John Dugard gives a presentation on how “the apartheid regime operated in law and policy in South Africa, and provide an overview of Israeli law and policy with respect to the prohibition on apartheid.” for the 3rd International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town in November 2011
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So much for ‘normalisation’ : A school set up to promote peace and understanding between Arab and Jewish communities in Jerusalem has been hit by vandals who have daubed racist threats on its playground walls, including “Death to Arabs”.
An historic national conference to promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement directed at ending Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people was held at the University of Pennsylvania Feb. 3-5.
Even before the conference began a wave of vicious racist attacks were directed against Palestine solidarity activists by the campus press, on-line blogs and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Penn students active in organizing the conference were verbally attacked by pro-Israeli forces.
Perhaps the most disgusting was the anti-Semitic slur of “kapos” aimed at Jewish pro-BDS students by Professor Ruben Gur in the campus paper The Daily Pennsylvanian. The term refers to Jews who collaborated with Nazis in concentration and extermination camps during World War II.
The night before the conference opened, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz — an apologist for Israeli and U.S. war crimes — addressed an event sponsored by several Penn academic departments and the college chapters of the Republicans and Democrats.
Dershowitz encouraged this audience to deny the brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel, known as al-Nakba.
On Thursday 9th February 2012 Cat Power, Chan Marshall, cancelled her date with apartheid – a Tel Aviv gig scheduled for 12th February. Palestinian and Israeli anti-apartheid activists had written to her asking her to cancel, as had international activists including DPAI (Don’t Play Apartheid Israel) who set up a Facebook page, wrote to, messaged and tweeted Marshall.
During the day of Thursday 9th, Cat Power was looking for a gig in Ramallah on February 13th and soon was inundated with messages explaining that Palestinians didn’t want her to play in Ramallah, they wanted her NOT to play in apartheid Israel and to respect their call for BDS. Screenshots of her tweets below, click on images to enlarge.
Looking to Play RamallahCancelling Apartheid
Thanks are due to Cat Power who made this courageous decision to cancel, she should be very proud of her actions and proud to be part of the BDS campaign.
This is a good day for the BDS campaign, a great day for justice! We can only hope it inspires more artists to act in good conscience and not to play in apartheid Israel, artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The beat drops when the wall falls! One world, one love.
‘While the, currently relatively unpopulated, Facebook page could seem like a case of dealing with trivialities in the face of all-out war with Iran,” Israeli Madonna fans’ fears are not unsubstantiated, with a distinguished list of artists bailing out on Israeli shows in the last minute over political crises and wars.
In fact, later Thursday American singer-songwriter Cat Power announced on her Facebook page that she is cancelling her planned Tel Aviv show due to political reasons.
In a short statement, the U.S. singer said: “Due to much confusion in my soul, playing for my Israeli fans with such unrest between Israel and Palestine I can’t play, as I feel sick in my spirit.”‘
Meanwhile the whiny zionist press bleats misogyny and sexism, and includes a disgraceful tirade from Mairav Zonstein in +972 mag, which unfortunately and ironically (the campaign to persuade Cat Power to cancel was initiated by Australians including myself, I set up the facebook group on behalf of Don’t Play Apartheid Israel, messaged her and wrote on her wall, along with other DPAI members) is republished on the Australians for Palestine site. (Update 13/2/12 – Australians for Palestine were alerted and now changed the +972 mag story to this one 🙂 thanks for the solidarity!)
Dena Shunra’s comment below the +972 story is worth republishing:
Isn’t it tragic that free will extends to people who don’t agree with you, for whatever reason?
Cat Power – along with the many other artists and performers who have joined the BDS campaign – gets to make choices about her performance, even if you don’t like them.
And it is not hard to imagine why an artist might be appalled and disgusted to find out that what was billed as a performance in a cosmopolitan city would be barred from being viewed by people living a mere hour’s drive away – due to a diabolical system of permits.
It doesn’t take a political agenda to do the decent thing in such a situation.
Also note the reference by Henry to the 4000 year old animal husbandry manual:
There are, however, some outstanding ancillary issues on which we’re not all comfortable appealing to a 4000 year old text on animal husbandry as a final arbiter.
Avicii, (Tim Berg) Swedish Electronica DJ and vocal artist is rising in popularity in the US, after many people heard his music on a Bud Light Platinum commercial during the 2012 Superbowl. (It is reported that 111 million people watched this year). He plans to tour South Africa at the end of March.
Avicii and his manager Ash Pournouri are being asked not to appear in Israel, and to respect the boycott. As part of their House For Hunger Tour the pair had planned to perform in Tel Aviv, but for medical reasons, Tim Berg was unable to travel under doctor’s orders. The DJ even posted a photo on twitter of himself in the hospital. On FB he apologized for having to cancel his show, saying “SO SORRY for not being able to make it to my shows this whole week. I was looking forward to every single night with my fans (Kingston , Amherst, Tel Aviv, Vienna and Rome) but the doctor’s are forbidding me to do any kind of work. I am dead set on making it up to all my fans and will get back asap with new announced dates!”
His manager Ash states on the Avicii facebook “I’d like to make it crystal clear that we will honor our commitment to completing the House For Hunger tour, as it is something Tim and I are very passionate about, as are our fans. ” // Ash
In honor of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian man facing death, now and on the date Avicii was planning to play Tel Aviv (Feb 2), Avicii is being asked not to reschedule his gig in Israel.
Khader was detained arbitrarily in 17 December 2011. Khader, who is a dad to two girls, a baker, and also a Masters student at Birzeit Univ., as well as a human rights adovocate, was arrested by masked soldiers in the middle of the night in his own home. Between the 18th and the 29th of January 2012, Khader was subjected to almost daily cruel and inhumane interrogations. During interrogations, he was shackled to a crooked chair with his hands tied behind his back in a position that caused him back pain. He said that interrogators threatened him constantly and verbally abused him and his family.
Khader Adnan began his hunger strike in protest of his ill-treatment in Israeli detention and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial (known as Administrative Detention). He is in danger of dying at any moment. His wife, Randa, who saw him for the first time since his detention on about 8 Feb. described his condition as rapidly deteriorating and that he has lost a third of his weight and his hair. It is his 53rd day on a hunger strike.
It would be unconscionable for Avicii to raise funds for people facing hunger while Khader is dying of hunger. The Israeli- inflicted hunger of the people of Gaza under seige also make it an act of disregard for justice for any musician outside of Israel to play in Tel Aviv.
Avicii might be interested to read these quotes from these Electronica artists:
Faithless: “ We’ve been asked to do some shows this summer in your country and, with the heaviest of hearts, I have regretfully declined the invitation. While human beings are being willfully denied not just their rights but their needs for their children and grandparents and themselves, I feel deeply that I should not be sending even tacit signals that this is either ‘normal’ or ‘ok’.”
Massive Attack’s Del Naja on the boycott of Israel: “I’ve always felt that it’s the only way forward … I think musicians have a major role to play, … I find the more I get involved, the more the movement becomes something tangible. I remember going to ‘Artists Against Apartheid’ gigs, and ‘Rock Against Racism’ gigs around the same sort of time. Bands like the Clash and the Specials had a lot to do with influencing the minds of the youth in those days.”
Del Naja refers to South Africa’s fallen apartheid system above, and today South African solidarity is very stong for Palestine. Watch Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speak of support for the boycott, on Feb 2:
To accommodate various university schedules across regions, IAW will take place at slightly different times between February and March. Here is a list of dates for the regions confirmed so far:
Europe: February 20 – March 10
Palestine: March 12-19
United States: February 26 – March 3
Canada: March 5-9
Arab World: March 5-11
South Africa: March 5-11.
Omar Barghouti: ‘Justice and equality only destroy their negation, injustice and apartheid, and this is precisely what Israel and its lobbies are running scared of, the effective and sustainable challenge of Israeli apartheid and colonial rule.’
I have experienced the checkpoint as an international, Muslim woman who wears the veil and observed the ignorant and mostly arrogant behavior of these young teenage soldiers. I am horrified, angry, and left paralyzed by confusion as I try to comprehend this behavior. I simply cannot imagine that the Palestinian people have to go through that every single day without having the possibility to leave as I do–without knowing that they can go home and are safe.
“If our demands, these rights, threaten the existence of Israel, what does that say about Israel?”
“The hysteria about this conference tells us soemthing about the moment we are in, we are in the endgame.”
“Israelis don’t have a right to superiority.”
“We’re here for the dozens of children born at military checkpoints because Israelis have not allowed ambulances through.”
“We are here in solidarity with the prisoners, including nearly 200 Palestinian children.”
“It’s the occupation forces who should be standing trial, not the children.”
“We stand together against all forms of bigotry: against racism, against Islamophobia, against anti-Semitism; we are one against sexism, against homophobia, against discrimination due to physical ability; we affirm and embrace the rights, dignity and equality of all human beings; and all are welcome here tonight.”
“Palestinians are told: ‘you must be nonviolent’. Why don’t we hear that said to Israel?”
“End the military occupation, end all forms of discriminationa against Palestinians in Israel, recognise Palestinians’ right of return. None of these goals contradict the rights of Israelis.”
“We are the 99%, we have to link this struggle to so many other struggles, here and round the world.”
“We have an abuse of the Civil Rights act, insteading of opening the campus, it’s designed to silence discussion.”
“The BDS movement grew out of the realisation that the US and UN were not upholding their responsibilities.
They don’t because of the power realities. We have to do it ourselves. We’d like to reach a state where states acted responsibly. US resisted sanctions against SAfrica to the very end – it’s often citizens’ movements that push governments to act responsibly from the bottom up, not the top down.
The amazing thing about the movemetn is that it is led by Palestinians, the BNC, but the implementation is done by local initiatives and creativity all over the world. The question is where do you think it will go over the next 5 yrs – I look forward to your creativity. We have to do that work as part of the broader solidarity movement … It’s true Palestine has been a taboo even on the left in this country for a very long time.
Palestine was always pushed to the side, but this is changing. The shift is that Palestine is part of a much larger global struggle.”
‘The JDO is a self-described “militant” organisation, though others have labelled it a “terrorist group”. It is a splinter group from the more infamous Jewish Defence League (JDL), and like the JDL subscribes to the extremist Zionist ideology of Kahanism, and boasts of physically attacking pro-Palestinian activists in the US.’
‘All Israeli wars since 1973 were flawed wars of choice. Israel initiated all of them. None of them was inevitable, none resulted in any benefit that could not have been achieved using different means. In fact all of them were disastrous for us, even if the disaster was even greater for the other side. The most megalomaniac of them all, the Second Lebanon War, was also the most disastrous of them all. This bears remembering when debating the even greater megalomania of an attack on Iran. ‘
Growing up as a Jewish anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, I was often told by white racists to “go back to Israel”. The idea that Jews don’t belong among non-Jews is the traditional language of anti-Semitism – and also of the modern ideology of Zionism that emerged in the late 19th century. Zionism’s founder, Theodore Herzl, believed that anti-Semitism of the sort I encountered was inevitable and even “natural” whenever Jews lived among gentiles. He effectively concurred with the anti-Semites’ remedy: that I should “go back to Israel”.
Apartheid, by the way, denied black people the rights of citizenship on the basis that their “national homelands” were in Bantustans such as Transkei and Kwazulu – bogus “states” in which they supposedly would exercise their right to self-determination.
Jews have certainly suffered for the right to live in security and safety, but the majority have chosen to exercise that right not in a separate Jewish nation state, but instead as Americans, Argentines, British or French. When Mr Netanyahu proclaims himself not just the prime minister of Israel, but also the “leader of the Jewish people”, that’s an expression of an ideology that holds that we’re a separate nation. I don’t believe that the majority of diaspora Jews are comfortable with the idea that they’re not really Americans or other nationalities, but are instead part of a separate people whose “national home” is Israel. While their grandparents’ experience may have been one of Jewish persecution and impermanence, most young Jews in the West today are not assuming that their gentile neighbours are going to turn on them.
If the current distribution of the world’s Jewish population changes in the coming decades, Israel’s share is more likely to shrink than to grow. The Israeli government revealed in 2003 that some 750,000 Israeli Jews were living abroad. Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert addressed French Jews a couple of years later and implored them to send their children “home” to Israel. Ironically, his sons were living in Paris and New York at that time.
By insisting that the Palestinians declare Israel “the national home of the Jewish people”, Mr Netanyahu is, in effect, asking Mahmoud Abbas to recognise a claim against which more than half of the world’s Jews have voted with their feet.
‘Charging these “Me Firsters” with principled loyalty to Israel drastically overestimates them. The record suggests that they are, as a rule, in it squarely for themselves. This confusion is significant, for example because a more realistic appreciation of the interests driving the Israel lobby and its sympathisers would draw attention to the ways in which support for Israeli militarism benefits and speaks to elite interests in the US, rather than just in Israel.’ (I’d go further about how US militarism benefits and speaks to elite interests in Israel 🙂
