BDS Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

105. A call for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) in response to Israeli human rights abuses, was first issued on 9th July 2005.  Pragmatically the BDS process has proved one of the most effective forms of civil, non-violent campaigns against the Israeli Zionist colonial apartheid regime over recent years. Both in breadth and in depth it has garnered support among major trade unions, academic associations, church groups and other grass root organizations in places such as South Africa, the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands and even in the U.S. itself, which attests the efficiency and enormous potential of BDS in resisting Israeli injustices. For the first time in decades, many movements in Europe supporting peace with justice in Palestine have discovered a process that they can actively and effectively contribute to and which promises to bring about concrete results on the ground as has successfully proved to be the case in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Judging by the results so far, BDS campaigns are moving at a faster pace than in South Africa during the apartheid years. There are many Jewish people who support BDS on its three fundamental rights: 1) the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees; 2) full equality of Palestinian citizens in Israel itself and 3) ending the occupation and colonial rule in the OPT. Genuine sustainable peace and security for all can never be achieved without justice, adherence to international law, universal human rights and most critically equality.
BDS is essentially a 'Rights'-based appraoch with clear objectives that forms a common denominator for all groups in solidarity with Palestine, i.e. ending the three main forms of Israeli injustices and advocating corresponding Palestinian rights as the basic requirements for this international campaign to be effective and in harmony with express needs and aspirations of Palestinian civil society.

There is also growing support amongst progressive European and American Jews for effective pressure and civil forms of struggle against Israel, regardless of what religion Israelis follow; be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is to stop Israeli Zionism's illegal and morally reprehensible violent oppression of the Palestinian people who want to be free and enjoy equal rights.  How successful BDS even in the US has been becomes clear from recent attempts by a pro-Israeli activist group, threatening legal action against Olympia Food Co-op; the first grocery store in the US to ban all Israeli made items from their shelves. And so there are more success stories, such as the French transport company Veolia, contracted by Israel to build a light rail network connecting Jerusalem with Israel, which is in violation of international law forbidding building in occupied territory. The Dutch Bank VKN, which identifies itself as an 'ethical bank upholding international law and human rights' decided in 2006 to divest from Veolia Transport Co.. Swedish companies soon followed suit rescinding contracts with Veolia for eight years worth 3.4 billion euro from a building contract with the Stockholm County Metro. Also other companies were targeted by BDS such as some Alsrom projects in the UK.   Sweden's chain of grocery stores Coop removed all popular Sodastream products from its shelves, which is manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements.
The recent liquidation of Agrexo, the largest fresh produce exporter in Israel can also be seen as a major victory of the BDS campaign, making it increasingly undesirable for multinational companies to be entangled in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Delegates from Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and Germany joined French organizers at a full day workshop to bring about this success and strengthening the boycott.  Israeli shares on the N.Y. stock exchange are heading for its worst monthly record. The Palestinian Aauthority's quest for statehood this month may destabilize the Jewish state even more.
Finally, in light of the persistence and severity of the Israeli Zionist violations of fundamental Palestinian rights for more than sixty years and given the failure of the United Nations and governments of the world to implement Palestinian right, it is politically and morally correct to accord maximum support to these BDS campaigns.

The Untold Story in Libya: How the West Cooked Up the "People's Uprising" | World | AlterNet

104.) The Untold Story in Libya: How the West Cooked Up the "People's Uprising" World AlterNet

Get rid of Zionism - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

102) Get rid of Zionism - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News

GOLDSTONE's U-TURN

101. For excerpts from the Goldstone report go to Post 79.

Goldstone's sudden U-turn from the findings of a four men U.N. fact-findings mission in response to the 2008 Israel/Gaza conflict,  as were published in what is known as "the Goldstone report'  has surprised many.
Goldstone is reported to have said that :(quote): 'If I had known what I know now the report would have been quite different' . His shift is apparently attributed to the findings of a follow up report by a United Nations Committee of independent experts chaired by Mary McGowen Davis, a former New York judge and what is 'recognized' therein about Israeli military investigations. McGowen Davis is in fact deeply critical of those investigations - their leniency, lack of transparency and flawed structure. Her report - stymied by lack of access to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - contains no new information that might buttress a change of heart. On the core issue of intentionality, it declares (quote): 'There is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation cast Lead(Israel's code name for their onslaught of Gaza). It (Israel) has not adequately answered the Goldstone report's allegations about the 'design and implementation of the Gaza operations' or its 'objectives and targets'. Victims on both side McGowen maintains, cannot expect genuine accountability and no justice. In short there is a mystery here. Goldstone has moved but the evidence has not. That raises the issue of whether Goldstone has buckled under pressure so unrelenting it almost got him barred from his grandson's bar Mitzvah in South Africa.Is this more a  matter of judicial cojones than coherence ? Goldstone has been relentlessly targeted and vilified by Israel and the Zionist lobbies over the last year or so as a self-hating Jew, hypocrite, traitor and despicable. He is declining media-interviews. Goldstone expresses 'confidence'  that that the Israeli officer responsible for the killing of 29 members of a Palestinian family will be properly punished. Yet McGowen Davis report is critical of this investigation and notes that no decision had been made as to whether or not the officer would stand trila. It also notes that more than a third of the 36 Gaza incidents identified in the Goldsone report are 'still unresolved or unclear'.  There have just been two convictions - and the one for the credit card theft brought a more severe sentence then the use of a Palestinian child as a human shield. Israel is now celebrating what it calls a vindication. It has now invited Goldstone to come to Israel and is demanding nullification of the report, even though Goldstone is only one of the four authors. But the facts remain: 1400 plus Palestinians dead, 13 Israelis killed, the wholesale devastation of houses, schools and hospitals in Gaza.
Commnent from The New York Times

MOST MORAL ARMY IN THE WORLD ?

100. Netanyahu was recently reported to have said that Israel's army is the most 'moral army' in the world. Lets have a look a its record:
During the 1967 war an Israeli reporter for Yediot Aharanot reported the following during Israel's Sinai campaign in Egypt:
It occurred at the El Arish airport, where Israel Tal's division - Yehoshua Bar-Dayan ur it - had set up its headquarters. Some 150 POW prisoners were held in an aircraft hanger surrounded with sandbags. They had huddled on the ground with their hands at the backs of their necks. Not far away was a desk where two men in IDF uniform were sitting. They wore steel helmets and their faces were hidden by dust goggles and khaki bandannas. Every so often the military police would pick out a prisoner from the holding
pen and lead him to the desk. Brunn could not hear the brief exchange, but he saw that when it was finished, the prisoner was led about a hundred yards behind the hanger and handed a shovel.
I watched the man dig a large pit for about fifteen minutes. Then the officer told him to throw away the shovel and one of them aimed an Uzi submachine gun and fired two short bursts at the man, three to four bullets each. The prisoner fell dead. Then more prisoners were brought out and shot. Brunn saw roughly ten such executions. An officer whose identity Brunn could not recall the explained to the horrified reservists that military intelligence had identified some Palestine terrorists among the POW in the holding pen, men who had killed Jews. They had disguised themselves as Egyptian soldiers and fled the Gaza strip."
These stories were also corroborated by historian  Arieh Yitzhaki, who quoted a soldier Kobi Rabinowitz writing to his girlfriend: "We turned the the Sinai Peninsula into a valley of death, into one big cemetery. Unarmed men, prisoners with their hand above their heads, cut down against orders. He finished his letter with the following words: Apparently it doesn't take years of Nazi education to turn people into animals".

ei: Goldstone's shameful U-turn

99. ei: Goldstone's shameful U-turn

ILLEGITIMATE STATE

98. Count Bernadotte.
Israeli Zionists quite falsely maintain that United Nation partition Resolution 181 was accepted by them and not by the Arab nations, which therefore gave them the alleged 'legal' grounds for the existence of the State of Israel. I have already deliberated on this half truth in previous posts (26 and 41). What apologists for Israel's illegal existence forget to mention however, is that the United Nations made its recognition of Israel specifically contingent on Israel's compliance with Resolution 194. However Israel cheated by first agreeing, but then reneged 24 hours after its U.N. admission was formalized in U.N. General Assemblence Resolution273. Sixty three years later it had yet to comply and refugees watched from the squalor and humiliation as Israel flaunted the International body that created it, but consistently flouted and ignored international law and U.N resolutions continuing unabatedly its aggression and ethnic cleansing.

United Nation Resolution 194 (December 1948) to be sure, demanded that Israel stop blocking the return of the 750,000 people it had just violently expelled from their land and villages; that Palestinians be accorded free access to Jerusalem, which was to have been an international zone (UNGA Res. 303 'Corpus Separatum'), but whose western half Israel had seized; and 'final settlement of all questions. Even though Israel had grabbed half of the 43 % of Palestine that Resolution 181 had reserved for Palestinians, claiming about 78 % of the land instead of the 55 % it would not (and to-day) will still not commit to any geographical boundaries !  The war of 1948 was a too late offensive by Arab armies fought principally inside the 43 % of land allocated to the Palestinians by the partition resolution to protect its indigenous inhabitants from expulsion and annihilation bu the Zionist terrorist campaign.

Count Bernadotte, the Swedish diplomat who during W.W. 2 had secured the release of 30,000 Jews from German death camps, told Zionist leaders that their theft of land beyond the U.N. partition agreements and massacres of Palestinians had to stop, he was assassinated by members of the Stern Gang.  A U.N. Security cablegram he had sent from Palestine just before he was killed in September 1948 describes the Zionists as:
"terrorist groups....in territory controlled by the provisional government of Israel (and that) had operated in Palestine during the mandate, and were responsible for the many hideous crimes committed in name of political objectives...(they) constitute a critical challenge from an unbridled bank of Jewish terrorists to the very effort of the United Nations to achieve, by means of mediation, a peaceful adjustment of the dispute in Palestine".

Ruins of the King David Hotel

P.S. Zionists most notorious terrorist groups were the Haganah, Stern Gang, Irgun (as well as a number of smaller splinter groups), later amalgamated into the IDF (Israel Defence Force). They already operated and terrorised the Palestinian population long before Israel was created in May 1948.   In July 1946 the Irgun and Haganah terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing 91 civilians and injuring 46.

Right of Return

 

97) The Right of Return is embodied in United Nation Resolutions 194 and 242 as well as in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12/8/1949 

Nine million stateless Palestinians are currently living in inhuman conditions in huge camps all over the Middle East.

A Palestinian refugee campaign is being planned aiming to harness the winds of change in the Middle East and mobilize the diaspora into action. It is expected that one million people will participate in a global sit-in at Israeli embassies world wide.

ei: Israel investing $1.6 million in "new media warriors"

96. ei: Israel investing $1.6 million in "new media warriors"

DEMOCRACY v ZIONISM

95. Zionism  wants Israel to be a Jewish state; a state for the Jewish people only. However at the same time it claims to be a 'democracy'. An exclusively Jewish state and at the same time claiming to be a democracy is a contradiction in terms and hence by definition can never be a democratic society. A true democracy is a multicultural society, with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of creed, race, gender or ethnic origin. In a democracy anyone can be a member or candidate for any of the country's political parties. Not so in Israel where one has to be a Jew in order to be a member or qualify to be elected for a particular political party. In a democracy no matter whether one is a Catholic, African, Protestant, China man, Muslim, Moroccan or Buddhist anyone can vote or stand as a candidate for the party of his choice as long as he or she is a national of that state. In order to give Israel some semblance of a democracy the Zionists will argue that there is an Arab 'party' sitting in the Knesset representing the Arab population of Israel. This is sheer deception and window dressing, because these so called parties have no voice and are not included in any key-decision making positions or committees as they would have in a real democracy.  Moreover only 20% of the original native Arabs are allowed to live in Israel and although Israel since its foundation in 1948 added by conquest almost another 40%  either de facto or actually to its territory, none of the other native Arabs of former Palestine that were forcibly driven from their land, have been given legal democratic rights; remain stateless and have been living for the last 45/60 years in appalling conditions in huge refugee camps in the West bank and Gaza and beyond, in complete violation by Israel of all UN resolutions and the Geneva Convention. These Palestinians are refused to return to their native country. In a democratic state as we know it in the rest of the world, these people would have been given the right to return to their country of origin and eligible to vote. Purely for demographic reasons Zionism keeps the number of Arab/Palestinians to vote round approximately 20% so as to preserve its Jewish identity. In a democracy no one is forced to sign declarations of allegiance to the State and in a democracy people of different faith and ethnic origins can marry each other. In Israel an Arab cannot marry a Jew or vise verse.. Only Jews can become citizens of the Zionist state. Israel fakes to be a 'democracy', but could never be accepted as a member of the European Union for the reasons listed here or for that matter the 51st State of the United States (because it would be against the American Constitution). 

Esam Al-Amin: Mubarak's Last Gasps

94. Esam Al-Amin: Mubarak's Last Gasps

MAHATMA GHANDI on ZIONISM 1938

93. Ghandi was not unsympathetic with the Jews He calls them the 'untouchables' of Christianity and compares it with the treatment of Hindus. Religious sanctions has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. "But  (so he continued), "my sympathies (with the Jewish people) does not blind me to the requirements of Justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanctions for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood ? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French It is wrong an inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine to-day cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred.. The Jews of France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled ? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will ? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews....And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of a bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestrina only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart."

Martin Luther King, Jr had this to say on the tripartite (France/Britain/Israel) attack on Egypt at the time when Nasser ruled that country:
"I have been keeping up with the situation in Egypt, and as you know this is one of the most important issues in the world to-day. It will determine whether we live in peace or whether we will die in war. naturally my sympathies are with Egypt, rather than with the Western Colonial and imperial powers"

WINDS OF CHANGE

92. 'Winds of change' are blowing through the Arab world.  Puppet, quisling dictatorships, all client state of the United States are tumbling one after the other like dominoes. Unrest has already been reported in Jordan and Yemen as well and Lebanon's Hezbollah is strengthening its grip on the country. Iraq is still in turmoil with the Shi-ite majority demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the country.  It had to happen sometime and it may indeed take years for these countries to recuperate from these upheavals. it will certainly not mean pie in the sky for a long time to come.. But once the US/Israeli one sided balance of power in the region has shifted, there might eventually be progress.  However, meanwhile there are still grave dangers lurking. The US/Israeli alliance will not take these changes lying down. Israel, since its very inception, is known to have provoked border incidents, skirmishes and worse wars in the region. I am sure they will not accept the the GAZA blockade to be broken, which could well be on the cards with a new Egyptian government and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the long suffering people of Gaza imprisoned.