Tag: Human Rights

Posted on

Australian academic faces Israeli lawfare attack from the Shurat HaDin

The right to criticize the policies of another country are at stake

Today an Israeli based law centre, Shurat HaDin, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia, against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. They claim that he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals representing them. Jake Lynch has refused collaboration with Hebrew University because of its support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

This lawfare attack against academic freedom and freedom of speech has been condemned by over 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries, who have all signed a pledge supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel because of its well documented and clear violations of international and humanitarian law, and offering to be co-defendants in any legal action taken against Lynch.

Shurat HaDin has taken many similar actions internationally against groups who support the BDS movement. Professor Stuart Rees comments, “It seems that this firm, Shurat HaDin works in the civil courts as a proxy for the Israeli government and security forces, seeking to shut down any criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

In August, Shurat HaDin lodged a complaint in the Human Rights Commission against Jake Lynch’s refusal to sponsor an Israeli academic from the Hebrew University, now they want to silence this highly regarded academic, by taking their complaint to the Federal Court. This challenges the right to take non violent action in support international human rights law and the rights of the dispossessed Palestinians. Australians for BDS condemns racism in all forms, and specifically anti-Semitism.

“Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing machinery continue unabated but the moral force that used to drive that process is fast eroding and, as out of touch as the Abbott government and anti-BDS activists in Australia may be, there is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power. International civil society is holding Israel to account in a way no government has ever been able to do”.

Press release by Randa Abdel Fattah, Australian Palestinian lawyer and writer.

Press conference with Professor Stuart Rees and Professor Peter Slezak
Date: WED Oct 30th (today)
Time: 2pm
Location: Queen’s Square, Junction of King, Phillip and Macquarie Streets, Sydney (St James Station)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen’s_Square,_Sydney

UPDATE

Professor Peter Slezak speaks at the press conference:

Related Links

Academics to fight Federal Court action claiming support for BDS racist
Two Thousand Defendants For Human Rights
Israeli lawyers group Shurat HaDin unmasked as Mossad proxy
Defending The Right To Dissent
Defend free speech and human rights and support the BDS
The Israeli government’s official ‘lawfare’ contractor

Posted on

Victim Diva

Betty Boop Banalitytabloid burnt offerings
grovel to my dictates
shock horror twerking scandal!
if you could ask Elvis,
would he not say
my heaving gyrations
transcend colour, sex,
class and race?
your acquiescence
in this rotting pop corn age
my attention-seeking militates.

tread those egg shells lightly
i throw down each day,
my name writ smooth and broadcast,
to remain in orbit, you must obey.
i have no allies,
only competitors in crimes
of appropriation,
fickle backslappers –
fans are not fans who disagree,
my privilege is to make decrees,
blogged, statused and tweeted.

form inverted Vs,
witless adoration fuels
my trajectory,
that dance i made my own?
there’s nothing new under the sun
that has not been borrowed or
stolen in show biz
from non-white cultures,
just ask Elvis –
from above i may watch,
so twerk your tail feather
and coyly brush your crotch.

yet this sympathetic magic
can never transmute you to me –
are exploiter and exploited,
voyeur and object,
entertainer and entertained
on the same branch of the tree?
trust me, this industry enslaves us all,
i need you more than you need me,
get busy, buy my song,
pity me, and dance my dance.

Jinjirrie, October 2013.

Focus on elite individuals and their manufactured victimhood serves as a bait and switch – instead of challenging the structure of capitalist patriarchy, we are baited to participate voyeuristically in the divide and rule show enabled by the ruling elite and their oppressive structures, especially the media. There’s something to be said for the Australian tradition of tall poppy lopping.

It benefits the ruling capitalist patriarchy if women are seen to be attacking other women, if folks are absorbed with their own gripes and not on the structures of oppression. The ‘meritocracy’ divides, rules, disempowers and kneecaps the coordinated class struggle.

Posted on

Amanda Palmer, Please Don’t Normalize with Apartheid

Don't Play Apartheid Israel, Amanda PalmerDear Amanda Palmer,

We appreciate your engagement with the cultural boycott in your statement on your blog [1], and would like to clarify to you that while your kickstarter house party does not fall within the ambit of the Palestinian-led boycott, because of its private nature and the absence of institutional backing, the gig at which you plan to play at the Barby would cross the boycott picket line.

To use a fact-finding tour with the Israeli organisation, Breaking the Silence “to see the areas they’re talking about”, as a kind of whitewashing of a contravention of the boycott is unacceptable.

We would hope you instead do make the effort, as did Jello Biafra [2], to view the results of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and then decide against breaching the boycott by playing at a public venue in Israel.

Would you have countenanced a tour of the apartheid South African bantustans with a white organisation and still played Sun City? We encourage you to listen to Palestinian voices who ask artists to respect the boycott and to realise that voices from the community of the Israeli oppressors do not represent Palestinians, and indeed often serve to silence and obscure the Palestinian message using deceptive words of ‘peace’ and ‘co-existence’. Palestinian people, in contrast, are asking you to co-resist with them in solidarity by respecting their boycott call.

As the PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) has explained:

‘we simply ask that they do the sensible thing and stay away from Israel until they are knowledgeable enough about the “situation.” Artists are not being asked by one or two local individuals to boycott Israel, which could be dismissed as uninformed or unrepresentative of the common interest. In the Palestinian case, artists are being asked to respect the cultural boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions by a majority of Palestinian civil society, over 170 organizations from across the political and social spectrum, and especially by a great majority of Palestinian artists and cultural figures. If the Palestinian near-consensus is not sufficient to convince them, then they can at least refrain from performing, accepting prizes, or exhibiting art in Israel until they have visited the occupied Palestinian territory and spoken with exiled Palestinian refugees’.[3]

Some artists who played and then became aware of Israel’s oppression and the legitimacy of the boycott, like Macy Gray [4], Roger Waters [5] and Denise Jannah [6], later regretted their performances and would not have played had they known then what they later discovered.

Please refrain from playing at the Barby, please don’t breach the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions call and do make the effort also to find out more for yourself about Israel’s occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.

DPAI (Don’t Play Apartheid Israel)
We are a group, of over 1300 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] http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130912/
[2] Jello Biafra cancels his Tel Aviv gig http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/jello-biafra-cancels-his-tel-aviv-gig
[3] Artists Violating Cultural Boycott of Israel: Moral Inconsistency and Logical Incoherence http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1582
[4] Macy Gray Regrets Feb Concert in Tel Aviv Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/macy-gray-regrets-feb-concert-in-tel-aviv-israel/
[5] BDS Roundup: Alice Walker, Roger Waters call on Alicia Keys to cancel Tel Aviv show
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/bds-roundup-alice-walker-roger-waters-call-alicia-keys-cancel-tel-aviv-show
[6] Denise Jannah Expresses Support for BDS
https://www.kadaitcha.com/2011/09/18/denise-jannah-and-ramon-valles-now-support-bds/

See also:

Open Letter to Amanda Palmer: There is a profound ethical obligation to refuse to play in Israel http://refrainplayingisrael.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/open-letter-to-amanda-palmer-there-is.html

Posted on

On Empire, Settler Colonialism and the Environment

The Fall

The Powell Doctrine

Don’t expect me to care about your empire
its sacrifices, its bloody flag that hides
money men from scrutiny
your capitalism, your patriarchy
your imbalances, your hatred for trees,
your intrepid ‘pioneers’, your usurpers,
your love for hard-footed soil-squandering
sheep, cattle and goats,
always the goats, eroding,
as you do, you and your greed,
enslaving us all for your short-term gains,
your pollution, your land-clearing,
your civilisation, your corrosion,
your obsession with domination,
the fire in my belly burns you to ash,
i am the thorny bush
even your goats find indigestible.

Jinjirrie, September 2013.

The Travails of the Ruling Class

Is the US still wondering why?
will twin towers
of ignorance and greed ever fall?
profits before people,
drones before homes
helter skelter before shelter
who dwells in mansions
paid for by war expansions?
endless terror
padding coffers of rich
deserving poor
are thrown in the ditch.
red raw capitalism
shrouded in religious schism
who’s jealous of freedom to bomb at will
the empire glories in spoils of the kill.

Jinjirrie, September 2013.

A Spell for Staying Well

One sip of moonlight, stirred with the tip of a dandelion,
look high up there to the right, the buddha sits and grins,
does he say it’s all an illusion when the pain walks in,
hold that choice between one delicious word and another,
even if the universe inevitably steals the last laugh.

Jinjirrie, September 2013.

Posted on

Musician Sonia Montez Speaks Out in Support of the Cultural Boycott of Israel

Boycott the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Israel
Boycott the Red Sea Jazz Festival
Inspirational singer and composer Sonia Montez advocates for boycott of apartheid Israel:

“When Mexico bleeds, and no one listens, who suffers. Would you play in a festival in Mexico that was supported by corrupt officials, the ones who feed into the violence epidemic sweeping Mexico? Do you not know that the Zapatistas have a history of supporting Palestinian human rights causes? You may think what is happening to the Palestinians is wrong but your willing nature to participate in celebration for their oppressors shows more of your character than your words offer. If music is beauty, what beauty lies in playing for a festival in which the native (like you are native to your country) population could not even attend because of humiliating checkpoints placed to break the spirit of said population. What if one day you were not allowed to return to Mexico because the government had taken over your land and placed more ideal residents there? Would you play for a government endorsed jazz festival. Do you think you’d be playing for the people then?”

Sonia continues on her Facebook wall:

Music, as I was taught, is a form of artistic expression and part of my being as an artist is an unwavering resolve to speak out against the bullshit my government supports.

and

music is “awesome” when the people making it behave “awesomely”

To a Zionist who attempts to smear and intimidate her, Sonia replies

I peacefully revolt for the future of mine and because I am a true mother who understand no mother should have to watch her child suffer at the hands of MY government. I will speak for the rights of your children, even if you choose to blind them in ignorant privilege. I do not want your children and my son to have to carry the burden your apathy will leave on the shoulders of future generations.

So, I hope they’re watching. I hope they see every video and link I post. You have just tried to make me fear my government, sir. I am not scared of you or they.

On Israel’s expulsion of Bedouins from the Negev under the Prawer Plan:

Right now, Israel’s Prawer Plan is displacing 70,000 Arabs from the Nagev Desert. People not allowed to enjoy your show. By playing in a government supported/endorsed cultural event, you are effectively distracting from and supporting this action.

…

Would you have played in apartheid South Africa? Would you have played for colonizers and settlers during Manifest Destiny? Stevie Wonder, Roger Waters, Elvis Costello, Chris “Daddy” Dave, and many others have joined the cultural boycott. What makes them over the top and you so correct?

…

Palestinians would not be allowed to put on such a lavish festival, just look at what they had to go through to put on a marathon. To suggest Palestine would even have enough funds to put on a music festival (because they would have to be allowed by the colonizing government to put on a music show on their own land and already live in inhumane conditions) shows mis-education on the the reality of the apartheid. I’m talking about independent and internationally recognized violations of human rights. Over 200 resolutions by the UNSC that only remind the apartheid state needs to heed the treaties they already agreed to but choose to violate at every turn.

….

You may play for people, but the government uses your silence to white-wash a very serious issue. You want to be a puppet? Fine, but then don’t get uppity when people call you a puppet. You could have joined Chris Daddy Dave and Palladino, the Matt Schofield Band, Salif Keita, Stanley Jordan… you could have become an educated artist. You could have done research and requested to visit Hebron, using activist escorts, so you could see for yourself how ridiculous the notion is that you are somehow lifting people up by playing the Red Sea Jazz Festival (which sounds like a pretty piece of propaganda from a brochure or something)

I am sure you are not watching these videos, why would you, confronting fact isn’t easy. But, in the event your curiosity and ethics grab hold, here is what you are really helping to “lift up” in a dire political situation (the dire situation isn’t political, it’s about basic human rights). You were saying “yes” to house demolitions, “yes” to peaceful demonstrators being pelted with uncovered and broken rubber bullets, “yes” to checkpoints, “yes” to ethnic cleansing with every hit. Your grooves translated into “yes” for kidnapping children in the middle of the night, “yes” to the illegal settlements (all settlements are illegal under international law), “yes” to the constant oppression and fear that Palestinians live through on a daily basis.

The reality you didn’t play for people, the amazing people of Judaic faith fighting the occupation that is being carried out in their name, you helped zionists. And, that, at the end of the day, is something you must live with. Every time Amnesty International finds a new study showing a more violations by the IDF, every time B’Tselem ???? has to demonstrate, every time a refusenick is jailed for not wanting to serve the oppressor, your name will be on the side of the system, not the people

Antonio Sanchez, whom Sonia Montez is addressing, replaced Chris Daddy Dave and the Drumhedz, who, along with the Matt Schofield Trio, cancelled performances at the Red Sea Jazz Festival held in Israel in August.

Related Links

Sonia Montez – Of Tears and Honey
A Bicycle Ride In The Park