Resisting criminal Israel’s use of violent Jewish settlers to steal Hebron from Palestinians.
Palestine / Israel Links
Sam Bahour: “If Israel is bent on discriminating against one fifth of its own citizens, what should we expect of it in the occupied territories, areas that are not internationally recognized as Israel? Indeed, the next time I’m asked what I think the solution to this conflict is, my answer will be ready: Let’s start with full equal rights for Palestinians inside Israel. In other words, The Galilee First if Israel is serious about peace and truly desires historic reconciliation with the Palestinians.”
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.
‘The majority of the Jewish public, 59 percent, wants preference for Jews over Arabs in admission to jobs in government ministries. Almost half the Jews, 49 percent, want the state to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones; 42 percent don’t want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don’t want their children in the same class with Arab children.
A third of the Jewish public wants a law barring Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset and a large majority of 69 percent objects to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank.
A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.”
Almost half – 47 percent – want part of Israel’s Arab population to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority and 36 percent support transferring some of the Arab towns from Israel to the PA, in exchange’
From past figures, it seems that Netanyahu’s fanatical rightwing pandering has contributed to the growth in vicious racism.
Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.
The survey, which was conducted for the Center Against Racism, also found that over 75 percent of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home.
Apartheid without shame or guilt : We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel.
The article itself, which I wrote, did not contain any mistakes. It provided a precise and detailed description of the survey results. In my analysis of the survey, which appeared as a separate article, there was a single sentence that did not accurately represent the poll results and contradicted what I had written in the news piece a short time beforehand. My sin was to write: “The majority doesn’t want Arabs to vote for the Knesset, Arab neighbors at home or Arab students at school.”
The truth, as I wrote in the news piece, is different: “Just” 33 percent of the respondents said they don’t want Arabs to vote in parliamentary elections, “just” 42 percent wouldn’t want an Arab neighbor, and about the same proportion said it would bother them if there were an Arab student in their child’s class. Not a majority – just a (large ) portion of Israelis espouse these frightening views. Cold comfort.
…
The most important thing was, and remains, that a significant portion of Israel’s Jewish society advocates positions that can only be described as nationalistic and racist. Nearly half of the respondents don’t want an Arab neighbor or an Arab student in their child’s class; a third don’t want Arabs to vote; nearly half want to discriminate against Arabs living in the country. Isn’t that enough to scare anyone who fears for the future of this country?
Israeli human rights organisation, Gisha, was recently able to access Israel’s 2008 ‘Red Lines’ document annotating its plans to maintain the captive population of Gaza on a starvation diet. Yet Israel did not keep to this plan. Despite this diabolical ‘starvation’ diet calculated malevolently as collective punishment, Israel only let in half the trucks required for it. What is half of starvation?
‘But a rather different picture emerges as one reads the small print. While the health ministry determined that Gazans needed daily an average of 2,279 calories each to avoid malnutrition – requiring 170 trucks a day – military officials then found a host of pretexts to whittle down the trucks to a fraction of the original figure.
The reality was that, in this period, an average of only 67 trucks – much less than half of the minimum requirement – entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.
To achieve this large reduction, officials deducted trucks based both on an over-generous assessment of how much food could be grown locally and on differences in the ”culture and experience” of food consumption in Gaza, a rationale never explained.’
‘We could argue over who killed it, but what’s the point? It’s increasingly obvious that a continued insistence on zombie peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians is deluded, because the two-state principle framing them is dead. ‘
The Cameri Theatre group serves as an “official propaganda tool for the State of Israel — a State that occupies Palestinian lands and practises apartheid policies on the Palestinian people.’’’
The nefarious actions of the Israeli government against BGU make a mockery of any claims that academic boycott against Israel’s complicit academic institutions are unwarranted.
