Politics

September 3, 2012December 11, 2020

Jesus and Mary Chain – Don’t Play Apartheid

Jesus & Mary Chain: Have You Heard About the Boycott?

Dear Jim Reid, William Reid, Phil King, Loz Colbert and Mark Crozer (The Jesus and Mary Chain),

We are a group of over 900 people from all over the world who are united in support of human rights, justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. Some of our members have been fans of The Jesus and Mary Chain since the 1980s. We are asking you to refrain from playing in Israel.

The recent findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine verify that Israel is an apartheid state. Here is an excerpt, from last November. Read the entire findings at http://bit.ly/svjpBT :

“The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. This discriminatory regime manifests in varying intensity and forms against different categories of Palestinians depending on their location. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognised human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”

Music plays a very political role in the case of Israel because of the global BDS movement. The PACBI, (Palestinian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) has, since 2005, asked musicians to refrain from playing in Israel, and their call, representing Palestinian civil society, has become a global movement. Many people have already joined a new Facebook page titled: “Jesus and Mary Chain, No Reverence for Apartheid. Don’t Play Israel.”

When a band agrees to play in Israel and breaks the picket line, whether they intend to or not, they are making a political statement. In 2005 an Israeli spokesman asserted that: “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.” [Ha’aretz, September 2005] Your performances on 18 and 19 October will place you on the side of injustice and oppression, we are asking you to stand with the oppressed instead .

Many other musicians have chosen to respect the boycott and equal rights for Palestinians, among them, Roger Waters. You might like to read Waters’ words in last year’s Guardian in “Tear down this Israeli wall”, where he says:
“This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.” [1]

Please read about Israel’s apartheid in the letter that was written to French philosopher and prominent intellectual, Jacques Rancière, Professor emeritus, University Paris 8, by the PACBI. Jacques Rancière subsequently chose to cancel his planned lecture at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University earlier this year.[3]

This year artists Cassandra Wilson, tUnE-yArDs, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Cat Power have chosen to cancel their planned gigs in respect of the boycott, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for justice. Also among the growing list of artists that have cancelled concerts and events in Israel are the late Gil Scott-Heron, Elvis Costello, the Pixies, Mike Leigh, Klaxons, Gorillaz Sound System and many more.[4]

We hope that you will choose to respect the boycott.

Warm Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel (DPAI)

Notes
[1] 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
[2] International Star Natacha Atlas announces Israel boycott http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/international-star-natacha-atlas-announces-israel-boycott
[3] (See http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1793)
[4] 2011 Summary of the Cultural Boycott of Israel http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1788

SOURCE

August 30, 2012December 11, 2020

BDS Brisbane Walking Tour a Great Success

First Brisbane BDS Walking Tour a great success

August 30, 2012

Last Saturday, August 25 the first Brisbane Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Walking Tour was held, successfully highlighting a number of stores in the Brisbane CBD that profit from the products of Israeli apartheid. The Tour spent around ten minutes outside the Children of the Revolution store where a speech was given about the Naot brand of shoes. A letter was delivered to the store management by two BDS activists, after which the tour moved on (see speech and letter below). The tour also visited David Jones which stocks Soda Stream products, Woolworths which sell Eskal products and more, Myer centre which has a Seacret Dead Sea cosmetics stall and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The BDS Movement is a non-violent campaign of civil disobedience aiming to bring Israel to account for its apartheid policies and occupation of Palestinian land. The BDS call was launched in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organisations and demands an end to the occupation of all Arab lands and the dismantling of the apartheid wall; equal rights for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the recognition and promotion of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return home.

The Australian newspaper has used to occasion of the successful BDS Walking Tour to publish the latest installment in their campaign against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. In an August 30 article by Christian Kerr in the Murdoch newspaper, BDS activists are portrayed as bullies and stand over merchants. In the face of the BDS Movement’s consistent exposure of the injustices perpetrated by Israeli apartheid, the campaign of lies by opponents of the BDS, like The Australian, is not surprising. They have to resort to lies and distortions because the truth is on our side – it is impossible to honestly defend apartheid and occupation and it is impossible to justify profiting from such inhumanity.

Justice for Palestine, Brisbane will proudly hold further BDS Walking Tours to expose those that profit from apartheid and occupation.

For more information and updates see www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org

SPEECH GIVEN AT ‘CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION’, BRISBANE, 25TH, AUGUST, 2012

Here we are ‘Children of the Revolution’. Unfortunately, there’s nothing revolutionary about this shop. In fact, its most popular brand is Naot Shoes, an Israeli company that actively supports the Israeli brand of apartheid.

According to its website, ‘Children of the Revolution’ is “dedicated to sourcing and providing the most progressively fashionable and functional footwear from around the world.”

Since when is apartheid fashionable or functional?

Since when is trampling on the human rights of an oppressed people fashionable or functional?

Well, at ‘Children of the Revolution’ it seems!

Naot Shoes was founded in 1942 at Kibbutz Neot Mordecai and is now one of Israel’s most successful exporter of shoes. 80% are distributed internationally, especially to the USA, Canada and Australia.

What is even more disturbing is that 66% of Naot Shoes is owned by Shamrock Holdings, the investment branch of Disney enterprises which is committed to Israel’s growth and expansion. It is involved in a number of illegal Israeli colonies and also invests in the construction of Israel’s wall which has had huge and negative repercussions on the humanitarian welfare of Palestinians and which was wholeheartedly condemned by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

Naot Shoes has a large factory outlet in the illegal Gush Etzion colony on occupied Palestinian Territory between Jerusalem and Hebron on the West Bank. The Gush Etzion block is occupied illegally by 70,000 colonists on land legally allocated to the Palestinian people in 1947.

The factory outlet store plays a role in strengthening and legitimising the Gush Etzion colony, providing employment for the residents of the colony and attracting both Israeli customers and international tourists alike to the area.

The systematic oppression of the Palestinian people relies on companies such as Naot and Disney. This apartheid regime – based on race and religion – forces Palestinians to live in small, prison-like areas divided by walls, military checkpoints and Israeli only roads. This, in turn, leads to poverty and a massive health crisis.

This does not sound to me to be “progressive and functional”.

In the 70s and 80s no-one who supported human rights or opposed racism, no-one with a conscience would have bought products from South Africa. And this boycott helped to bring about the end of the apartheid regime there.

We are in the middle of a similar campaign now – a campaign to end apartheid in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Palestinian people are asking us to boycott Israeli products such as Naot shoes – just as the oppressed people of South Africa asked us to boycott South African products. As people of conscience we should listen to them.

When you walk in Naot shoes you walk on the rights of Palestinian people.

When you sell Naot shoes you profit from the oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Letter delivered to stores stocking Israeli Goods as part of the first Brisbane BDS Walking Tour, 25 August 2012.

To whom it may concern

Your business has been identified as stocking goods that are under international boycott because they were made in Israel or in illegal Israeli settlements within the occupied Palestinian territories.

You may, or may not, have heard of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the State of Israel. The boycott call was issued on July 9th in 2005 by over 171 Palestinian civil-society organisations, who called on the international community to implement the BDS campaign against Israel. Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in a similar framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for popular resistance through the BDS campaign until Israel complies with international law and meets its obligations towards the Palestinian people.

The international BDS campaign movement is committed to international law and human rights and demands that Israel:

Ends its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantles the separation Wall, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice;
Recognises the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
Accepts the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Since the beginning of the BDS campaign many businesses around the world have decided to support the boycott and remove Israeli goods from their shelves. National, State and local governments, church groups and community organisations have divested from Israeli business interests and international corporations that support illegal actions by Israel, such as the building of settlements and infrastructure on or through Palestinian land.

The treatment of Palestinians by Israel has been likened to the former apartheid regime in South Africa by respected former activists who were involved in the South African anti-apartheid movement (including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela).

In 1973, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the international Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which holds that apartheid is a crime against humanity. The word apartheid means separation. Apartheid is defined by the U.N. as “a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over another and systematically oppressing them by, among other things, creating ghettos; land confiscations; illegal arrests and detentions; bans on freedom of movement and speech and prohibiting mixed marriages.

We consider the actions of the State of Israeli meet this definition of apartheid, as do many other organisations around the world today.

We therefore respectfully ask you to stop importing and selling goods from Israel.

We are committed to ongoing mobilised non-violent action to support the boycott.

We have attached some information on the apartheid system in Israel and encourage you to read it and join us in acting in solidarity with the people of Palestine and supporting their legal and human rights.

Justice for Palestine (Brisbane)

Shop targeted for daring to sell Israeli shoes

August 27, 2012December 11, 2020

Israel Shoots Palestinian Children

Tomer Rot, former Israeli soldier: “I understood the reality we are creating … because there’s an entire population, that’s stepped on, pissed on, trampled on … and it’s sad.”

How the Israeli army treats Palestinian children

Israeli soldiers tell how they routinely harass Palestinian families and sometimes shoot children involved in protests. Their testimony was given to campaigning group Breaking the Silence. Video by Ruth Pollard.

…

The Israel Defence Forces’ arbitrary use of violence against Palestinian children, including forcing them to act as human shields in military operations, has been exposed by veteran soldiers in detailed statements chronicling dozens of brutal incidents.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/children-on-front-line-in-the-west-bank-20120826-24uhw.html

Breaking the Silence is limited in its discourse. As illustrated in the video below, Breaking the Silence’s activity is based on the ABSOLUTE REFUSAL TO BREAK THE SILENCE as well as PROTECT those who perpetrated crimes, sometimes as serious as war-crimes.

we are here to call on people to take responsibility

you and the people around you in the city

on the actions that the army is doing today, now, tonight

tonight, forces will enter Hebron into houses

and will perform activities

to quote the language of the military order:

“disrupting of daily life in the neighborhood”

in order to create that feeling of the oppressed, that Nadav referred to earlier

if we seek to resolve this within the army

by making people feel uneasy so they won’t come, or will be punished at the lower ranks

it’s really not…

human history shows that things do not change in this manner

and that this is not what’s going to end the military control

even if Daniel would have gone all the way and said no

the military control over Hebron would not have ended

and i think that the question we ought to ask ourselves is

for each one of us, what is their own responsibility?

so I return the question back to you

following on the previous couple of questions

I’d like to ask the organization and specifically those

who took testimonies from the massacre that took place in Gaza

and I’d also like to ask whether you are taking responsibility?

those people who are active in the organization

from reading of the testimonies

or more precisely, those stories

removed of facts, removed of names

dates, places, chain of command,

names of Palestinians

from reading these stories

it seems as though crimes clearly took place

and a considerable number of which may be regarded as war crimes

I would like to know why do you choose

to conceal the facts

to cover up the crimes

and even to tamper with evidence

and why don’t you go to the authorities?

sorry, I will only add that if you say that

if you will not participate in protecting these criminals

you will not receive any more testimonies

then this is not a valid argument

since you yourselves are participating in such a crime

ok, just in order to explain the position of Breaking the Silence

and also so that it won’t be a back and forth discussion

about Gaza and in general, also Hebron

first of all a crime of war

and the whole discussion is a legal discourse

thanks. this is a legal discourse

meaning a crime of war is not something a civilian can decide on

but something that the authorities decide on

Breaking the Silence chose to take a stand

that we know is a controversial one and aware of its problems

that we act as a journalistic organization

also on the technical level

we have a journalistic status

it means, for example, that soldiers are not allowed to talk to us

since they’re not allowed to talk to journalists

so they make another offence when approaching us

and when they expose themselves they also make this offence

sorry..

along with that we decided that our political activity

and we certainly see Breaking the Silence as having a political activity

our political activity of diseminating information is a journalistic activity

and as much as it is possible to ask every journalist

whether they are not complicit in crime

when they receive a testimony from a senior political source

or from a senior military source

every journalist speaking to someone who remains anonoymous

is actually complicit in crime

we took a decision that this is the best way to get the information outside

but there is also a second part to this answer

since we have to explain why we took this decision

we, and again, coming from our political perspective

that we understand others may disagree with

we don’t know which authority concerns us

when such a thing is mentioned

for example, there are people sitting on stage here

testifying for themsleves

if the military investigation uniit would have liked to sit here they would have

if the state wanted to be sitting here it would have

it doesn’t want to sit here

since they understand that actually judging us is judging themselves and the system

so this is for the Israeli authorities

as for the international authorities

first of all we don’t see it as something that’s necessarily positive

neither positive nor negative

it’s simply stepping out of the country

but also there, there is no technical place that one could go to

it’s not that the court in Hague sits there

and says: “if we only had these Breaking the Silence testimonies, we would have been able to wrap up the whole case”

so technically there’s nothing really to be done with that

it sounds like a very practical claim

until you start disintegrating it and technically

there isn’t much to be done in the legal arena

furthermore, we know that in the legal arena

there have been many attempts and from our political perspective they have failed

and this is why

we are aware of these issues

i’d also like to say about things that have been said

which is universally true, that rookie soldiers have

less of a criminal responsibility than commanders

we carry a criminal liability

these specific persons expose it

and for exposing it they know it and understand it

we understand it daily

all the Breaking the Silence people who speak in public

we understand that we have criminal liability

and some of us, I can say for myself, will be happy if they come and try me

I think it’s important to be said

so in a nutshell, when you build the authority that will try me

I will also come with Michael

seriously, I say it in jest but according to international law

according to my moral values

I committed crimes and would be happy that the political situation will allow me to pay the price

it is irrelevant today

August 24, 2012December 11, 2020

Samah Sabawi – Keynote Address at the Byron Bay BDS Conference

Although 70& of Australians supported Abbas’ unilateral bid for Palestinian statehood in 2011, including Jewish organisations, the Australian government voted no. This is despite Australia voting positively for partition in UN General Assembly Resolution 181 in 1947.

Samah Sabawi describes the history of zionist political injustice toward and theft from Palestinian people from 1947 to the present day, accentuating the duplicity of Israel’s settlement expansion. Israel wants all the resources and most Palestinian land, and deliberately avoids a just peace. 570 checkpoints hinder Palestinian life and growth.

Recognition of Israel without Israel declaring its borders is illogical and unacceptable. Israel has so far annexed more than 50% of the West Bank, rendering a Palestinian state unviable. Delaying tactics to just settlement with Palestinians have been used by Israel since its inception.

As Samah says, “Retaining the status quo works really well for them”.

The Australian government accepts Israel’s falsehoods even as the remainder of Palestinian land is stolen by Israel year after year.

To counteract Israel’s crimes, Samah and a growing number of people from Palestinian civil society advocate global BDS in order to put “a moral and economic cost on Israel’s human rights violations” as “there is no sense in pinning hopes on a state that may never be”.

Australia Links

The UNHCR rightly distances itself from Australia’s xenophobic offshore processing scheme
New law to control cyber data: Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said the laws went further than the European convention, and that the government had failed to explain why the far-reaching powers were necessary

August 20, 2012December 11, 2020

Julian Assange Speaks from the Ecuadorean Embassy

Memorable:

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.”

“The United States must renounce its witchhunt against Wikileaks.”

“The United States must pledge that it will not persecute journalists for shining a light on the rich and powerful.”

“The US war on whistleblowers must end.”

“Bradley Manning must be released. If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and an example to all of us and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.”

‘The report said staff at two forensic laboratories were unable to find conclusive evidence of Mr Assange’s DNA on a torn condom provided by one of two women who claim to have been assaulted in August 2010.

However, the same analysts have found DNA believed to belong to Mr Assange on a condom from a second woman, The Mail on Sunday reports.’