Support the international boycott movement against Israel! - Part 2
September 4, 2009 - 11:33pm
Continued from this prematurely-closed thread.
(77 posts is considered a "long thread"??)
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Syndicate
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation [excerpts]
by Anat Matar
[Dr. Neve] Gordon looks at the Israeli society and sees an apartheid state. While the Palestinians' living conditions deteriorate, many Israelis are benefiting from the occupation....
The academic community has an important role to play in this process. Yet, instead of sounding the alarm, it wakes up only when someone dares approach the international community and desperately call for help....
When the flag of academic freedom is raised, the oppressor and not the oppressed is usually the one who flies it. What is that academic freedom that so interests the academic community in Israel? When, for example, has it shown concern for the state of academic freedom in the occupied territories?
This school year in Gaza will open in shattered classrooms as there are no building materials there for rehabilitating the ruins; without notebooks, books and writing utensils that cannot be brought into Gaza because of the goods embargo (yes, Israel may boycott schools there and no cry is heard).
Hundreds of students in West Bank universities are under arrest or detention in Israeli jails, usually because they belong to student organizations that the ruling power does not like.
The separation fence and the barriers prevent students and lecturers from reaching classes, libraries and tests. Attending conferences abroad is almost unthinkable and the entry of experts who bear foreign passports is permitted only sparingly.
On the other hand, members of the Israeli academia staunchly guard their right to research what the regime expects them to research and appoint former army officers to university positions. Tel Aviv University alone prides itself over the fact that the Defense Ministry is funding 55 of its research projects and that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Defense Department, is funding nine more. All the universities offer special study programs for the defense establishment....
Let's hear from some of the academic freedomites about that.
Good find, Jingles.
I saw this Zio-hummus in stores and refused to buy it already (besides, I make my own hommous), but the Angry Arab cites this boycott on his site so I thought I'd pass it on:
Zio-hummus alert: boycott
The company Sabra Dipping Company, LLC is selling a huge quantity of hummus, babaganoush, "Moroccan matbucha" and other middle eastern/Arabic recipes throughout the U.S.A. [and Canada] through Costco, Ralphs, Vons and many large grocery chains.
Never mind a boycott, Israel ought to be blockaded.
Why won't Israel allow Gazans to import coriander?The Defense Ministry is refusing - on security grounds, it says - to reveal why Israel prohibits the import into the Gaza Strip of items such as cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, french fries, dried fruit, fabrics, notebooks empty flowerpots and toys, while allowing cinnamon, plastic buckets and combs.
Announcement:
Heather Reisman is scheduled to be receiving an honorary degree from Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., at the Convocation ceremony on May 17. This decision is being criticized by some faculty and staff and students on the following grounds:
1. The Heseg Foundation, which Ms Reisman and her husband Gerard Schwartz founded (look it up www.heseg.com), purports to grant scholarships to support the education in Israel of "lone soldiers" --foreign volunteers who have served in the IDF-- after their year in the IDF is up. The website makes it quite clear that the goal is to encourage these "internationalists" to remain in Israel; in fact, the web site also runs a job placement bulletin board, with such postings as engineer, computer systems personnel, etc. - which could fit nicely into the military-industrial complex that drives Israel's economy. Moreover, at least one Board member is a senior IDF officer who has been accused of war crimes.
At a crucial moment in the struggle to organize BDS across Canada, when Israel and its supporters internationally are waging a campaign to discredit the BDS activists and to prevent divestment movements from gaining a foothold in universities and other institutions, Mount Allison has every right to remain neutral, but not to give the anti-BDS movement a shot in the arm and implicitly take sides against social justice movements. This honorary degree can only be taken by supporters of Israel to signify that Mount Allison does not care about Israel's violations of human rights and of the Geneva convention.
2. While Chapters/Indigo is a great promoter of Canadians writers and Canadian culture and encourages reading through its strategic location in shopping malls where urban sprawl rules, it enjoys an unfair advantage in marketing and purchasing over the independent bookstores of our communities. A university located in a small town with two independent bookstores that need every bit of support they can get must show more respect to the owners and staff of these bookstores.
Some faculty, staff and students are protesting this decision by the university administrtion. Colleagues from across Canada are invited to write a COURTEOUS letter to the following officials of the university:
1. Dr.Robert Campbell, President, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB 2. Dr. Stephen McClatchi, Vice-President Academic... 3. Mr. Peter Mansbridge, Chancellor, Mount Allison University. (or c/o The National)Via the Angry Arab, here's a list of companies to boycott.
This moves follows intense Palestinian and international pressure on the parent company, Unilever International, to move its operations out of the settlement industrial zone or to divest from the factory, which collects profits due to the advantages given to Israeli businesses in the West Bank, including extensive subsidies by the Israeli government.
BDS Success: Unilever to Move Factory out of West Bank
Do the palestinians workers get a say? Just wondering...
Do the palestinians workers get a say? Just wondering...
Hmmm, that's what pro-South African apartheid propagandists used to say in opposition to those boycotts. Just sayin...
You're prepared to personally cut a palestinian a cheque for lost wages? Put up or shut up, I say.
E.Tamaran, you are deliberately baiting. Stay out of this thread. Keep it up and you will get a vacation from babble.
The most cursory research into the BDS campaign will tell anyone that it is supported by Palestinian civil society.
from Rabble front page:
Canada's Boat to Gaza Must Go
http://www.rabble.ca/news/2010/10/canadas-boat-gaza-must-go
"Gideon Levy, the noted Israeli journalist for the newspaper Haaretz, accclaimed worldwide and vilified at home, put things in perspective when he toured Canada 3 weeks ago, noting there are five million Jews in Israel who support Israel's occupation of Palestine and 6.7 billion people in the world who oppose it, an unimaginable mammoth ratio. Levy drove home the point that our government is aligning itself with and supporting the largest pariah country in history.."
Do the palestinians workers get a say? Just wondering...
Well, considering the BDS call and many individual BDS actions are endorsed by many Palestinian unions, I would say "yes"
You're prepared to personally cut a palestinian a cheque for lost wages? Put up or shut up, I say.
You're prepared to personally cut a Palestinian a cheque for the damages caused by continuing apartheid? Put up or shut up, I say.
Also,
As to those who oppose BDS because "it hurts the Palestinians," I repeat what I've often stated: "Do not patronize us! Feel free to oppose us, to openly defend our oppressors' right to maintain apartheid, or to say you don't really care; but please do not patronize us! We do not need white liberals (as most often is the case with patronizers) to preach to us, brown natives, about what is in our best interest--it smacks of colonial arrogance, not to mention indisputable falsehood!" We realize the cost we must pay for ANY resistance, as our South African comrades did, but a huge majority in Palestinian civil society has endorsed BDS, understanding well the price we must pay to attain freedom and justice and more than ready to pay it.
Hey genstrike.
I get that you disagree with E.Tamaran, I do as well, and gave a non-negotiable directive to him. However, since I've asked him to not post in this thread anymore, he won't be able to respond to your refuting of his points. So let's just leave his "arguments" aside now.
The Omar Barghouti quote is amazing. Where is it from?
As much as I disagree with the way E. Tamaran phrased his #11 I think he has the right to ask these questions. Is support for the BDS campaign now an article of faith on Babble? If it is I look forward to reading the rest of the creed. I marvel at how some elements of so-called progessivism receive immediate defense whil others most noticeably workers rights often don't. TGIF.
As much as I disagree with the way E. Tamaran phrased his #11 I think he has the right to ask these questions. Is support for the BDS campaign now an article of faith on Babble? If it is I look forward to reading the rest of the creed.
E.Tamran's post #11 was disrespectful, trolling and baiting. Sadly, nobody has the "right" to ask anything, and in any manner they choose to, on babble.
When you see anything that is against babble's policy, including slamming workers' rights, anti-union bullshit or anything else that minimizes the contributions of workers, both organized and non-organized, flag it as offensive, or challenge it, or both.
Can we return to the topic please?
Back to topic: My point is support of the BDS is taken as an article of faith on Babble and discussion of it is not permitted. E. Tamaran was attempting to discuss it. He should be allowed to do so.
The Palestinian people are experiencing their 42nd year of military occupation. The siege by the Israeli army and the economic blockade have devastated their daily lives so that 'normal' life is impossible.
Israel operates an entrenched system of racial Apartheid against its own non-Jewish inhabitants and has been illegally occupying Palestinian land in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights since 1967. It has sought to further annex these lands and has systematically transferred its own civilian population into these occupied territories in contravention of international law. Israel continues to build the illegal Apartheid wall, annexing vast swathes of Palestinian land in the West Bank and creating Palestinian ghettos, despite the ruling of the International Court of Justice that it is illegal.
The above from an excellent website based in the UK on BDS
.................
Words from Rabbi David J. Cooper
Meanwhile, others who have never before felt that they should question the actions of the Israeli government, have come to feel that a solution to the impasse can no longer be left to the Israelis or Palestinians and that some sort of outside pressure and/or forceful guidance is going to be necessary to bring about a peaceful solution for Israel and Palestine.
Rabbi Cooper's blog entry here
The Omar Barghouti quote is amazing. Where is it from?
Someone emailed it to me recently, I just googled it to confirm that he said it (http://www.labournet.net/world/1009/bds1.html)
London Protesters Disrupt Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra's Concert
Zionist lawyers demand prosecution of Royal Albert Hall protesters (see previous post)