations and for breaching a law that says donations of more than 5,000 pounds (roughly $10,000) must be declared. The investigation ended in the summer, and Levy faced no charges.

The current scandal, nicknamed Donorgate, was kicked off by evidence that Abrahams had circumvented laws designed to ensure transparency in political funding. In addition to the 200,000 pounds ($400,000) that was given to the Labor Party by an employee at one of Abraham's construction firms, three more intermediaries were outed, including Abrahams's secretary. The donations added up to 600,000 pounds, slightly more than $1.2 million.

Labor Party officials initially denied knowing about Abrahams's unorthodox methods of giving, but evidence has since emerged that Abrahams was in close contact with Prime Minister Gordon Brown's election campaign adviser, Jon Mendelsohn, who also happens to be the ex-chairman of the lobby group Labor Friends of Israel.

Brown acknowledged that the donations broke transparency laws and promised that the party would pay them back, but Mendelsohn and Abrahams have been sniping at each other through the press.

The problem for British Jewry is that this scandal involves not merely characters who happen to be Jewish, but rather two men who are key communal players and strong advocates for Israel.

Mendelsohn, said to be one of the most connected power brokers in Parliament, is former head of the Union of Jewish Students and of the Holocaust Educational Trust, among other organizations.

Abrahams has been a vice chairman of the Jewish Labor Movement and a board member of the Trade Union Friends of Israel. He is a member of St. John's Wood Synagogue, a prosperous London congregation considered the jewel in the crown of the Orthodox Union's British equivalent, the United Synagogue.

Abrahams released a statement Sunday saying he was placed next to Mendelsohn at dinner in London on April 25.

"I told him," Abrahams said in his statement, "that I regularly donated to the party and I described how it was done through intermediaries for the purposes of anonymity, to which he replied, 'That sounds like a good idea.'"

Mendelsohn has hit back, releasing his own statement, saying: "This latest statement is fictional and completely untrue. I will be cooperating fully with the police in their investigation."

The tension between the two men has its roots in their time together in Labor Friends of Israel. When Mendelsohn became head of the organization in 2002, he reportedly threw Abrahams off the executive board.

Already, reporters have been looking at other Jewish roots of the current scandal. The Daily Telegraph reported fears that Abrahams "may himself have been a conduit for another mystery benefactor." The newspaper outlined some Israel connections and pointed out that last year Abrahams was photographed with the Israeli ambassador to London.

Within the Jewish community, Abrahams is known for his friendships with Israeli politicians. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during Olmert's recent visit to Britain.

Andrew Dismore, a Labor Member of Parliament who represents a heavily Jewish London constituency, told The Jewish Chronicle that people are "looking for links to Jewish interests and evidence of a Jewish conspiracy. The press are turning every stone to find one."

==============================

BBC - Profile: David Abrahams

Jewish Chronicle defends its coverage of David Abrahams
Haroon Siddique and agencies, Guardian Unlimited, Friday December 7, 2007
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle today insisted that his paper had run an accurate record of its interview with David Abrahams about his donations to the Labour party, after the property developer's spokesman claimed he had been "misrepresented". An interview in today's Jewish Chronicle quotes Abrahams as saying he did not want to be identified because he "didn't want Jewish money and the Labour party being put together".

He said the media had proved him to be right in trying to keep his name out of the limelight by printing allegations of a "Jewish conspiracy" in relation to the donations. The cash gifts were made through agents and not registered in Abrahams' name with the Electoral Commission, as required under party funding law.

David Abrahams hints at frequent meetings with PM
Nick Allen, Paul Stokes and Richard Edwards
The Telegraph, 30/11/2007
It emerged yesterday he is a provincial vice-chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement, serves on the board of the Trade Union Friends of Israel, and was among communal leaders who met the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, during his recent visit to Britain.

He was also the northern convenor of the Labour Friends of Israel and, in 1991, was elected to the LFI national executive. It is likely that it was at LFI where he first met Jon Mendelsohn, Labour's chief fundraiser, who became its director in 2002.

The shadowy role of Labour Friends of Israel
Such lobbyists and their back-room influence should make us very uneasy
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent, 03 December 2007
I rang some of my Jewish friends who support LFI and are well acquainted with Abrahams and Mendelsohn. Two have known both professionally for some time and others have personal relationships with these men. I felt their unease as we talked about this latest unsavoury New Labour scandal. Some of these contacts confirm that Abrahams and Mendelsohn fell out at a dramatic LFI meeting when Abrahams wanted the group to make contact with a particular Palestinian organisation and Mendelsohn vehemently disagreed.

OK. Internal strife among campaigners is part of the deal, and Palestine, as we know, divides Jewish opinion the whole world over. Such things happen all the time when communal champions gather. It happens within Palestinian forums too. But LFI is not only an activist network. It enviably attracts the support of top parliamentarians, almost all prime ministers for a start. Its fringe meetings are packed because, on the platform, they can guarantee the biggest names from the political parties.

Architects protest Brown's JNF patronship

Susannah Tarbush - The Electronic Intifada - September 10, 2007
When Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) sent a letter to the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown two weeks ago describing as "disturbing" his decision to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), this was another example of the active campaigning of this international pressure group. The letter says: "Your becoming a patron of JNF-UK can be seen as a tacit acceptance of an unacceptable status quo, and also places you in the position of not being an unbiased mediator in the peace process."

Among those signing the letter were the chairman of APJP the Jewish architect Abe Hayeem, APJP's secretary the Palestinian architect Haifa Hammami, and a number of British and other architects. They include Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London University. He is author of the new book Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Oppression. Copies of the letter have been sent to the new Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and to the Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN Lord Mark Malloch Brown (former deputy secretary-general of the UN).

Its letter calls on Brown to withdraw his patronage of the JNF, and suggests he instead become patron of some of the non-governmental organizations that bring Israelis and Palestinians together, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

Brown accepted to become a patron of JNF UK after its president Gail Seal wrote to him conveying her good wishes the day after he took office on 27 June. Brown said he that he was "delighted to accept your offer to become a patron of JNF UK." A spokesman for Brown told the weekly London-based Jewish Chronicle newspaper Brown had agreed to become a patron of the JNF UK "in order to encourage their work to promote charitable projects for everyone in Israel." But as the letter from APJP to Brown makes clear, the JNF benefits only Israeli Jews and not its Palestinian citizens.

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.

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."

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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.

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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.

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/

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

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* 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

Leaders who follow ordinary people's courage earn respect

Karma Nabulsi
Thursday May 17, 2007
The Guardian
The inability of political leaders in Britain to take a sustained principled position on Palestine has been served by the mainstream media, which in the past few years have so obscured the nature of the struggle in Palestine that hardly anyone understands what the conflict is about, or what must be done to end it. Instead we have an existential war about religion and extremism, where Israel, the occupier and regional hyperpower, is cast as eternal friend, liberal, victim and hero.

A recent study at Glasgow University revealed the astonishing fact that over 70% of young people surveyed did not know that East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are under military occupation by the Israeli army; 11% believe it is the Palestinians who are occupying that land.

The most elementary facts have been separated from the truth. To now propose foreign investment in Gaza as the solution to the expanding illegal settlements and land seizures by Israel, the increasing violence of a 39-year military occupation, the continued dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees living in dangerous circumstances for nearly 60 years, and even today's violence in Gaza (entirely a byproduct of these larger issues) is, quite simply, to propose the death of Palestine and its people.

Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University.