13 August 2011
We the undersigned call on the Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien to withdraw allegations he made singling out several pro-Palestine advocacy groups calling for them to be investigated by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for an alleged suspicion that they may be involved in ‘secondary boycotts’ against Israeli-owned businesses in Australia.
These allegations form an ongoing campaign of intensified attacks on Palestine solidarity organising and freedom of expression in Australia. We understand the current round of attacks to be a direct reaction to a growing international solidarity movement in support of Palestinian human rights, so we take the opportunity to reiterate our support for the Palestinian civil society’s call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) from Israel.
The BDS campaign is based on well-founded criticism of the Israeli state for its ongoing violations of international law, violations that include: Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories; its settlement-building and construction of an apartheid wall on occupied land; its refusal to respect the right of Palestinian refugees to return; and its ongoing military siege on the Gaza strip.
As in the past when the Australian people participated in the boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa, we affirm our right to participate in the BDS campaign against apartheid Israel in our churches, unions, professional bodies, local councils, parliaments and community groups. This campaign has provided a vital and viable framework and non-violent approach to building an anti-apartheid movement grounded in principles of international solidarity. People of conscience in Australia, have a proud history of principled international solidarity through BDS campaigns – any legalistic attempts, employing anti-union laws such as the ‘secondary boycotts’ law, will fail to deter social justice groups from vocally advocating the BDS campaign and supporting Palestinian human rights.
It is very disappointing that elected politicians choose to launch investigations into human-rights and solidarity organisations, rather than explain to the public why Israel is not held to account for its violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice against Israel’s Wall and colonial settlements. The active attempts to repress Australian organisations that work to promote Israel’s accountability before international law is beyond reproach.
We stress that the BDS movement is an anti-racist movement that rejects all forms of racism including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The consumer-boycott campaigns are aimed at institutions and businesses that provide support for ongoing Israeli violations of international law, they do not target any particular religious or ethnic group.
We note that most of the organisations named by the Minister for the investigation did not take part in the protest he refers to against Max Brenner stores in Melbourne. This is a clear indication that he has not looked closely into the matter, but is purely targeting all pro-Palestine advocacy groups on the basis of their support for BDS. Although, we may not have all participated in this specific protest, we strongly believe in the basic right to peacefully protest and raise awareness about businesses that have questionable policies and show blatant disregard for basic human rights.
We urge elected officials to remember that their job is to protect rights and freedoms and to represent democratic values, not to waste our hard earned tax dollars on trying to appease a foreign state and those who blindly cheer for it.
Justice for Palestine (JFP-Qld)
Australians for Palestine (AFP)
Women for Palestine (WFP)
Australian Friends of Palestine (AFOPA-SA)
Action for Palestine (SA)
Friends of Palestine (FOP-WA)
Students for Justice for Palestine (UTS)
Students for Palestine (Vic)
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC-Melbourne)
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA)
Australian Palestinian Professionals Association (APPA)
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN)
Artists Against Apartheid (AAA)
Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP-Sydney)
Showing posts with label boycott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boycott. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Australia’s repression of BDS movement coordinated with Israel
by Kim Bullimore
The Electronic Intifada: 9 August 2011
Australian solidarity activists are facing intense police repression.
(Erik Anderson/Flickr)
In the largest show of support for the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign so far in Australia, more than 350 persons marched on 29 July in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle — and in opposition to an attempt by Victorian Police to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism in Melbourne.
A month earlier, on 1 July, a similar, peaceful BDS action involving 120 persons was brutally attacked by the Victorian Police. Nineteen individuals were arrested.
Charged with “trespassing” and “besetting,” those arrested are now facing fines of up to AUD $30,000 (approximately US $32,300). The 1 July action, organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, had sought to highlight the complicity of two Israeli companies, Jericho and Max Brenner Chocolate, with Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies. The action was the fourth protest against both companies since December 2010.
Jericho, located in Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and other shopping centers around the city, produces cosmetics made from minerals exploited from the Dead Sea. While Jericho and other Israeli companies — such as Ahava, also a target of BDS campaigns — profit from the Dead Sea, Palestinians are regularly denied access by Israel’s military checkpoints, exclusion zones and Israeli-only roads.
Max Brenner Chocolate, the other Israeli company subject to BDS protests in Melbourne, is owned by the Strauss Group — one of Israel’s largest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasizes its support for the Israeli military, providing care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soldiers.
Strauss boasts support for the Golani and Givati Brigades, which were heavily involved in Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip in the Winter of 2008-09, which resulted in the killing of approximately 1,400 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including approximately 350 children. While Strauss has removed information about their support for the Golani and Givati brigades from their English language website, information about the company’s support for both brigades remains on their Hebrew language site.
BDS repression coordinated with Israeli government
Trade union and community representatives spoke at the rally on 29 July before the crowd marched through the city. In spite of repeated threats of mass arrests by Victoria Police — and the deployment of police horses in one of the shopping centers — the protest marched into both the Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria centers, staging peaceful sit-ins in front of the Max Brenner stores located within.
Two day earlier, on 27 July, the Victorian police confirmed during a bail variation hearing at the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria (local District Court) for some of the activists arrested on 1 July that a decision had been made to arrest the protesters before the demonstration. This decision was made after discussions with Zionist organizations, the Victorian government, shopping center managements and state and national management of Max Brenner.
In April, the Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported that the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) had made representations to the Victorian police. According to the AJN, JCCV president John Searle had “called on the police to stamp down harder on aggressive protesters” (“Police questioned as protests turn violent,” 15 April 2011). Similar calls for a government and police crackdown on BDS protests against Max Brenner in Sydney were made in June by former AJN journalist Walt Secord, who is now a member of the NSW State Parliament (“Police called to action on BDS,” 24 June 2011).
On July 29, the same day as the BDS action against Max Brenner in Melbourne the Australian Jewish News carried a “debate” piece between Vic Alhadeff, the CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and Ted Lapkin, a former staffer with the key pro-Israeli lobby group in Australia, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The piece reveals that the various calls for police and government crackdown on BDS activism was part of a “nationally coordinated strategy” developed with and backed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (“BDS: To protest or not to protest?”).
Arguing against any Zionist-organized BDS “counter” protest, Alhadeff writes: “It is important for the community to be aware that our response to BDS forms part of [a] coordinated national strategy. Furthermore, this strategy is endorsed by counterparts abroad and Israel’s Foreign Ministry.”
Alhadeff outlined this coordinated national strategy in response to BDS, stating that it “included, but is not limited to, engagement with civil society and politicians, patronage of boycotted outlets, cooperation with police, shop owners and center managers and exposure of the motives behind the BDS movement.” According to Alhadeff, Zionist policy in response to BDS should be one which seeks to “speak softly” but to also carry “a suggestion of a big stick.”
Activism leadership targeted
During cross-examination by Robert Stary, the lawyer representing the activists, Michael Beattie, an operational support inspector with the the Victorian Police, conceded that both Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria shopping centers were “public places” and that neither center prior to 1 July had sought any civil injunctions to prevent entry to the public places inside.
The cross-examination by Stary also revealed that the main reason that police had decided to criminalize the actions against the Israeli companies was because they had been well-organized, coordinated and effective.
Victorian Police acknowledged that the demonstrations had been peaceful, that solidarity activists hadn’t damaged property and there was no record of police or any member of the public being injured.
According to the testimony given by Inspector Beattie, the police had specifically sought to target the leadership of the protests, in particular those activists the police perceived as “operating a command and control function,” in order to diminish the possibility of well-coordinated demonstrations — and to ensure “no protesters go to property and disrupt targeted business or additional businesses.”
According to Inspector Beattie, “the protesters had their own way” for too long and a “decision [was] made to draw a line in the sand and make arrests.” Another police officer, Senior Sargent Andrew Falconer, also gave testimony at the court hearing and acknowledged that police infiltrators had been sent to pro-Palestine solidarity meetings in order to monitor the activity of BDS activists.
In a statement issued after their arrests, the nineteen activists noted that “the attack on the peaceful BDS action in Melbourne highlights increasing attempts to criminalize BDS and Palestine solidarity activism internationally. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights” (“Support the Boycott Israel 19 Defence Campaign”).
James Crafti, one of the activists arrested, told The Electronic Intifada that “the attempt by Israel and governments around the world to criminalize pro-Palestinian and BDS activism ignores the fact that the real criminal activity is being carried out by the Israeli state.”
“Since its founding in 1948, Israel has sought to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian people through war, occupation and apartheid practices. Israel regularly engages in collective punishment, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes and civil infrastructure, all of which are illegal under international law,” he added.
Crafti noted that while the Victorian and Australian governments sought to criminalize support for Palestine self-determination, they refused to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses, war crimes and apartheid policies.
All of the arrested activists who spoke to The Electronic Intifada said the police attack on the protest also highlighted the increasing repression of civil liberties and freedom of speech by the Victorian (conservative) Baillieu government.
One Palestine solidarity activist, Sue Bolton, who has been charged with “besetting” (obstructing or hindering the right to enter, use or leave a premise), asserted that the police reaction to the action on 1 July was “over the top.”
“There were massive numbers of police, well over a hundred, not counting those behind the scenes in the loading docks,” she said.
According to Bolton, the Queen Victoria Centre loading docks had been cleared of delivery trucks, allowing the police to set up a processing unit and bring in prison transport trucks to be used as holding cells for those arrested.
Bolton described how police had sought to “kettle” the demonstration by corralling protesters and physically pushing them into a smaller and smaller area. According to Bolton, this resulted in a number of protesters being injured and crushed when the police had surrounded and violently pushed protesters from all sides.
Similar tactics have been used by police forces in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and Denmark. The use of kettling by police in the UK against student protesters in November 2010 has led to legal challenges and the calling for a ban on the use of the tactic in the British High Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
Damian Ridgwell, another Palestine solidarity protester arrested on 1 July, told The Electronic Intifada that he had been standing away from the peaceful picket, speaking on a megaphone when three policemen grabbed him.
“I was dragged behind police lines,” Ridgwell said. “Once they grabbed me and started dragging me, I went limp and dropped to the ground … As I was being carried through the corridors of the loading dock, I lost consciousness because one of the police had me in a choke hold. I am not sure how long I was out, probably a few minutes. I woke up on the loading dock floor and heard the police saying I was ‘out.’”
Ridgwell, who was charged with trespassing, said “while it is outrageous we were arrested for peacefully demonstrating, our arrests have to be seen in the context of the Australia government’s support for Israel and its continued theft of Palestinian land … it’s important we don’t let the police intimidate protests like this. It is important to keep going with the protests and to keep supporting BDS.”
Australian government’s support of Israeli apartheid
Successive Australian governments, including the current Gillard government, have long supported Israel’s colonial and apartheid policies.
Current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard signaled her uncritical support for Israel when she was still deputy Prime Minster of Australia. During the early days of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, she blamed Palestinians for Israel’s all-out assault, saying that Hamas must “renounce violence” and that Israel had the “right to defend itself.”
During a visit to Israel In 2009, Gillard was thanked by Israeli government minister Isaac Herzog for standing “almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel’s right to defend itself” (“Israel to Gillard: thanks for standing by us,” The Age, 24 June 2009).
The arrested activists noted that in June, the Baillieu government had established a new 42-member riot squad — and the attack on the 1 July protest was the first time it had been used in any significant way.
According to James Crafti, “the Victorian government thinks it can easily get away with attacking a pro-Palestine action because they think they can label us anti-Semitic.” Crafti, who is Jewish, said that the police and those opposed to the BDS actions, however, “underestimate the sympathy towards both Palestine and the [Palestine solidarity] movement in the broader community.”
“The amount of force used by the police and the response of the political elite to our protests, particularly the fact that the Australian Foreign Minister [and former Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd felt the need to go a few days after our protest to Max Brenner as a public relations stunt is a sign of the pro-Israeli forces’ desperation,” he added.
The eleven activists succeeded in changing the original bail conditions preventing them from entering either shopping center (which also host medical clinics and a major train station) until the end of their case, to a lesser restriction of being prohibited from being within fifty meters of Max Brenner in both centers. However, Stary said he was still “anxious about the criminalization of dissent.”
“The police should not be used to protect the interests of an international commercial company,” he said.
Building on the success of 29 July, Melbourne activists will continue to campaign in support of Palestinian rights and oppose the criminalization of Palestine solidarity activism. The next Melbourne BDS action is scheduled for 9 September, the same week those arrested will plead not guilty to the charges against them. The defense campaign in support of the arrested activists has gained wide attention, with well-known public figures such as filmmaker John Pilger, author Norman Finkelstein and radical thinker Noam Chomsky supporting the campaign.
In a media release issued immediately following the success of the 29 July BDS action, Melbourne activists said the Victorian Police “thought that by attacking the BDS demonstration they would put an end to our movement. They were wrong … [we will] not be silenced” (“BDS returns to Max Brenner in spite of police intimidation,” 5 August 2011).
Kim Bullimore has lived and worked in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She is a member of the Melbourne Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and a co-organizer of the first national Australian BDS conference, which took place in Melbourne in October 2010. Kim writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action. She has a blog at livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.
The Electronic Intifada: 9 August 2011
Australian solidarity activists are facing intense police repression.
(Erik Anderson/Flickr)
In the largest show of support for the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign so far in Australia, more than 350 persons marched on 29 July in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle — and in opposition to an attempt by Victorian Police to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism in Melbourne.
A month earlier, on 1 July, a similar, peaceful BDS action involving 120 persons was brutally attacked by the Victorian Police. Nineteen individuals were arrested.
Charged with “trespassing” and “besetting,” those arrested are now facing fines of up to AUD $30,000 (approximately US $32,300). The 1 July action, organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, had sought to highlight the complicity of two Israeli companies, Jericho and Max Brenner Chocolate, with Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies. The action was the fourth protest against both companies since December 2010.
Jericho, located in Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and other shopping centers around the city, produces cosmetics made from minerals exploited from the Dead Sea. While Jericho and other Israeli companies — such as Ahava, also a target of BDS campaigns — profit from the Dead Sea, Palestinians are regularly denied access by Israel’s military checkpoints, exclusion zones and Israeli-only roads.
Max Brenner Chocolate, the other Israeli company subject to BDS protests in Melbourne, is owned by the Strauss Group — one of Israel’s largest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasizes its support for the Israeli military, providing care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soldiers.
Strauss boasts support for the Golani and Givati Brigades, which were heavily involved in Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip in the Winter of 2008-09, which resulted in the killing of approximately 1,400 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including approximately 350 children. While Strauss has removed information about their support for the Golani and Givati brigades from their English language website, information about the company’s support for both brigades remains on their Hebrew language site.
BDS repression coordinated with Israeli government
Trade union and community representatives spoke at the rally on 29 July before the crowd marched through the city. In spite of repeated threats of mass arrests by Victoria Police — and the deployment of police horses in one of the shopping centers — the protest marched into both the Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria centers, staging peaceful sit-ins in front of the Max Brenner stores located within.
Two day earlier, on 27 July, the Victorian police confirmed during a bail variation hearing at the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria (local District Court) for some of the activists arrested on 1 July that a decision had been made to arrest the protesters before the demonstration. This decision was made after discussions with Zionist organizations, the Victorian government, shopping center managements and state and national management of Max Brenner.
In April, the Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported that the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) had made representations to the Victorian police. According to the AJN, JCCV president John Searle had “called on the police to stamp down harder on aggressive protesters” (“Police questioned as protests turn violent,” 15 April 2011). Similar calls for a government and police crackdown on BDS protests against Max Brenner in Sydney were made in June by former AJN journalist Walt Secord, who is now a member of the NSW State Parliament (“Police called to action on BDS,” 24 June 2011).
On July 29, the same day as the BDS action against Max Brenner in Melbourne the Australian Jewish News carried a “debate” piece between Vic Alhadeff, the CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and Ted Lapkin, a former staffer with the key pro-Israeli lobby group in Australia, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The piece reveals that the various calls for police and government crackdown on BDS activism was part of a “nationally coordinated strategy” developed with and backed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (“BDS: To protest or not to protest?”).
Arguing against any Zionist-organized BDS “counter” protest, Alhadeff writes: “It is important for the community to be aware that our response to BDS forms part of [a] coordinated national strategy. Furthermore, this strategy is endorsed by counterparts abroad and Israel’s Foreign Ministry.”
Alhadeff outlined this coordinated national strategy in response to BDS, stating that it “included, but is not limited to, engagement with civil society and politicians, patronage of boycotted outlets, cooperation with police, shop owners and center managers and exposure of the motives behind the BDS movement.” According to Alhadeff, Zionist policy in response to BDS should be one which seeks to “speak softly” but to also carry “a suggestion of a big stick.”
Activism leadership targeted
During cross-examination by Robert Stary, the lawyer representing the activists, Michael Beattie, an operational support inspector with the the Victorian Police, conceded that both Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria shopping centers were “public places” and that neither center prior to 1 July had sought any civil injunctions to prevent entry to the public places inside.
The cross-examination by Stary also revealed that the main reason that police had decided to criminalize the actions against the Israeli companies was because they had been well-organized, coordinated and effective.
Victorian Police acknowledged that the demonstrations had been peaceful, that solidarity activists hadn’t damaged property and there was no record of police or any member of the public being injured.
According to the testimony given by Inspector Beattie, the police had specifically sought to target the leadership of the protests, in particular those activists the police perceived as “operating a command and control function,” in order to diminish the possibility of well-coordinated demonstrations — and to ensure “no protesters go to property and disrupt targeted business or additional businesses.”
According to Inspector Beattie, “the protesters had their own way” for too long and a “decision [was] made to draw a line in the sand and make arrests.” Another police officer, Senior Sargent Andrew Falconer, also gave testimony at the court hearing and acknowledged that police infiltrators had been sent to pro-Palestine solidarity meetings in order to monitor the activity of BDS activists.
In a statement issued after their arrests, the nineteen activists noted that “the attack on the peaceful BDS action in Melbourne highlights increasing attempts to criminalize BDS and Palestine solidarity activism internationally. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights” (“Support the Boycott Israel 19 Defence Campaign”).
James Crafti, one of the activists arrested, told The Electronic Intifada that “the attempt by Israel and governments around the world to criminalize pro-Palestinian and BDS activism ignores the fact that the real criminal activity is being carried out by the Israeli state.”
“Since its founding in 1948, Israel has sought to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian people through war, occupation and apartheid practices. Israel regularly engages in collective punishment, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes and civil infrastructure, all of which are illegal under international law,” he added.
Crafti noted that while the Victorian and Australian governments sought to criminalize support for Palestine self-determination, they refused to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses, war crimes and apartheid policies.
All of the arrested activists who spoke to The Electronic Intifada said the police attack on the protest also highlighted the increasing repression of civil liberties and freedom of speech by the Victorian (conservative) Baillieu government.
One Palestine solidarity activist, Sue Bolton, who has been charged with “besetting” (obstructing or hindering the right to enter, use or leave a premise), asserted that the police reaction to the action on 1 July was “over the top.”
“There were massive numbers of police, well over a hundred, not counting those behind the scenes in the loading docks,” she said.
According to Bolton, the Queen Victoria Centre loading docks had been cleared of delivery trucks, allowing the police to set up a processing unit and bring in prison transport trucks to be used as holding cells for those arrested.
Bolton described how police had sought to “kettle” the demonstration by corralling protesters and physically pushing them into a smaller and smaller area. According to Bolton, this resulted in a number of protesters being injured and crushed when the police had surrounded and violently pushed protesters from all sides.
Similar tactics have been used by police forces in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and Denmark. The use of kettling by police in the UK against student protesters in November 2010 has led to legal challenges and the calling for a ban on the use of the tactic in the British High Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
Damian Ridgwell, another Palestine solidarity protester arrested on 1 July, told The Electronic Intifada that he had been standing away from the peaceful picket, speaking on a megaphone when three policemen grabbed him.
“I was dragged behind police lines,” Ridgwell said. “Once they grabbed me and started dragging me, I went limp and dropped to the ground … As I was being carried through the corridors of the loading dock, I lost consciousness because one of the police had me in a choke hold. I am not sure how long I was out, probably a few minutes. I woke up on the loading dock floor and heard the police saying I was ‘out.’”
Ridgwell, who was charged with trespassing, said “while it is outrageous we were arrested for peacefully demonstrating, our arrests have to be seen in the context of the Australia government’s support for Israel and its continued theft of Palestinian land … it’s important we don’t let the police intimidate protests like this. It is important to keep going with the protests and to keep supporting BDS.”
Australian government’s support of Israeli apartheid
Successive Australian governments, including the current Gillard government, have long supported Israel’s colonial and apartheid policies.
Current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard signaled her uncritical support for Israel when she was still deputy Prime Minster of Australia. During the early days of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, she blamed Palestinians for Israel’s all-out assault, saying that Hamas must “renounce violence” and that Israel had the “right to defend itself.”
During a visit to Israel In 2009, Gillard was thanked by Israeli government minister Isaac Herzog for standing “almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel’s right to defend itself” (“Israel to Gillard: thanks for standing by us,” The Age, 24 June 2009).
The arrested activists noted that in June, the Baillieu government had established a new 42-member riot squad — and the attack on the 1 July protest was the first time it had been used in any significant way.
According to James Crafti, “the Victorian government thinks it can easily get away with attacking a pro-Palestine action because they think they can label us anti-Semitic.” Crafti, who is Jewish, said that the police and those opposed to the BDS actions, however, “underestimate the sympathy towards both Palestine and the [Palestine solidarity] movement in the broader community.”
“The amount of force used by the police and the response of the political elite to our protests, particularly the fact that the Australian Foreign Minister [and former Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd felt the need to go a few days after our protest to Max Brenner as a public relations stunt is a sign of the pro-Israeli forces’ desperation,” he added.
The eleven activists succeeded in changing the original bail conditions preventing them from entering either shopping center (which also host medical clinics and a major train station) until the end of their case, to a lesser restriction of being prohibited from being within fifty meters of Max Brenner in both centers. However, Stary said he was still “anxious about the criminalization of dissent.”
“The police should not be used to protect the interests of an international commercial company,” he said.
Building on the success of 29 July, Melbourne activists will continue to campaign in support of Palestinian rights and oppose the criminalization of Palestine solidarity activism. The next Melbourne BDS action is scheduled for 9 September, the same week those arrested will plead not guilty to the charges against them. The defense campaign in support of the arrested activists has gained wide attention, with well-known public figures such as filmmaker John Pilger, author Norman Finkelstein and radical thinker Noam Chomsky supporting the campaign.
In a media release issued immediately following the success of the 29 July BDS action, Melbourne activists said the Victorian Police “thought that by attacking the BDS demonstration they would put an end to our movement. They were wrong … [we will] not be silenced” (“BDS returns to Max Brenner in spite of police intimidation,” 5 August 2011).
Kim Bullimore has lived and worked in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She is a member of the Melbourne Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and a co-organizer of the first national Australian BDS conference, which took place in Melbourne in October 2010. Kim writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action. She has a blog at livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Four Austalian pro-Palestine/BDS activists arrested in dawn raids
Dear friends,
as many of you will be aware things have started to heat up in Australia on the BDS front. Yesterday, Tuesday 9th August, the Victorian Police conducted morning raids arresting four pro-Palestine/BDS activists. The police attempted to execute 5 arrest but only ended up arresting 4 activists. The activists were arrested for breaking their bail conditions.
The activists were four of the nineteen activist who were arrested on July 1 when our peaceful BDS protest outside of the Israeli owned company, Max Brenner, was violently attacked by the Victorian police. At the time of their arrest 11 of those arrested signed bail conditions which would have prohibited them from entering two major shopping centres, including one which has a major train station and medical centres. On July 27 their bail was varied and they were prohibited from going within 50 meters of the two Max Brenner stores in the two centres.
Our next demonstration on July 29 was attended between 350 to 400 people, makig it the biggest pro-BDS activity so far in Australia. The action was completely peaceful (as was the action on July 1. The police were out in force but did not attack or arrest anyone.
Please find below, information on the arrest and the detention of activists yesterday, including a media release and an update on the arrests. All activists were released by 11.30pm Australia time last night, after paying surety.
In solidarity,
Kim
***
July 29 BDS action against Max Brenner and Israel, Melbourne
MEDIA RELEASE Tuesday 9 August
BAILLIEU GOVERNMENT ESCALATES ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES
Dawn raids see pro-Palestine activists arrested
Police demand activists be held in custody for weeks
Raids carried out at dawn this morning by police have seen several pro-Palestine activists arrested, in the most severe crack-down on civil liberties in decades. The activists are being targeted because of their involvement in protests against chocolate shop Max Brenner, a chain store with strong ties to the Israeli military. The protests are part of the worldwide Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which aims to draw attention to the ongoing genocide committed by the Apartheid regime in Israel against Palestinians.
Campaign organiser Omar Hassan:
“This crack-down on the right to protest should be of concern to all Victorians. The lengths to which the Baillieu government is going to eradicate criticism of Israeli Apartheid and criminalise dissent are unprecedented. We need to be clearly saying; demonstrating is not a crime. Taking action in support of Palestine is not a crime.”
The activists were arrested for breaching bail conditions imposed following arrests at a previous pro-Palestine protest at Max Brenner. The bail conditions, which prohibit arrestees going within 50 metres of a Max Brenner shop, are themselves a serious curtailment on the right to protest. The arrestees have been told they will be held until September the 5th.
As Hassan points out:
“Actions taken against South African businesses by anti-Apartheid protests were important in generating opposition to that racist regime. To outlaw similar actions today can only be motivated by a desire to protect the reputation of Israel, and represent an unacceptable attack on our right to express dissent and show solidarity with oppressed people around the world.”
*************************
please circulate widely...
Police persecute Palestine solidarity activists to defend Israeli Apartheid
The Victorian Police and courts went to outrageous lengths to criminalise solidarity activism with Palestine today. For the crime of attending a peaceful demonstration against Max Brenner chocolate store and their support for Apartheid, four activists were snatched from their homes in the early hours of the day, locked in a holding cell, and made to pay a combined total of $16,000 in surety to be allowed to leave.
The four activists were part of the Max Brenner 19, peaceful demonstrators who were savagely attacked by police at a demonstration on the 1st of July. Some weeks after the protest the magistrates court imposed anti-democratic bail conditions on 11 of this 19. Which explicitly denied their right to assembly by prohibiting them on the threat of months of imprisonment from protesting against Max Brenner. This attempt to intimidate the Palestine solidarity campaign in Melbourne, has taken place in the context of a hysterical campaign by Zionist organisations, the Victorian Premier Ted Bailieu, and the Victorian Police, to silence protest calling for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions against Apartheid Israel.
Today the courts and the police went out of their way to try to punish these four activists by any means possible, when none have been convicted of any crime. Indeed, no crime has been committed except to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations. The four activists were denied their right to phone calls when placed in remand, in an attempt to isolate and demoralise them. It was over 7 hours after their arrest that they were allowed to speak to their lawyers.
Once they were brought before a magistrate for a bail hearing, excessively punitive conditions were placed on their liberty for their alleged offenses. The magistrate chose the harshest possible conditions for bail. For the explicit purpose of preventing them from protesting at or even near Max Brenner. Three were made to pay $2,000 in surety each to be granted bail. One was singled out for far harsher conditions on the basis that she has been a public spokesperson at these demonstrations. For the crime of speaking their mind, they were made to pay $2,000 in surety plus another $8,000 the following week. A sum of money that is many times the maximum sentence for her alleged offense.
Once all four were granted bail on these conditions, they were further punished by deliberately delaying their release. Friends of the detainees have been made to wait over 5 hours to pay the surety for their release. Despite people being present at 5pm to pay for their release, it was 9:30pm before a single detainee was let out. At the time of writing this report only 2 had been released.
It appears that in the eyes of the courts, protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians struggle for freedom is a heinous crime, while Max Brenner's support for genocide and occupation is not.
as many of you will be aware things have started to heat up in Australia on the BDS front. Yesterday, Tuesday 9th August, the Victorian Police conducted morning raids arresting four pro-Palestine/BDS activists. The police attempted to execute 5 arrest but only ended up arresting 4 activists. The activists were arrested for breaking their bail conditions.
The activists were four of the nineteen activist who were arrested on July 1 when our peaceful BDS protest outside of the Israeli owned company, Max Brenner, was violently attacked by the Victorian police. At the time of their arrest 11 of those arrested signed bail conditions which would have prohibited them from entering two major shopping centres, including one which has a major train station and medical centres. On July 27 their bail was varied and they were prohibited from going within 50 meters of the two Max Brenner stores in the two centres.
Our next demonstration on July 29 was attended between 350 to 400 people, makig it the biggest pro-BDS activity so far in Australia. The action was completely peaceful (as was the action on July 1. The police were out in force but did not attack or arrest anyone.
Please find below, information on the arrest and the detention of activists yesterday, including a media release and an update on the arrests. All activists were released by 11.30pm Australia time last night, after paying surety.
In solidarity,
Kim
***
July 29 BDS action against Max Brenner and Israel, Melbourne
MEDIA RELEASE Tuesday 9 August
BAILLIEU GOVERNMENT ESCALATES ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES
Dawn raids see pro-Palestine activists arrested
Police demand activists be held in custody for weeks
Raids carried out at dawn this morning by police have seen several pro-Palestine activists arrested, in the most severe crack-down on civil liberties in decades. The activists are being targeted because of their involvement in protests against chocolate shop Max Brenner, a chain store with strong ties to the Israeli military. The protests are part of the worldwide Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which aims to draw attention to the ongoing genocide committed by the Apartheid regime in Israel against Palestinians.
Campaign organiser Omar Hassan:
“This crack-down on the right to protest should be of concern to all Victorians. The lengths to which the Baillieu government is going to eradicate criticism of Israeli Apartheid and criminalise dissent are unprecedented. We need to be clearly saying; demonstrating is not a crime. Taking action in support of Palestine is not a crime.”
The activists were arrested for breaching bail conditions imposed following arrests at a previous pro-Palestine protest at Max Brenner. The bail conditions, which prohibit arrestees going within 50 metres of a Max Brenner shop, are themselves a serious curtailment on the right to protest. The arrestees have been told they will be held until September the 5th.
As Hassan points out:
“Actions taken against South African businesses by anti-Apartheid protests were important in generating opposition to that racist regime. To outlaw similar actions today can only be motivated by a desire to protect the reputation of Israel, and represent an unacceptable attack on our right to express dissent and show solidarity with oppressed people around the world.”
*************************
please circulate widely...
Police persecute Palestine solidarity activists to defend Israeli Apartheid
The Victorian Police and courts went to outrageous lengths to criminalise solidarity activism with Palestine today. For the crime of attending a peaceful demonstration against Max Brenner chocolate store and their support for Apartheid, four activists were snatched from their homes in the early hours of the day, locked in a holding cell, and made to pay a combined total of $16,000 in surety to be allowed to leave.
The four activists were part of the Max Brenner 19, peaceful demonstrators who were savagely attacked by police at a demonstration on the 1st of July. Some weeks after the protest the magistrates court imposed anti-democratic bail conditions on 11 of this 19. Which explicitly denied their right to assembly by prohibiting them on the threat of months of imprisonment from protesting against Max Brenner. This attempt to intimidate the Palestine solidarity campaign in Melbourne, has taken place in the context of a hysterical campaign by Zionist organisations, the Victorian Premier Ted Bailieu, and the Victorian Police, to silence protest calling for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions against Apartheid Israel.
Today the courts and the police went out of their way to try to punish these four activists by any means possible, when none have been convicted of any crime. Indeed, no crime has been committed except to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations. The four activists were denied their right to phone calls when placed in remand, in an attempt to isolate and demoralise them. It was over 7 hours after their arrest that they were allowed to speak to their lawyers.
Once they were brought before a magistrate for a bail hearing, excessively punitive conditions were placed on their liberty for their alleged offenses. The magistrate chose the harshest possible conditions for bail. For the explicit purpose of preventing them from protesting at or even near Max Brenner. Three were made to pay $2,000 in surety each to be granted bail. One was singled out for far harsher conditions on the basis that she has been a public spokesperson at these demonstrations. For the crime of speaking their mind, they were made to pay $2,000 in surety plus another $8,000 the following week. A sum of money that is many times the maximum sentence for her alleged offense.
Once all four were granted bail on these conditions, they were further punished by deliberately delaying their release. Friends of the detainees have been made to wait over 5 hours to pay the surety for their release. Despite people being present at 5pm to pay for their release, it was 9:30pm before a single detainee was let out. At the time of writing this report only 2 had been released.
It appears that in the eyes of the courts, protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians struggle for freedom is a heinous crime, while Max Brenner's support for genocide and occupation is not.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Opposing police intimidation, pro-Palestine supporters in Melbourne call for the boycott of Israel
Dear friends,
Please find below a video I have put together from the highly successful BDS action in Melbourne on July 29.
Between 300 -400 people participated in the action against Max Brenner Chocolate, an Israeli company which is owned by the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s biggest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasis its support for the Israeli military. Strauss boasts that it supports both the Golani and Givati Brigades of the Israeli military, providing them with care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games. Both of these brigades were heavily involved in Israel's 2008/2009 military assault on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 1300 Palestinians being killed, the majority civilian, including approximately 350 children.
The atmosphere at the July 29 action was fantastic, with lots of new people attending. According to an “eyewitness” report published by the Zionist media in Australia, “protesting were Socialists, Muslim Arab community members including, Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians and a group of multicultural activists”.
As many of you will be aware our last peaceful BDS action against Max Brenner on July 1 was violently attacked by the Victorian Police, with at least one non-violent protestor being choked unconscious by the police as he was dragged by them out of the peaceful demonstration. Police arrested 19 people charging them with “trespass” (in a public place) and “besetting”.
Video of the police attack on the peaceful demonstration can be seen here and here.
The police attack on the July 1 action marked a clear escalation in Victorian police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. This reasons for this escalation was made abundantly clear on July 27 at a bail variation hearing for 11 of the 19 who were arrested.
At the court hearing, the police made it clear that their attack on peaceful demonstration came only after discussions with Zionist groups, the Victorian government, shopping centre management and the state and national management of Max Brenner. A lot of the police testimony revolved around the fact that the protests were well organised and coordinated (and therefore effective, although they didn’t use the word “effective”). They made it clear that their main aim in arresting people was to disrupt the ability of pro-Palestine solidarity activists to organise.
Police stated during the hearing that “the protestors had their own way” for too long and a “decision [was] made to draw a line in the sand and make arrests”. The Victorian Police also admitted that police infiltrators had been sent to pro-Palestine solidarity meetings in order to monitor the activity of BDS/Palestine activists.
However, in the wake of the police attack, Pro-Palestine/BDS activists resolved not to be intimidated by the police and to continue to organise our non-violent peaceful actions highlighting the complicity of companies like Max Brenner in Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies.
After hearing a range of speakers at the State Library, pro-Palestine protestors took to the streets and marched through Melbourne city. They then entered Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and held a peaceful a half hour sit-in outside the Max Brenner located there. The protestors then proceeded peacefully to the Queen Victoria Shopping Centre and held another half hour sit-in outside of Max Brenner in the QVB.
Although the Victorian Police had deployed a large number of police officers and had once again hidden Police Prison trucks in the loading docks of the QV shopping centre, no police attacks on the peaceful demonstration occurred (unlike on July 1) and the non-violent peaceful protest proceeded unhindered (On July 1, the police had established a mobile processing unit in the QV loading docks and had brought in a number of prison transport trucks to hold arrest protestors).
The next BDS action in Melbourne will be held on September 9. On September 5, those arrested will appear in court and will plead not-guilty to the charges laid against them.
For more information on the Defence Campaign in support of the “Boycott-Israel19” please visit:http://boycottisrael19.wordpress.com/
Please find below a video I have put together from the highly successful BDS action in Melbourne on July 29.
Between 300 -400 people participated in the action against Max Brenner Chocolate, an Israeli company which is owned by the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s biggest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasis its support for the Israeli military. Strauss boasts that it supports both the Golani and Givati Brigades of the Israeli military, providing them with care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games. Both of these brigades were heavily involved in Israel's 2008/2009 military assault on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 1300 Palestinians being killed, the majority civilian, including approximately 350 children.
The atmosphere at the July 29 action was fantastic, with lots of new people attending. According to an “eyewitness” report published by the Zionist media in Australia, “protesting were Socialists, Muslim Arab community members including, Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians and a group of multicultural activists”.
As many of you will be aware our last peaceful BDS action against Max Brenner on July 1 was violently attacked by the Victorian Police, with at least one non-violent protestor being choked unconscious by the police as he was dragged by them out of the peaceful demonstration. Police arrested 19 people charging them with “trespass” (in a public place) and “besetting”.
Video of the police attack on the peaceful demonstration can be seen here and here.
The police attack on the July 1 action marked a clear escalation in Victorian police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. This reasons for this escalation was made abundantly clear on July 27 at a bail variation hearing for 11 of the 19 who were arrested.
At the court hearing, the police made it clear that their attack on peaceful demonstration came only after discussions with Zionist groups, the Victorian government, shopping centre management and the state and national management of Max Brenner. A lot of the police testimony revolved around the fact that the protests were well organised and coordinated (and therefore effective, although they didn’t use the word “effective”). They made it clear that their main aim in arresting people was to disrupt the ability of pro-Palestine solidarity activists to organise.
Police stated during the hearing that “the protestors had their own way” for too long and a “decision [was] made to draw a line in the sand and make arrests”. The Victorian Police also admitted that police infiltrators had been sent to pro-Palestine solidarity meetings in order to monitor the activity of BDS/Palestine activists.
However, in the wake of the police attack, Pro-Palestine/BDS activists resolved not to be intimidated by the police and to continue to organise our non-violent peaceful actions highlighting the complicity of companies like Max Brenner in Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies.
After hearing a range of speakers at the State Library, pro-Palestine protestors took to the streets and marched through Melbourne city. They then entered Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and held a peaceful a half hour sit-in outside the Max Brenner located there. The protestors then proceeded peacefully to the Queen Victoria Shopping Centre and held another half hour sit-in outside of Max Brenner in the QVB.
Although the Victorian Police had deployed a large number of police officers and had once again hidden Police Prison trucks in the loading docks of the QV shopping centre, no police attacks on the peaceful demonstration occurred (unlike on July 1) and the non-violent peaceful protest proceeded unhindered (On July 1, the police had established a mobile processing unit in the QV loading docks and had brought in a number of prison transport trucks to hold arrest protestors).
The next BDS action in Melbourne will be held on September 9. On September 5, those arrested will appear in court and will plead not-guilty to the charges laid against them.
For more information on the Defence Campaign in support of the “Boycott-Israel19” please visit:http://boycottisrael19.wordpress.com/
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Why Socialists should support the boycott of Israel: a response to the Socialist Party of Australia
Dear friends,
in April, on the eve of the vote by the Marrickville Council in Sydney to rescind their support for BDS, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement on their Yarra Socialist website opposing BDS. In response to the Socialist Party of Australia's position - a position which is held by the CWI tendency which they are a part of - I have written this response arguing why not only are the Socialist Party wrong to oppose BDS but why socialists should support the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. The Socialist Party position contains many arguments against BDS which is similar in some aspects (but not all) to the position also put forward by The Alliance for a Workers Liberty. While Workers Liberty and the Socialist Party are two socialist groups who have come out publicly against the Palestinian initiated BDS, many other socialists in Australia and internationally are actively in support of BDS (including my own political party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Australia www.rsp.org.au).
I have included here a link to the statement issued by the Socialist Party of Australia and my response as to why socialists should be supporting BDS below, which has been published in Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au)
Please feel free to distribute to your networks.
In solidarity, Kim
****
SOCIALIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA: Will boycotting help the Palestinians?
**
Home » Direct Action Issue 33 June-July 2011
Why socialists should support the boycott of Israel
By Kim Bullimore
On April 19, the same day that Marrickville Council met to reconsider its vote in support of the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian human rights and against Israel, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement opposing the BDS campaign.
The statement, posted on the web site of Stephen Jolly, one of two Socialist Party councillors elected to the Yarra City Council in Melbourne, said “The “Socialist Party has been asked by a number of groups and individuals if our Councillors ... would consider supporting the campaign”. No doubt many of these inquiries would have been occasioned by the concerted campaign by the capitalist media against the NSW Greens and the Marrickville Council, both of which had voted to support the BDS campaign in December 2010. The media campaign, led by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing pro-Zionist Australian newspaper, sought to cast the Marrickville Council as fiscally irresponsible and the NSW Greens as “nutters” and to pressure them into rescinding their support for BDS.
On April 19, the 12-member council voted to rescind its support for the international boycott of Israel, which had been adopted by a 10-2 vote on December 14. The April 19 motion, bizarrely, reaffirmed the three key planks of the BDS campaign, while at the same time resolving not to pursue BDS against Israel. The three BDS planks are an end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab lands, the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the right of Palestinians living in Israel to full equality and the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.
In its statement, the Socialist Party argued that, while a call for the “boycott of Israeli goods and institutions is understandable and usually well-intentioned”, it would not aid the Palestinian struggle. This was because “a boycott is unlikely to have a significant economic impact, not least because it will attract only partial participation” and because “it would play into the hands of the worst right-wing warmongers in Israel, and alienate Israeli workers, who are the only force capable of removing the brutal Israeli regime and participating in a lasting settlement with the Palestinian people”.
The Socialist Party of Australia sought to justify its position by saying, “Unlike several other groups on the left we understand that there is a class divide within Israel”. The statement went on: “... we are concerned that the BDS campaign has already been used by Israeli capitalist politicians to launch a propaganda offensive aimed at Israeli workers, driving those workers into the arms of the Israeli right. They argue that it shows that Israeli Jews are under siege and need to stick together against what they portray as an anti-Semitic stance.”
South African example
The statement notes that the South African BDS campaign, which the Palestinian BDS campaign is modelled on, did mobilise support for the struggle against the South African apartheid regime. While correctly noting that the key to ending apartheid was the mass movement of black South African workers, the Socialist Party downplays the contribution of the international BDS campaign to the overthrow of apartheid. The South African BDS campaign, launched in the 1950s after calls by black South Africans for an international boycott, significantly boosted internal resistance to the regime. In addition, the economic boycott and sanctions made it difficult for the regime to maintain internal cohesion among the capitalist class, whose profits were being impacted. As South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu noted in a 2008 speech to participants in the sporting boycott, “Refusal to kow-tow to racism was the sanction that hurt the supporters of apartheid the most”. Tutu went on to explain that the boycott campaign had aided the internal struggle by showing black South African workers that people outside South Africa stood with them in their struggle.
Challenging accepted ideas
The Socialist Party and others who hold a similar position ignore the fact that the BDS campaign has never been solely about making an economic impact. While this is an important objective, one of the primary aims of BDS has been to challenge the dominant discourse around the “question of Palestine”.
The Towards a Global Movement report issued by the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign in 2007 notes: “... turning the tide within popular discourse and the media - building an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights - is a core objective of the campaign and goes hand-in-hand with activities on the ground attempting to implement the BDS appeal”. In particular, BDS, which is consciously shaped as an anti-colonial campaign, seeks to highlight Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and to counter the reduction of the “question of Palestine” to being merely a dispute over “contested land”. In particular, it counters attempts to exclude and ignore the rights under international law of the majority of Palestinians who are scattered around the world. While there is still a long way to go, in just six years the BDS campaign has dented the once unassailable discourse about the “Palestine question” in the corporate media and popular discussion. Today, discourse about Israel is peppered with words such as “apartheid”, “boycott”, “right of return”, something barely heard six years ago, when Palestinian civil society launched the BDS campaign.
Economic impact
Despite the claims of detractors such as the Socialist Party, BDS has also started to have an economic impact on the Zionist state. In April 2009, the Israeli manufacturers’ association reported that 21% of its 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. In recent months, as a result of BDS campaigns by solidarity activists, an increasing number of international contractors have pulled out of Israeli projects. For example, in May, the German state-owned company Deutsche Bahn, which was part of an Israeli rail project cutting through the occupied West Bank, pulled out because of potential breaches of international law.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister and current defence minister, in a May 5 interview with the Hebrew edition of the Tel Aviv Haaretz newspaper, acknowledged the impact that BDS was having. According to an English translation of the interview by Israeli activist Ofer Neiman from Boycott from Within (the Israeli campaign in support of BDS), Barak said that BDS was more “dangerous than what the [Israeli] public perceives at the moment”. According to Barak, BDS is uniting trade unions, academics, consumers, green political parties and others in a movement to do to Israel “what was done to South Africa”. He noted: “... there are people in the European Council that deal with export and import; they are capable, without any government decision, of inflicting significant damage on the Israeli economy”.
Workers’ views
One of the arguments of the Socialist Party against BDS is that, unlike in South Africa, where “a majority of black workers supported international sanctions against the ruling white elite, Israeli workers are not in agreement with sanctions against Israel”. It is because of this, according to the Socialist Party, that a boycott would be “a gift to the Israeli right”.
It is clear from the Socialist Party’s statement that when it speaks about Israeli workers, it is in fact speaking predominantly about Jewish Israeli workers. Rather than challenging Zionism, a reactionary and racist ideology, which the majority of Jewish Israeli workers have adopted, the Socialist Party chooses to pander to it. Prior to the Oslo Accords, the majority of Jewish Israeli workers opposed talks with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and opposed even a two state-solution, something that the Socialist Party supports. Is the Socialist Party saying that because these positions were held by the majority of the Jewish Israeli working class, it would never have have put forward demands that countered such positions?
This amounts to acting as the rearguard of the working class rather than its vanguard. As Lenin noted in his 1903 polemic What is to be done?, the role of revolutionary socialists, whether in the trade unions or in social movements, is not to tail-end the working class but to raise its political consciousness. Lenin pointed out: “Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic [revolutionary socialist] point of view and no other”.
Unfortunately, in opposing BDS on the basis it does, the Socialist Party fails to seek to raise the political consciousness of Jewish Israeli workers. By failing to challenge politically the dominant ideology of Zionism, the Socialist Party leaves open the door for the Israeli ruling class to continue to exploit the Jewish Israeli working class.
‘Into the sea’
The Socialist Party’s pandering to Zionism is most evident in its argument that “The Palestinians and the Israeli Jews have a right to their own separate states”. Rather than calling for a democratic secular state for all, which would afford equal rights for all its citizens, the Socialist Party supports the creation of a Jewish-only (socialist) state for Israeli Jews.
When challenged about their reasons for supporting a Jewish-only state, albeit a socialist one, members of the Australian Socialist Party cited a 2002 article by Lynn Walsh, a leader of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), based in Great Britain, as offering a more in-depth explanation. In his article on the Palestine-Israel conflict, Walsh makes it clear that the CWI sees the Zionist movement as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Socialist Party fails to understand that, far from being a movement of national liberation, the Zionist movement from its inception was, and continues to be today, a settler-colonial movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land.
Walsh’s article makes it clear that the Socialist Party and CWI believe the notion that Jews are constantly under threat of being “driven into the sea” and that the Jewish state is the only way to protect the human rights of the Jewish people. According to Walsh, the aim of the Arab regimes “whether blatant or thinly veiled, appear[s] to be to drive the Jews into the sea”. This claim is a longstanding piece of Zionist propaganda, which originated not in a speech by an Arab leader but in a speech given by Zionist leader David Ben Gurion to the Israeli Knesset in 1961. Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, sought to justify the ethnic cleansing of more than 1 million Palestinians in 1948 by repeating the falsehood that Palestinians had left Palestine on the instruction of Arab leaders. According to Ben Gurion, they did this willingly “under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive”. This assertion was proven to be a historical falsehood by BBC journalist Erskine Childers in May 1961, several months before Ben Gurion’s speech. That a socialist organisation should uncritically promote a historical falsehood and blatant piece of Zionist propaganda is astounding.
‘National consciousness’
In their anti-BDS statement, as well as in informal comments in social media debates about their position, members of the Socialist Party reveal that they are politically confused about the issue of “national consciousness”. Socialist Party members have argued that their support for a Jewish-only state is justified because a national consciousness regarding Israel exists amongst the Jewish people. This is concretely reflected in the Socialist Party’s April 19 anti-BDS statement, which advocates “the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own”. In advocating this position, the Socialist Party reveals that it has bought into the Zionist notion that all Jews are part of a national grouping, rather than part of a religious or ethno-cultural grouping. This is a decidedly un-Marxist and un-Leninist position.
In 1903, in opposition to the Jewish socialists in the Bund, Lenin argued that it was “absolutely untenable scientifically” to claim that the Jewish people formed a separate nation. He said that “the idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically” and that the “the idea of a Jewish ‘nationality’ is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists) but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy [revolutionary socialism] (the Bundists)”.
The Socialist Party has sought to mitigate its support for a Jewish state, which is contrary to Marxist tradition, by saying that while it did not support the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it must now support one because there is now a national consciousness among Jewish people.
Now that a territorial entity called Israel exists, the Socialist Party argues that socialists should abandon the position advocated by Lenin and adopt the reactionary and unscientific Zionist notion that all the Jewish people of the world form a national grouping. The Socialist Party fails to distinguish between a “Jewish state” and an “Israeli nation”. This is primarily because it has adopted the reactionary Zionist position that all Jewish people form a national grouping.
Within the Zionist framework, there is no such thing as an Israeli nation or nationality; instead Israel exists as a “Jewish nation” not an “Israeli nation”. Therefore, Israel makes a distinction between Israeli citizenship and nationality. While all Israelis (both Jews and the Palestinian minority in Israel) qualify as “citizens”, the state itself is defined as a “Jewish nation”. Thus it is a nation belonging not to just the Jews in Israel but to all Jews around the world. The Israeli state lists more than 130 nationalities for Israeli citizens - the two most predominant being Jewish and Arab. The one nationality that does not exist among the 130 is “Israeli”. This is to ensure that Palestinians do not have equal status with Jewish citizens.
By adopting the formulation of a “Jewish state”, even a socialist one, the Socialist Party buys into the reactionary Zionist narrative. The party’s support for a Jewish state, far from being in the interest of the Jewish proletariat, runs counter to their interests, as Lenin noted, because it reinforces and supports the reactionary fears and racist attitudes fanned by Zionism.
As Lenin noted in his polemic against the Bund, supporting a Jewish state “is to degrade the struggle from the plane of ideas and principles to that of suspicion, incitement and fanning of historically evolved prejudices. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle.” We can only hope that the Socialist Party will reconsider its position of support for historically evolved prejudices and decide to support real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle, namely the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the National Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. She is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who has lived and worked as an international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories]
in April, on the eve of the vote by the Marrickville Council in Sydney to rescind their support for BDS, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement on their Yarra Socialist website opposing BDS. In response to the Socialist Party of Australia's position - a position which is held by the CWI tendency which they are a part of - I have written this response arguing why not only are the Socialist Party wrong to oppose BDS but why socialists should support the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. The Socialist Party position contains many arguments against BDS which is similar in some aspects (but not all) to the position also put forward by The Alliance for a Workers Liberty. While Workers Liberty and the Socialist Party are two socialist groups who have come out publicly against the Palestinian initiated BDS, many other socialists in Australia and internationally are actively in support of BDS (including my own political party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Australia www.rsp.org.au).
I have included here a link to the statement issued by the Socialist Party of Australia and my response as to why socialists should be supporting BDS below, which has been published in Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au)
Please feel free to distribute to your networks.
In solidarity, Kim
****
SOCIALIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA: Will boycotting help the Palestinians?
**
Home » Direct Action Issue 33 June-July 2011
Why socialists should support the boycott of Israel
By Kim Bullimore
On April 19, the same day that Marrickville Council met to reconsider its vote in support of the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian human rights and against Israel, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement opposing the BDS campaign.
The statement, posted on the web site of Stephen Jolly, one of two Socialist Party councillors elected to the Yarra City Council in Melbourne, said “The “Socialist Party has been asked by a number of groups and individuals if our Councillors ... would consider supporting the campaign”. No doubt many of these inquiries would have been occasioned by the concerted campaign by the capitalist media against the NSW Greens and the Marrickville Council, both of which had voted to support the BDS campaign in December 2010. The media campaign, led by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing pro-Zionist Australian newspaper, sought to cast the Marrickville Council as fiscally irresponsible and the NSW Greens as “nutters” and to pressure them into rescinding their support for BDS.
On April 19, the 12-member council voted to rescind its support for the international boycott of Israel, which had been adopted by a 10-2 vote on December 14. The April 19 motion, bizarrely, reaffirmed the three key planks of the BDS campaign, while at the same time resolving not to pursue BDS against Israel. The three BDS planks are an end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab lands, the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the right of Palestinians living in Israel to full equality and the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.
In its statement, the Socialist Party argued that, while a call for the “boycott of Israeli goods and institutions is understandable and usually well-intentioned”, it would not aid the Palestinian struggle. This was because “a boycott is unlikely to have a significant economic impact, not least because it will attract only partial participation” and because “it would play into the hands of the worst right-wing warmongers in Israel, and alienate Israeli workers, who are the only force capable of removing the brutal Israeli regime and participating in a lasting settlement with the Palestinian people”.
The Socialist Party of Australia sought to justify its position by saying, “Unlike several other groups on the left we understand that there is a class divide within Israel”. The statement went on: “... we are concerned that the BDS campaign has already been used by Israeli capitalist politicians to launch a propaganda offensive aimed at Israeli workers, driving those workers into the arms of the Israeli right. They argue that it shows that Israeli Jews are under siege and need to stick together against what they portray as an anti-Semitic stance.”
South African example
The statement notes that the South African BDS campaign, which the Palestinian BDS campaign is modelled on, did mobilise support for the struggle against the South African apartheid regime. While correctly noting that the key to ending apartheid was the mass movement of black South African workers, the Socialist Party downplays the contribution of the international BDS campaign to the overthrow of apartheid. The South African BDS campaign, launched in the 1950s after calls by black South Africans for an international boycott, significantly boosted internal resistance to the regime. In addition, the economic boycott and sanctions made it difficult for the regime to maintain internal cohesion among the capitalist class, whose profits were being impacted. As South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu noted in a 2008 speech to participants in the sporting boycott, “Refusal to kow-tow to racism was the sanction that hurt the supporters of apartheid the most”. Tutu went on to explain that the boycott campaign had aided the internal struggle by showing black South African workers that people outside South Africa stood with them in their struggle.
Challenging accepted ideas
The Socialist Party and others who hold a similar position ignore the fact that the BDS campaign has never been solely about making an economic impact. While this is an important objective, one of the primary aims of BDS has been to challenge the dominant discourse around the “question of Palestine”.
The Towards a Global Movement report issued by the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign in 2007 notes: “... turning the tide within popular discourse and the media - building an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights - is a core objective of the campaign and goes hand-in-hand with activities on the ground attempting to implement the BDS appeal”. In particular, BDS, which is consciously shaped as an anti-colonial campaign, seeks to highlight Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and to counter the reduction of the “question of Palestine” to being merely a dispute over “contested land”. In particular, it counters attempts to exclude and ignore the rights under international law of the majority of Palestinians who are scattered around the world. While there is still a long way to go, in just six years the BDS campaign has dented the once unassailable discourse about the “Palestine question” in the corporate media and popular discussion. Today, discourse about Israel is peppered with words such as “apartheid”, “boycott”, “right of return”, something barely heard six years ago, when Palestinian civil society launched the BDS campaign.
Economic impact
Despite the claims of detractors such as the Socialist Party, BDS has also started to have an economic impact on the Zionist state. In April 2009, the Israeli manufacturers’ association reported that 21% of its 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. In recent months, as a result of BDS campaigns by solidarity activists, an increasing number of international contractors have pulled out of Israeli projects. For example, in May, the German state-owned company Deutsche Bahn, which was part of an Israeli rail project cutting through the occupied West Bank, pulled out because of potential breaches of international law.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister and current defence minister, in a May 5 interview with the Hebrew edition of the Tel Aviv Haaretz newspaper, acknowledged the impact that BDS was having. According to an English translation of the interview by Israeli activist Ofer Neiman from Boycott from Within (the Israeli campaign in support of BDS), Barak said that BDS was more “dangerous than what the [Israeli] public perceives at the moment”. According to Barak, BDS is uniting trade unions, academics, consumers, green political parties and others in a movement to do to Israel “what was done to South Africa”. He noted: “... there are people in the European Council that deal with export and import; they are capable, without any government decision, of inflicting significant damage on the Israeli economy”.
Workers’ views
One of the arguments of the Socialist Party against BDS is that, unlike in South Africa, where “a majority of black workers supported international sanctions against the ruling white elite, Israeli workers are not in agreement with sanctions against Israel”. It is because of this, according to the Socialist Party, that a boycott would be “a gift to the Israeli right”.
It is clear from the Socialist Party’s statement that when it speaks about Israeli workers, it is in fact speaking predominantly about Jewish Israeli workers. Rather than challenging Zionism, a reactionary and racist ideology, which the majority of Jewish Israeli workers have adopted, the Socialist Party chooses to pander to it. Prior to the Oslo Accords, the majority of Jewish Israeli workers opposed talks with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and opposed even a two state-solution, something that the Socialist Party supports. Is the Socialist Party saying that because these positions were held by the majority of the Jewish Israeli working class, it would never have have put forward demands that countered such positions?
This amounts to acting as the rearguard of the working class rather than its vanguard. As Lenin noted in his 1903 polemic What is to be done?, the role of revolutionary socialists, whether in the trade unions or in social movements, is not to tail-end the working class but to raise its political consciousness. Lenin pointed out: “Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic [revolutionary socialist] point of view and no other”.
Unfortunately, in opposing BDS on the basis it does, the Socialist Party fails to seek to raise the political consciousness of Jewish Israeli workers. By failing to challenge politically the dominant ideology of Zionism, the Socialist Party leaves open the door for the Israeli ruling class to continue to exploit the Jewish Israeli working class.
‘Into the sea’
The Socialist Party’s pandering to Zionism is most evident in its argument that “The Palestinians and the Israeli Jews have a right to their own separate states”. Rather than calling for a democratic secular state for all, which would afford equal rights for all its citizens, the Socialist Party supports the creation of a Jewish-only (socialist) state for Israeli Jews.
When challenged about their reasons for supporting a Jewish-only state, albeit a socialist one, members of the Australian Socialist Party cited a 2002 article by Lynn Walsh, a leader of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), based in Great Britain, as offering a more in-depth explanation. In his article on the Palestine-Israel conflict, Walsh makes it clear that the CWI sees the Zionist movement as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Socialist Party fails to understand that, far from being a movement of national liberation, the Zionist movement from its inception was, and continues to be today, a settler-colonial movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land.
Walsh’s article makes it clear that the Socialist Party and CWI believe the notion that Jews are constantly under threat of being “driven into the sea” and that the Jewish state is the only way to protect the human rights of the Jewish people. According to Walsh, the aim of the Arab regimes “whether blatant or thinly veiled, appear[s] to be to drive the Jews into the sea”. This claim is a longstanding piece of Zionist propaganda, which originated not in a speech by an Arab leader but in a speech given by Zionist leader David Ben Gurion to the Israeli Knesset in 1961. Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, sought to justify the ethnic cleansing of more than 1 million Palestinians in 1948 by repeating the falsehood that Palestinians had left Palestine on the instruction of Arab leaders. According to Ben Gurion, they did this willingly “under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive”. This assertion was proven to be a historical falsehood by BBC journalist Erskine Childers in May 1961, several months before Ben Gurion’s speech. That a socialist organisation should uncritically promote a historical falsehood and blatant piece of Zionist propaganda is astounding.
‘National consciousness’
In their anti-BDS statement, as well as in informal comments in social media debates about their position, members of the Socialist Party reveal that they are politically confused about the issue of “national consciousness”. Socialist Party members have argued that their support for a Jewish-only state is justified because a national consciousness regarding Israel exists amongst the Jewish people. This is concretely reflected in the Socialist Party’s April 19 anti-BDS statement, which advocates “the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own”. In advocating this position, the Socialist Party reveals that it has bought into the Zionist notion that all Jews are part of a national grouping, rather than part of a religious or ethno-cultural grouping. This is a decidedly un-Marxist and un-Leninist position.
In 1903, in opposition to the Jewish socialists in the Bund, Lenin argued that it was “absolutely untenable scientifically” to claim that the Jewish people formed a separate nation. He said that “the idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically” and that the “the idea of a Jewish ‘nationality’ is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists) but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy [revolutionary socialism] (the Bundists)”.
The Socialist Party has sought to mitigate its support for a Jewish state, which is contrary to Marxist tradition, by saying that while it did not support the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it must now support one because there is now a national consciousness among Jewish people.
Now that a territorial entity called Israel exists, the Socialist Party argues that socialists should abandon the position advocated by Lenin and adopt the reactionary and unscientific Zionist notion that all the Jewish people of the world form a national grouping. The Socialist Party fails to distinguish between a “Jewish state” and an “Israeli nation”. This is primarily because it has adopted the reactionary Zionist position that all Jewish people form a national grouping.
Within the Zionist framework, there is no such thing as an Israeli nation or nationality; instead Israel exists as a “Jewish nation” not an “Israeli nation”. Therefore, Israel makes a distinction between Israeli citizenship and nationality. While all Israelis (both Jews and the Palestinian minority in Israel) qualify as “citizens”, the state itself is defined as a “Jewish nation”. Thus it is a nation belonging not to just the Jews in Israel but to all Jews around the world. The Israeli state lists more than 130 nationalities for Israeli citizens - the two most predominant being Jewish and Arab. The one nationality that does not exist among the 130 is “Israeli”. This is to ensure that Palestinians do not have equal status with Jewish citizens.
By adopting the formulation of a “Jewish state”, even a socialist one, the Socialist Party buys into the reactionary Zionist narrative. The party’s support for a Jewish state, far from being in the interest of the Jewish proletariat, runs counter to their interests, as Lenin noted, because it reinforces and supports the reactionary fears and racist attitudes fanned by Zionism.
As Lenin noted in his polemic against the Bund, supporting a Jewish state “is to degrade the struggle from the plane of ideas and principles to that of suspicion, incitement and fanning of historically evolved prejudices. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle.” We can only hope that the Socialist Party will reconsider its position of support for historically evolved prejudices and decide to support real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle, namely the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the National Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. She is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who has lived and worked as an international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories]
Monday, May 23, 2011
Boycott Jericho! Boycott Max Brenner! Don't Buy Israeli Apartheid!
On May 20, Palestine solidarity activists and human rights supporters in Melbourne staged a peaceful BDS action to highlight the complicity of Israeli companies, Max Brenner Chocolate and Jericho, in Israel's Apartheid and Occupation policies.
Israeli company, Jericho, exploits minerals from the Dead Sea. While Jericho profits from the Dead Sea, the indigenous Palestinian people who live on the land surrounding the Dead Sea are regularly denied access. Palestinian access to the Dead Sea is prevented by Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands. Restrictions are place on Palestinian access to the Dead Sea via a network of military checkpoints, Israeli-only roads, exclusive zones and other apartheid and occupation policies.
Max Brenner Chocolate is owned by the Strauss Group, Israel's second largest food and beverage company. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasis its support for the Israeli military, providing care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soldiers. Strauss boasts that it supports both the Golani and Givati (Shualei Shimshon) Brigades of the Israeli military. Both of these brigades were heavily involved in Israel's 2008/2009 Gaza massacre, which killed more than 1300 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including 300 children.
In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued the Palestinian Unified Call for Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.
BDS calls for non-violent punitive measures against Israel until it complies with international law and meets its internatonal obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
For more information on the BDS campaign visit: http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad from the Palestinians Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign
Dear friends,
please find below my recent interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in Ramallah. The interview has been published in Direct Action. I will also be uploading soon a video version of the interview in the near future, which will also be available on the Live from Occupied Palestine blog.
In solidarity, Kim
***
Home » Issue 29: February 2011
Direct Action
Palestinians speak on growing boycott of Israel
http://directaction.org.au/issue29/palestinians_speak_on_growing_boycott_of_israel
By Kim Bullimore, in Ramallah, occupied Palestine
In 2005, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations issued an international call for the boycott of Israel. Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression. It calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law. Over the past five years, the BDS campaign has gone from strength to strength internationally, with trade unions, student groups and other sectors announcing support. Kim Bullimore spoke with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad in Ramallah about the growing international campaign. Barghouti is a Palestinian political and cultural analyst and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Awwad is the national coordinator of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).
Omar Barghouti
“After five years of BDS, we feel that we have reached our ‘South Africa moment’”, Omar Barghouti told Direct Action. “We are on the offensive, and Zionist and anti-BDS groups are definitely on the defensive everywhere.”
Barghouti notes: “A few years ago we would have looked at where we are now as a dream that cannot come true except after many, many years. But after five years we have campaigns which are advocating BDS [and] working on BDS from the US to Australia, from Norway to South Africa, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina and so on. So now we have very successful campaigns in corporate responsibility, divestment campaigns.”
According to Barghouti, who is one of the founders of the PACBI, since Israel’s all-out assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, the BDS campaign, particularly the academic and cultural boycott, has grown by leaps and bounds. “Since Gaza and especially after the flotilla attack, academic and cultural boycott campaigns have spread throughout the world. Big performers, major artists like the Pixies, [Elvis] Costello, Gill Scott Heron and others have cancelled performances in Israel. We are getting more and more and the list of groups is growing; every month we are getting new performers that are cancelling.”
Barghouti points out that the cancellation of performances in Israel by such artists means that “millions and millions of fans of those big artists have been introduced to the boycott. So now BDS is a name that is known in the mainstream media, in Israel, the US and Europe and probably in Australia as well. So we think there is a lot of progress being made.”
Barghouti continued that the next step is to “increase the coordination of all BDS activists in specific campaigns”. He noted that not only is the BNC coordinating many global campaigns for BDS, but that “we are spreading BDS through local conferences and regional conferences.
“Our latest regional conference was in India, and it attracted many from South Asia and was an extremely important moment for us to spread BDS in that part of the world. The next will be Latin America. We will have a regional conference in Latin America in 2011, and that will be our biggest ‘new hit’, so to speak. So we are branching out. And of course the conference that happened in Australia last October was extremely important. So we hope there will be more coordination with BDS activists in Australia.”
Hind Awwad
Hind Awwad, the BNC’s national coordinator in Ramallah, explained that there is currently overwhelming consensus for BDS within all sectors of Palestinian society. “Within the three sectors of Palestinian society — this being Palestinians present in the 1967 areas, the 48 areas [Israel] and Palestinians in the diaspora — there is overwhelming consensus on BDS or the full boycott of Israel. This includes academic and cultural boycott.” She points out: “This consensus is represented by the BDS National Committee, which is a wide coalition of the largest mass civil society organisations within Palestinian society”. At present, the BNC represents the “largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations”.
Asked about the argument by Zionists and anti-BDS groups that BDS hurts Palestinians, particularly Palestinian workers, Awwad pointed out that when the BDS call was issued in 2005 it was endorsed by all major Palestinian trade unions, farmer unions and agricultural unions. In addition, the three major Palestinian trade union federations are now part of the BNC. “So there is consensus among Palestinian workers and agricultural farmers on the need for BDS”, she said.
Awwad added that the argument that BDS hurts Palestinians “is a very patronising argument. It makes it seem like Palestinians are not mature enough to decide what they want. The overwhelming consensus within Palestinian civil society is very clear on the need for full BDS. We are mature enough to make our own decisions; we are mature enough to know what we want and to know what tactics to use to wage our struggle, our resistance to Israel’s oppression.”
International companies
Both Barghouti and Awwad note that a range of international companies are profiting from Israel’s occupation. Awwad said: “Within the Industrial zones that Israel is setting up, there are international corporations that are complicit in maintaining these zones and thereby they are directly aiding Israel’s occupation”. She noted that such companies are legitimate targets within the framework of the BDS campaign “due to their involvement in the Israeli occupation and due to their violations of international law”.
Asked about BDS campaigns against international companies profiting from Israel’s occupation, Barghouti cited the campaign against Veolia and Alstrom as one of the biggest success stories. The two French conglomerates are currently involved in building the Jerusalem light rail, intended to connect Israel’s illegal colonies to the city of Jerusalem. However, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which outlines the rights and responsibilities of an occupying power, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its civilian population into the territories it occupies. The Jerusalem light rail will aid in the transfer of sections of Israel’s population into the territories it illegally seized in 1967.
Barghouti said, “We have targeted those two companies because they were involved in this patently illegal project”. Since the campaign began in November 2008, “Veolia specifically has lost contracts worth billions of dollars, close to 10 billion in fact, and we think a lot of that can be attributed to BDS campaigns in Sweden, the UK, Ireland, France, Melbourne and other places”.
Barghouti also noted that two other BDS campaigns that have grown in strength internationally are the campaigns to strip the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a key Israeli and Zionist organisation, of its charitable status and the campaign against the Israeli state-owned company Agrexco. Barghouti said the primary reason for targeting the JNF was because “it’s a colonial entity, a very racist entity implicated in Israel’s war crimes and violations of international law”, while Agrexco is being targeted because it is Israel’s major exporter of settlement products and produce.
Barghouti noted that the campaign against Agrexco has been particularly successful in France, where close to 100 NGOs and five national political parties are working jointly on the campaign. The campaign is also strong in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Belgium and many other countries. Barghouti encouraged Australian BDS activists also to get involved in the Agrexco campaign.
Palestinian Authority
On the boycott against Israeli settlement goods launched by the Palestinian Authority (PA), Awwad noted that while this was a welcome move, it does not go far enough. “While this campaign is certainly a step in the right direction, I think it is a step that is incomplete and has come way too late.” Awwad noted that a boycott focused solely on Israel’s illegal settlements in reality lets the Israeli government off the hook. “According to international law, Israel is the liable party for the settlements. The settlements are not a legal entity on their own. So, if we are to hold Israel accountable for its settlements and occupation industry, we should target Israel as a whole, not just the settlements.”
Awwad pointed out that the PA campaign has come as a result of the overwhelming growth in the global boycott campaign. “The PA felt that they were behind on a boycott of Israel, that they had to take up some part of the boycott or some part of BDS that they could work on, given the agreements they have with Israel.” Awwad said that the constraints imposed on the PA by the Paris Protocol and the Oslo Agreement made it choose to focus on this part of the BDS campaign. She noted, however, that “the standards for Palestinian civil society of course remain much higher than the PA … with a full boycott of Israel, not just the settlements”.
Two important developments in the BDS campaign in 2010 were the increased support in both South Africa and Israel. According to Barghouti, “the developments in South Africa ... have been phenomenal.
“Now we have an Artists Against Apartheid in South Africa, and to us this is extremely relevant symbolically and practically. There are major campaigns supported by very key figures like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and major figures in the ANC, major cultural figures and many prominent academics are involved in the campaigns for BDS.”
Barghouti said that one particularly important campaign in South Africa was that at the University of Johannesburg to sever links with Ben Gurion University. “We hope that this may well be our very first success in the terms of academic boycott, not just passing a resolution supporting academic boycott as we have done for several years in the UK”, he said. “The new thing is that that the University of Johannesburg may actually sever links with Ben Gurion University, under pressure from its own academics, as well as many, many academics in South Africa. Two hundred and eighty academics, very prominent, some vice-chancellors of universities have signed this petition calling for severing the links. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has put his name to the cultural boycott. It is really spreading.”
On support in Israel for BDS, Barghouti pointed out that the campaign had grown in strength since Israel’s all out bombardment of Gaza in 2008-09. The BDS campaign, he said, had been “launched inside Israel, predominately [by] Israeli Jewish citizens, conscientious citizens, academics, intellectuals, artists, students and other activists and queer activists. This campaign is really growing and attracting a lot of attention.” According to Barghouti, “The Israeli BDS group, called Boycott from Within, is helping us tremendously in many, many ways”.
Barghouti also cited the important contribution to the BDS campaign by Israeli groups such as the Alternative Information Centre and the Women’s Coalition for Peace. Barghouti noted that the Women’s Coalition for Peace was playing a particularly important role, having established the “Who Profits from the Occupation” web site. Barghouti noted that the site “documents almost all international and Israeli companies profiting from the occupation. This has been an extremely valuable resource for BDS activists everywhere, who want to select companies to target and want to select those involved in the occupation.” Barghouti added that while “BDS talks about comprehensive Palestinian human rights: ending the occupation, as well as ending apartheid and racial discrimination in Israel and most importantly the right of return for refugees …the occupation is clearly the most convenient and easiest practical target.”
Barghouti went on to say that there are Israeli activists working on the cultural boycott campaign, academic campaign and product boycotts and “they are involved in all the networks that the BNC is coordinating globally”.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the National Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and a volunteer with the international human rights and solidarity group, the International Women's Peace Service, in Palestine]
please find below my recent interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in Ramallah. The interview has been published in Direct Action. I will also be uploading soon a video version of the interview in the near future, which will also be available on the Live from Occupied Palestine blog.
In solidarity, Kim
***
Home » Issue 29: February 2011
Direct Action
Palestinians speak on growing boycott of Israel
http://directaction.org.au/issue29/palestinians_speak_on_growing_boycott_of_israel
By Kim Bullimore, in Ramallah, occupied Palestine
In 2005, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations issued an international call for the boycott of Israel. Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression. It calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law. Over the past five years, the BDS campaign has gone from strength to strength internationally, with trade unions, student groups and other sectors announcing support. Kim Bullimore spoke with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad in Ramallah about the growing international campaign. Barghouti is a Palestinian political and cultural analyst and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Awwad is the national coordinator of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).
Omar Barghouti
“After five years of BDS, we feel that we have reached our ‘South Africa moment’”, Omar Barghouti told Direct Action. “We are on the offensive, and Zionist and anti-BDS groups are definitely on the defensive everywhere.”
Barghouti notes: “A few years ago we would have looked at where we are now as a dream that cannot come true except after many, many years. But after five years we have campaigns which are advocating BDS [and] working on BDS from the US to Australia, from Norway to South Africa, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina and so on. So now we have very successful campaigns in corporate responsibility, divestment campaigns.”
According to Barghouti, who is one of the founders of the PACBI, since Israel’s all-out assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, the BDS campaign, particularly the academic and cultural boycott, has grown by leaps and bounds. “Since Gaza and especially after the flotilla attack, academic and cultural boycott campaigns have spread throughout the world. Big performers, major artists like the Pixies, [Elvis] Costello, Gill Scott Heron and others have cancelled performances in Israel. We are getting more and more and the list of groups is growing; every month we are getting new performers that are cancelling.”
Barghouti points out that the cancellation of performances in Israel by such artists means that “millions and millions of fans of those big artists have been introduced to the boycott. So now BDS is a name that is known in the mainstream media, in Israel, the US and Europe and probably in Australia as well. So we think there is a lot of progress being made.”
Barghouti continued that the next step is to “increase the coordination of all BDS activists in specific campaigns”. He noted that not only is the BNC coordinating many global campaigns for BDS, but that “we are spreading BDS through local conferences and regional conferences.
“Our latest regional conference was in India, and it attracted many from South Asia and was an extremely important moment for us to spread BDS in that part of the world. The next will be Latin America. We will have a regional conference in Latin America in 2011, and that will be our biggest ‘new hit’, so to speak. So we are branching out. And of course the conference that happened in Australia last October was extremely important. So we hope there will be more coordination with BDS activists in Australia.”
Hind Awwad
Hind Awwad, the BNC’s national coordinator in Ramallah, explained that there is currently overwhelming consensus for BDS within all sectors of Palestinian society. “Within the three sectors of Palestinian society — this being Palestinians present in the 1967 areas, the 48 areas [Israel] and Palestinians in the diaspora — there is overwhelming consensus on BDS or the full boycott of Israel. This includes academic and cultural boycott.” She points out: “This consensus is represented by the BDS National Committee, which is a wide coalition of the largest mass civil society organisations within Palestinian society”. At present, the BNC represents the “largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations”.
Asked about the argument by Zionists and anti-BDS groups that BDS hurts Palestinians, particularly Palestinian workers, Awwad pointed out that when the BDS call was issued in 2005 it was endorsed by all major Palestinian trade unions, farmer unions and agricultural unions. In addition, the three major Palestinian trade union federations are now part of the BNC. “So there is consensus among Palestinian workers and agricultural farmers on the need for BDS”, she said.
Awwad added that the argument that BDS hurts Palestinians “is a very patronising argument. It makes it seem like Palestinians are not mature enough to decide what they want. The overwhelming consensus within Palestinian civil society is very clear on the need for full BDS. We are mature enough to make our own decisions; we are mature enough to know what we want and to know what tactics to use to wage our struggle, our resistance to Israel’s oppression.”
International companies
Both Barghouti and Awwad note that a range of international companies are profiting from Israel’s occupation. Awwad said: “Within the Industrial zones that Israel is setting up, there are international corporations that are complicit in maintaining these zones and thereby they are directly aiding Israel’s occupation”. She noted that such companies are legitimate targets within the framework of the BDS campaign “due to their involvement in the Israeli occupation and due to their violations of international law”.
Asked about BDS campaigns against international companies profiting from Israel’s occupation, Barghouti cited the campaign against Veolia and Alstrom as one of the biggest success stories. The two French conglomerates are currently involved in building the Jerusalem light rail, intended to connect Israel’s illegal colonies to the city of Jerusalem. However, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which outlines the rights and responsibilities of an occupying power, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its civilian population into the territories it occupies. The Jerusalem light rail will aid in the transfer of sections of Israel’s population into the territories it illegally seized in 1967.
Barghouti said, “We have targeted those two companies because they were involved in this patently illegal project”. Since the campaign began in November 2008, “Veolia specifically has lost contracts worth billions of dollars, close to 10 billion in fact, and we think a lot of that can be attributed to BDS campaigns in Sweden, the UK, Ireland, France, Melbourne and other places”.
Barghouti also noted that two other BDS campaigns that have grown in strength internationally are the campaigns to strip the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a key Israeli and Zionist organisation, of its charitable status and the campaign against the Israeli state-owned company Agrexco. Barghouti said the primary reason for targeting the JNF was because “it’s a colonial entity, a very racist entity implicated in Israel’s war crimes and violations of international law”, while Agrexco is being targeted because it is Israel’s major exporter of settlement products and produce.
Barghouti noted that the campaign against Agrexco has been particularly successful in France, where close to 100 NGOs and five national political parties are working jointly on the campaign. The campaign is also strong in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Belgium and many other countries. Barghouti encouraged Australian BDS activists also to get involved in the Agrexco campaign.
Palestinian Authority
On the boycott against Israeli settlement goods launched by the Palestinian Authority (PA), Awwad noted that while this was a welcome move, it does not go far enough. “While this campaign is certainly a step in the right direction, I think it is a step that is incomplete and has come way too late.” Awwad noted that a boycott focused solely on Israel’s illegal settlements in reality lets the Israeli government off the hook. “According to international law, Israel is the liable party for the settlements. The settlements are not a legal entity on their own. So, if we are to hold Israel accountable for its settlements and occupation industry, we should target Israel as a whole, not just the settlements.”
Awwad pointed out that the PA campaign has come as a result of the overwhelming growth in the global boycott campaign. “The PA felt that they were behind on a boycott of Israel, that they had to take up some part of the boycott or some part of BDS that they could work on, given the agreements they have with Israel.” Awwad said that the constraints imposed on the PA by the Paris Protocol and the Oslo Agreement made it choose to focus on this part of the BDS campaign. She noted, however, that “the standards for Palestinian civil society of course remain much higher than the PA … with a full boycott of Israel, not just the settlements”.
Two important developments in the BDS campaign in 2010 were the increased support in both South Africa and Israel. According to Barghouti, “the developments in South Africa ... have been phenomenal.
“Now we have an Artists Against Apartheid in South Africa, and to us this is extremely relevant symbolically and practically. There are major campaigns supported by very key figures like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and major figures in the ANC, major cultural figures and many prominent academics are involved in the campaigns for BDS.”
Barghouti said that one particularly important campaign in South Africa was that at the University of Johannesburg to sever links with Ben Gurion University. “We hope that this may well be our very first success in the terms of academic boycott, not just passing a resolution supporting academic boycott as we have done for several years in the UK”, he said. “The new thing is that that the University of Johannesburg may actually sever links with Ben Gurion University, under pressure from its own academics, as well as many, many academics in South Africa. Two hundred and eighty academics, very prominent, some vice-chancellors of universities have signed this petition calling for severing the links. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has put his name to the cultural boycott. It is really spreading.”
On support in Israel for BDS, Barghouti pointed out that the campaign had grown in strength since Israel’s all out bombardment of Gaza in 2008-09. The BDS campaign, he said, had been “launched inside Israel, predominately [by] Israeli Jewish citizens, conscientious citizens, academics, intellectuals, artists, students and other activists and queer activists. This campaign is really growing and attracting a lot of attention.” According to Barghouti, “The Israeli BDS group, called Boycott from Within, is helping us tremendously in many, many ways”.
Barghouti also cited the important contribution to the BDS campaign by Israeli groups such as the Alternative Information Centre and the Women’s Coalition for Peace. Barghouti noted that the Women’s Coalition for Peace was playing a particularly important role, having established the “Who Profits from the Occupation” web site. Barghouti noted that the site “documents almost all international and Israeli companies profiting from the occupation. This has been an extremely valuable resource for BDS activists everywhere, who want to select companies to target and want to select those involved in the occupation.” Barghouti added that while “BDS talks about comprehensive Palestinian human rights: ending the occupation, as well as ending apartheid and racial discrimination in Israel and most importantly the right of return for refugees …the occupation is clearly the most convenient and easiest practical target.”
Barghouti went on to say that there are Israeli activists working on the cultural boycott campaign, academic campaign and product boycotts and “they are involved in all the networks that the BNC is coordinating globally”.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the National Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and a volunteer with the international human rights and solidarity group, the International Women's Peace Service, in Palestine]
Monday, December 6, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Boycott apartheid Israel: national campaign launched
Home » Issue 28: November-December 2010
Direct Action
Boycott apartheid Israel: national campaign launched
By Kim Bullimore and Sahal Al-Ruwaili
More than 150 Palestine solidarity activists and supporters of human rights from around Australia gathered in Melbourne October 29-31 for Australia’s first national boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) conference in support of Palestine.
The conference represented a watershed moment in Australian Palestine solidarity work. It was organised in support of the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for the boycott of Israel. The 2005 call, issued by 171 Palestinian civil society organisations, appealed for a comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel as a focal point of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law. The BDS campaign calls for an end to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and the dismantling of the apartheid wall; equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel; and upholding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
International law
In August, Julia Terreu, one of the organisers of the Australian BDS conference, told Direct Action that the conference is an important initiative because Israel flagrantly flouts international law. “Israel continues to carry out its siege and occupation of Gaza and illegal occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and more recently we saw the illegal attack on the humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza and the murder of nine human rights activists by Israeli commandos.” Terreu went on to say: “As the BDS campaign continues to grow in leaps and bounds internationally, it is time for supporters of human rights and justice in Australia to come together and develop a national campaign in support of BDS and the Palestinian people”.
International guest speaker Rafeef Ziadah, speaking on behalf of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told delegates at the October 29 launch of the conference: “Australian activists were key in shutting down South African apartheid. It is time to make history again by shutting down Israeli apartheid, and this weekend we are going to start doing that together.”
Speaking with Direct Action, Rafeef Ziadah, who is also a member of the steering committee of the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said the conference was “an important step in coordinating a national BDS campaign across Australia to put pressure on Israel to simply abide by international law”.
Also speaking at the launch of the conference, which was chaired by well-known Australian media personality and political commentator Bryan Dawe, were Palestinian academic and radio presenter Yousef Alreemawi, Jerusalem-based Israeli activist Ofer Neiman from “BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within” and the secretary of Unions ACT in Canberra, Kim Sattler.
On October 30, visiting American Jewish activist and author Anna Baltzer also addressed the conference. Baltzer, a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine and author of A Witness in Palestine, spoke on BDS and the popular struggle in Palestine. Baltzer was joined by Alex Whisson from Australians for Palestine, who discussed the history of BDS and civil disobedience. In the session on “Struggle and Solidarity”, Rafeef Ziadah was joined by Palestinian-Australian poet and writer Samah Sabawi and the secretary of the Victorian Maritime Union of Australia and president of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Kevin Bracken, to discuss the international solidarity campaign.
Sabawi noted: “Israeli propagandists attacking the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement often claim that pro-Palestinian activists hide behind words like international humanitarian law to promote a hidden agenda aimed at demonising and delegitimising Israel ... But there is no hidden agenda. We are explicit and clear in what we say and what we call for. We don’t hide behind international humanitarian law; we stand by it. This is precisely why Israeli propagandists have good reason to worry. Israel knows that its fight to legitimise its behaviour cannot be won for as long as the BDS movement continues to expose its violations.” Sabawi also noted that Israel in its effort to “exonerate itself of accountability” was seeking to “redefine the rules of international humanitarian law and undermine international bodies and institutions”. She noted: “If Israel succeeds, Palestinians will not be the only ones to suffer. The implications of legitimising Israel’s behaviour will have far-reaching effects on all citizens of this globe.”
Union solidarity
In the same session, Kevin Bracken discussed the importance of worker and union solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the last year the BDS campaign has begun to draw support from a number of Australian trade unions and labour councils. One of the aims of the conference was to extend that support among trade unions, as well as the wider Australian community. The conference was successful in bringing together members of more than 20 different unions across Australia. In addition, five Australian trade unions sent official delegations to the conference to participate in the discussion around the practical implementation of the BDS campaign and resolutions.
On the final day of the conference, long-time unionists Kevin Davis and Ginny Adams discussed apartheid in relation to international law, how it applied to South Africa and in what ways could it apply to Israel, while Sabawi and Kim Bullimore from the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine, tackled the issue of countering Israeli efforts to delegitimise the BDS campaign.
The final session of the conference unanimously adopted a calendar of BDS actions and activities to be carried out nationally over the next 12 months. Conference organisers urged all attendees “to build on the momentum of the conference and work together to build the strongest possible grassroots campaign to hold Israel accountable for its actions”.
One of the conference highlights was the “Concert for Palestine”, which formally launched Australian Artists Against Apartheid. Performers at the concert included Fear of A Brown Planet, the Conch, the Phil Monsour Band, Jafra and Rafeef Ziadah. Phil Monsour, one of the organisers of the conference and concert, told Direct Action in September: “The nature of the apartheid system in Israel is slowly seeping into the consciousness of people outside the Middle East and will hopefully lead to artists of conscience not only supporting the boycott but also using music to help expose the nature of the apartheid system in Israel to a mass audience”.
With the conclusion of the conference, participants have begun plans for a range of BDS actions and activities around the theme “Don’t buy Israeli apartheid for Christmas”.
To find out more about the Australian BDS campaign visit the Australian Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign for Palestine website or email ausbds@gmail.com
[Kim Bullimore is the convener of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Melbourne and a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in Australia. She is one of the organisers of the Australian BDS Conference. Sahal Al-Ruwaili is a Palestine solidarity activist with Action for Palestine in Adelaide.]
Direct Action
Boycott apartheid Israel: national campaign launched
By Kim Bullimore and Sahal Al-Ruwaili
More than 150 Palestine solidarity activists and supporters of human rights from around Australia gathered in Melbourne October 29-31 for Australia’s first national boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) conference in support of Palestine.
The conference represented a watershed moment in Australian Palestine solidarity work. It was organised in support of the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for the boycott of Israel. The 2005 call, issued by 171 Palestinian civil society organisations, appealed for a comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel as a focal point of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law. The BDS campaign calls for an end to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and the dismantling of the apartheid wall; equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel; and upholding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
International law
In August, Julia Terreu, one of the organisers of the Australian BDS conference, told Direct Action that the conference is an important initiative because Israel flagrantly flouts international law. “Israel continues to carry out its siege and occupation of Gaza and illegal occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and more recently we saw the illegal attack on the humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza and the murder of nine human rights activists by Israeli commandos.” Terreu went on to say: “As the BDS campaign continues to grow in leaps and bounds internationally, it is time for supporters of human rights and justice in Australia to come together and develop a national campaign in support of BDS and the Palestinian people”.
International guest speaker Rafeef Ziadah, speaking on behalf of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told delegates at the October 29 launch of the conference: “Australian activists were key in shutting down South African apartheid. It is time to make history again by shutting down Israeli apartheid, and this weekend we are going to start doing that together.”
Speaking with Direct Action, Rafeef Ziadah, who is also a member of the steering committee of the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said the conference was “an important step in coordinating a national BDS campaign across Australia to put pressure on Israel to simply abide by international law”.
Also speaking at the launch of the conference, which was chaired by well-known Australian media personality and political commentator Bryan Dawe, were Palestinian academic and radio presenter Yousef Alreemawi, Jerusalem-based Israeli activist Ofer Neiman from “BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within” and the secretary of Unions ACT in Canberra, Kim Sattler.
On October 30, visiting American Jewish activist and author Anna Baltzer also addressed the conference. Baltzer, a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine and author of A Witness in Palestine, spoke on BDS and the popular struggle in Palestine. Baltzer was joined by Alex Whisson from Australians for Palestine, who discussed the history of BDS and civil disobedience. In the session on “Struggle and Solidarity”, Rafeef Ziadah was joined by Palestinian-Australian poet and writer Samah Sabawi and the secretary of the Victorian Maritime Union of Australia and president of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Kevin Bracken, to discuss the international solidarity campaign.
Sabawi noted: “Israeli propagandists attacking the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement often claim that pro-Palestinian activists hide behind words like international humanitarian law to promote a hidden agenda aimed at demonising and delegitimising Israel ... But there is no hidden agenda. We are explicit and clear in what we say and what we call for. We don’t hide behind international humanitarian law; we stand by it. This is precisely why Israeli propagandists have good reason to worry. Israel knows that its fight to legitimise its behaviour cannot be won for as long as the BDS movement continues to expose its violations.” Sabawi also noted that Israel in its effort to “exonerate itself of accountability” was seeking to “redefine the rules of international humanitarian law and undermine international bodies and institutions”. She noted: “If Israel succeeds, Palestinians will not be the only ones to suffer. The implications of legitimising Israel’s behaviour will have far-reaching effects on all citizens of this globe.”
Union solidarity
In the same session, Kevin Bracken discussed the importance of worker and union solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the last year the BDS campaign has begun to draw support from a number of Australian trade unions and labour councils. One of the aims of the conference was to extend that support among trade unions, as well as the wider Australian community. The conference was successful in bringing together members of more than 20 different unions across Australia. In addition, five Australian trade unions sent official delegations to the conference to participate in the discussion around the practical implementation of the BDS campaign and resolutions.
On the final day of the conference, long-time unionists Kevin Davis and Ginny Adams discussed apartheid in relation to international law, how it applied to South Africa and in what ways could it apply to Israel, while Sabawi and Kim Bullimore from the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine, tackled the issue of countering Israeli efforts to delegitimise the BDS campaign.
The final session of the conference unanimously adopted a calendar of BDS actions and activities to be carried out nationally over the next 12 months. Conference organisers urged all attendees “to build on the momentum of the conference and work together to build the strongest possible grassroots campaign to hold Israel accountable for its actions”.
One of the conference highlights was the “Concert for Palestine”, which formally launched Australian Artists Against Apartheid. Performers at the concert included Fear of A Brown Planet, the Conch, the Phil Monsour Band, Jafra and Rafeef Ziadah. Phil Monsour, one of the organisers of the conference and concert, told Direct Action in September: “The nature of the apartheid system in Israel is slowly seeping into the consciousness of people outside the Middle East and will hopefully lead to artists of conscience not only supporting the boycott but also using music to help expose the nature of the apartheid system in Israel to a mass audience”.
With the conclusion of the conference, participants have begun plans for a range of BDS actions and activities around the theme “Don’t buy Israeli apartheid for Christmas”.
To find out more about the Australian BDS campaign visit the Australian Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign for Palestine website or email ausbds@gmail.com
[Kim Bullimore is the convener of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Melbourne and a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in Australia. She is one of the organisers of the Australian BDS Conference. Sahal Al-Ruwaili is a Palestine solidarity activist with Action for Palestine in Adelaide.]
Friday, August 6, 2010
UPDATE ON NATIONAL AUSTRALIAN BDS CONFERENCE CALL
Update No 2: 27 July, 2010
UPDATE ON NATIONAL AUSTRALIAN BDS CONFERENCE CALL
Building Solidarity, Combating Occupation and Apartheid
National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference
Melbourne, 29 - 31 October 2010
- activism in support of Palestine -
Dear friends and supporters,
Thank you for your emails and words of support. We have been overwhelmed and delighted by the positive response to the conference call. We are currently working on the conference program and agenda and hope to have an initial program to you all shortly.
In the meantime, endorsements for the conference have continued to come in and in the last week we have received endorsements for the conference from:
• Australians for Palestine (Melbourne)
• Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine (Canberra)
• Women in Black (Melbourne)
• Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth (FAMSY)
• Garth Smith (Organiser, Seminars in the Sand, Byron Bay)
• Maxine Caron (Organiser, Seminars in the Sand, Byron Bay);
They have joined the following individuals, community and solidarity groups in endorsing the call for the conference:
Individuals
• Yousef Alreemawi; advocate for Palestine, academic and refugee activist.
• Leyal Asku - Lawyer.
• Fay Waddington (Palestine Solidarity Queensland)
• Kim Sattler (Secretary Unions ACT)
• Ginny Adams (Organiser, Health and Community Services Union)
• Kathryn Kelly (former ISM activist)
Groups:
• Friends of Palestine Western Australia (Perth)
• Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Melbourne)
• Students for Palestine (Victoria)
• Action for Palestine (Adelaide)
• Justice for Palestine (Brisbane)
• Australian-Palestinian Cultural Centre
• Palestine Remembered @ Radio 3CR; Australia's only radio program that it totally dedicated to the Palestinian cause in English
We would like to encourage all supporters of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and justice to endorse and support this very important initiative. If you would like to endorse and support the call for the conference, please contact us on ausbds@gmail.com
We will send out regular updates on the endorsements and the planning for the conference over the next couple of months.
You can keep up with news of what is happening with the conference by joining our email announcement group at: australian-bds-conference@googlegroups.com (or email us at ausbds@gmail.com and let us know you want to be added to the announcement list and we will add you).
Or by joining us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=123970357646027
We will also keep our blog regularly updated: http://australianbdscampaign.wordpress.com/
Thank you again and we look forward to seeing everyone in October,
UPDATE ON NATIONAL AUSTRALIAN BDS CONFERENCE CALL
Building Solidarity, Combating Occupation and Apartheid
National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference
Melbourne, 29 - 31 October 2010
- activism in support of Palestine -
Dear friends and supporters,
Thank you for your emails and words of support. We have been overwhelmed and delighted by the positive response to the conference call. We are currently working on the conference program and agenda and hope to have an initial program to you all shortly.
In the meantime, endorsements for the conference have continued to come in and in the last week we have received endorsements for the conference from:
• Australians for Palestine (Melbourne)
• Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine (Canberra)
• Women in Black (Melbourne)
• Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth (FAMSY)
• Garth Smith (Organiser, Seminars in the Sand, Byron Bay)
• Maxine Caron (Organiser, Seminars in the Sand, Byron Bay);
They have joined the following individuals, community and solidarity groups in endorsing the call for the conference:
Individuals
• Yousef Alreemawi; advocate for Palestine, academic and refugee activist.
• Leyal Asku - Lawyer.
• Fay Waddington (Palestine Solidarity Queensland)
• Kim Sattler (Secretary Unions ACT)
• Ginny Adams (Organiser, Health and Community Services Union)
• Kathryn Kelly (former ISM activist)
Groups:
• Friends of Palestine Western Australia (Perth)
• Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Melbourne)
• Students for Palestine (Victoria)
• Action for Palestine (Adelaide)
• Justice for Palestine (Brisbane)
• Australian-Palestinian Cultural Centre
• Palestine Remembered @ Radio 3CR; Australia's only radio program that it totally dedicated to the Palestinian cause in English
We would like to encourage all supporters of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and justice to endorse and support this very important initiative. If you would like to endorse and support the call for the conference, please contact us on ausbds@gmail.com
We will send out regular updates on the endorsements and the planning for the conference over the next couple of months.
You can keep up with news of what is happening with the conference by joining our email announcement group at: australian-bds-conference@googlegroups.com (or email us at ausbds@gmail.com and let us know you want to be added to the announcement list and we will add you).
Or by joining us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=123970357646027
We will also keep our blog regularly updated: http://australianbdscampaign.wordpress.com/
Thank you again and we look forward to seeing everyone in October,
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Refuting pro-Israel hasbara: Official PGFTU statement in support of Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment campaign against Israel
Dear friends,
as you will be aware with the increasing success of the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Campaign against Israel, the Israeli state, pro-Zionist media outlets and pro-Israel groups have sought to discredit the campaign.
In particular, with increasing support for the campaign coming from trade unions around the world, Israel and pro-Israel groups have engaged in hasbara claiming that the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) does not support the campaign. This was despite the fact that the PGFTU, along with other Palestinian trade unions signed onto the original 2005 Palestinian Unified Call for BDS and that the PGFTU and other trade unions are members of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (the national Palestinian steering committee for the BDS campaign). See: http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Over the last few months the Histadrut (Israel's key trade union federation), along with the recently founded pro-Israel trade union lobby group, TULIP (Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine) have sought to perpetuate this hasbara about the PGFTU and the BDS campaign.
Recently both TULIP (running a report from Trade Union Friends of Israel http://www.tuliponline.org/?p=1167) and the Jewish Chronicle (http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/21906/palestinian-unions-say-israel-boycott-would-harm-them) ran stories claiming that the head of the PGFTU, Shaher Sa'ad had stated that the PGFTU were not interested in participating in the BDS campaign. Following the news story, the BNC issued a press release which included Mr Sa'ad denial of such a statement.
At the same time the PGFTU issued a statement (in Arabic) clearly outlining their support for BDS. The statement has now been translated into English and is below.
Also below is the BNC Press release welcoming the PGFTU's reaffirmation of support and participation in the BDS campaign.
Please feel free to distribute to your networks.
In solidarity,
Kim
*****
OFFICIAL PGFTU STATEMENT:
A Statement* by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the Palestinian Trade Union Blocs and Frameworks
25 November 2009
Based on the national and trade union position, which PGFTU has always been a part of, representing the unified national and trade union framework for all Palestinian trade union and labor blocs and frameworks, PGFTU with all its organizations, branches and member trade unions stresses its advanced historic and national role in the Palestinian national movement [in the struggle] to accomplish the national tasks, at the forefront of which is putting an end to the Israeli occupation and colonization and establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were expelled.
In addition, our Federation unambiguously states its principled and committed position for the boycott of Israel in all international forums, and appreciates all international forces, institutions and trade unions that stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and adopt this position. PGFTU and its member trade unions reiterates that is has been and will always be a key and authentic part of the Palestinian national coalition for the boycott [the BDS National Committee, BNC] and confirms the necessity of supporting the national Palestinian production and of building an [independent] economy free from economic dependency.
[…]
Together we continue on the path of national and social struggle
Long live the unity of our people and its national forces
Long like the unity of the Palestinian trade union movement
Glory and immortality to our martyrs and freedom to our prisoners.
Palestine – 25 November 2009
Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)
Secretary General Shaher Sa’ed and the members of the Executive Committee
Endorsed by: Youth Workers Movement, Central Office for the Workers Movement, Progressive
Workers Block, Progressive Labor Union Front, Workers Unity Block, Workers Struggle Block,
Labor Solidarity Organization
*Arabic original: http://web.alquds.com/docs/pdf-docs/2009/11/26/page1.pdf
Report on PGFTU's Website (Arabic): http://pgftu.org/site2/news.php?action=view&id=965
Shaher Sa'ad (on right) meeting with international trade union representatives (photo: PGFTU website)
***
BNC Warmly Welcomes PGFTU's Statement Confirming Unambiguous Endorsement of BDS
[Press Release: 1 December 2009]
The Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC, warmly welcomes the statement issued on 25 November 2009 by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) -- signed by its Secretary General, Mr. Shaher Sa'ad, and its Executive Committee, and endorsed by all the main Palestinian trade union blocs that are represented in the Federation. In particular, the BNC welcomes PGFTU's affirmation of its "principled and committed position for the boycott of Israel" and its praise of international trade unions and other civil society organizations that stand in solidarity with Palestinian rights and adopt the boycott against Israel.
We are further encouraged by PGFTU's commitment to remaining a "key and authentic component" of the large civil society coalition that leads the global BDS movement, the BNC.
While Mr. Sa'ad himself signed PGFTU's endorsement of the BDS Call when it was first launched on 9 July 2005, this new statement by the leadership of PGFTU confirms the Federation's unqualified commitment to BDS in the struggle "to accomplish the national [Palestinian] tasks, at the forefront of which is putting an end to the Israeli occupation and colonization and establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were expelled," as the Federation's just-released statement affirms.
All three Palestinian trade union federations -- the General Union of Palestinian Workers (a constituent mass organization of the PLO), PGFTU and the Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions -- have endorsed BDS against Israel and have been part of the BNC since its inception. This has provided a unified Palestinian labor voice in support of boycotting Israel until it ends its three-tiered oppression of the Palestinian people: its occupation and colonization of the 1967 occupied territory; its institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid; and its denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees, especially their right to return to their homes of origin.
Despite this complete unity behind BDS, Zionist media outlets as well as Israel lobby groups in the West have launched a campaign of deception and disinformation, using unofficial utterances by this or that Palestinian trade union official to claim that part of the Palestinian trade union movement was unenthusiastic about the boycott or, worse yet, in favor of normal relations with Israel and its complicit institutions. This hasbara was most vigorous in the UK, where well-oiled pressure groups, like Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), kept the fraud going and tried to influence major trade unions not to support BDS. With the truth finally being revealed about Israel's war crimes, apartheid and colonial policies, however, motions supporting BDS were passed with overwhelming majorities in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Scottish Trade Union Congress, several major British unions and, finally, the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), leaving the Israel trade union lobby in tatters, facing imminent collapse. With the steady and remarkable spread of BDS among major labor unions across the World, the Israel lobby has evidently reached a level of despair that is compelling it to intensify its reliance on fabrications, intimidation and outright lies in its abortive attempts to hinder the growth of the boycott.
In the latest fatal blow to whatever credibility these Israel lobby groups may still have had in some trade unions, PGFTU's Secretary General himself accused TUFI of fabricating or misrepresenting the statement they attributed to him in a Jewish Chronicle article on November 12, in which he allegedly distanced the Federation from BDS. The BNC and the Palestinian labor movement afterwards strongly urged PGFTU to issue an official statement committing itself to the BDS campaign and thus putting an end to all the rumors and innuendo spread by the Zionist lobby in the West that shed any doubt on PGFTU’s commitment to the boycott. By issuing this recent, clearly-worded statement, PGFTU has confirmed that it not only unequivocally supports the boycott against Israel but that it also still considers itself an integral part of the BDS campaign leadership, the BNC.
The Palestinian labor movement has never been as united as it is today in supporting the boycott against Israel and calling on all international trade unions and trade union federations to endorse BDS as the most effective form of solidarity with the people of Palestine in general and our working class in particular. Furthermore, we repeat our appeal to all international trade unions to sever their links with the Histadrut, a racist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
As the struggle against apartheid in South Africa has shown, effective and consistent international solidarity with an oppressed people is best expressed in forms that the oppressed themselves call for. Since 2005, Palestinian civil society, including its trade union federations and all the trade union political blocs, has been united in calling on people of conscience and institutions around the world, particularly trade unions, to endorse BDS against Israel and to implement the boycott in diverse ways that best suit their respective contexts. BDS remains our best hope to end Israel’s occupation and apartheid and to attain our UN-recognized rights, particularly our right to self determination.
The Palestinian Civil Society BDS National Committee (BNC)
as you will be aware with the increasing success of the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Campaign against Israel, the Israeli state, pro-Zionist media outlets and pro-Israel groups have sought to discredit the campaign.
In particular, with increasing support for the campaign coming from trade unions around the world, Israel and pro-Israel groups have engaged in hasbara claiming that the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) does not support the campaign. This was despite the fact that the PGFTU, along with other Palestinian trade unions signed onto the original 2005 Palestinian Unified Call for BDS and that the PGFTU and other trade unions are members of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (the national Palestinian steering committee for the BDS campaign). See: http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Over the last few months the Histadrut (Israel's key trade union federation), along with the recently founded pro-Israel trade union lobby group, TULIP (Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine) have sought to perpetuate this hasbara about the PGFTU and the BDS campaign.
Recently both TULIP (running a report from Trade Union Friends of Israel http://www.tuliponline.org/?p=1167) and the Jewish Chronicle (http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/21906/palestinian-unions-say-israel-boycott-would-harm-them) ran stories claiming that the head of the PGFTU, Shaher Sa'ad had stated that the PGFTU were not interested in participating in the BDS campaign. Following the news story, the BNC issued a press release which included Mr Sa'ad denial of such a statement.
At the same time the PGFTU issued a statement (in Arabic) clearly outlining their support for BDS. The statement has now been translated into English and is below.
Also below is the BNC Press release welcoming the PGFTU's reaffirmation of support and participation in the BDS campaign.
Please feel free to distribute to your networks.
In solidarity,
Kim
*****
OFFICIAL PGFTU STATEMENT:
A Statement* by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the Palestinian Trade Union Blocs and Frameworks
25 November 2009
Based on the national and trade union position, which PGFTU has always been a part of, representing the unified national and trade union framework for all Palestinian trade union and labor blocs and frameworks, PGFTU with all its organizations, branches and member trade unions stresses its advanced historic and national role in the Palestinian national movement [in the struggle] to accomplish the national tasks, at the forefront of which is putting an end to the Israeli occupation and colonization and establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were expelled.
In addition, our Federation unambiguously states its principled and committed position for the boycott of Israel in all international forums, and appreciates all international forces, institutions and trade unions that stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and adopt this position. PGFTU and its member trade unions reiterates that is has been and will always be a key and authentic part of the Palestinian national coalition for the boycott [the BDS National Committee, BNC] and confirms the necessity of supporting the national Palestinian production and of building an [independent] economy free from economic dependency.
[…]
Together we continue on the path of national and social struggle
Long live the unity of our people and its national forces
Long like the unity of the Palestinian trade union movement
Glory and immortality to our martyrs and freedom to our prisoners.
Palestine – 25 November 2009
Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)
Secretary General Shaher Sa’ed and the members of the Executive Committee
Endorsed by: Youth Workers Movement, Central Office for the Workers Movement, Progressive
Workers Block, Progressive Labor Union Front, Workers Unity Block, Workers Struggle Block,
Labor Solidarity Organization
*Arabic original: http://web.alquds.com/docs/pdf-docs/2009/11/26/page1.pdf
Report on PGFTU's Website (Arabic): http://pgftu.org/site2/news.php?action=view&id=965
Shaher Sa'ad (on right) meeting with international trade union representatives (photo: PGFTU website)
***
BNC Warmly Welcomes PGFTU's Statement Confirming Unambiguous Endorsement of BDS
[Press Release: 1 December 2009]
The Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC, warmly welcomes the statement issued on 25 November 2009 by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) -- signed by its Secretary General, Mr. Shaher Sa'ad, and its Executive Committee, and endorsed by all the main Palestinian trade union blocs that are represented in the Federation. In particular, the BNC welcomes PGFTU's affirmation of its "principled and committed position for the boycott of Israel" and its praise of international trade unions and other civil society organizations that stand in solidarity with Palestinian rights and adopt the boycott against Israel.
We are further encouraged by PGFTU's commitment to remaining a "key and authentic component" of the large civil society coalition that leads the global BDS movement, the BNC.
While Mr. Sa'ad himself signed PGFTU's endorsement of the BDS Call when it was first launched on 9 July 2005, this new statement by the leadership of PGFTU confirms the Federation's unqualified commitment to BDS in the struggle "to accomplish the national [Palestinian] tasks, at the forefront of which is putting an end to the Israeli occupation and colonization and establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and with the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were expelled," as the Federation's just-released statement affirms.
All three Palestinian trade union federations -- the General Union of Palestinian Workers (a constituent mass organization of the PLO), PGFTU and the Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions -- have endorsed BDS against Israel and have been part of the BNC since its inception. This has provided a unified Palestinian labor voice in support of boycotting Israel until it ends its three-tiered oppression of the Palestinian people: its occupation and colonization of the 1967 occupied territory; its institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid; and its denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees, especially their right to return to their homes of origin.
Despite this complete unity behind BDS, Zionist media outlets as well as Israel lobby groups in the West have launched a campaign of deception and disinformation, using unofficial utterances by this or that Palestinian trade union official to claim that part of the Palestinian trade union movement was unenthusiastic about the boycott or, worse yet, in favor of normal relations with Israel and its complicit institutions. This hasbara was most vigorous in the UK, where well-oiled pressure groups, like Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), kept the fraud going and tried to influence major trade unions not to support BDS. With the truth finally being revealed about Israel's war crimes, apartheid and colonial policies, however, motions supporting BDS were passed with overwhelming majorities in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Scottish Trade Union Congress, several major British unions and, finally, the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), leaving the Israel trade union lobby in tatters, facing imminent collapse. With the steady and remarkable spread of BDS among major labor unions across the World, the Israel lobby has evidently reached a level of despair that is compelling it to intensify its reliance on fabrications, intimidation and outright lies in its abortive attempts to hinder the growth of the boycott.
In the latest fatal blow to whatever credibility these Israel lobby groups may still have had in some trade unions, PGFTU's Secretary General himself accused TUFI of fabricating or misrepresenting the statement they attributed to him in a Jewish Chronicle article on November 12, in which he allegedly distanced the Federation from BDS. The BNC and the Palestinian labor movement afterwards strongly urged PGFTU to issue an official statement committing itself to the BDS campaign and thus putting an end to all the rumors and innuendo spread by the Zionist lobby in the West that shed any doubt on PGFTU’s commitment to the boycott. By issuing this recent, clearly-worded statement, PGFTU has confirmed that it not only unequivocally supports the boycott against Israel but that it also still considers itself an integral part of the BDS campaign leadership, the BNC.
The Palestinian labor movement has never been as united as it is today in supporting the boycott against Israel and calling on all international trade unions and trade union federations to endorse BDS as the most effective form of solidarity with the people of Palestine in general and our working class in particular. Furthermore, we repeat our appeal to all international trade unions to sever their links with the Histadrut, a racist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
As the struggle against apartheid in South Africa has shown, effective and consistent international solidarity with an oppressed people is best expressed in forms that the oppressed themselves call for. Since 2005, Palestinian civil society, including its trade union federations and all the trade union political blocs, has been united in calling on people of conscience and institutions around the world, particularly trade unions, to endorse BDS against Israel and to implement the boycott in diverse ways that best suit their respective contexts. BDS remains our best hope to end Israel’s occupation and apartheid and to attain our UN-recognized rights, particularly our right to self determination.
The Palestinian Civil Society BDS National Committee (BNC)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Boycotts as a Legitimate Means of Resistance: As Determined by the Oppressed People
Dear friends,
an excellent article by Kim Petersen critiquing opposition to BDS, particularly in relation to the "Zionist Left" in Israel. The article also offers a critique of those who nominally support boycott but seeks to redefine the parameters/objectives of the campaign to suit their own political agenda, ignoring the fact that BDS as a campaign is a Palestinian initiated and led (global) movement.
in solidarity, Kim
***
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/boycotts-as-a-legitimate-means-of-resistance/
Dissident Voice header
Boycotts as a Legitimate Means of Resistance
As Determined by the Oppressed People
by Kim Petersen / August 29th, 2009
Kim Petersen
Prejudice does not always come with an ugly face. The same holds for Zionism and racism. It is entirely possible for well-intentioned people to hold a prejudice and, even worse, act on held prejudices.
Uri Avnery opposes the brutality inflicted on Palestinians. He campaigns for peace with Palestinians. But he also has a Zionist past. He is European born and fought for the terrorist Irgun in perpetration of a holocaust (Nakba) against Palestinans. He later renounced Irgun’s tactics. He is antiwar, but he is not anti-the fruits of war. He approves of a two state solution. In other words, Israeli Jews will keep the fruits of their dispossessing others — this while continuing to press for the return of what they were dispossessed.1
Avnery advocates selective use of tactics against Zionism. This is apparent when it comes to an international boycott of Israel. Avnery states that no one is better qualified than South African archbishop Desmond Tutu to answer this question.2
What does Tutu say? He has called on the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa. Tutu supports the divestment campaign against Israel.3
Avnery’s fellow Israeli, Neve Gordon, agrees that it is time for a boycott.4 Avnery laments, “I am sorry that I cannot agree with him this time – neither about the similarity with South Africa nor about the efficacy of a boycott of Israel.”
Indeed, the apartheids — while in many respects similar — are also different. Gary Zaztman pointed to a key difference:
For all its serious and undoubted evils and the numerous crimes against humanity committed in its name, including physical slaughters, South African white-racist apartheid was not premised on committing genocide. Zionism, on the other hand, has been committed to dissolving the social, cultural, political and economic integrity of the Palestinian people, i.e., genocide, from the outset, at least as early as Theodor Herzl’s injunction in his diaries that the “transfer” of the Palestinian “penniless population” elsewhere be conducted “discreetly and circumspectly.”5
Uri Avnery
Boycotts as a Tactic against Racism
Avnery says Tutu told him: “The boycott was immensely important, much more than the armed struggle.”
But it was the revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, who refused to give up the right to armed struggle, who negotiated the dismantling of South African apartheid.6
Tutu also told Avnery, “The importance of the boycott was not only economic but also moral.”
Avnery writes, “It seems to me that Tutu’s answer emphasizes the huge difference between the South African reality at the time and ours today.”
So what is Avnery saying? First he states that Tutu is best qualified person to speak to the effectiveness of boycotting as a tool in the fight against racism, then he says Tutu has it wrong. So is Avnery saying, then, that he is best qualified to speak on the effectiveness of boycotts against racism?
Avnery fears that Israeli Jews will feel “the whole world is against us.”
However, isn’t that, in a sense, what the purpose is: to show that the whole world is against Jewish racism against Palestinians? It must be emphasized that the world is not against Jews, as Israeli propaganda would choose to portray it. Although he doesn’t specifically state it, Avnery is using a version of the anti-Semitism smear: if you are against anything Israel does, then you are against Israelis. Hence, you are anti-Semitic. This grotesque perversion of morality and logic holds that to be against racism toward Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic.
Avnery admits, “In South Africa, the world-wide boycott helped in strengthening the majority and steeling [sic] it for the struggle. The impact of a boycott on Israel would be the exact opposite: it would push the large majority into the arms of the extreme right and create a fortress mentality against the ‘anti-Semitic world’. (The boycott would, of course, have a different impact on the Palestinians, but that is not the aim of those who advocate it.)
Avnery merely states what is the current status quo. Israel is already hunkered down in an extreme right fortress mentality. The boycott is not the cause. Avnery fixates on the population dynamics. What is the relevance of majority and minority in Avnery’s reasoning? It would seem that Palestinians being in the minority – and the fact that the Palestinians support the boycott – to be even greater reason for international support of the boycott. Who and what is Avnery supporting: Palestinians from racism or Israeli Jews from the economic effects and moral stigma of an international boycott?
As for the aim of the boycott campaign: “to deny Israel the financial means to continue to kill Palestinians and occupy the lands.”7
Avnery raises “the Holocaust” arguing that Jewish suffering has imprinted itself deeply on the Jewish soul. That the Nazis rounded up Jews in concentration was a moral outrage. But what is the lesson of World War II? That suffering imposed on any identifiable group of people is evil and wrong, or that one group can appropriate a holocaust, make it their own, and use past suffering as a shield to inflict a holocaust on another people? Avnery argues that boycotting Jews will remind them of Nazism, but when Jews use Nazi-type techniques what should they be reminded of?
Avnery says it is okay to boycott of the product of the “settlements.” He draws a distinction between “settlers” (i.e., “colonisers”) and other Israeli Jews. How then does Avnery rationalize the fact that the “settlers” are in the West Bank?
BDS poster
Avnery asserts, “Those who call for a boycott act out of despair. And that is the root of the matter.” Indeed, despair is life for many Palestinians under occupation or in refugee camps.
Avnery states that an international boycott would be difficult to achieve, and the US would not be behind it. It was not easy to achieve against the apartheid regimes in South Africa either. Is that a reason not to try? Did not the US oppose a boycott of South Africa? Yes, it might take a long time. But times do change. The US (and its western allies’s) recalcitrance was steam rolled in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Empires have risen and fallen throughout history.
Avnery finds that the tactic of boycotting is “an example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy.”
Avnery continues, “In South Africa there was total agreement between the two sides about the unity of the country. The struggle was about the regime. Both Whites and Blacks considered themselves South Africans and were determined to keep the country intact. The Whites did not want partition, and indeed could not want it, because their economy was based on the labor of the Blacks.”
Seems there is some faulty analysis going on. “Whites did not want partition”? How can Avnery state something so factually inaccurate? What were Venda, Lebowa, the Bantustans, if not sections of South Africa partitioned off by the White government? Furthermore, that Zionism is now no longer dependent on Palestinian labor does not mask that it at one time was dependent on such labor; Avnery is cherry picking in his argument. Denying Palestinians the right to work in historical Palestine is a tactic that evolved from Zionism.
Also, how is it that Avnery can argue against an international boycott of Israel when Israel maintains a crushing illegal embargo against Palestinians – a war crime? As long as Israel uses such a tactic, then resistance through boycott, certainly, is legitimate.
Avnery says Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have nothing in common. However, this same lack of commonality was true between White and Black South Africans as well. Nonetheless, I take exception with the thrust of such argumentation. It prepares the ground for racism. Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Black and White South Africans are all humans. They all eat, work, sleep, have dreams, have families. This should be reason enough to act humanely toward each other: love of humanity. It is entirely possible to embrace our shared humanity and respect diversity.
Avnery concludes, “In short: the two conflicts are fundamentally different. Therefore, the methods of struggle, too, must necessarily be different.”
+of+bdscall.jpg)
This is logically flawed reasoning, much like the logical and moral flaw that being a victim of a genocide minimizes one’s own culpability in a subsequent genocide. One suspects that Avnery may well be the victim of a pained conscience and cognitive dissonance. I submit that the two “conflicts”8 are fundamentally similar. Fundamentally, colonial Israel and colonial South Africa share these hallmarks: a racially, culturally, spiritually, linguistically different group of outsiders through preponderant violence dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their homeland, and set up an apartheid system which humiliates the Indigenous peoples and privileges the occupiers.
Avnery focuses on certain “fundamentals” — which I submit are not fundamentals but nuances — that he considers different.
Avnery’s solution lies with “a comprehensive and detailed peace plan” from US president Barack Obama and “the full persuasive power of the United States” to lead to “a path of peace with Palestine.”
Avnery remembers well previous US-backed peace plans, like Oslo and the Roadmap. Why, then, does he cast his audacious hope on AIPAC appeaser Obama? Avnery hopes that Israeli Jews will realize that peace with Palestinians is the way? The peace activist touts a solution that has failed and been rejected many times. He rejects a solution that worked in South African because of the sensibilities of the oppressors.
But let us examine Avnery’s logic that fundamentally different “conflicts” demand different struggles.
Oppression is overthrown by struggle. Fundamentally different “conflicts” can succeed through similar struggles. As one example, revolutionaries overthrew an American-backed dictatorship in Cuba through armed struggle and Cuban revoluntionaries defeated South African forces in Angola through armed struggle.9
In his article’s finale, seemingly assured of his own argumentation over the person he deems the best qualified authority on boycotts as a tool to overcome apartheid, Avnery points to a prayer of Tutu’s – a prayer that would serve all of us well:
“Dear God, when I am wrong, please make me willing to see my mistake. And when I am right – please make me tolerable to live with.”
Hopefully, Avnery abides by such humbleness when he sees the error of his ways as well.
1. See Dinah Spritzer, “Last chance for Holocaust restitution?” JTA, 30 June 2009. [↩]
2. Uri Avnery, “Tutu’s Prayer,” Gush Shalom, 29 August 2009. [↩]
3. Desmond Tutu, “Israel: Time to Divest,” New Internationalist magazine, January/February 2003. Available online at Third World Traveler. [↩]
4. Neve Gordon, “Boycott Israel,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 2009. [↩]
5. Gary Zatzman, “The Notion of the ‘Jewish State’ as an ‘Apartheid Regime’ is a Liberal-Zionist One,” Dissident Voice, 21 November 2005. [↩]
6. See Bill Keller, Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela (Boston: Kingfisher, 2008). Mandela wanted to pursue a peaceful, non-violent settlement, but when faced with the violence of state power he felt compelled to use violence as a method of struggle. Mandela did emphasize that this violence was not terrorism: 98. [↩]
7. ”Aim of the boycott campaign,” Boycott Israel Now. [↩]
8. The word “conflict” minimizes the atrocities wreaked on Palestinians and South Africans by their oppressors. [↩]
9. Isaac Saney contends that the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the “turning point in the struggle against apartheid. ”Isaac Saney, “The Story of How Cuba Helped to Free Africa,” Morning Star, 4 November 2005. Available at Embajada de Cuba en Egipto. [↩]
Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim, or visit Kim's website.
an excellent article by Kim Petersen critiquing opposition to BDS, particularly in relation to the "Zionist Left" in Israel. The article also offers a critique of those who nominally support boycott but seeks to redefine the parameters/objectives of the campaign to suit their own political agenda, ignoring the fact that BDS as a campaign is a Palestinian initiated and led (global) movement.
in solidarity, Kim
***
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/boycotts-as-a-legitimate-means-of-resistance/
Dissident Voice header
Boycotts as a Legitimate Means of Resistance
As Determined by the Oppressed People
by Kim Petersen / August 29th, 2009
Kim Petersen
Prejudice does not always come with an ugly face. The same holds for Zionism and racism. It is entirely possible for well-intentioned people to hold a prejudice and, even worse, act on held prejudices.
Uri Avnery opposes the brutality inflicted on Palestinians. He campaigns for peace with Palestinians. But he also has a Zionist past. He is European born and fought for the terrorist Irgun in perpetration of a holocaust (Nakba) against Palestinans. He later renounced Irgun’s tactics. He is antiwar, but he is not anti-the fruits of war. He approves of a two state solution. In other words, Israeli Jews will keep the fruits of their dispossessing others — this while continuing to press for the return of what they were dispossessed.1
Avnery advocates selective use of tactics against Zionism. This is apparent when it comes to an international boycott of Israel. Avnery states that no one is better qualified than South African archbishop Desmond Tutu to answer this question.2
What does Tutu say? He has called on the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa. Tutu supports the divestment campaign against Israel.3
Avnery’s fellow Israeli, Neve Gordon, agrees that it is time for a boycott.4 Avnery laments, “I am sorry that I cannot agree with him this time – neither about the similarity with South Africa nor about the efficacy of a boycott of Israel.”
Indeed, the apartheids — while in many respects similar — are also different. Gary Zaztman pointed to a key difference:
For all its serious and undoubted evils and the numerous crimes against humanity committed in its name, including physical slaughters, South African white-racist apartheid was not premised on committing genocide. Zionism, on the other hand, has been committed to dissolving the social, cultural, political and economic integrity of the Palestinian people, i.e., genocide, from the outset, at least as early as Theodor Herzl’s injunction in his diaries that the “transfer” of the Palestinian “penniless population” elsewhere be conducted “discreetly and circumspectly.”5
Uri Avnery
Boycotts as a Tactic against Racism
Avnery says Tutu told him: “The boycott was immensely important, much more than the armed struggle.”
But it was the revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, who refused to give up the right to armed struggle, who negotiated the dismantling of South African apartheid.6
Tutu also told Avnery, “The importance of the boycott was not only economic but also moral.”
Avnery writes, “It seems to me that Tutu’s answer emphasizes the huge difference between the South African reality at the time and ours today.”
So what is Avnery saying? First he states that Tutu is best qualified person to speak to the effectiveness of boycotting as a tool in the fight against racism, then he says Tutu has it wrong. So is Avnery saying, then, that he is best qualified to speak on the effectiveness of boycotts against racism?
Avnery fears that Israeli Jews will feel “the whole world is against us.”
However, isn’t that, in a sense, what the purpose is: to show that the whole world is against Jewish racism against Palestinians? It must be emphasized that the world is not against Jews, as Israeli propaganda would choose to portray it. Although he doesn’t specifically state it, Avnery is using a version of the anti-Semitism smear: if you are against anything Israel does, then you are against Israelis. Hence, you are anti-Semitic. This grotesque perversion of morality and logic holds that to be against racism toward Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic.
Avnery admits, “In South Africa, the world-wide boycott helped in strengthening the majority and steeling [sic] it for the struggle. The impact of a boycott on Israel would be the exact opposite: it would push the large majority into the arms of the extreme right and create a fortress mentality against the ‘anti-Semitic world’. (The boycott would, of course, have a different impact on the Palestinians, but that is not the aim of those who advocate it.)
Avnery merely states what is the current status quo. Israel is already hunkered down in an extreme right fortress mentality. The boycott is not the cause. Avnery fixates on the population dynamics. What is the relevance of majority and minority in Avnery’s reasoning? It would seem that Palestinians being in the minority – and the fact that the Palestinians support the boycott – to be even greater reason for international support of the boycott. Who and what is Avnery supporting: Palestinians from racism or Israeli Jews from the economic effects and moral stigma of an international boycott?
As for the aim of the boycott campaign: “to deny Israel the financial means to continue to kill Palestinians and occupy the lands.”7
Avnery raises “the Holocaust” arguing that Jewish suffering has imprinted itself deeply on the Jewish soul. That the Nazis rounded up Jews in concentration was a moral outrage. But what is the lesson of World War II? That suffering imposed on any identifiable group of people is evil and wrong, or that one group can appropriate a holocaust, make it their own, and use past suffering as a shield to inflict a holocaust on another people? Avnery argues that boycotting Jews will remind them of Nazism, but when Jews use Nazi-type techniques what should they be reminded of?
Avnery says it is okay to boycott of the product of the “settlements.” He draws a distinction between “settlers” (i.e., “colonisers”) and other Israeli Jews. How then does Avnery rationalize the fact that the “settlers” are in the West Bank?
BDS poster
Avnery asserts, “Those who call for a boycott act out of despair. And that is the root of the matter.” Indeed, despair is life for many Palestinians under occupation or in refugee camps.
Avnery states that an international boycott would be difficult to achieve, and the US would not be behind it. It was not easy to achieve against the apartheid regimes in South Africa either. Is that a reason not to try? Did not the US oppose a boycott of South Africa? Yes, it might take a long time. But times do change. The US (and its western allies’s) recalcitrance was steam rolled in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Empires have risen and fallen throughout history.
Avnery finds that the tactic of boycotting is “an example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy.”
Avnery continues, “In South Africa there was total agreement between the two sides about the unity of the country. The struggle was about the regime. Both Whites and Blacks considered themselves South Africans and were determined to keep the country intact. The Whites did not want partition, and indeed could not want it, because their economy was based on the labor of the Blacks.”
Seems there is some faulty analysis going on. “Whites did not want partition”? How can Avnery state something so factually inaccurate? What were Venda, Lebowa, the Bantustans, if not sections of South Africa partitioned off by the White government? Furthermore, that Zionism is now no longer dependent on Palestinian labor does not mask that it at one time was dependent on such labor; Avnery is cherry picking in his argument. Denying Palestinians the right to work in historical Palestine is a tactic that evolved from Zionism.
Also, how is it that Avnery can argue against an international boycott of Israel when Israel maintains a crushing illegal embargo against Palestinians – a war crime? As long as Israel uses such a tactic, then resistance through boycott, certainly, is legitimate.
Avnery says Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have nothing in common. However, this same lack of commonality was true between White and Black South Africans as well. Nonetheless, I take exception with the thrust of such argumentation. It prepares the ground for racism. Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Black and White South Africans are all humans. They all eat, work, sleep, have dreams, have families. This should be reason enough to act humanely toward each other: love of humanity. It is entirely possible to embrace our shared humanity and respect diversity.
Avnery concludes, “In short: the two conflicts are fundamentally different. Therefore, the methods of struggle, too, must necessarily be different.”
+of+bdscall.jpg)
This is logically flawed reasoning, much like the logical and moral flaw that being a victim of a genocide minimizes one’s own culpability in a subsequent genocide. One suspects that Avnery may well be the victim of a pained conscience and cognitive dissonance. I submit that the two “conflicts”8 are fundamentally similar. Fundamentally, colonial Israel and colonial South Africa share these hallmarks: a racially, culturally, spiritually, linguistically different group of outsiders through preponderant violence dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their homeland, and set up an apartheid system which humiliates the Indigenous peoples and privileges the occupiers.
Avnery focuses on certain “fundamentals” — which I submit are not fundamentals but nuances — that he considers different.
Avnery’s solution lies with “a comprehensive and detailed peace plan” from US president Barack Obama and “the full persuasive power of the United States” to lead to “a path of peace with Palestine.”
Avnery remembers well previous US-backed peace plans, like Oslo and the Roadmap. Why, then, does he cast his audacious hope on AIPAC appeaser Obama? Avnery hopes that Israeli Jews will realize that peace with Palestinians is the way? The peace activist touts a solution that has failed and been rejected many times. He rejects a solution that worked in South African because of the sensibilities of the oppressors.
But let us examine Avnery’s logic that fundamentally different “conflicts” demand different struggles.
Oppression is overthrown by struggle. Fundamentally different “conflicts” can succeed through similar struggles. As one example, revolutionaries overthrew an American-backed dictatorship in Cuba through armed struggle and Cuban revoluntionaries defeated South African forces in Angola through armed struggle.9
In his article’s finale, seemingly assured of his own argumentation over the person he deems the best qualified authority on boycotts as a tool to overcome apartheid, Avnery points to a prayer of Tutu’s – a prayer that would serve all of us well:
“Dear God, when I am wrong, please make me willing to see my mistake. And when I am right – please make me tolerable to live with.”
Hopefully, Avnery abides by such humbleness when he sees the error of his ways as well.
1. See Dinah Spritzer, “Last chance for Holocaust restitution?” JTA, 30 June 2009. [↩]
2. Uri Avnery, “Tutu’s Prayer,” Gush Shalom, 29 August 2009. [↩]
3. Desmond Tutu, “Israel: Time to Divest,” New Internationalist magazine, January/February 2003. Available online at Third World Traveler. [↩]
4. Neve Gordon, “Boycott Israel,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 2009. [↩]
5. Gary Zatzman, “The Notion of the ‘Jewish State’ as an ‘Apartheid Regime’ is a Liberal-Zionist One,” Dissident Voice, 21 November 2005. [↩]
6. See Bill Keller, Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela (Boston: Kingfisher, 2008). Mandela wanted to pursue a peaceful, non-violent settlement, but when faced with the violence of state power he felt compelled to use violence as a method of struggle. Mandela did emphasize that this violence was not terrorism: 98. [↩]
7. ”Aim of the boycott campaign,” Boycott Israel Now. [↩]
8. The word “conflict” minimizes the atrocities wreaked on Palestinians and South Africans by their oppressors. [↩]
9. Isaac Saney contends that the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the “turning point in the struggle against apartheid. ”Isaac Saney, “The Story of How Cuba Helped to Free Africa,” Morning Star, 4 November 2005. Available at Embajada de Cuba en Egipto. [↩]
Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim, or visit Kim's website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)