The Boycott of Israeli goods is part of an international movement known as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. The movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organisations and has gained momentum internationally as the brutality of Israel has time and again been exposed to the world.
The main goals of the movement are to:
– Expose the true nature of Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices
-Give real value to human rights by making Israel accountable for its crimes
– Reveal and highlight the complicity of the international community in supporting Israeli crimes that relentlessly violate human rights and international law
– End international law support for Israeli occupation and apartheid with the understanding that apartheid cannot be sustained without external assistance.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
– Support the boycott of all Israeli companies
– Inform yourself about the history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine
– Spread the word (share on facebook, myspace or any social sites, ‘like’ this video or add to favorites)
The leaked minutes of a meeting in 2008 between Palestinian, U.S. and Israeli officials show a senior Palestinian proposing that Israel annex all but one of its major Jerusalem settlements as part of a broad deal to end their decades-old conflict.
Ah, to be a ‘democracy’- apartheid Israel can flaunt international law and steal land, sponsor Palestinian ‘leaders’ without a mandate of the people from whom Israel steals, who then give away even more land behind Palestinians’ backs. How could Israel then be accused of stealing?
The Palestinian Papers blow the cover off the iniquitous deals which Abbas and his cohorts have done on the sly with their Israeli bosses. What chance for the end of the gross indignity of Israeli apartheid when the perpetrators of this discrimination are covertly and not so covertly assisted by those who shill as ‘Palestinian leaders’?
“Even during the days of negotiations, our own experience taught us that the pursuit of human fraternity and equality — irrespective of race or religion — should stand at the centre of our peaceful endeavours. The choice is not between freedom and justice, on the one hand, and their opposite, on the other. Peace and prosperity; tranquility and security are only possible if these are enjoyed by all without discrimination.”
One remembers also the second point in the preamble of the United Nations Charter:
“to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”
‘… it is sickening to see the Israeli consensus demanding that when Arabs think of their future, they should imagine a hobnailed boot crushing their faces forever, in order to protect Israelis from their own fears. This concept demonstrates, again, how much Israelis view Arabs as savages who can neither govern themselves, nor develop. They always need a strongman to keep them down. This concept tells us much more about Israelis than about their neighbours.’
Israel’s friend, Mubarak is a nice chappie, really …
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak rejected calls from protesters to resign and said he would name a new government to promote democracy as protesters clashed with police into the night, setting buildings on fire and swarming armored cars.
Kevin Rudd is milquetoast, omitting condemnation of Mubarak’s outrageous oppression and police violence against peaceful protestors and journalists.
Well the political situation is highly fluid, as a number of my colleagues from elsewhere around the world have said. We have long supported democratic transformation across the Middle East. We have equally strongly argued that this transformation should occur peacefully and without violence. That remains our view in terms of recent developments in Egypt as well.
“We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters, and we call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces,”
Mubarak is in power in Cairo with the west’s blessing, approval, support, sponsorship, funding and arms. Democrat and Republican presidents, Labour and Conservative prime ministers, have all cosied up to Egypt’s “secular” tyrant, a self-proclaimed but ineffective bulwark against “Islamic extremism”, since he assumed the presidency in 1981.
‘There was an old despot called Hosni
whose mind was suspicious and lazy,
for when poems are writ,
he quivers his lip,
and looks for the poet not meaning.’
‘There was an old fool called Mubarak
who hated all literary dialect
while his back was turned,
Hosni’s ears would burn,
as poets would cleverly paint him black’
On “Australia Day” many Australians project yobboish nationalism and drape themselves in the flag US-style, while the self-appointed elite sneer at the ‘bogans’ and ‘bevans’. Yet elitism is another form of the purulent racism with which Australia is infested, a miasm from the colonial aristocracy with roots in British class structure along with a more recent infection from the US ‘Me, me, me’ consumerist culture which values money, power and capitalist competition over community and cooperation.
At my place, we think of Australia Day as Invasion Day, the anniversary of the day our indigenous people saw white sails on the horizon, bringing Little England and its vapid social class structure, filthy diseases and other introduced species and destructive agricultural methods. This is my poem/song about the colonialists’ invasion of Australia.
Blow the Winds
Five years gone since my mate left home
he purchased his ticket to slavery
consigned him to another land
to wait for me in purgatory.
His pretty girl cried silken tears
sent to the gallows with cotton in her ears
they said she lied by the Rule of Law
born and bred a gypsy woman.
I’ll be going now, and I’ll see you soon
Sailing beneath the rising moon,
I’ll look for you in Melbourne town,
and there’s never been a heart so torn.
I stole an heiress in a field one morn
My heart’s in tatters and my hopes are gone,
In 1825, cold and wet and barely alive
I miss my woman and the babes she’s borne,
Fated to hang by a weeping judge,
Now sailing on the winds of scorn.
Blow the winds and fill the sails
take us to hell in New South Wales
The hulks are full in England
with many more like me
Bound to be Australians
with ironclad guarantees.
Me life’s not me own, I’m a Government man,
don’t remember when me term began,
the squatter’s chains rattle in me bones
to please the whims of the English throne.
Thrown into the white man’s cell
for laughin’ late and givin’ ‘em hell,
grabbed by the coppers, ripped from the land
no white fella can understand.
In 1985 another Murri suicides,
and there’s plenty more in Australia
of scoundrels such as me
Australia would be better off
if we’d hung on English trees.
Ah, to be a ‘democracy’- apartheid Israel can flaunt international law and steal land, sponsor Palestinian ‘leaders’ without a mandate of the people from whom Israel steals, who then give away even more land behind Palestinians’ backs. How could Israel then be accused of stealing?