[A] firm demand… to put an immediate end to the policy of arrests and draconian interrogations currently conducted against the Arab-Palestinian community in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; to free ALL political prisoners; to halt the current wave of legislation aimed at curbing and restricting the civil rights of Israel’s residents and citizens; to stop the violent, racist policy now implemented against refugees and migrant workers; and to condemn crimes of hate and violence against ethnic, religious or gender minorities.
So let us admit the truth: The occupier deserves to be boycotted. As long as the Israelis pay no price for the occupation, the occupation will not end, and therefore the only way open to the opponents of the occupation is to take concrete means that will make the Israelis understand that the injustice they are perpetrating comes with a price tag.
“Where there is no law and no one to turn to, Ezra is seen as a law breaker, while the state itself breaks the law and fails to uphold its basic obligations. Ezra is the savior of these people. He blocks with his body settlers who stop the farmers from working on their land. You could call him Robin Hood of the Wild West,” she said.
The Palestinian civil society Call for global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, launched in July 2005 by over 170 Palestinian political parties, unions and organizations offers an opportunity to join the collective effort for justice for the Palestinian people, based on the successful South African model. It is noteworthy that the Palestinian call for boycott is aimed at institutions rather than an inclusive and personal boycott of Israelis as individuals.
Uri Davis is used to denunciations. A “traitor”, “scum”, “mentally unstable”: those are just some of the condemnations that have been posted in the Israeli blogosphere in recent days. As the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, an organisation once dominated by Yasser Arafat, Davis has tapped a deep reserve of Israeli resentment. Some have even called for him to be deported.
UPDATED 18 Aug 2009: Ezra Nawi’s sentencing hearing took place on August 16, 2009, and Jewish Voice for Peace was there with over 20,000 of your signatures. The judge will render her sentence on September 21st, 2009.
“I always knew that many people silently supported me, and that if I ever got into trouble they would stand behind me. This moment has come.”
Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Noam Chomsky and thousands of others and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most courageous human rights activists. His crime? He tried to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region.
Loud applause broke out Saturday evening as it was announced that “brother” Dr Uri Davis had been elected to the Fatah movement’s largest governing body. Fatah conference spokesman Fawzi Salamah announced that the Jewish professor, who teaches Judaic studies at Al-Quds University in the West Bank, won 31st place out of 81 new members of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council.
It is difficult to increase honey production inside Israel. Ongoing urbanization and the destruction of natural forests have resulted in a dearth of land suitable for bee cultivation. The West Bank, by contrast, contains a great deal of relatively virgin land. It is very easy to plant it with vegetation that consumes little water while making the land suitable for bee cultivation
IOA Editor: Now that 100 years of Zionist settlement has greatly destroyed the natural environment in pre-1967 Israel, the reliance on the natural resources of the Occupied Territories is more important than ever. Unfortunately, West Bank-made honey for Israeli consumption is not likely to be boycotted by many.
Naturally, no mentioning of Palestinian beekeepers… On that, see story on West Bank economy
The stunning actress is no longer working as a spokeswoman for human rights/relief organization Oxfam International because she also endorses the Ahava cosmetics line — which is manfactured in what Oxfam regards as “disputed” territory.
Human rights groups in the European Union are reportedly preparing to launch a public campaign lobbying EU governments as well as the European Commission to stop funding Israeli non-governmental organizations.
Breaking the Silence added: “The attempts to silence voices from Israeli civil society are dangerous. As opposed to reports, the IDF has never denied the [validity of the] testimonies and it and the foreign ministry’s virulent reaction… only strengthens the position of the testifying soldiers, who are not willing to be exposed.”
Unlike the cancellation of Leonard Cohen’s concert in Ramallah, which got a lot of press, the cancellation of conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim’s visit to the West Bank city has been kept almost secret. Both cancellations were spurred by different Palestinian groups which warned against what they described as the normalization with the occupation and with Israel.
This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.
Ramallah’s intellectual elite, foreigners and curious spectators gathered last Saturday at the Friends School in Ramallah to hear writer and political activist Naomi Klein lecture to a packed auditorium… She chose to speak in Ramallah about her Jewish roots. “There is a debate among Jews – I’m a Jew by the way,” she said. The debate boils down to the question: “Never again to everyone, or never again to us?… [Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card… There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that say,’Never again to anyone.’”
Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.
Entitled “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace,” the three-day meet features presentations by dozens of speakers, including Palestinian and Israeli scholars.
IOA Editor: So-called “Supporters of Israel” (a misnomer because, invariably, they object to an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian confilct, thus excluding any viable solution) again show their true anti-democratic faces: trying to block an academic conference assessing potential future peace arrangements which they choose not to tolerate. Thus, not for the first time, charges of “anti-Semitism” are leveled. Anyone who experienced the anti-Occupation struggle in the past 42 years is familiar with this dynamic.
[I]nside the occupied Palestinian territories [there] is a shadow state where the only real law is the law of the gun, where land is being taken away from its rightful owners every day, and where the very few who stand up to protest, without violence, like Ezra Nawi, are sent to prison. Bad times generally bring out the worst in most of us.
About 1,000 demonstrators marched in the rally. The speakers demanded that Israel stop settlement building and heed calls by U.S. President Barack Obama to restart the peace process.
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