“The BDS movement, which has spread from Palestinian civil society to activists around the world, is part of that non-violent resistance and I support it whole heartedly, but let us be clear that the disparity of power, and the reality of the occupation, and the response of the occupied is the reality we face unless we find recourse in international law and hold all parties to it. “
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The 3rd of December, 2012, marks 2000 days of siege by Israel on the people of Gaza – collective punishment, a crime against humanity. End Israel’s oppression and apartheid, equal rights for all, recognise the right of Palestinians to return to their lands, and until these are achieved, boycott, divest from and sanction Israel!
Following the UN vote admitting Palestine as a non-member observer state, Netanyahu has announced 3,000 more illegal Jews-only settler houses in Occupied East Jerusalem. The reactions of Western governments has been one of horror as they believe this development will make two states geographically impossible, as if two states weren’t already geographically impossible. Still, their concern for protecting the mirage of the possibility of two states blows their continued support for Israel as a willing negotiator if only the Palestinians would negotiate, out of the water. The UK mutters about diplomatic withdrawals – I’ll wake up a little more if the UK threatens an arms boycott. Otherwise this sort of thing is symbolic. It may cause Israel to feel more isolated, delegitimised and even belligerent. There’s a couple of possibilities the zio-elite may have in mind to get their noxious impunity from the West back – the obvious is to precipitate another conflict. Otherwise is an early election possible? Netanyahu on the other hand may have decided to go for broke and to snatch Area C in the West Bank in total.
“Those who place their hope in the Palestinian Authority taking steps to hold Israel to account naively failed to grasp that the Palestinian Authority essentially manages the occupation for Israel
through its “security coordination” with Israel. Mahmoud Abbas has “always been the obedient servant of the United States and Israel.” It must not be forgotten that in October 2009, Abbas, under pressure from Israel, the United States and European diplomats, abandoned a resolution requesting the UN Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone’s Report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action.
Meanwhile, the settlement expansion and land and water expropriation will persist unabated, and Israel will continue to cement its status as an apartheid state.”
Driven by its politicians’ malevolent rhetoric, Israel foams with fascist fervour. In the streets zionist fanatics scream for Palestinian genocide. Not one to demur from a frolic in a foreign blood bath, the saturnine imperial potentate Obama mouths the customary western obscenity about the racist zionist entity having a right to defend itself, rubberstamping its criminality in chorus with one hundred percent of the good old boys and girls in the US senate. Ashton is ‘deeply’ duplicitous as the EU turns away from Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza, a deliberate, premeditated crime against humanity which, as in November 2008, the ziocolony has orchestrated bloody mayhem to spice the lead up to its apartheid faux elections. In Australia, bipartisan prevarication oozes from the shonky Australian political shills for empire and zionism.
Fascist states refresh themselves continuously through calibrated, manufactured spectacles, to reprime the illusionist themes of sanctioned violence amd self-righteous racism, all the better to support the state’s drive for power and expansionism. To retain its expansionary, militarist, oppressive and racist nature, the ziocolony indulges in regular orgiastic, violent frenzies. Yet this sadistic, cathartic behaviour is inherently unstable and unsustainable.
Thicker than Netanyahu’s Amerikkkan accent, the putrid zionist hasbara flows through the western media, to obscure the deaths and maiming of Palestinian civilians who unlike cossetted, privileged Israelis, have no air raid shelters or early warning sirens, no Iron Dome defence system supplied by the world’s super-maniacal power. Children in Gaza are crying in fear and hurt, dying again in the arms of their parents, parents slaughtered before their children’s eyes, buildings new-built since Israel’s 2009 Cast Lead frenzy pulverised by torrents of bombs which in the urban density of Gaza take a bloody toll of innocent civilians. Israel’s vile oppression must end, with its war criminals and their western accomplices brought to justice at The Hague.
While awaiting the moral arc of governments to grind far too slowly toward justice, individuals can act = boycott apartheid Israel – conscientious attention costs nothing and adds to the growing weight of grassroots action to transform the racist, oppressive behaviour of the brutal apartheid entity. On no account buy your beloved diamonds for Christmas – you don’t know where they’ve been. Israeli diamonds are blood diamonds.
Revolución está al alcance de todos – resistir a la Bestia. Tierra y libertad!
Bombs and Lies
through shrouded sky
to a Gaza reprise
fascist drones fly
remotely contrived
for justice’s demise
at maimed childrens’ cries
chorused liberal sighs
can’t obscure genocide
in apartheid eyes
truth dies
as empire’s disguise
Israel lies
lies and lies
a Pillar of Lies
Forget the Australian Greens, overrun with white supremacism, zionism and equivocation between oppressor and oppressed. A good sign of their western colonialist infection perhaps is their use of the ‘deeply’ word, so beloved of Cashton and Rice.
The Malaysian government condemns Israel’s murderous attack on the civilian population of Gaza while “Viva Palestina Malaysia (VPM) chairman Datuk Dr Musa Mohd Nordin said the airstrike on Gaza that killed 10 Palestinians yesterday was yet another display of Israel’s contempt for international laws and its ruthless defiance of accepted norms of co-existence.”
The ANC has responded in the affirmative to calls for support for boycott against apartheid Israel.
“ANC International Solidarity Conference in Tshwane City Hall, Pretoria, takes a decision to support the 2005 call by Palestinians’ largest political gathering in Ramallah to impose Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel. ANC chair Baleka Mbete goes on to mention that Israel is worse than Apartheid. This was in response to German comrades opposing the motion to include BDS in conference declaration. This is the strongest statement yet, in support of BDS coming from an ANC related Conference. Inshallah, the rest of the world gathered here will follow. Viva BDS, Viva!”
This ANC affirmation is inspiring and significant particularly combined with the strength of past achievements by conscientious people all over the world in solidarity maintaining commitment to justice and rights – in the past against apartheid in South Africa, and now for Palestinian people and dismantlement of Israel’s apartheid tyranny.
CALL BY FORMER INTERNATIONAL ANTI-APARTHEID ACTIVISTS TO THE ANC
Dear South African Comrades,
We — former international anti-apartheid activists — supported the African National Congress (ANC) and the people of South Africa in their fight for liberation and against apartheid by mobilizing support for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the South African apartheid regime.
We succeeded to put the crime of apartheid on the agenda of political parties, trade unions, churches, non-governmental organizations, artists, sports bodies, universities and concerned citizens. We called on people not to buy apartheid products and we discouraged tourism to the country. We campaigned for a weapons embargo, an oil embargo, a Krugerrand boycott, a sports, academic and cultural boycott. We pressurized companies and banks to withdraw from apartheid South Africa. We mobilized thousands of people to participate in demonstrations against apartheid.
On the occasion of the 3rd ANC International Solidarity Conference, we call on the ANC to support the Palestinian people in their fight for freedom, justice and equality. We are deeply concerned about Israel’s ongoing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people with total impunity.
In 2005, Palestinian civil society released a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to pressurize the Israeli government to change. The call – anchored in universal human rights – de?ned three basic Palestinian rights that constitute the minimal requirements of a just peace, namely, that Israel should:
– End its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantle its Apartheid Wall;
– Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and,
– Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
We call on the ANC to support the Palestinian call for BDS as expression of the party’s solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people to enjoy their rights, including the right to self-determination.
International boycotts and disinvestment, which were used as effective tools to fight apartheid should also be used to further the cause of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.
This call was made at a tribute to the longest serving president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) on Wednesday night.
The event organised by the Wits SRC also saw the screening of a special tribute “Have You Heard from Johannesburg”, highlighting OR’s campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa at a time when the ANC was viewed by the west as an agent of communist Russia or at worst a terrorist organisation.
Speakers said there were strong parallels between the two struggles against injustice and oppression.
They also pointed to the tactics used by Tambo to mobilise the international community against South Africa, and argued that the same strategies were needed to help the people of Palestine.
The Wits SRC reiterated its call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel despite Wits management distancing itself from the move.
This comes at a time when there is a strong movement in favour of boycotting Israeli products in South Africa.
SRC representative Tokelo Nhlapo said that the similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel’s occupation of Palestine were too great to ignore. The Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ebrahim Ebrahim’s statement for the event read: “Today, there is a similar international civil society solidarity campaign in support of the Palestinians against Israeli policies and practices of occupation and aggression.
“The ANC fully supports this international movement to pressure Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”
University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Prof Farid Essack, one of the guest speakers, said that Israel was an apartheid state and should be stopped.
“This is what is expected from the family of humankind. Not because we owe it to the Palestinian people but we owe it to ourselves,” he said.
International anti-apartheid movement organiser from the Netherlands Adri Neiwhof said that Tambo was “humble and a motivator”.
A boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigner against Israel, Neiwhof spoke of the success of a Dutch boycott campaign in helping to end apartheid.
The famous Turkish alternative band Baba Zula has cancelled their planned concert in Israel. Originally planned for 9 November at the Barby in Tel Aviv, the band removed Tel Aviv from their tour schedule and Auris Media posted that the band from Istanbul had cancelled.
Musician Omar Saad refuses to join the criminal IDF: ‘I oppose the recruitment to the Israeli military and any other military for conscience and nationalistic reasons. I hate the injustice and oppose the occupation; I hate intolerance and restriction of freedoms. I hate those who detain children, the elderly and women.’
The global jewellery business is bankrolling the Zionist project in Palestine to a very significant degree. Jewellers deceitfully claim diamonds are conflict-free even though a large percentage of them are crafted in Israel where revenue from the diamond industry generates over $1 billion per year in funding for the Israeli military regime which is guilty of nuclear weapons proliferation and war crimes in the Middle East.
‘According to many international organisations, water is being used by Israel as a war weapon, threatening the life of the Palestinian people. Since the creation of the Zionist entity in Palestine, Israel has been working relentlessly on annexing Palestinian land and water sources lying beneath. Such a strategic design was confirmed in a document prepared, in 1941, by David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first prime minister). In this document (which was released by the British Public Record Office) Ben-Gurion stated: “We have to remember that for the Jewish state’s ability to survive, it must have within its borders, the waters of [rivers] Jordan and Litani.”’
‘The Palestinian Authority has proved after 19 years to have been nothing more than a Palestinian guard for Israel’s brutal occupation instead of confronting the aggressor or taking any forward steps towards justice in the region.’
“During the military offensive, 18 schools were destroyed, (including eight government schools, two private schools and eight kindergartens) and at least 280 were damaged. Six of the destroyed government schools were in North Gaza alone, affecting almost 9,000 students who had to relocate to other schools.”
“‘Welcome to the first edition of the web based Voice of Palestine, the Voice of the Palestinian People. Our host Hanna Kawas talks live with Dr. Haidar Eid from Gaza City.
Haidar is a professor at Al Aqsa University in Gaza and a longtime activist for Palestinian rights and he covers a broad range of topics in this open discussion, including the recent airstrikes on Gaza and the visit of the Emir of Qatar, the limitations of the two state solution and his commitment to the one democratic state principle, as well as a frank critique of the visit to Gaza by Noam Chomsky.'”
On the Palestinian BDS action against an Israeli supermarket located in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank. Includes media release, video and photos. Four activists were arrested, including her friend Bassem Tamimi who is currently being held in Ofer Prison.
