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The Great Apartheid Wall Land Theft

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released a report on the humanitarian impact of Israel’s apartheid wall, 85% of which snakes through the West Bank, appropriating 9.4% of West Bank land and isolating 23,000 Palestinians. The main points of the report are:

  • The Barrier consists of concrete walls, fences, ditches, razor wire, groomed sand paths, an electronic monitoring
    system, patrol roads, and a buffer zone.
  • The Barrier’s total length (constructed and projected) is approximately 708 km, more than twice the length of
    the 1949 Armistice (‘Green’) Line, which separates Israel from the occupied West Bank.
  • Approximately 62.1% of the Barrier is complete, a further 8% is under construction and 29.9% is planned but
    not yet constructed.
  • When completed, some 85%, of the route will run inside the West Bank, rather than along the Green Line,
    isolating some 9.4% of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
  • 71 of the 150 Israeli settlements in the West Bank and over 85% of the total settler population are located on
    the ‘Israeli’ side of the Barrier’s route.
  • Palestinians with West Bank ID cards who are granted special permits can only enter East Jerusalem through
    four of the 14 Barrier checkpoints around the city.
  • Around 7,500 Palestinians who reside in areas between the Green Line and the Barrier (Seam Zone), excluding
    East Jerusalem, require special permits to continue living in their own homes; another 23,000 will be isolated if
    the Barrier is completed as planned.
  • There are about 150 Palestinian communities which have part of their land isolated by the Barrier and must
    obtain ‘visitors’ permits or perform ‘prior coordination’ to access this area.
  • Access to agricultural land through the Barrier is channelled through 80 gates. The majority of these gates only
    open during the six weeks olive harvest season and usually only for a limited period during the day.
  • During the 2011 olive harvest, about 42% of applications submitted for permits to access areas behind the
    Barrier were rejected citing ‘security reasons’ or lack of ‘connection to the land.’
  • Despite the presence of the Barrier, Israeli sources estimate that some 15,000 Palestinians without the required
    permits smuggle themselves from the West Bank to look for employment in Israel every day in 2011 (Israeli
    Government Special Committee).
  • The UN Register of Damage (UNRoD) has to date collected over 26,000 claims for material damage caused by
    the construction of the Barrier in the northern West Bank.

In May 2012, Archbishop Desmond Tutu had this to say:

Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid.

Palestinians and their supporters who protest the illegal apartheid wall are subjected to attacks by Israeli Occupation Forces, as evidenced last Friday:

Yousef Abu Maria, coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Ummar, stated that the army violently attacked and clubbed the protests leading to several injuries.

Abu Maria added that the army also closed the area and declared it a military zone in an attempt to prevent the peace activists from holding their protest and to prevent them from reaching the lands that became isolated behind the Annexation Wall, in addition to the lands Israel intends to steal for settlement construction and expansion.

Similar to other villages and towns in the West Bank, Beit Ummar holds weekly protests against the wall and settlements; Israeli and international peace activists join these protests, Israeli soldiers continuously resort to the use of excessive force to stop these protests.

Israel’s land heist must be reversed, the apartheid wall torn down and the rights of Palestinians to their lands preserved.

Related Links

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Eightieth session
13 February – 9 March 2012

The Committee is particularly appalled at the hermetic character of the separation of two groups, who live on
the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal
access to basic services and water resources. Such separation is concretized by the
implementation of a complex combination of movement restrictions consisting of the Wall,
roadblocks, the obligation to use separate roads and a permit regime that only impacts the
Palestinian population (Article 3 of the Convention).

The Committee draws the State party’s attention to its General Recommendation 19
(1995) concerning the prevention, prohibition and eradication of all policies and
practices of racial segregation and apartheid, and urges the State party to take
immediate measures to prohibit and eradicate any such policies or practices which
severely and disproportionately affect the Palestinian population in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory and which violate the provisions of article 3 of the Convention.

In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”
Israeli Apartheid is Worse Than Apartheid Practised by White South Africa
End Israel’s Apartheid & Bring Down Its Illegal Wall
Israel’s Apartheid is ‘a present-day reality’ : Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Greater Israel Watch
Greater Israel Watch, Ctd

Palestine / Israel Links

Israel’s cruel imprisonment of Akram Rikhawi continues despite 94 days on hunger strike.
Reclaiming the PLO: an urgent call to unite all Palestinians
Reasons for optimism and answers to BDS critics. ‘This book is about much more than answering the critics of BDS, however. Hind Awwad, a coordinator with the BDS National Committee, makes a powerful argument for why BDS not only unites Palestinians but also unites the Palestinian struggle with other popular struggles, including those in the US that seek reforms in education, healthcare, and social justice. “The BDS movement,” she writes, “has provided a way for us to break our collective chains.”’
American Carolyn Cicciu after a visit to Palestine: “Why should we be sending money to a country that is enslaving a people?” she said. “We make it too easy for Israel to follow a military solution when they don’t get their way.”
Nutanyahoo bars access to sites of inquiry to an all female UNHRC panel set up to probe illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Zionist now supports BDS
‘Last night in Tel Aviv, during the social justice #J14 demonstration, a 57 year old man set himself on fire and is currently in the hospital. According to his letter, he was about to become homeless after going bankrupt and not receiving state assistance. In Israel, a person over the age of 55 is not eligible for housing assistance; a person who owned an apartment in the past 5 years – regardless of his current economic situation – is not eligible for rent assistance. These are the results of the continuous decline in eligibility for any form of social aid – this is part of the tragedy of the ongoing draining of social services, described by ACRI in this recently published report.’ (See ‘Crushing the opposition by delegitimizing labor unions and workers’ struggles’ – this is what fascist governments do.)
Juan Cole examines five key areas where Israel’s image is cracking like an old dry creek bed. Perhaps add another – institutionalised racism and bigotry which ridiculous mountains of hasbara highlight, rather than obscure.
Lecture in Melbourne, Victoria with Dr. Virginia Tilley

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Christian McBride, Please Support Justice, Don’t Play Your Double Bass for Israel

Christian McBride
McBride on Bass leads the tribute he wrote to Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Juilliard in 2009. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel’s borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people’s daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa.
Dear Christian McBride,

We are asking you to take a moment to learn about the cultural boycott of apartheid Israel. We hope you will be persuaded to choose to honour the boycott call, and refrain from playing your double bass in apartheid Israel, until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine determined last fall in Cape Town, South Africa, that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.[1] Palestinian jazz fans, in the occupied West Bank and particularly those in besieged Gaza, will not be allowed to attend your concert. Many people are unaware that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under a brutal and unlawful military occupation. In the West Bank, Israel restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks. All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006. As part of this siege, Israel has prevented not only various types of medicines, candles, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air prison [2].

It is not unusual for jazz artists to refuse to play in front of the segregated audiences at the Red Sea Jazz Festival. In 2011, Eddie Palmieri [3] and Jason Moran [4] both quietly cancelled their gigs. Tuba Skinny cancelled, stating … when we agreed to play the festival we were not aware that it was largely state sponsored, or that people on the other side of the wall would be denied entry.[5]

You can learn about the wall they were referring to in this video:

In April, Cassandra Wilson graciously bowed out of headlining an Israeli woman’s festival that would have ignored the suffering of Palestinian women and honoured only Israeli women. Wilson said “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel.” [6]

Roger Waters recently wrote:

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.[7]

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.[8]

“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“.[9]

Today, due to the boycott call and its international magnitude, it is impossible for any international artist to play in Israel in a political vacuum. Your performance will be interpreted, especially by supporters of Israel, as an endorsement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said, in 2005 that “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”[10]

The Red Sea Jazz Festival’s top sponsors are the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport as well as the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

We urge you learn about the boycott, especially by reading the article Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid by J. K?haulani Kauanui, Robin D.G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, Nikhil Pal Singh and Neferti Tadiar. These courageous professors stated:

We refuse to be silent or passive in the face of gross violations of principles of universal human rights that both Israel and the US publicly purport to uphold. As was the case with the US removal of tribal nations, the US South under anti-black “Jim Crow” laws, or South Africa under apartheid, Palestine today is the measure of the meaning and value of human rights in our time.[11]

Learn about why Alice Walker supports the boycott by reading Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher. Walker writes:

When I was in the West Bank it was shocking to see the apartheid wall, which is immense and forbidding. And to realize that it’s purpose is not only to enforce segregation between Palestinians and Israelis but that it also steals huge amounts of Palestinian land. Land Palestinian farmers need to work in order to feed their families. I sat with a family of four and watched a huge Volvo digging machine dig the deep trench directly in front of their drive that the wall will be placed in. The noise was deafening and the vibrations shook the small house. The children, two young boys, will have to cross three check points each morning to go to school. The youngest boy had been severely beaten the week before our arrival by an Israeli soldier and was still so frightened he hid during most of our visit.[12]

The boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and instead, standing in solidarity with the oppressed. By cancelling your two planned performances at the Red Sea Jazz festival (July 31 and August 1), you would be helping greatly to stop this unjust apartheid which denies Palestinians their basic rights. Boycotts were effective in stopping South African apartheid, and they can also work to stop Israeli apartheid.

Warmest Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel

We are a group, of 850 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Notes

[1] Russell Tribunal on Palestine Findings of the South Africa Session http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/RToP-Cape-Town-full-findings2.pdf
In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa
[2] BBC Guide: Gaza Under Blockage http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm
[3]Latin Jazz Great Eddie Palmieri: Thank You for Cancelling Israel Performance
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/latin-jazz-great-eddie-palmieri-thank-you-for
[4]Jazz Musician Jason Moran Cancels Concert in Apartheid Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/jazz-musician-jason-moran-cancels-concert-in
[5] Tuba Skinny speaks out on cancellation of show at Red Sea Festival
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/adri-nieuwhof/tuba-skinny-speaks-out-cancellation-show-red-sea-festival
[6] Singer Cassandra Wilson cancels Israel show: “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel” http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1824
[7] Tear down this Israeli wall
I want the music industry to support Palestinians’ rights and oppose this inhumane barrier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[8] Divesting from Injustice http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
[9] Tutu urges Cape Town Opera to call off Israel tour
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[10] http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267
[11] Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid http://electronicintifada.net/content/educators-cant-stay-silent-about-israeli-apartheid/10928
[12] Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1942

SOURCE

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To the Sean Jones Quintet – Please Don’t Play for Apartheid Israel

Sean Jones
The Sean Jones Quintet is being asked to bring hope to people through heeding the anti-apartheid boycott.
Dear Sean Jones, Tim Green, Orrin Evans, Matt Clohesy and Obed Calvaire,

You are probably aware by now that your plan to perform in Israel is a controversial one. We hope you will take a stand as musicians of conscience and honour the Palestinian boycott call until Israel complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights, this call was made in 2005 and calls for a cultural, academic and sporting boycott. We hope this letter will provide you with some of the information you need to make the choice to side with justice and human rights.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine determined last fall in Cape Town, South Africa, that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.[1] Artists who would have refused to perform for white South Africa during apartheid there should easily understand why the current anti-apartheid boycott is so important.

It is not unusual for jazz artists to refuse to play in front of the segregated audiences at the Red Sea Jazz Festival. In 2011, Eddie Palmieri [2] and Jason Moran [3] both quietly cancelled their gigs. Six member band Tuba Skinny cancelled, stating … when we agreed to play the festival we were not aware that it was largely state sponsored, or that people on the other side of the wall would be denied entry.[5]

In April, Cassandra Wilson graciously bowed out of headlining an Israeli woman’s festival that would have ignored the suffering of Palestinian women and honoured only Israeli women. Wilson said “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel.” [5]

Roger Waters recently wrote:

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.[6]

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.[7]

“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“.[8]

Today, due to the boycott call and its international magnitude, it is impossible for any international artist to play in Israel in a political vacuum. Your performance will be interpreted, especially by supporters of Israel, as an endorsement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said, in 2005 that “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”[9]

The Red Sea Jazz Festival’s top sponsors are the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport as well as the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

We urge you learn about the boycott, especially by reading the article Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid by J. K?haulani Kauanui, Robin D.G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, Nikhil Pal Singh and Neferti Tadiar. These courageous professors stated:

We refuse to be silent or passive in the face of gross violations of principles of universal human rights that both Israel and the US publicly purport to uphold. As was the case with the US removal of tribal nations, the US South under anti-black “Jim Crow” laws, or South Africa under apartheid, Palestine today is the measure of the meaning and value of human rights in our time.[10]

Learn about why Alice Walker supports the boycott by reading Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher. Walker writes:

When I was in the West Bank it was shocking to see the apartheid wall, which is immense and forbidding. And to realize that it’s purpose is not only to enforce segregation between Palestinians and Israelis but that it also steals huge amounts of Palestinian land. Land Palestinian farmers need to work in order to feed their families. I sat with a family of four and watched a huge Volvo digging machine dig the deep trench directly in front of their drive that the wall will be placed in. The noise was deafening and the vibrations shook the small house. The children, two young boys, will have to cross three check points each morning to go to school. The youngest boy had been severely beaten the week before our arrival by an Israeli soldier and was still so frightened he hid during most of our visit.[11]

Sean Jones, the boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and instead, standing in solidarity with the oppressed. Please stay true to your words [12] that you want to bring hope to people via sound. By cancelling your two planned performances at the Red Sea Jazz Festival (July 31 and August 1), you would be helping greatly to bring hope to the Palestinian people that there will come an end to this unjust form of apartheid soon.

Warmest Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel
We are a group, of 850 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Notes

[1] Russell Tribunal on Palestine Findings of the South Africa Session http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/RToP-Cape-Town-full-findings2.pdf
In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa
[2]Latin Jazz Great Eddie Palmieri: Thank You for Cancelling Israel Performance
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/latin-jazz-great-eddie-palmieri-thank-you-for
[3]Jazz Musician Jason Moran Cancels Concert in Apartheid Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/jazz-musician-jason-moran-cancels-concert-in
[4] Tuba Skinny speaks out on cancellation of show at Red Sea Festival
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/adri-nieuwhof/tuba-skinny-speaks-out-cancellation-show-red-sea-festival
[5] Singer Cassandra Wilson cancels Israel show: “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel” http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1824
[6] Tear down this Israeli wall
I want the music industry to support Palestinians’ rights and oppose this inhumane barrier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[7] Divesting from Injustice http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
[8] Tutu urges Cape Town Opera to call off Israel tour
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[9] http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267
[10] Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid http://electronicintifada.net/content/educators-cant-stay-silent-about-israeli-apartheid/10928
[11] Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1942
[12] Amazing trumpeter Sean Jones talks about the making of his new CD ‘The Search Within’ (youtube)

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Israel subjects Palestinians to a cruel system of dispossession and racial discrimination

Perhaps you are not familiar enough with Israel’s practices, widely acknowledged as violations of international law. If this is the case, then we hope you will reconsider your planned concert after thinking through some of Israel’s trespasses. Your performance would function as a whitewash of these practices, making it appear as though business with Israel should go on as usual. Concretely, Israel routinely violates Palestinians’ basic human rights in some of the following ways:

  1. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under a brutal and unlawful military occupation. Israel restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks strangling the West Bank. All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans.
  2. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel’s borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people’s daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa.
  3. Since 1948, when Israel dispossessed more than 750,000 Palestinian people in order to form an exclusivist Jewish state, Israel has denied Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their homes and their lands. Israel also continues to expel people from their homes in Jerusalem and the Naqab (Negev). Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees still struggling for their right to return to their homes, like all refugees around the world.
  4. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006. As part of this siege, Israel has prevented not only various types of medicines, candles, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air prison.

Israel uses arts and culture to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights.

In December 2008 and January 2009, Israel waged a war of aggression against Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinians, predominantly civilians, dead, and led the UN Goldstone Report to declare that Israel had committed war crimes. In the wake of this assault and to salvage its deteriorating image, Israel has redoubled its effort to “brand” itself as an enlightened liberal democracy. Arts and culture play a unique role in this branding campaign, as the presence of internationally acclaimed artists from the West is meant to affirm Israel’s membership in the West’s privileged club of “cultured,” liberal democracies. But it should not be business as usual with a state that routinely violates international law and basic human rights.

Your performance would serve this Israeli campaign to rebrand itself and will be used as a publicity tool by the Israeli government.
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1779#_ftn9

SOURCE

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Ali Abunimah Demolishes Jonathan Tobin on Democracy Now

Ali Abunimah’s calm, precise logic triumphs over a vexatious defence of land theft redolent with racism, flailing strawmen and turgid hasbara.

Related Links

Elise Hendrick’s piece exposes Tobin’s flaccid, desperate grasp of the San Remo document

Today’s Palestine/Israel Links

How obsession with “nonviolence” harms the Palestinian cause – As Lina says: ‘Oppressed people do not and should not have to explain their oppression to their oppressor, nor tailor their resistance to the comfort of the oppressors and their supporters.’

Yet Lina is noticing that Palestinian participation and leadership is limited by the current PSCC model, despite it being effective in terms of international awareness, and is funded inadequately by Fayyad who has his own dubious neoliberal, collaborator agenda, and foreign NGOs with their agendas. So how can this really be ‘popular’ resistance? instead, it can look more like normalisation – including with Fayyad’s neoliberalism. For a popular movement there has to be mobilisation.

The Legitimate Criticisms of the Popular Resistance

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences academia declared a threat to the apartheid Israeli state

Ban on settlement goods wouldn’t break EU laws

Australia Links

The Australian government signals that it assumes all Australians are criminals

Reminder of how zionist Herschel Landes boasted about convincing Bob Brown to dump BDS

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Woody Allen, Please Refuse Israel’s Hasbara Bribes

Woody, how do you feel about being bribed with millions of dollars by Israeli government agents to sacrifice your artistic integrity as propaganda for their apartheid state?

Would it not be more ingenious to develop a movie satirising Israel’s desperate attempts to obscure its crimes against humanity? Many human rights activists would be happy to lend their assistance and resources to such a worthy project for free. Noa Tishby can perform as herself, Mark Regev can be played by a real Australian Taipan and the IDF Spokesperson could be played by a Dalek.

Mark Regev demonstrates his natural ability for satire:

Woody, if you are in any doubt about the monstrous nature of the regime which you are being enveigled to support, please read about how illegal Israeli settlers kill Palestinian livestock and torch olive groves while the Palestinian owners are arrested by Israeli occupation forces and prevented from defending their crops. Find out how Indigenous Bedouin Palestinians are deprived of water by Israel.

The Civil Administration is supposed to take care of the people’s needs. But it does not stop at the most despicable measure – depriving people and livestock of water in the scathing summer heat – to implement Israel’s strategic goal: to drive them from their lands and purge the valley of its non-Jewish residents.

…

Last week I saw the people whose water container Avi had confiscated, leaving them thirsty. Newborn babies, a handicapped little girl, a small boy post-surgery, women and old folks, and, of course, the sheep – the only source of income here. Denizens with no water – in Israel, not in Africa. Water for one nation only – in Israel, not in South Africa.

…

Amjad Zahawa, a 2-day-old infant, passed his third day under the hot sun, with no shelter over his head. Greetings, Amjad; welcome to the reality of your life.

Palestinian civil society has requested that artists refrain from appearing in Israel until it respects international law, ends its colonialism and apartheid, delivers equal rights for Palestinian Israelis and recognises the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands.

Please, Woody, respect the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

UPDATE 12/7/12

According to JJ Goldberg’s translation of a Yediot print interview with him in Paris last week, Woody is an Israelophile who intends taking his children to apartheid, oppressive Israel to explore their father’s “Jewish culture” as if that’s only available in the settler colonial zionist entity, a secular fascist state.

Coincidentally, we don’t need to guess any longer about Allen’s feelings toward Israel. He discusses them — passionately — in an interview with Yediot Ahronot Paris correspondent Yaniv Halili, published last Friday (in Hebrew) in Yediot’s increasingly readable weekend entertainment supplement, 7 Nights. Most of it is about growing old (he hates it), the Soon-Yi scandal (the public never got it, he doesn’t read the tabloids), his non-relationship with his son and his work habits. Israel only comes up at the end, but he goes at it with gusto. I don’t have time to translate the whole thing (and it’s not online even in Hebrew, alas), but here’s the part about Israel, Jewish identity and, intriguingly, the dilemmas of his half-Jewish children’s Jewish identity:

Unlike every mother and daughter, he doesn’t light Sabbath candles. “I grew up in a Jewish atmosphere (al birkei ha-yahadut) and they made me a bar mitzvah, so clearly it’s an element that will remain in my life permanently, just like the songs I listened to on the radio when I was a child. But I don’t believe in organized religions. Most of them exploit people, and I think these clubs have nothing to do with God. Today I feel Jewish mainly when people attack me because of my being Jewish.”

About Israel, on the other hand, he has only good things to say. In practice, when Allen starts talking about Israel it’s hard to stop him. So hard that even his assertive, energetic publicist merited only a dismissive wave of the hand, indicating that she should wait until he was finished gushing about his love. “I support Israel and I’ve supported it since the day it was founded. Israel’s neighbors have treated it badly, cruelly, instead of embracing it and making it part of the Middle East family of nations. Over the years Israel has responded to these attacks in various ways, some of which I approved of and some less so. I understand that Israelis have been through hard times, I don’t expect Israel to react perfectly every time and that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a wonderful, marvelous country. I’m just worried about the rise of fundamentalism in Israel, which I think damages its interests. I also have questions about your leadership, which doesn’t always act in Israel’s best interests. But even my criticism of Israel comes from a place of love, just like when I criticize the United States. It would be a mistake not to say something if you think a country you love makes a mistake and could hurt itself.”

Then why have you never visited Israel?

“I’m not a tourist. I travel regularly to three cities that I know and love — Paris, London and Rome — and that’s it. I don’t like to leave home because I’m a bit neurotic, and when I do leave home, it’s mostly for work. I don’t like flying and I don’t consider myself a curious person who wants to see new places. There are many states in the United States that I’ve never visited. My wife is of Korean origin and she’s been trying for years to convince me to go to South Korea with her — so far, unsuccessfully. She’s also very curious about Israel and wants to go there with the girls, so they can see and understand their father’s Jewish culture. I assume we’ll go and visit Israel soon. There’s no way around it.”

Perhaps Woody’s girls will find out in Israel that they are not regarded as Jewish and even if they were born in Israel, they would be deported as happened recently to this 6 year old Asian girl.

UPDATE 17/7/12

Is the Woody Allen Israel movie a done deal? Jerusalem ‘Mayor’ Barkat met with him months ago, Peres got in a word as well recently. Beware orchestrated hasbara campaigns.

A Jerusalem municipality spokesman told Haaretz that several months ago, while on a fund-raising tour, Barkat met with Allen and Diane Keaton in a Manhattan restaurant. Barkat invited Allen to visit the capital and consider shooting a film there.

“Allen replied that he would seriously consider it,” the spokesman said. “Barkat plans to meet with Allen again during his next visit to the U.S.”

Tel Aviv made a similar offer, but Allen has not yet responded. “The Tel Aviv municipality is leading a move to position the city in the international arena,” Mayor Ron Huldai told Haaretz.

“Obviously, a film taking place in Tel Aviv would be a vehicle to promote the city abroad, and we have constant and close contacts with leading figures in Hollywood, with the government and with Israel’s cinema community, hoping that such a move will materialize.”

Related Links

Allison Kaplan Sommer quotes this blog post in Haaretz: Why I’m not bribing Woody Allen to shoot a movie in Israel
Woody Allen and ‘Self-Hating Jew’ Drivel; Is It Not Incredible?
Woody Allen expresses typical American Jewish attitudes on Israel: Loves it but has never been there
The Woody Allen Israel Project
Rob Eshman quoted by the Reut Institute from his article Six Steps to Better Israel PR from June 2010 wherein Eshman commends the Reut Institute for its propagandising intiatives: ‘Reut’s proposal to create a similarly sophisticated network of coordinated activists working on behalf of Israel is a smart start.’
Top Israeli Advocate Empowers AJC President’s Council Members to Fight Delegitimizers of Israel
Eshman publishes Reut’s Gidi Grinstein in 2008
Eshman attends a Reut conference in June 2008
Eshman supports the Reut two state position in 2011.
Eshman argues against cultural boycott of Israel in 2010

“The Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership was the flagship project of [The Jewish Agency for Israel’s] Partnership 2000, and people sort of took it for granted that it was smooth sailing and very effective,” said Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv strategy group that conducted a study of the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership in 2010.

Demonstrated Impact: One Hub at a Time

Tel-Aviv – Los Angeles Partnership [as part of Partnership 2Gether] adopts the recommendations of the Reut Institute report – Following a comprehensive evaluation of the untapped potential of the Tel Aviv – Los Angeles Partnership 2Gether (P2G) project, to serve as a platform for direct links between the Jewish communities of Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, the Jewish World taskforce presented the LA Federation with a report. This report outlines criteria for a leading and innovative 21st century model partnership, including specific recommendations for leveraging the unique assets of the TLV-LA partnership. In recent months, members of the Los Angeles Federation arrived in Israel and elected to adopt the findings and recommendations of the report, marking a new and promising chapter in the partnership. The taskforce also launched a document outlining the elements of a generic model partnership.

The Jewish Agency’s deputy chairperson of the Executive, partners with the Reut Institute on how to leverage JAFI’s new strategic plan – Against the backdrop of JAFI’s recently updated strategic plan, the Reut Institute was invited to facilitate a series of strategic discussions on the unique value and assets that JAFI’s Deputy Chairperson of the Executive can leverage in order to promote the two main drivers of JAFI’s strategic plan: Israel experiences and social activism.

Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?

Targeting individuals on discover the networks

Anatomy of a Blacklisting: A Thread in Two Blogs