Tag: BDS

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A Quantum of Racism

Two young Palestinian Israeli citizens who came second in an international Physics Competition in Warsaw are omitted conspicuously in a racist report on the winners in Israel Hayom. It is notable that of all the Israeli winners, only ONE won a prize in the 24th European Union Contest for Young Scientists, and it was the Palestinian Israeli, Alfarook Abu Alhassan, who won the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility GmbH Prize.

*Even when you excel and you are an Arab, you remain invisible.

* Israel came first in an international physics competition, and it is trying to reach the same benchmark in racism.

First published: 1/10/2012 11:30:27am

On 20 September 2012 Israel Hayom published an article under the headline Quantum of success. It highlighted the success of the Israeli delegation from Ilan Ramon Centre at Ben-Gurion University in a competition held at the Institute of Physics in Warsaw.

The article contained the names of the winners, but not all of them…

It mentioned the first prize winner (Yuval Katznelson) and one of third prize winners (May Alon). The article quotes Professor Victor Malamud, head of the Ilan Ramon Centre at BGU, which coordinates efforts for the competition as saying that “We succeeded in showing the world the potential of the Jewish mind.”

On the surface, a cause for Jewish pride, indeed..

But what about the second place getter in the competition? The two second place winners, Magd Alfrawona and Alfarook Abu Alhassan were not mentioned at all. Probably because they don’t have a Jewish mind, or because they are Arabs …

What is the message that such articles give to the general public? What is the message that head of the program is providing to the students?

The conclusion is inescapable, instead of being proud of all those who represented the country and impel them further forward, there is a very clear delineation between the Arab and Jewish participants. This is not all that far from our reality which is full of physical and virtual fences marking the separation between the two peoples.

This statement is racist for several reasons: it ignores some of the delegation’s winners, solely because cultural/social/national differences. This statement tries to establish the superiority of some participants over others on the sole basis of their national affiliation. In addition to all this, the article tries to obliterate the Arab presence in the delegation, and their success. This is despite the writers being aware of a different picture being presented on the university’s English-language website (there the two Arab winners are mentioned, and they also appear in the team photo published in the newspaper).

It is a pity that a lecturer in such a distinguished university professor chose to speak in such a racist fashion as he died. We hope he’ll get his comeuppance when the university launches an inquiry and takes disciplinary proceedings against him, and those responsible for this letdown.

This article proves once again that academia is not free of racism …

Names of participants Winners: http://in.bgu.ac.il/ilanramon/Pages/FIRST%20STEP%20TO%20NOBEL%20PRIZE%20IN%20PHYSICS.aspx

Israel Hayom article:

English: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5841

Hebrew: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21508&hp=1&newsletter=20.09.2012

Translated by Sol Salbe of the Middle East News Service Melbourne, Australia

Hebrew original: http://fightracism.org/Article.asp?aid=328

Related Links
High on positivism
The French Political Science Association: A sanction that appears to be based on political grounds
Ha’aretz editorial: CHE’s recommendation stems from desire to punish faculty who dared offer their students a critical viewpoint
Netanyahu’s Likud party and its nationalist ally, Yisrael Beiteinu, have been cracking down on dissenters for months. It would seem that cowing the academy is one of their objectives. Of the current academic situation in Israel, Lustick told me, “there’s a real witch-hunt.”

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Shedding a Light on US and UN Complicity with Israel’s Crimes at the Russell Tribunal

Roger Waters: ‘Bertrand Russell believed that there was a logical connection between the rule of law and a natural law of human kindness.’

‘The Russell Tribunal is about shedding a light about what is going on in the Occupied Territories in order that we can lend weight to the argument that the Palestinian people should be treated with respect.’

After the Russell Tribunal sessions in Barcelona, focusing on EU complicity, London on Corporate Complicity, and Cape Town, on the crime of Apartheid, the New York Tribunal will examine UN and US responsibility in the denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination.

As the US is currently blackmailing the EU in the UN to prevent Palestinians obtaining a higher ‘non-member’ status in the UN, the Russell Tribunal hearings in New York have contemporary relevance. Neither the US nor Israel wish for Palestinian statehood – the US stymies Palestinians at every turn enabling Israel to pretend to be pursuing two states even as it makes this outcome impossible through its ongoing rapacious, criminal land and resource theft. The status quo of ongoing Israeli appropriation of Palestinian land and resources is the preferred option of both the exploitative neoliberal empire and its racist crony which poses duplicitously as an oxymoronic ‘Jewish democracy’ surrounded by hostile hordes.

Watch the New York Russell Tribunal hearings live on October 6th and 7th, 2012.

Related Links

Gaza youth commend Mahmoud’s Sarsak for not Normalising with Apartheid Israel
‘Al-Sarsak said he would “refuse coexistence and normalization with occupation.”

“I respect Barcelona’s invitation, but I have to avoid angering the Palestinian people and their supporters as well as all those who supported me during my hunger strike. ‘
Love for Palestinian footballer and hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak
Kudos to Palestinian footballer and hunger striker hero, Mahmoud Sarsak for refusing to normalise Israeli oppression
Infected with zionist lies, the BBC displays brazen contempt for international law.
Support amongst British adults for BDS by British artists of apartheid Israel at 27% in the UK, with 36% don’t knows. BDS has room to grow 🙂
Palestinian Authority: Running Israel’s Guantanamo

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa is calling for nations to consider reviewing diplomatic ties with Israel and boycotting its products in solidarity with Palestine.

Marty acknowledged that the situation in the occupied territories had gro
wn unfavorable following unilateral Israeli moves.

“There is an unbalanced situation and Israel should bear responsibility for the failure of peace negotiations,” Marty said on the sidelines of the 67th UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.

The foreign minister was commenting on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s pessimistic assessment of the peace process. “The door may be closing, for good, on a two-state solution,” Ban said in his speech to the assembly.’

All harpists from all nations are being asked to boycott the International Harp Contest in Israel.

Israeli harpists are also being asked to boycott the contest.

Many other harp competitions exist. We believe it is not considered an ho
nor to participate or to place in the Israeli contest. It is an indication that the harpist ignored the call to boycott, and chose to stand instead on the side of the oppressor. The level of the music may be sublime, and that is all the more reason not to validate Israel’s cruel apartheid government by participating. Such beautiful music should be used to promote justice, not to enable and legitimize occupation and segregation.

For the Zionists, the failure to organise resistance grew out of the political history of their movement. Their focus had never been on the fight against anti-Semitism.

Lessons from South Africa : ‘One of the most diabolical aspects of racist repression was the regime’s ability to outsource that repression to puppet regimes like those of Matanzima, Oupa Gqozo and other “homeland leaders”.’ This is a terrific article covering sexism, racism and the ongoing role of capitalism/neoliberalism.

One of my favourite political scientists, and expert on fascism, Prof Robert Paxton, comments on the CHE subcommittee decision
CAIRO HELD its first official boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) event in Egypt at the independent media center Mosireen on August 27, a critical first step in challenging the government’s continuing economic relations with Israel and building solidarity with Palestine.

The rate of asylum seekers receiving refugee status in Israel IS THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD.
Australian activist workshops discussed the four national BDS campaigns: Bin Veolia (referring to the French multinational that provides discriminatory transport services to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank); boycotting Dead Sea minerals (this includes Israeli companies such as Seacret, which steal Palestinian resources); academic boycotts; and truth in labelling.

‘In his presentation at this weekend’s conference, Miko Peled, the Israeli-born anti-Zionist and advocate of equal rights and decolonization in a single state, made the observation that every cause of social justice in history that has been worth fighting for was divisive in its time

Inshallah: a virtual tour of the Gaza Strip

Scenes from yesterday’s demo at the Tower of London

where De Beers put on display a Forevermark Steinmetz diamond in honor of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The Steinmetz Foundation funded and supported the war criminals of the Givati Brigade
, responsible for the massacre of the Samouni family in Gaza during the Israeli assault in the winter of 2008/2009.

The trade in Israeli blood diamonds goes on unseen and unnoticed on the high streets of every city. Jewellers must be asked to end the trade in Israeli diamonds which are funding the proliferation of nuclear arms and war crimes in the Middle East.

“Right and wrong, justice and injustice, do not wear ethnic badges or wave national flags.”

Australia Links

Victory in Queensland against the neolib machine! Queensland construction workers win!
Jones only has an audience because Australian society is a cesspit of racism, bigotry and violence. Jones distills and spouts what is already there. In a just society he would not have a job because he wouldn’t have an audience. But to rise up against him because he’s offended a pollies’ propriety? this is hypocrisy of the highest order.

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Ilan Pappé on the Apartheid Israeli Regime

Here’s the podcast of Ilan Pappé, interviewed by Geraldine Doogue on Radio National. Ilan is speaking at several engagements in Australia and appeared at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney. He also appeared on Q and A. Accurately, Ilan stated: “Israel wants to remain a racist state and a democratic state – this is an oxymoron.”

Ilan Pappé on the National Press Club 19/9/12

Celebrated Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé whose landmark publication, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” documented the planned removal of 700,000 Palestinians from their lands in 1948, has written a new book “The Forgotten Palestinians”.

In the book, and at this September 16 community meeting at Sydney University, Pappé reveals the situation for the Palestinians who still live within Israel’s borders.

This was the first event of Professor Pappé’s 2012 Australian lecture tour. It was hosted by the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney with the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine and Leichhardt Friends of Hebron. Professor Pappé is in Australia as the guest of AFOPA to deliver the annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Adelaide.

Ilan Pappé’s Melbourne address.

The two state solution is an hegemonic Israeli plan … to incorporate the West Bank. Its time has passed … Israel will ghettoise the West Bank. You have to decolonise the land, the people, to liberate them, it’s too early to talk about peace, you have to end oppression first. Only then can people can sit down and talk about what comes after the oppressive reality. The horse sees things differently from the rider, the rider does not see things in the same way.

The first but not the only way of convincing political elites that their way is the wrong way is pressure from the outside. BDS is part of what we should do, to send a political message that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Constructive dialogue with Israeli Jews, educating them to see what life would be like after the oppression ends is important.

You need all ingredients to be in place, you won’t do it solely through BDS.

…

Oslo was oppression by other means.

UPDATE 28/9/12

Desegregating The Conflict: The History Of Collaborative Struggle In Palestine, Collaborative Struggle Conference, 24.09.2012 at the University of Woollongong

2012 ESML Presented By Ilan Pappe

Israel’s bravest historian

UPDATE 23/9/12

Notes from Middle East Reality Check on Ilan Pappé’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas address on the subject Israel Is an Apartheid State:

Is this a dangerous idea? Many Israelis wouldn’t think so. Nor South Africans. Nor many journalists and progressive folk in the West. Liberal Zionists though find it dangerous, and for many years have been trying to square the circle in an attempt to justify Israel’s apartheid policies. Jewish communities, of course, are allergic to the very idea. No, it’s not the recognition that Israel is an apartheid state that’s dangerous, it’s Israel itself that is dangerous; dangerous to Palestinians, dangerous to Jews in Israel and abroad, and dangerous to the world beyond.

Apartheid is a generic term for a legal, economic, social and political regime based on dispossession, discrimination and segregation on the basis of race, religion or nationality. The early Zionists, who were prolific diarists, described the Palestinians as dangerous aliens and usurpers. Their resistance to Zionist colonisation led the colonisers to develop apartheid policies of self-segregation and gated communities, which they forced on the native population once they’d become a ruling majority in 1948.

They institutionalised segregation, forcing on the Palestinian minority in Israel an invisible apartheid based on restricted living spaces, double standards in the courts and reduced access to state benefits. The Palestinian Israelis are confined to enclaves, with no new Arab towns being built since 1948. In contrast, hundreds of Jewish settlements have been constructed. In the West Bank, apartheid is starkly visible. Gaza of course is a world on its own, a large ghetto. How ironic that the people who most suffered from policies based on demography and population control in Europe should be dishing it out to others in Palestine.

Update 19/9/12:

Ilan Pappé on QandA

Ilan Pappe likens Israel’s invasion of Palestine to Aboriginal dispossession

The premise of Terra Nullius, in which European settlers viewed Australia as an unoccupied space, is similar to the idea that the Palestinians willingly gave up their land.

Understanding and accepting this premise is one of the keys to reconciliation and forging a peaceful future, Professor Pappe says.

“Building reconciliation on the basis of these acknowledgments, understanding what kind of privilege you’re going to lose if you accept you are the dispossessor, and so many other issues that are really comparable. If you are an average Australian who accepts the basic narrative of what happened in Australia, the comparison is very clear.

“It is a problem of not accepting indigeneity, and claiming that it was either settled or disappeared or can be handled, instead of accepting it. Settlers and native people always have a complex relationship but the first step is acknowledging that this is the basic paradigm, the basic reality.”

Another historical comparison is that of apartheid South Africa, Professor Pappe says. Invoking the word “apartheid” is highly provocative; the term has legal implications as well as emotive ones, but he is resolute that the name is justified.

The ideology of apartheid – of separation, of segregation – is not dissimilar in the two countries, he says, arguing that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has also drawn the comparison between the two situations. “I don’t think it’s too strong a term. As a scholar I would like to go deeply into the comparison and see the similarities as well as the dissimilarities. But from the general perspective of what kind of attitude Jews have towards non-Jews in the state of Israel, I don’t know of a better term in a legal realm in that respect.”

South Africa did manage eventually to overcome the bitter policy of apartheid, and so too can Israel, Professor Pappe believes, but it must involve what he describes as “the three As”: acknowledgement, acceptance and accountability. Israeli, Jewish and Western acknowledgement that ethnic cleansing has occurred and that refugees want to return to their homeland; Israeli accountability for what has happened in the past; and an acceptance in the Arab world and among Palestinians that the Jewish nation is part of the Middle East.

It is not a completely hopeless prospect, he says, but accepts that it is very difficult for those with established standpoints to move beyond those and make a fundamental shift about how they view the problem before a solution can be found. And a solution is fundamental for the two nations, the region and the rest of the world.

“The future of Palestine is not just the future of Jews and Palestinians who live there, it’s the future of the relationship of the Arab and Muslim worlds with the west,” he said in an earlier lecture.

ABC Radio Conversation Hour with Jon Faine, Claire Bowditch & Greg Jericho Tuesday 18 Sep 2012

Related Links

Ilan Pappe in Australia at Coalition for Justice & Peace in Palestine (CJPP)
Radio National Breakfast makes Palestinians peripheral to their own dispossession, and invites zionist Morris to respond to Pappé
Danby’s petulant criticism of the ABC having Pappé on QandA

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Successful BDS Protest at Max Brenner, Parramatta

BDS rally at Max Brenner, Parramatta 19/9/12From the Palestine Action Group Sydney:

150 supporters of Palestine staged a rally in Parramatta in support of the global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid today. The protest was timed to also commemorate the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon 30 years ago.

The Police had yesterday requested the Palestine Action Group cancel the event, but organisers decided to proceed as planned.

Demonstrators were addressed by South African activist Kolin Thumbadoo, who was president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Australia during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

In his speech Kolin stated, “As I was then, I am now, an implacable, unapologetic anti-racist. As I was opposed to a white minority regime in South Africa, so to am I opposed to a racist Zionist regime in occupied Palestine.”

The protest marched to the Max Brenner chocolate shop in Parramatta to highlight it’s connections with the Strauss Group, an Israeli corporation which publicly supports two of the most notorious brigades in the Israeli Defence Forces, the Golani and Gavati brigades.

“Just as in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, companies that support or profit from Israeli Apartheid should be boycotted,” said one of the protest organisers, Patrick Langosch.

The Palestine Action Group plans to hold more demonstrations in the future to continue to support the BDS campaign and the struggle of the Palestinians.

Related Links

BDS Action at Max Brenner, Parramatta – Photo Slideshow