Global BDS News

Capture: France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy (C), shakes hands with employees of Alstom during the inauguration of the European LGV Est in Belfort, eastern France. (Photo: AFP- Sebastien Bozon)

Alstom, a French corporation, has received global condemnation for aiding Israel’s colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Yet Alstom’s business ventures continue to thrive in the Arab world, and the corporation appears set to win more multi-million dollar contracts in the near future.

Boycott Divestment and Sanctions(BDS) campaigners in Beirut warned Wednesday in a press conference that French construction giant Alstom Group may be awarded major new contracts in several Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The activists appealed to Arab governments to stop dealing with the firm, which is complicit in Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land.

“Alstom is a partner in the occupation’s crimes,” said Khaled Tiraani, head of the Brussels-based KARAMA (Keep Alstom’s Rail and Metro Away) campaign. KARAMA is part of a coalition of European organizations campaigning for a worldwide boycott of the company. “This rail network is designed to judaize Jerusalem, while separating and dividing the surrounding Arab villages,” he told a press conference held at the Lebanese Journalists’ Syndicate headquarters. “Despite all attempts to dissuade this company from working with the Israeli occupation, Alstom turned a deaf ear.”

Alstom has been involved in the construction of an Israeli rail network linking western and eastern Jerusalem and adjoining Israeli settlements. The Jerusalem Light Rail (JLP) project is likely to provide a major boost to Israel’s efforts to expand illegal settlements and strengthen its hold on occupied Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, in violation of international law.

The campaigners hope to raise awareness of the issue in the Arab world and persuade Arab governments to use their existing or prospective business dealings to pressure the French company. Efforts to urge Arab governments to withhold contracts from companies involved in the JLP have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Lawyers in Egypt unsuccessfully petitioned the Egyptian high court to ban Alstom from bidding in the third phase of the Cairo Metro project.

In Lebanon, Alstom manages the control center for the national electricity company (Electricité du Liban), under a contract awarded by the Council for Development and Reconstruction. While the firm is already engaged in various multi-billion dollar infrastructure and energy projects throughout the region — notably in Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, and the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — it is also a prime contender for a number of other major contracts in various Arab countries.

In Iraq, Alstom — which is already heavily invested in the electricity sector — signed preliminary agreements this year for two major rail projects, each expected to cost some US$1.5 billion. One is a commuter train network in Baghdad, and the other, a 650km high-speed link between the capital and Basra. Earlier, Alstom cut a 10-year deal with Morocco to develop a rail transportation system valued at some 9 billion Moroccan dirhams (about US$1.5 billion).

Tiraani said that given the French company’s contribution to Israel’s takeover of Jerusalem, Alstom’s involvement in plans to establish a rail link between two other holy cities – Mecca and Madina – were particularly outrageous. Alstom is part of the conglomerate that won the bid for the first phase of a project worth 6.8 billion Saudi riyal (around US$800 million), with costs expected to total US$12.5 billion. “It is an affront and a slap in the face for this company to be poised to sign this contract,” Tiraani said. “It is an insult to one’s intelligence.”

Tiraani urged the Saudi government not to award the final contract to Alstom, while stressing that the boycott campaign was directed against the company and not against Saudi Arabia or other governments doing business with the company. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are among Alstom’s most lucrative markets. They are also seen as increasingly reluctant participants in the supposed Arab governments economic boycott of Israel. At a recent regular meeting of boycott liaison officers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait resisted efforts to include several European companies who have Israeli subsidiaries on the boycott list.

Campaigners now fear that Alstom is eyeing the biggest Gulf prize of all: the proposed railway linking all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member-states. Estimated costs of the proposed scheme, due to be built by 2017, have risen from US$14 billion to US$25 billion. Some analysts say the final price tag could near US$100 billion.

“This company should not be involved in any projects in the Arab world,” said Lebanese Journalists Syndicate head Muhammad al-Baalbaki at Wednesday’s event. “This firm and others like it ought to be denied any contract in any Arab country.”

This is in contrast to notable successes in Europe. Pressure from campaigners forced the German government to order partly state-owned Deutsche Bahn to pull out of the JLR on grounds that the project was illegal; in Sweden, the state pension fund divested from Alstom because of its role in consolidating Israel’s occupation. Several European banks and companies have followed suit. According to some estimates, the boycott campaign has cost Alstom some US$5 billion in lost business.

Alstom in Occupied Palestine: Complicity and Evasion

Alstom used to hold 20 percent of Citipass, the consortium which won the tender to construct and operate the JLR. In October 2010, Alstom was reported to be in ‘advanced stages’ of negotiating to sell its stake (see http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/harel-climbing-aboard-jeru…).

On 19 January 2011, the Israeli financial newspaper, The Marker, announced the sale of Alstom’s share in Citipass to two of its Israeli partners in the consortium.

But Alstom remains the provider of the trains for the project, and still has shares in two other companies that are involved in the light rail project. The first is the contractor for the project. In this company Alstom holds 80 percent of the shares while Ashtrum holds the other 20 percent.

The second is the company which has the contract for providing maintenance for the project for the next 22 years, called Citadis Israel. Alstom is the sole owner of this company.

This is an edited translation form the Arabic Edition.

Original Link: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/rewarding-alstom-arab-partnership-occupation

A new Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign was launched this summer by the United Church of Canada, which will try to persuade six companies operating in Canada — Caterpillar, Motorola, Ahava, Veolia, Elbit Systems and Chapters/Indigo — to stop supporting the Israeli occupation. “The Campaign follows similar campaigns launched some time ago by the US Presbyterian Church and the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. We have launched ‘Occupied with Peace’ after almost two years of discernment and information gathering,” says spokesperson Jean Lee.

The UK’s Trades Union Congress voted to reconsider its ties with Israel’s national trade union federation Histadrut, reaffirming its policy to encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and the construction of the Wall.

In a most unusual boycott move, on 1 September, London cultural activists from “Beethovians for Boycotting Israel” sang their own version of the Ode to Joy repeatedly during a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic at London’s Royal Albert Hall, finally bringing the live BBC broadcast to a halt. “Israel, end your occupation, There’s no peace on stolen land. We’ll sing out for liberation till you hear and understand.”

South African students endorsed a nationwide boycott against Israel, and South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority dismissed complaints relating to a radio advert by the lead guitarist of Faithless in support of the South African Artists Against Apartheid: “Hi, I’m Dave Randall from Faithless. Twenty years ago I would not have played in apartheid South Africa; today I refuse to play in Israel. Be on the right side of history. Don’t entertain apartheid. Join the international boycott of Israel.”

Legendary NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar declined to appear in Israel due to “concerns arising from Nakba day violence.” Abdul-Jabbar was slated to show his new documentary film about racial segregation in basketball, On the Shoulders of Giants, and was due to compete for the “Spirit of Freedom Award” at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Facing an intense Europe-wide boycott campaign, Agrexco, Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter, which markets produce from Israel’s illegal settlements as “product of Israel”, filed for bankruptcy this summer. Its financial woes, however, pale next to those of French multinational Veolia, an urban systems corporation which provides light rail services that link West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank.

Since the beginning of the Palestinian-led campaign in 2005, Veolia has lost contracts worth more than $14 billion. A recent merger between Veolia’s transport division and a subsidiary of the main French state investment fund shows the French government’s solution to Veolia’s problems: let the taxpayers finance Veolia’s income losses. Veolia is cutting its activities from more than 40 countries, but not the one country — Israel — that is the main cause of its financial woes.

Involvement in the light rail project violates Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines. Considering that Paris is the seat of the OECD and Israel a new member, this is particularly ironic.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Sodastream took a direct hit in Sweden, its largest market, when the Coop supermarket chain announced it would stop all purchases of its products. The main production facilities for Sodastream are located at Mishor Adumim, Israel’s largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, where it profits from tax benefits enjoyed by companies in industrial parks in illegal settlements. Unilever has already bowed to BDS pressure, in July announcing plans to move its Bagel and Bagel pretzel factory to a location within the green line. Sodastream itself has shown signs it will probably comply, also announcing it will build a new factory within the green line, expected to begin operations in 2013, the same year the lease on the Mishor plant is due to expire.

The campaign against Sodastream has quickly spread around the world, including the US. In March, a petition calling on Bed Bath & Beyond to stop selling Sodastream products (as well as products from Ahava, the settlement-based cosmetics company) was delivered to 15 locations up and down the US West Coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, and a group of activists dressed as brides held a mock wedding inside Bed Bath & Beyond in Los Angeles calling on concerned brides everywhere to strike Sodastream (and Ahava) off their bridal registries.

The struggles are uphill, especially in Australia. A peaceful BDS action against a Jericho cosmetics outlet, which sells Dead Sea salts, was attacked in July by the Victoria police, and 19 Melbourne activists face fines of $32,000. The attack followed the call by Victoria Jewish Community President John Searle for the police to “stamp down harder on aggressive protesters”. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights.

Then there’s the herem law passed 11 July by the Knesset that allows “victims” to sue boycott promoters. This bill follows upon the Knesset’s recent Nakba law, which defunded any institution that acknowledged the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

Israeli peace group Peace Now immediately set up a Facebook group “So Sue Me, I’m Boycotting the Settlements”. “We’ve never done a boycott of settlements. We are doing this now because of the boycott law,” Peace Now activist Etai Mizrav said. “The moment they decided to shut mouths, we decided it is time to tell the Israeli public that whoever supports settlements supports Israel’s isolation and harms the state.” A coalition of allied groups said they would ask Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the law. “It is really absurd that victims of the occupation should be paying damages to the occupiers if they organise a boycott of settlement products,” coalition spokesman Idan Ring said.

A divestment victory this summer was the decision by Norway’s 450 billion euro Oil Fund to excluded two Israeli firms — Africa Israel Investments and its engineering subsidiary Danya Cebus — for their settlement activities.

As for sanctions, the big news this summer was the UN Palmer Report which criticised Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla last year for its excessive use of violence, but nonetheless supported its siege of Gaza, despite an earlier UN Human Rights Commission report condemning it as illegal. The lack of any real sanctions against Israel by the world body prompted the Turkish government to send its Israeli ambassador packing. Israel’s killing of at least five Egyptian border guards this summer prompted Egyptian protesters to send their Israeli ambassador packing too, and the Israeli ambassador in Jordan fled amid worries over a similar protest there.

There was a setback for those trying to bring Israeli politicians to account. Last week Britain amended a law that allowed for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli politicians and military figures under terms of universal jurisdiction, which holds that some alleged crimes are so grave that they can be tried anywhere. Such a warrant was issued against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni in 2009.

Original Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=48225

The tribunal of the 17th magistrate’s court of the Paris law courts, which specialises in matters regarding press rights, the defamation of public figures and the freedom of expression, has given a most important and clear ruling on the right of citizens and consumers to call for a boycott of Israel and its products. It concerns all of us. Here are below the grounds for the decision. Please circulate widely.

This ruling, whose grounds are precise and strongly supported, is the subject of a very interesting commentary in the latest issue of the ‘Gazette du Palais’ (September 2011 no. 244, p.15), entitled “PUBLIC FREEDOMS : The call for the boycott of the products of a State by a citizen is not forbidden under French law”, and signed by a magistrate, Ghislain Poissonnier.

These grounds must be known, and read all the more carefully as the BDS campaign is developing throughout the world, while legal proceedings against it are going to take place in France, starting with those on 20 OCTOBER 2011 in BOBIGNY, because of the remarkable obedience of the Sarkozy government to Israeli desiderata.

THE REASON WHY CITIZENS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CALL FOR THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL

The judges who heard us on 17 June 2011, acquitted Olivia Zémor on 8 July. She had been accused of discrimination against the Israeli nation, and incitation to racial hatred by the government and four associations of the Israeli lobby in France. They stressed that :

“Since the call for a boycott of Israeli products is formulated by a citizen for political motives and it is part of a political debate relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a debate concerned with a matter of general interest with international significance, the offence of provocation to discrimination, based on the fact of belonging to a Nation, is not constituted.”

When the ruling was given on 8 July, the judge explained that the article of law cited by the plaintiffs (article 24, paragraph 8, Law of 1881) is designed to “fight any form of racism” and cannot be cited in order to forbid a call for boycott “suggesting a certain form of conscientious objection, which each of us is free to express or not to express” and “ launched by non-governmental organisations without prerogative powers”.

Relying on the decisions of the Court of Cassation and of the European Court of Human Rights, the tribunal pointed out that :

“Criticism of a State or its policies cannot be regarded, in principle, as infringing the rights or dignity of its nationals, without seriously affecting freedom of expression in a world now globalized, whose civil society has become a major actor, and since no ‘criminal offence against a Foreign State’ has ever been established under substantive law or international common law, because this would be contrary to the commonly accepted standards of freedom to express opinions”.

Using the examples developed by the defence lawyers, Mr Antoine Comte, Mr Dominique Cochain and Mr Henri Choukroun, the tribunal added that “the other calls from certain sectors of civil society for the boycott of such and such products coming from a country or a company are numerous, without having ever been incriminated as misuses of freedom of expression”.

Here the judge lists a great many previous and recent calls for the boycott of products, tourism in certain countries, Olympic games in others, among which the boycott of the Year of Mexico in France in 2011 and the boycott of Burmese products by Carrefour.

He also insists on the fact that we can never be accused, of “provocation to discrimination, violence or hatred against a group of people because they belong to the Israeli nation, since certain sectors of Israeli opinion support the BDS call”. (He explicitly refers to the declaration of the Israeli Women’s Coalition for Peace, Israelis who ask international artists not to come and perform I Israel, and to the support given by many personalities from Desmond Tutu to French ministers, parliamentarians or intellectuals, whom we cannot suspect of any form of racism.)

Examining the opposite views presented by the plaintiffs, the tribunal points out that : “The confrontation of points of views is very likely to convince us that the peaceful and unrestrained call for the boycott of Israeli products is an integral part of the opinion debate generated everywhere in the world by the preoccupations linked with the settlement of a conflict which has raged for more than 60 years.”

BDS ACTION BEYOND REPROACH

Regarding the publication of that BDS video by Olivia Zémor on the website www.europalestine.com and its content, the tribunal therefore concluded that :

>“The publication of a video lasting a few minutes, during which activists called for the consumers of a supermarket not to buy products from Israel and to support such a boycott for political reasons, on a matter of general interest with international implications, which has mobilised the international community for years, until now in vain, with the aim for a peaceful settlement : does not constitute in any of its elements an offence of provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of persons on the grounds of belonging to a nation, in this case Israel”.

>Likewise, “The language of the presentation, unquestionably militant, is indissociable from the call for a boycott, which the defendant is free to support in order to express her views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Incidentally, it is worth noting that the tribunal of the 17th magistrate’s court in Paris, declared “inadmissible” one of the plaintiffs, the Israeli Chamber of Commerce.

The plaintiffs naturally appealed this ruling, and are continuing to pursue some militants for the same acts, hoping they will deal somewhere else, with judges and prosecutors likely to be more easily influenced and less anxious to enforce freedom of expression.

ALL AT BOBIGNY ON 20 OCTOBER NEXT FROM MIDDAY ON

So, on THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER NEXT, Olivia, Maha, Mohamed and Ulrich will be ordered to appear before the Bobigny Tribunal, which postponed the hearing to 20 October 2011.

An exemplary turnout is essential for this occasion, therefore we ask you to reserve this date in order to come and support us, as early as midday on that day at the Bobigny Tribunal (Metro station Pablo Picasso. Terminus of line 5).

We shall remember that, on 17 March 2011, the lady judge who chaired the hearing had not shown much equity between the parties. Mrs Krief had thus allowed the private bodyguards of some lawyers of the plaintiffs, equipped with earpieces inside the court room, to communicate permanently with the outside. At the same time, she had taken the trouble to criticize some people sitting quietly on public benches, for their (sic) “smiles” or “leaning heads” !

CAPJPO-EuroPalestine

Original Link: http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/51616

The world’s eyes are still fixed on the Middle East, and the first half of September has delivered two profound events in Egypt and Turkey that have sent shockwaves through the Israeli establishment.

On 2 September, the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced the decision to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel to second secretary level and cut all military relations between the two countries. Then, after weeks of protests, the Egyptian people finally stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo on 9 September and staged a “citizen’s expulsion” of the Israeli embassy staff (“Egyptian protesters send Israel ambassador and his staff out of country,” AhramOnline, 10 September 2011).

At the cost of three lives and more than a thousand injuries, protesters literally shut down the Israeli embassy and required the Israeli ambassador to be flown directly back to Tel Aviv.

These two events are indicative of a three-fold shift in power relations: the core strength of the people’s movements, which have contributed to the changing governmental power balance in the Middle East, which in turn have begun to assert aspirations within global diplomacy. These slow yet steady shifts have a direct, net-positive effect on the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice and an overall negative impact on Israeli apartheid.

People power

In Egypt and Tunisia, inspiring victories that have come out of determined struggles have brought to power governments that, if popular mobilization continues, will be obliged to respond, at least in part, to the persistent demands and undying aspirations of the people. Some governments are still brutally combating uprisings, such as Syria and Bahrain. And still other leaders have been keenly reminded that people count and can take control of their destinies.

Unquestionably, Palestine is and always has been on the agendas of the Arab popular uprisings. This has been particularly clear over the last few months in Egypt.

In order to appease at least some popular demands, the interim government tried to steer away from Hosni Mubarak’s pro-Israel policies. Egypt has begun renegotiating the gas contracts, which sold natural gas at below market price to Israel (“Israeli delegation in Egypt to negotiate fixed gas rates,” Al Masry Al Youm, 13 May 2011).

The official Egyptian airline EgyptAir closed down direct Cairo-Tel Aviv flights (“Egypt Air deletes Israel from its destination list,” Middle East Monitor, 23 March 2011).

However, the weak diplomatic response on the part of the post-Mubarak government to Israel’s murder of five Egyptian soldiers in August triggered dramatic popular action. Mohammed el Baradei and Amr Moussa, the two leading presidential candidates, both immediately called for a stronger reaction to Israel (“Egypt-Israel ties strained after border incidents, says analyst,” The Daily News Egypt, 19 August 2011).

The “citizen’s expulsion” of the Israeli embassy staff was a response to the first killing of Egyptian martyrs after the revolutionary weeks in Tahrir Square during the spring.

Likewise, Turkey’s diplomatic boldness can indeed only be viewed as a victory of activists, movements, and organizations that have consistently shown the Ankara government the line of actions to take in order to display its solidarity with Palestine.

Turkey ditches Israeli war industry

Here, the popular mood is similar to Egypt’s. For a long time, the Turkish government has been aware of the unpopularity of its support of the Israeli war industry and the occupation of Palestine. The people in Turkey have consistently shown overwhelming solidarity with Palestine, most notably with their mobilization for the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which ended in a brutal attack by the Israeli navy. Israel commandos killed eight Turkish citizens and one US citizen of Turkish origin on the Mavi Marmara.

Now, we see the Turkish government taking leads from its citizens, mobilizations in the region, and the Palestinian people. Only two months ago, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) launched its call for a military embargo on Israel (“Impose a mandatory and comprehensive military embargo on Israel,” BDS Movement, 8 July 2011).

This call was supported by organizations and unions representing dozens of millions of people all over the globe.

For civil society in the entire region, beyond just Egyptians and Turks, there can be no question about the power of citizens to affect social and political changes that can undermine Israeli apartheid and neo-colonial policies pursued by neighboring governments.

Meltdown of power structures

Power relations and alliances are changing in the Middle East. The strength of the people’s movements is a driving force in this phenomenon, as well as a result of it.

A short overview of the region reveals the slow meltdown of the power structures on which the US and the EU had cast a stronghold on the region. The wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven to be military and political failures.

As NATO attempts to control oil reserves in Libya, the West is proving itself to be militarily overstretched, economically depleted, and politically discredited. The failures of its governments’ diplomatic initiatives for peace in the region are due to Israel and its arrogance, its impunity becoming a liability for Western powers. Pillars of colonial power such as the Mubarak regime have fallen, leaving a political void. At least until Egypt’s November elections, Turkey will be the only resource-rich and populous country with an uncontested leadership between the Mediterranean and Iran.

The Turkish realignment is also a reflection of this scenario. Turkey was Israel’s second biggest importer of Israeli weapons and had guaranteed to Israel airspace rights for military training flights. Turkey imported more than double the amount of arms from Israel than any other country in 2009 (“Palestinian civil society welcomes Turkey’s decision to suspend all military ties with Israel and lower diplomatic relations,” BDS Movement, 7 September 2011).

Turkey and Israel also conducted intensive joint military training exercises (“Military cooperation was at the hear of Turkey-Israel ties,” Defence Talk, 1 June 2010).

The freezing of military ties is a dramatic show of force but is part of a long-term shift of policy. In the last few years Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rebuilt relations with the Turkmen neighboring states, Iran, and others in the Global South and decisively shifted Turkey’s areas of interest towards the east and the south. Since the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, Turkey has not signed any new military contracts with Israel. And just days ahead of the 2 September statement, Turkey reached an agreement with NATO to ensure that Israel would not have access to data collected by a new NATO anti-missile early warning system (“Turks to install NATO radar,” Hurriyet, 2 September 2011).

It’s notable also that the US seems to have conceded to the direction of Turkey’s new policies.

Taking advantage of the governmental power void and political support for Palestine at popular level, Turkey has forcefully put itself on the public and diplomatic map by letting Israel know it is not anymore dominating the region. That is an astute move that has allowed Turkey to assert regional hegemonic aspirations and, contemporaneously, to gain widespread sympathy across the Middle East for challenging Israel. Immediately afterwards, Erdogan extended his hand to Egypt by planning the first presidential visit to Cairo in 15 years. Being aware that Egypt and Turkey together make up more than half of the population of the Middle East and half of the eastern Mediterranean seashore, Erdogan will sign strategic economic and military agreements that could be the basis for a new Middle Eastern alliance (“Egypt, Turkey look to forge stronger ties as Erdogan readies to visit Cairo,” Today’s Zaman, 9 September 2011).

However, regardless of future Egyptian government and Egyptian-Turkish cooperation, one thing is clear: since 2 September, the new Middle East in formation has a leading figure nobody will be able to avoid.

Sham UN investigation

The latest Turkish announcements took on the United Nations as well. The Turkish move was ultimately triggered by what began as a stand-off on the Palmer report, a UN investigation into Israel’s attack on the Mavi Marmara. The formation of the Palmer Commission was a shield for Israel from condemnation of its violations of international law, to avoid a repeat of the detailed proof in the UN investigative report on the Israeli attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

After the UN Human Rights Council had already mandated an expert committee to investigate the issue, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon formed an almost parallel committee. Ban appointed none other than Alvaro Uribe, the ex-president of Colombia, as vice-chairman of the Freedom Flotilla investigation.

Only a few months earlier, the UN Human Rights Commissioner had published a scathing report on violations of human rights and repression of human rights defenders committed in Colombia under Uribe (“Report of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Colombia,” 4 March 2010).

Moreover, Colombia became one of the world’s biggest importers of Israeli weapons during his presidency and the Colombian military continues to hire Israeli military “consultants” to learn from their methods of repression. Unsurprisingly, the outcome of the UN report was taken as an insult to Turkey as well as to international law (“Disappointment at the United Nations: the Palmer report on the flotilla incident of 31 May 2010,” Middle East Monitor, 9 September 2011).

Against the consensus of international law experts, the report argued that the siege on Gaza was legal and recommended that little more than an apology from the Israeli government would be an apt remedy for the killing of nine Turks. Turkey’s response was sharp and functioned on two levels: it stated its intention to refer the of Gaza to the International Court of Justice and promised that it will ensure freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean by the force of its own navy.

These recent announcements by Turkey are therefore a message to the United Nations that it must not guarantee Israel impunity for its crimes. Where the UN fails, other avenues will succeed in holding Israel accountable. US vetoes in the Security Council can shield Israel only insofar as the West willingly permits this fig leaf to obscure its own unwillingness to act.

Turkey’s message is nothing new. Civil society around the world has long promoted a call for accountability through boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), including the call for a military embargo on Israel. Civil society has already gained impressive victories over the last five years through BDS and a call for BDS may soon be heeded by institutions and governments.

It is crucial that activists in Turkey and around the world continue to escalate their mobilization in support of the Palestinian call for BDS and a complete military embargo on Israel in order to ensure that the Turkish government does not resume relations with Israel until Israel complies with international law and human rights and other governments follow suit. Activists will further have to develop and refine methods of monitoring the implementation of BDS pledges by governments, institutions and enterprises.

The people’s movements strengthen Middle Eastern governments against sustained apartheid in Israel. There is hope that the time is coming close when the nations finally unite in effective action against Israeli apartheid, colonialism and occupation.

Jamal Juma’ is coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign.

Maren Mantovani is international outreach coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign.

Original Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-civil-society-pushed-turkey-ditch-israels-war-industry/10390

Occupied Palestine, 15 September 2011 – The Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS), the broadest and most representative alliance of Palestinian trade and professional unions, salutes the Trades Union Congress (TUC), representing 6.5 million workers in the UK, for their most recent policy in support of Palestinian human rights. [1] TUC voted overwhelmingly on 14 September 2011 to “work closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to actively encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and the construction of the Wall”. Importantly, TUC also called on “all unions on the basis of this policy to review their bi-lateral relations with all Israeli organisations, including Histadrut”.  PTUC-BDS deeply appreciates this decision to review relations with Israel’s racist and colonial trade union entity and urges unions and congresses around the world to follow suit.

In commemoration of May Day, the PTUC-BDS was launched at a historic conference in Occupied Palestine on 30 April 2011 to provide the widest and most representative Palestinian reference for the international trade union movement and to help coordinate trade union solidarity efforts.  Leaders of all major Palestinian political parties have warmly endorsed the formation of PTUC-BDS as the unified voice of Palestinian workers and professionals struggling to end Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonialism through effective, peaceful BDS measures.

The declaration from this hugely significant conference called upon trade unions to implement boycotts of Israeli and international companies that are complicit with violations of Palestinian rights, divest trade union funds from Israeli and international companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid and apply pressure on governments to cut military and trade relations with Israel, leading to sanctions. We are therefore delighted that the TUC has reaffirmed its commitment to encourage campaigns that heed this call and look forward to their implementation.

Regarding the Histadurt specifically, at the PTUC-BDS founding conference we decisively condemned the Histadrut and called on international trade unions to review and sever all links with it due to its historic and current complicity in Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights. The Histadrut has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination by: publicly supporting Israel’s violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other tenets of international law, maintaining active commercial interests in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise,[2] allowing Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to join the organization,[3] supporting Israel’s war of aggression on besieged Gaza in 2008/9;[4] it later justified Israel’s massacre of humanitarian relief workers and activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla on 31 May 2010[5].

The Histadrut is also illegally withholding over NIS 8.3 billion (approximately $2.43bn) over decades of occupation from wages earned by Palestinian workers from Occupied Palestinian Territory, [6] deducted for ‘social and other trade union benefits’ that Palestinian laborers from OPT have never received.  For all these reasons, we are heartened that TUC is urging its member unions to review bi-lateral relations with the Histadrut. As PTUC-BDS we would be most than happy to assist any such review processes in any way.

The Palestinian trade union movement has collectively set up a boycott “picket line” against Israel to hold it accountable for its violations of international law and more specifically of Palestinian workers’ rights. Over 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip – most of them working families — have literally been imprisoned behind an illegal and immoral military siege in one of the cruelest examples of collective punishment witnessed in recent history.  This year marks 63 years since the original mass ethnic cleansing of the majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and lands as Israel continues to deny them the right to return to their homes.  In the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Palestinian workers continue to face daily humiliation at checkpoints and due to the illegal apartheid Wall, and suffer from a crippling economic situation that leaves them at the mercy of Israel and international donors. For example, most recently when the Israeli state decided to withhold taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority, and international donors withheld contributions, Palestinian public sector workers were left without wages for the month of July.  Yet despite the military occupation and constant attacks on workers’ fundamental rights (like the right to freedom of movement), the Palestinian people remain as determined as ever to resist and to win justice, freedom and equality.

We understand these are critical times for the trade-union movement world-wide, and the UK movement specifically is gearing up to challenge some of the most severe cuts and austerity measures taking place in Europe. We stand shoulder to shoulder with you in your fight and thank you for the solidarity you continue to show to the struggle for Palestinian workers rights.

Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS)
ptuc-bds@bdsmovement.net

Notes

[1] For the full text of the motion and amendment: http://www.congressvoices.org/2011/71-peace-in-the-middle-eastsouth-asia/
[2]http://www.whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=889
[3]http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10379.shtml
[4] http://www.labourstart.org/israel/Histadrut_on_Gaza.pdf
[5] http://www.histadrut.org.il/index.php?page_id=1801[6] http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/2422-israel-owes-over-nis-83-billion-to-palestinian-workers-from-the-occupied-palestinian-territories

 

 

 

For Immediate Release – September 12, 2011

- Supporters of Palestinian rights claim victory as target Agrexco ordered into liquidation
- Court papers warn that company is Israeli symbol whose downfall will have ‘wider implications’
- Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions National Committee (BNC) calls on the movement internationally to celebrate this victory and to intensify BDS campaigns

Campaigners for Palestinian rights are celebrating after the primary Israeli agricultural produce export company Agrexco, which has been a key target of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights, has been ordered into liquidation after being unable to pay its creditors.

Agrexco is a partially state-owned Israeli exporter responsible for the export of a large proportion of fresh Israeli produce, including 60-70% of the agricultural produce grown in Israel’s illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).  In a translation of the court documents on the liquidation process that the BNC obtained, it is clearly stated that Agrexco acted as an arm of the Israeli state, effectively providing state subsidies to the agricultural sector. The documents indicate criticism of the government for allowing the company to default on its debts and also warn that Agrexco is a primary Israeli symbol and that its downfall is likely to have great implications.

“We congratulate and warmly salute our European partners for their dedicated and determined campaign against Agrexco. This ruling follows the news that Veolia, a French multinational that has lost billions of euros worth of municipality contracts over its provision of infrastructure to illegal Israeli settlements, is facing a financial meltdown. Clearly, the BDS movement is coming of age and is raising the cost of corporate complicity with Israeli war crimes.  Strategic BDS campaigns are proving, through every day successes, that BDS is the most effective form of solidarity needed to challenge Israel’s system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid” said Jamal Juma’, coordinator of Stop the Wall Campaign and member of BNC secretariat.

Adel Abu Ni’meh, director of the Palestinian Farmers Union,  a member organisation of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, welcomed the news but warned that “Agrexco assets are still being sold. We are following this closely and call on all international companies to withdraw their offers. Those companies that purchase Agrexco assets and brand names or seek to replace the company as the primary Israeli agricultural exporter will be similarly targeted by the BDS movement”.

Agrexco has been targeted with popular boycotts, blockades, demonstrations and direct action throughout Europe. In France, a broad civil society coalition containing dozens of organisations took legal action against the company and fiercely opposed the construction of a terminal at Sete that has laid unused since its construction. In Italy and the UK, campaigners took direct action and pressured supermarkets to drop the Agrexco brand.  In July, a new coalition of organisations from over 13 European countries vowed to “put an end to Agrexco’s presence in Europe”. The coalition is expected to examine developments and may initiate new campaigns in response to the outcome of the liquidation.

As respected Israeli economist Shir Hever has stated, the European-wide campaign against the company was among the factors that led to the company’s downfall.  “The company has been found to produce misleading reports, and did not warn its investors of the possible impact of the BDS campaign to boycott the company products. Many farmers have left the company, opting to work with competing ones which have not yet been at the focus of the BDS campaign, and as a result Agrexco entered a liquidity crisis. Several companies have considered bidding to buy Agrexco, but have withdrawn their bids after a brief research, which has no doubt uncovered the company’s prominence in the BDS campaign, among other things,” he explained.

The campaign against Agrexco was initiated in response to the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestment initiatives and sanctions on Israel and its supporters until the state complies with international law by ending its occupation and dismantling its apartheid Wall, ensuring equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and implementing the right of refugees to return to their homes as stipulated under UN resolution 194.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND INTERVIEWS:
info@bdsmovement.net

 

After seven years of apparently futile corporate engagement with Caterpillar over its business practices in Israel/Palestine, the Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee is recommending that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) add the company to its divestment list.

MRTI is also recommending that the 220th General Assembly (2012) add Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard to the list.

The move toward divestment is the “logical conclusion to what the (General Assembly) asked us to do,” said the Rev. Brian Ellison, chairman of MRTI. The committee implements GA policies on socially responsible investing by engaging corporations in which the church owns stock.

“We are telling them, ‘(Corporate engagement hasn’t) been successful, and we don’t think it’s going to be successful,’” Ellison said.

At MRTI’s recommendation, the 219th GA (2010) denounced Caterpillar for profiting from the non-peaceful use of its products in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

MRTI has been engaged with Motorola since 2005. The company split into two companies in 2010: Motorola Mobility, which markets cell phones in civilian markets, and Motorola Solutions, which conducts business with the Israeli government. Since the split, MRTI has been engaged with Motorola Solutions.

MRTI has also been engaged with Hewlett-Packard about its’ products role in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. “The company sells hardware to the Israeli Navy that is used for its operational communications, logistics and planning including the ongoing naval blockade of the Gaza Strip,” reads MRTI’s report from its Sept. 9 meeting.

The committee discussed continuing engagement with Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard, but ultimately voted to recommend adding those companies to the divestment list.

“I just think we need to take bold action,” said MRTI committee member Terry Dunning.

She added that focusing on two well-known consumer brands might alert people to their connections to human rights violations, and that she doesn’t believe further corporate engagement with the companies will be productive.

“What good did it do us to keep talking to Caterpillar for seven years?” she said.

Another MRTI committee member, Joanne Rodriguez, said that she would have supported continuing engagement if the companies were more open to communication, but they have shown total disregard.

According to MRTI’s report, Hewlett-Packard provided faith-based shareholders with “vague answers” in writing, repeatedly delayed conference calls and participated in unproductive dialogue. Motorola Solutions is “unresponsive to all efforts by religious shareholders to engage in serious discussions about its involvement in non-peaceful pursuits,” reads the report.

“You can’t bring about positive change if there’s no relationship, if there’s no communication — and there isn’t,” Rodriguez said.

The Rev. John Hougen, committee member, said that MRTI’s recommendations are a statement about the companies, not Israelis or Palestinians. Human rights violations should be opposed in any part of the world, but because the Middle East is a political hot button, MRTI’s recommendations could be taken the wrong way.

“I’m voting to divest because it’s the right idea, not — absolutely not — because of the people involved,” he said.

Original Link: http://www.pcusa.org/news/2011/9/12/mrti-recommends-pcusa-divestment-caterpillar/

Occupied Palestine, September 7 2011

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the broad Palestinian civil society coalition that acts as the Palestinian reference point of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, welcomes the recent decision by the Turkish government to impose limited sanctions on Israel and hopes that it is implemented from today as announced.

On September 2, the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that the Turkish government would downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspend all military relations with Israel. Davutoglu gave today, September 7, as the deadline for Israel to withdraw all diplomatic personnel above the second-secretary level.

This decision comes only two months after the BNC launched its call for an immediate and comprehensive military embargo on Israel.

Turkey imported more than double the amount of arms from Israel than any other country in 2009 and was the second largest importer of Israeli arms in 2010.

The people of Turkey have consistently shown overwhelming solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian rights, most notably with their mobilization for the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, which led to the brutal killing of eight Turkish citizens and one US citizen of Turkish origin by the Israeli military. The Turkish government has long been aware of the unpopularity of its support for the Israeli war industry and oppression.

Jamal Juma, Stop the Wall campaign coordinator and BNC secretariat member, said:

“In the context of the Arab Spring, this decision should be seen as a victory not only for Palestinians but also for all movements, civil society organizations and people of conscience that have shown solidarity with Palestinians and demonstrated to their governments the strength of public support for the Palestinian struggle. The Turkish government decision is clearly a result of the hugely unpopular nature of its support for Israel.”

“That Turkey, formerly such a staunch ally of Israel, has taken this step shows that governments are finding it increasingly difficult to justify their support for Israel’s regime of colonisation, occupation and apartheid. Where international institutions such as the UN are failing to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, the call for BDS is being heeded in the corridors of power, providing a concrete tool with which international diplomacy can be used in support of Palestinian rights.”

“Palestinian civil society, as broadly represented in the BNC, reiterates its call to the movements and people of conscience in Turkey and around the world to mobilize for an immediate and comprehensive military embargo against Israel.”

- BNC Secretariat

A group of pro-Israel activists, backed by StandWithUs, a national US pro-Israel US organization, is planning to take legal action to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its historic decision to boycott Israeli products.

The Electronic Intifada has obtained a copy of a 31 May 2011 letter sent to the Board of Directors of the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, Washington, threatening “expensive” legal action if the pro-Israel activists’ “demands” to end the boycott of Israeli products are not met.

Other documents, supported by interviews, confirm that the Israeli government has taken part in discussions about, and been given advance knowledge of, the planned lawsuit and another planned action against Evergreen State College in Olympia in response to Palestine solidarity activism by students.

Evergreen State is noted for being the school attended by Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli occupation soldier operating a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003.

These developments indicate new, even more aggressive tactics by pro-Israel organizations to suppress, deter and malign any form of Palestine-related dissent, protest or solidarity action.

An historic vote

On 15 July 2010, the Olympia Food Co-Op (OFC) became the first grocery store in the United States to ban Israeli-made items from its shelves.

The highly symbolic action, which gained global attention, came in response to the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel until Israel respects Palestinian human rights and international law.

From the first moment the boycott resolution was passed, Olympia community members who supported and organized for it were accused of anti-Semitism by the Northwest chapter of StandWithUs.

Now, StandWithUs is taking its assault against the OFC to a new level with its backing for legal action.

Also in June 2010, students at Evergreen State College voted overwhelmingly to back an initiative calling on college administrators to divest the school’s assets from any companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, and specifically Caterpillar Corporation, which makes bulldozers Israel uses to demolish Palestinian homes.

It was a Caterpillar bulldozer that Israeli forces used to kill Rachel Corrie as she attempted to prevent such a demolition. According to a StandWithUs flyer (PDF), Rachel Corrie “died in Gaza after interfering with Israeli counter-terrorism operations.”

Documents show that in addition to targeting the Olympia Food Co-op, StandWithUs is helping to plan a civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College.

Threat of legal action against Olympia Food Co-op

The 31 May letter (PDF) sent individually to members of the Olympia Food Co-op Board of Directors is signed by five individuals who identify themselves as “members of the Olympia Food Co-op (‘OFC’) who oppose OFC’s boycott of Israeli made products (‘Israel Boycott’) and divestment from Israeli companies (‘Divestment’).”

The five are Kent L. Davis, Linda Davis, Susan Mayer, Susan G. Trinin and Jeffrey I. Trinin. All except for Mayer also appeared in a StandWithUs Northwest video published on YouTube in June entitled “Why BDS Scars Don’t Heal: A StandWithUs Production.”

The video alleges that the BDS effort in Olympia has been motivated by and generated anti-Semitism, and was run by a secretive and conspiratorial “dark organization” from outside the community.

It also claims that the BDS effort in Olympia and a similar initiative in the town of Port Townsend, north of Seattle, last year had generated “a climate of fear and terror for Jews.”

The activists’ letter makes sweeping allegations that the OFC board engaged in “numerous procedural violations” in passing the boycott of Israeli goods, but it does not provide any examples of such violations.

The letter writers claim to have made many sincere efforts to rectify the unspecified “violations” but asserted that their complaints had “fallen on deaf ears as the Board steadfastly refuses to revisit its position on the Israel Boycott and Divestment policies.”

“At this point,” the letter states, “we are left no choice but to demand in no uncertain terms that OFC act in accordance with its rules and bylaws and rescind the Israel Boycott and Divestment policies.”

The letter sets a thirty-day deadline for a response and adds, “Regrettably should the board reject our demand, we are prepared to pursue relief through the court system.”

The pro-Israel activists’ letter concludes, “If you do what we demand, this situation may be resolved amicably and efficiently. If not, we will bring legal action against you, and this process will become considerably more complicated, burdensome, and expensive than it has been already.”

Lawsuit “a matter of time”

Reached by telephone, Avi Lipman, a Seattle-based attorney that The Electronic Intifada learned represents the letter writers, confirmed that two letters had been sent to the OFC board — the 31 May letter obtained by The Electronic Intifada and a follow-up.

However, Lipman said that a lawsuit had still not been filed, and “there is still an opportunity for the board to take the remedial action my clients have asked for.”

Lipman would not specify any procedural violations made by the OFC board. “I don’t want to get into it in any detail,” he said, indicating that the 31 May letter described “in general terms what our concerns are.”

But Lipman did not seem optimistic that the board would rescind the boycott decision as demanded. After the initial thirty-day deadline, Lipman said his clients had given the board an additional fifteen-day period to act.

“That time has also expired,” Lipman said. “The board has indicated that it plans to stand by the actions it has taken, so it seems clear to me that remedial action will not be taken.”

“It’s just a matter of time before we go to court and seek relief from the court,” Lipman added.

Lipman was keen to emphasize that his clients’ complaints were not based on the substance of the BDS decision, but merely the alleged, unspecified procedural violations. “The issue is how the process unfolded and the procedures that were followed and not followed by the board,” Lipman said.

He stressed that if the boycott of Israeli goods was revoked, and then reinstated according to the proper procedures, his clients would abide by it.

“An allegation that doesn’t have an allegation”

“We don’t have any statement on the non-existent lawsuit,” Jayne Kaszynski, Staff Representative to the Olympia Food Co-op Board, told The Electronic Intifada. “It’s pretty much impossible to respond to an allegation that doesn’t have an allegation.”

Kaszynski said that the BDS decision and the procedures used to reach it had generated widespread public debate among Co-op members, especially on the OFC’s blog. She added that any member who was unhappy with a decision of the board had “democratic alternatives” to legal action.

“If you’ve read the bylaws you know that we have a simple member petition process. Any member can create a petition and if they get 300 members to sign it, they can get pretty much any issue put on a ballot,” Kaszynski said.

The OFC has 22,000 active members, according to Kaszynski, “so the 300 signature requirement is not very high. So far no one has exercised this democratic right in relation to the boycott.”

The petition procedure is described in the Olympia Food Co-op Bylaws.

Lipman, however, said his clients did not think they should use this procedure because they see the original boycott decision as illegitimate, and therefore the burden should be on the board, not on his clients, to take remedial action.

Smearing BDS as “anti-Semitism”

At one point, the StandWithUs YouTube video briefly displays an image of a Nazi Swastika superimposed on a Star of David, with a caption above it stating “Actual image from handout.”

The video provides no information on where this handout was supposedly distributed or any evidence that it has anything whatsoever to do with the Olympia Food Co-op.

Yet the smear is clearly meant to tar any and all BDS supporters — presumably including those who self-identify as Jewish — as anti-Semites.

“I really don’t think it’s comfortable for Jews to live in the city of Olympia and be outwardly expressing Jews,” Kent Davis, one of the letter writers, claims in the video. “You know, you can be a closet Jew and that’s fine. I just don’t feel comfortable discussing my religion or my beliefs in a mixed group environment anymore.”

As with the swastika “handout,” no evidence is ever presented of any specific incidents that back up this grave charge likening placid Olympia to 1930s Berlin, or to link the alleged climate of fear to the Olympia Food Co-op’s boycott of Israeli goods.

A “dark” outside conspiracy

In the StandWithUs video, the letter writers and other speakers allege that the BDS action at the Olympia Food Co-op was planned by a shadowy organization that came in from outside the community, and then disappeared leaving behind acrimony and conflict from which there has been no “healing.”

None of these allegations come with any specifics or facts and the overall tone is conspiratorial.

“It’s amazing that I’ve been pushed aside as a Jew in this town because of the BDS,” says Tibor Breuer, identified as an OFC member in the video. “It’s a very, very dark organization that has no interest in anything that has to do with the two-state solution.”

BDS is, in fact, not an “organization,” but the term given to a set of principles and tactics which have been taken up by independent individuals and solidarity groups all over the world in response to the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions measures on Israel until Israel ends its human rights violations and respects Palestinian rights and international law.

“When BDS comes into these communities, they just divide people in all sorts of ways and then they leave and the community is stuck with having to somehow heal and we can’t heal yet,” Linda Davis, another of the five letter writers, alleges in the video.

“BDS was over there in Europe celebrating their victory, and we’re stuck with this shit,” Breuer adds.

In fact, at the time the OFC boycott was passed, and since, those who initiated it spoke frequently to the media, and all have been local Olympia community and Co-op members.

Ironically, Robert S. Jacobs, the director of StandWithUs Northwest, acknowledges as much.

Refuting suggestions that the pro-Israel counterattack against BDS is centralized, Jacobs told The Electronic Intifada, “Similar to the BDS movement, we’re made up of activists in the community who passionately feel they want to express a certain perspective and hope that opinion leaders will adopt that perspective.”

Jacobs admitted in the interview that there was no such thing as “BDS central.” Yet the video that bears the StandWithUs name and features the letter writers paints an altogether different picture.

Meanwhile, the vilification of Palestine solidarity activists as anti-Semites is not surprising given the views of some of the StandWithUs leadership.

One board member and founder in Los Angeles, Mordechai “Moti” Gur, describes the purpose of StandWithUs in the following terms on the website for another organization he founded: “We combat the soft jihad and local intifadas by Muslim organizations by exposing everyone to the light of truth” (The Moses Project).

Other StandWithUs documents and websites routinely malign Palestine solidarity activists — including the nine civilians killed by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara as “jihadists.”

But while the pro-Israel activists in the StandWithUs video allege — without offering a shred of evidence — that OFC was the victim of a “dark” external conspiracy by anti-Semitic outsiders bent on dividing their community, they themselves are receiving significant external backing.

How StandWithUs describes its role

StandWithUs is a national pro-Israel advocacy organization which has taken a lead in fighting “delegitimization” and BDS.

Pro-Israel groups and the Israeli government have since last year claimed that virtually all Palestinian solidarity work amounts to an effort to delegitmize Israel. In recent policy speeches, US officials have vowed to help Israel combat “delegitmization” — though precisely what this means in practice and how it may affect civil liberties and free speech is unclear.

The Northwest chapter of StandWithUs has been particularly active in combating BDS efforts not only in Olympia but at the food co-op in Port Townsend, north of Seattle, where there was an unsuccessful bid to emulate the OFC boycott. (Disclosure: I was invited to Port Townsend in August 2010 to speak at a community event in support of BDS).

But how deeply involved is StandWithUs, and how does the organization liaise with the Israeli government in mounting these local battles?

Jacobs characterizes StandWithUs Northwest as little more than a small local chapter, “a two-person office,” providing basic support and advice to individuals such as those threatening to sue the Olympia Food Co-op.

Jacobs told The Electronic Intifada his group’s contact with the five letter writers was largely limited to providing printed materials, helping bring in speakers and offering advice. He said he had not seen either of the letters sent to the OFC board.

Although Jacobs did acknowledge working with and meeting repeatedly with the letter writers, he characterized the relationship to any potential lawsuit as arms length:

“Since we’re not actually a party to anything down there, frankly we’re not in any of the loop regarding the legal matters. Just from an attorney-client privilege standpoint anything we would do with anybody would be violating some kind of potential privilege. So, we know that they’re doing some stuff. I know they’ve been working with an attorney. I know which firm it is but beyond that we have not in any way participated in the legal discussion.”

Jacobs acknowledged attending one meeting related to the potential lawsuit.

“We were at one meeting, I don’t know how many months ago, before anything actually happened,” Jacobs explained.

“We had been asked by some of the folks down there if we knew any attorneys up here [in Seattle], so we mentioned a number of names. But I was at a meeting where they had an initial — they had not retained any attorney or developed any permanent relationship with an attorney — when they had someone there talk off-the-cuff about what an attorney could do for them.”

Jacobs was also adamant that his office had not done any fundraising toward a potential lawsuit. “I don’t foresee us putting any money into a lawsuit,” he said, adding, “I don’t know of anybody who’s giving them money. I’ll be that blunt about it.”

Jacobs estimated that the amount of money his office had spent on work related to the OFC boycott — presumably not including staff time — amounted to just hundreds of dollars principally for printing flyers and brochures.

The role of the Israeli consulate

Asked what role the Israeli government plays in StandWithUs Northwest’s work, Jacobs stated that he personally knew Akiva Tor, the Israeli Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, based in San Francisco, and that Tor would be speaking at an upcoming StandWithUs fundraising event. Jacobs acknowledged that StandWithUs had helped to bring Tor’s deputy to speak in Port Townsend.

Jacobs said that the Israeli consulate did not play any “active role” in opposing the OFC boycott, but, he added, “from the information standpoint they want to know what’s going on.”

“We update him [Tor] on what’s happening in the community here,” Jacobs said.

“If what you’re talking about is if there is some sort of central coordination out of Israel for the activity we are doing here, absolutely not,” he added.

Tor had also offered to speak in Olympia, but it had not happened yet, according to Jacobs. “I know he met in a coffee shop with the Corries [Cindy and Craig, the parents of Rachel Corrie]. I heard that from all sorts of people in Olympia,” Jacobs stated.

Yet, this characterization is at best incomplete.

A deeper role for Israeli officials?

Although Jacobs has confirmed reporting to Israeli officials what goes on in the local community, the relationship may be even closer than he acknowledged.

A “Weekly Status Report” of StandWithUs Northwest, for the week of 5-11 March 2011 states that the following meetings took place:

“Rob [Jacobs] and Carolyn in Olympia with Olympia activists, Akiva Tor and Avi Lipman on Thursday – Presentation of legal case, discussion of Evergreen strategy and Olympia community speaker opportunities.”

Carolyn Hathaway is the co-chair of StandWithUs Northwest.

In his conversation with The Electronic Intifada, Jacobs did not disclose that Israeli Consul General Tor had not only already traveled to Olympia at the behest of StandWithUs, but had participated in a meeting with the activists threatening to sue the OFC and their lawyer.

The “status update” was posted on a website that archives emails sent to members of a private list of StandWithUs affiliates, but the website itself is unprotected.

It appears that this and other documents may have been published inadvertently, given how revealing they are of StandWithUs Northwest’s activities and strategy and the contradictions with Jacobs’ own characterizations.

Akiva Tor did not respond to a request to speak to The Electronic Intifada left with a staff person at his office.

The attorney, Avi Lipman, would not disclose what was discussed at the March meeting, again citing attorney-client privilege. Lipman said, however, “The Israeli consulate has nothing to do with this action. StandWithUs is not our client. We represent the individual co-op members who have asked the board to take remedial action.”

While all that may technically be true, none of it is inconsistent with a close advisory and an eventual fundraising role for StandWithUs and even the Israeli consulate.

Nor does it explain the presence of an official from a foreign government at a meeting in which legal action against OFC and possibly Evergreen State College was discussed.

Lipman would also not discuss how his clients might be able to afford an “expensive” — as the 31 May letter put it — legal action.

Another worrying possibility is that through StandWithUs, and possibly other organizations, Israeli diplomatic missions may collect intelligence about local activists or people who express views sympathetic to Palestinian human rights in order to exclude such people from visiting the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on political grounds.

In July, for example, Israel detained and deported dozens of individuals who planned to visit the occupied West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians.

StandWithUs remains fully engaged in Olympia lawsuit

Jacobs’ characterization of his organization’s role with the planned lawsuit as almost incidental is flatly contradicted by another document made public via the StandWithUs email archive.

The agenda for an upcoming 27 September 2011 StandWithUs Northwest Executive Committee meeting includes the following items:

Project Status

• The civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College
• The law suit against the Olympia Food Co-op
• Working to shut down the “educational” programs that Ed Mast has circulated to all Washington State social studies teachers and librarians
• Speakers Bureau

Thus the OFC lawsuit and the Evergreen State College civil rights complaint are both “projects” of the StandWithUs Northwest Executive Committee, and firmly on its agenda.

Ed Mast, it is worth noting, is a Seattle-area activist and playwright who has provided educational resources on Palestine.

In addition to everything else, it would appear that rather than merely providing an alternative, pro-Israeli viewpoint, StandWithUs is working to censor and exclude other viewpoints from schools and libraries and exclusively impose its own.

And, far from being merely restricted to its local area, StandWithUs Northwest is apparently assuming a national role:

StandWithUs Northwest helping other regions

• Helping Avi Posnick in NY oppose the BDS boycott proposal at the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn
• Helping Gail Rubin in Davis oppose the BDS boycott proposal at the Sacramento Food Co-op in Sacramento

It is clear from its agenda that not only is StandWithUs Northwest playing a continuing role in Olympia, but expanding its anti-BDS activities across the country.

Focus on procedure, not substance

During his interview with The Electronic Intifada, Jacobs characterized the grievances the letter writers had with the co-op in a manner remarkably similar to the 31 May letter which he said he had not seen. He acknowledged that it was StandWithUs’ advice that the case should focus on procedure, rather than substance.

“Courtrooms aren’t the place to discuss foreign policy and they wouldn’t make a decision based on that,” Jacobs explained. “The same is true with the board members that were on the board [of OFC] at the time. Most of them were sympathetic to the BDS movement and trying to make an argument counter to theirs would be a huge educational effort and probably not very successful.”

This, Jacobs said, was the rationale for focusing on procedure, rather than substantive arguments.

StandWithUs fundraising 

Jacobs presents StandWithUs Northwest as almost a shoe-string operation. “We’re thought of as this huge, incredibly wealthy organization,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “As far as Jewish community organizations go, even on a national basis, we don’t have anything near the kind of resources of some other organizations such as ADL or AJC. Here frankly, we barely cover our own costs just in operations.”

But public financial filings of StandWithUs, which raises funds under the legal name “Israel Emergency Alliance,” (IEA) tell a quite different story.

The IEA’s mandatory Form 990 financial filings to the Internal Revenue Service (available from the website Guidestar) show an organization with $4.2 million in annual revenue and impressive fundraising capacity.

In 2008, Jacobs himself received an annual salary of $96,923 for an average forty-hour week, more on a pro-rated basis than StandWithUs founder and national executive director Roz Rothstein who received $100,000 for an average sixty-hour week, according to the filings. In 2009, Rothstein’s salary was raised to $150,000.

StandWithUs also has an international presence, with an Israeli office and a European base in Brussels, which together accounted for a million dollars in expenses in 2009.

The largest area of expenditure, however, is for campus advocacy at US colleges and universities, which accounted for $2.6 million in 2009.

Targeting Evergreen State College for student activism

The planned civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College may be an attempt to use alleged incidents of campus anti-Semitism as the basis for a legal action to discredit the divestment campaign at the school.

On 8 November 2010, a story appeared on the news website MyNorthwest.com under the byline of Alex Silverman with the headline “Pro-Israel students harassed, leave Evergreen State.”

It alleges that Evergreen State, once an oasis of tolerance, had become a place where some students have faced “torment and harassment” and have even left “simply for expressing their opinions about a controversial issue.”

The story claims five unnamed students “transferred out” of Evergreen State because of “harassment,” but the only source is a student named Joshua Levine. “There are days I feel uncomfortable walking across campus alone because I wear a yarmulke [Jewish skull cap] on my head,” Levine alleges.

Levine, president of the campus chapter of Hillel — another national pro-Israel organization — is also a StandWithUs Northwest Emerson Fellow.

But what were the examples of “harassment” that supposedly led to this situation? Just like the StandWithUs video, the only ones Levine provides conflate Palestine solidarity with “anti-Semitism”:

“Checkpoints were erected outside the bus stop,” Levine told Silverman. “People claiming to be IDF [Israeli army] veterans shoving toy assault rifles in people’s faces, demanding to see their student ID before they could go onto campus.”

Students have staged similar actions on campuses across North America to highlight the well-documented abuses Palestinians face living under Israeli military occupation.

The article quotes Israeli Consul General Akiva Tor decrying the supposedly dire situation.

The MyNorthwest.com story also notes: “This summer, the student body at Evergreen State voted overwhelmingly to divest from companies with economic interests in Israel, further fueling the anti-Israel fervor on campus.”

That, it would seem, is what is making Levine so uncomfortable.

Laying the ground for a civil rights complaint

Recently, the US Department of Education began investigating precisely such a civil rights complaint stemming from charges of anti-Semitism because of Palestine solidarity activism at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

That federal investigation is the first of its kind, though it may well be the model for targeting Evergreen State College.

Has StandWithUs, through Levine, been carefully laying the ground for a similar effort to use US civil rights protection legislation to suppress criticism of a foreign government that engages in massive human rights abuses and discrimination of precisely the kind civil rights legislation is meant to prevent?

Importing Israeli repression to the US?

What is particularly troubling about the threatened legal action against OFC and Evergreen State backed by StandWithUs and its close collaboration with the Israeli government, is that it appears to import Israeli tactics of political repression into the United States.

Earlier this year, Israel passed a law that imposes heavy fines on anyone who participates in or advocates a boycott of Israeli businesses, universities and social and cultural institutions or illegal West Bank settlements. The law was strongly condemned by human rights organizations as a violation of basic freedoms.

The threatened legal action against the Olympia Food Co-op may be a “do it yourself” version of the law on US soil. Simply taking someone to court imposes a punishment on them through high legal fees before any judgment is ever rendered. That may be the whole point.

It should serve as a red flag that however small and tight-knit a community, powerful pro-Israel groups, in coordination with Israeli officials, are prepared to go to any length to smear and harass people.

They’ll do whatever it takes to keep people quiet about Israel’s human rights abuses, war crimes and the international complicity that the BDS movement seeks to expose, challenge and bring to an end.

Correction: An earlier version of this story identified major StandWithUs donors Steven and Rita Emerson, who fund the StandWithUs Emerson Fellowship. Following publication of the article, StandWithUs confirmed via Twitter that the Steven Emerson who funds StandWithUs is in no way related to the Steven Emerson who runs the Investigative Project on Terrorism (ITP), and who has been accused of being a leading figure in fostering Islamophobia. The story was been amended accordingly. StandWithUs also stated via Twitter that the Steven Emerson who runs ITP “has never donated nor is he associated in anyway with StandWithUs.” 

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books).

Original Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/uncovered-israels-role-planned-us-lawsuit-fight-bds/10350

Next week, student and local community activists will present a petition to the University of Colorado Board of Regents, urging it to remove from the university’s stock portfolio all companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Launched by CU-Divest and signed by more than 2,000 students and human rights activists, the petition states that the university’s $1.7 billion investments “may violate the University’s commitment to human rights and social justice.”

Similar divestment and boycott campaigns are underway in dozens of campuses across the country, following the successful efforts of Hampshire College students in 2009. (The retirement plan giant TIAA-CREF is the focus of a separate national divestment campaign.)

In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued a call to the international community to apply boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it upholds international law and Palestinian rights. The appeal resonated with human rights activists who have been frustrated by their government’s failure to pressure Israel to stop its human rights violations of Palestinians.

The US divestment campaign has been modeled very deliberately on campaigns that targeted investment in South Africa apartheid during the 1980s. The two countries, Israel and the former South Africa, are remarkably similar in their treatment of populations they define as undesirable (Palestinians and black South Africans, respectively).

The similarity has been observed by South Africans who visit the occupied Palestinian territories. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a 1984 Nobel Prize recipient, published an open letter to the University of Berkeley student government in 2010: “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.”

Archbishop Tutu called for the international community to withdraw support from Israel until it ends its occupation. Withdrawing financial support from companies that profit from the occupation is one avenue available to all of us.

So which companies profit from the occupation? A Web site (whoprofits.org) helps identify companies with Israeli military and illegal settlement connections. Motorola has a contract with the Israeli military to provide communications technology, including voice and data services to military commanders. (Israel’s indiscriminate shelling of the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009 prompted UN officials to accuse Israel of war crimes.)

Another collaborator in Israel’s crimes is Caterpillar, the largest producer of earth-moving construction vehicles. The Israeli military has used Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy more than 12,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. This company contributes to the homelessness of an occupied people and should not be part of any university’s (or individual’s) stock portfolio.

A successful divestment campaign at CU affirms the power of communities to make investment decisions that are consistent with their values. Most Americans do not approve of the killing of civilians, yet Israel kills unarmed Palestinians without consequence. Americans contribute generously to assist famine and earthquake victims, but many of us seem unaware of Israel’s siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip, which one UN official described in 2008 as the intentional reduction of a region to “abject destitution.” We affirm the sanctity of the home, yet a US client state has used US equipment to make tens of thousands of Palestinians homeless.  We should not invest in the industries that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations.

Successive US administrations have provided unconditional support for a highly militarized and aggressive Israel, and this has fueled Israeli lawlessness and prolonged the conflict. (According to the Web site If Americans Knew, in 2011 the US provides $8.2 million each day in military aid to Israel. The administration and Congress are discussing ways to cut entitlement programs that are relied on by millions of Americans during these difficult economic times, yet aid to Israel is shielded from cuts.)

Because US government support enables Israeli intransigence, we are complicit in crimes committed with our tax dollars. One way (by no means the only way) to redress that is to identify companies that are complicit in Israel’s control of the occupied Palestinian territories and to refrain from boosting their profits.

Ida Audeh, an editor who lives in Boulder, is a Palestinian who grew up in the occupied West Bank. The CU Divest petition is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/cudivest/home/petition

Original Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/06-5

The summer of 2011 has been a long, hot one for Israeli and international companies complicit in human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.

Facing an intense Europe-wide boycott campaign, Israel’s largest produce exporter, Agrexco, filed for bankruptcy. French multinational Veolia, an urban systems corporation contracted with the Israeli government to provide light rail services for Israeli settlers in the West Bank, announced massive losses due to sustained pressure by activists around the world.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the Israeli maker of home carbonation devices, Sodastream, took a direct hit when the Coop supermarket chain announced on 19 July that it would stop all purchases of its products due to the company’s activity in illegal Israeli settlements. This marked another important victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, as Sweden is Sodastream’s largest market, with an estimated one in five households owning a Sodastream product (“Coop Sweden stops all purchases of Soda Stream carbonation devices,” 21 July 2011).

The Israeli company has been the target of a two-year campaign by Swedish activists who seek to highlight the company’s complicity with the Israeli occupation. The main production facilities for Sodastream are located at Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone of the Israeli settlement Maaleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank.

Sodastream, whose products are sold in 41 countries, has repeatedly attempted to deflect attention from the factory in the occupied West Bank, claiming that it is just one of many around the world.

In an interview last March with the Israeli financial daily The Marker (published by Haaretz), Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum went so far as to say that “all Sodastream products sold in Sweden are made in China, not Israel” (“Sodastream setting up plant within Green Line,” 3 March 2011).

Sodastream’s documents disprove its claims

Sodastream’s own annual report demonstrates Birnbaum’s claims to be patently false. On 30 June, the company filed a report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as required for publicly traded companies (Sodastream is listed on NASDAQ). That report describes that the 164,214-square-foot facilities at Mishor Adumim include “a metal factory, plastic and bottle blowing factory, machining factory, assembly factory, cylinder manufacturing facility, CO2 refill line and cylinder retest facility,” while two subcontractors in China produce nothing more than “certain components” for Sodastream products (“Sodastream International Ltd.; Annual report,” 30 June 2011 [PDF]).

The widely-trumpeted “factories around the world” — namely Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and the United States — are shown in the annual report to be limited to carbon dioxide refilling services.

Coop Sweden initially tried to defend its ties with Sodastream, repeating claims that the products on Swedish retailer shelves were made in China. However, as highlighted in a report presented to Coop by the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden (PGS) last January, the main issue was that the company had partnered with Israeli firms complicit in violations of international law (“PGS urges Coop to stop supporting the occupation,” 14 January 2011 [Swedish]).

As the PGS report emphasizes, “[A] product is part of a firm, and if you buy a product from a firm with an unethical operation, then you support the firm’s operation.”

The decision by Coop Sweden, with 21.5 percent of the Swedish grocery retail sector, came after a nationally televised report covering Sodastream’s ongoing operations in Mishor Adumim aired on 4 July. Using information from Israeli journalists and human rights organizations as well as Sodastream’s own corporate data, the TV4 report showed that despite claims to the contrary by both Sodastream and its Swedish distributor, Empire, products sold in Sweden were produced in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Promises had been made by Empire three years ago that production in the settlement would cease (“TV report: Continued production on occupied land,” 4 July 2011 [Swedish]).

Sodastream taxes finance settlement

Sodastream was a natural choice for the case study in corporate activity in illegal Israeli settlements in the detailed report released in January 2011 by the Who Profits project of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel (“Sodastream: A case study for Corporate Activity in Illegal Israeli Settlements,” January 2011 [PDF]).

The report underscores how purchasing Sodastream products directly supports the Maaleh Adumim settlement. In its report Who Profits states that the municipal taxes the company pays are used exclusively to “support the growth and development of the settlement.”

Created in 1974, the illegal industrial park at Mishor Adumim was integral to the establishment of the Maaleh Adumim settlement. The ministerial committee tasked with executing the plan to create the industrial park expropriated an area seven times that originally recommended, stealing lands from the surrounding Palestinian towns of Abu Dis, Azarya, al-Tur, Issawiya, Khan al-Ahmar, Anata and Nabi Moussa. The Who Profits report notes this is “considered the largest single expropriation in the history of the Israeli occupation.”

In addition to the industrial park, the ministerial committee also added a camp to the plan “for workers whose work is in the area.” One year later, the workers’ compound was erected and declared the settlement of Maaleh Adumim, and in 1977 as the Likud party gained power, the Israeli government officially recognized Maaleh Adumim as a “civilian community,” according to a report by Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Bimkom (“The Hidden Agenda: The Establishment and Expansion Plans of Ma’ale Adummim and their Human Rights Ramification,” December 2009 [PDF]).

Today, it is Israel’s largest settlement in terms of geographical area and, with 35,000 settlers, third in population. Strategically positioned to link settlements in East Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, Maaleh Adumim effectively bisects the West Bank, cutting off the north from the south.

Sodastream whitewashes exploitation of Palestinian workers

Meanwhile, the company’s leadership has attempted to paint Sodastream as an attractive place at which Palestinians would be lucky to work.

Sodastream Italy’s marketing director, Petra Schrott, responded with corporate talking points to a question posted on Yahoo Answers last June regarding the company’s West Bank location. Schrott described Sodastream as “a wonderful example of peaceful coexistence” where “160 Palestinians are employed and receive full social and health services” not to mention “daily hot meals” (“A question about Sodastream“ [Italian]).

As the Who Profits report points out, Palestinian workers, left with few choices other than working in settlements due to high unemployment in the West Bank, are “occupied subjects and thus they do not enjoy civil rights, and depend on their employers for work permits.” Efforts by Palestinian workers to organize and demand their due rights often result in the revocation of work permits, leading few to make any requests of their employers at all.

According to the Israeli workers rights organization Kav LaOved, Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements are underpaid, subjected to extensive security checks, exposed to workplace hazards and are left to fend for themselves if injured on the job (“Palestinian Workers in Israeli West Bank Settlements – 2009,” 13 March 2010).

Kav LaOved has assisted workers at the Sodastream factory in their struggle to obtain improved working conditions, better salaries and, at times, unpaid wages.

In 2008, workers complaining of pay far below the required minimum wage and twelve-hour workdays organized a protest at the factory after their appeals for better wages had met with no results. Seventeen workers were fired. It was only after Kav LaOved intervened via letters and meetings with Sodastream management and after Sodastream earned itself unflattering publicity in the Swedish press that the company — begrudgingly — rehired the Palestinian workers and granted them their due rights. However, as Kav LaOved noted, they remain “at the bottom of the hierarchy in the factory and constantly fear their dismissal.”

The story repeated itself in April 2010, when 140 Palestinian workers were fired and not paid their wages for the previous month. Kav LaOved again succeeded in obtaining back pay and in having the workers rehired, except for the two who led the struggle. Since that time, Kav LaOved has been unable to gather any information on working conditions at the Sodastream factory (“Employees at Soda Club fired without wages (follow up report),” 27 April 2010).

Unsurprisingly, the Palestinian workers at the Sodastream factory come from some of the very villages whose land was stolen to create Maaleh Adumim, including Abu Dis and Azarya — Azarya alone lost 57 percent of its village lands.

Greenwashing the occupation

Sodastream markets its products as “eco-friendly.” That’s an idea that is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the very settlement the company financially supports is responsible for “managing” the infamous Abu Dis landfill. That landfill is built on expropriated land from the village of the same name, where garbage from areas in Jerusalem and the surrounding settlements is dumped.

In June 2011, the Jerusalem municipality finally agreed to comply with an order from the Ministry of the Environment filed in October 2010 to reduce the 1,100 tons of waste per day being sent to Abu Dis because the dump was “polluting nearby streams and land” (“J’lem trash crisis solved, Abu Dis dump to be phased out,” The Jerusalem Post, 17 June 2011).

The Abu Dis landfill sits atop the Mountain Aquifer, the primary water source in the occupied West Bank. Under the Oslo accords, the agreement signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s, Israel is granted four times more of the water from the aquifer than are Palestinians.

Furthermore, Palestinians are required to obtain approval for the development and maintenance of their own water resources from the Joint Water Committee. This joint Israeli-Palestinian committee, however, deals only with water and sewage-related issues within the West Bank, effectively giving Israel exclusive veto power on all decisions on water resource and infrastructure development, including in Oslo-designated areas A and B, areas of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian administrative control.

Since Oslo, not one new permit for agricultural wells has been issued and 120 existing Palestinian wells are not functioning for lack of approval for repairs, according to water rights organization Ewash. Palestinians are forced to purchase their own water from the Israeli water utility, Mekerot (“Water resources in the West Bank“ [PDF]).

Settlement investment a “risk factor”

In disclosing risk factors as required in SEC filings, Sodastream listed both remaining in and transferring from Mishor Adumim as potential liabilities. The risks associated with staying include “negative publicity, primarily in Western Europe, against companies with facilities in the West Bank” and “consumer boycotts of Israeli products originating in the West Bank.”

Complying with international law and leaving the illegal settlement, on the other hand, would “limit certain tax benefits” enjoyed by companies in industrial parks in illegal settlements.

However, for more and more companies, those tax incentives fail to compensate for the negative publicity. On 19 July, the multinational corporation Unilever, after unsuccessfully attempting to sell its shares in the company, formally announced plans to move its Bagel and Bagel pretzel factory from the Barkan industrial zone in the Ariel settlement bloc to within the green line, Israel’s internationally-recognized armistice line with the occupied West Bank (“Bagel Bagel leaving territories,” 19 July 2011).

And while the Israel Lands Administration announced tenders for six new factories in Mishor Adumim, Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now points out that this is a recycled tender issued under the Olmert administration in 2008, which failed to find any takers (“Boycott Law Passes Knesset – Now Govt Establishes New Factories in Settlements,” Peace Now, 14 July 2011).

Sodastream itself has exhibited signs of bowing to international campaigns against the company. A press release on 6 July announced the groundbreaking of a new factory within the green line. The new facility is expected to begin operations in 2013, the same year the lease on the Mishor plant is due to expire (“SodaStream Announces the Groundbreaking of a New Primary Manufacturing Facility,” 6 July 2011).

In the press release, CEO Birnbaum says the company looks forward to leveraging “free trade agreements with the EU and North America.” In 2010, Sodastream was at the center of a European Court of Justice ruling that declared products originating in the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories ineligible for preferential trade tariffs under the EU-Israel Agreement. Though several other legal actions were included in Sodastream’s SEC filings, this particular case was conspicuously missing.

Sodastream looking to expand but meets protest

Sodastream is largely an export company with only three percent of sales made in Israel, according to an article published last February on the Israeli promotional site Israel 21c (“Putting the ‘pop’ back into soda pop,” 22 February 2011).

While Sweden is currently Sodastream’s largest market, the advertising blitz taking place in several European countries and the US indicates the company is looking to expand. On 12 July Sodastream announced a 3.4-million euro ($4.9 million) TV ad campaign in the UK, and in Italy a 1.8-million euro ($2.6 million) campaign was announced in June.

Sodastream’s annual report shows its advertising budget more than doubled from 10.5 million euros ($15 million) in 2009 to 21.5 million euros ($31 million) in 2010.

Sodastream identifies the US as its “most important target market” in its annual report and US activists are gearing up to meet the challenge. In a coordinated action last March, a petition with more than 2,500 signatures calling on Bed Bath & Beyond to stop selling Sodastream products (as well as products from Ahava, the settlement-based cosmetics company), was delivered to 15 locations up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles (“Tell Bed Bath & Beyond to Stop Carrying Illegal Settlement Products!”, CodePink).

Earlier this month, a group of activists dressed as brides held a mock wedding inside Bed Bath & Beyond in Los Angeles calling on concerned brides everywhere to strike Sodastream (and Ahava) off their bridal registries (“BDS Brides Boycott SodaStream and Ahava Sales at Bed Bath & Beyond,” YouTube, 12 August 2011).

The recent decision by Coop Sweden, as well as the financial woes of occupation-complicit companies, will give BDS campaigns around the world a boost. And the comments sections for online Sodastream promotional pieces provide a prime space for activists to get the word out on Sodastream’s complicity in human rights violations.

Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen based in Rome, Italy. Her articles have been published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Electronic Intifada, In These Times and Z Magazine. She can be reached at steph AT webfabbrica DOT com.

Original Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/swedish-chain-kicks-out-drink-machines-made-israeli-settlements/10327

The French corporation Veolia once appeared unassailable; today it is ailing. It is faced not only with the global economic crisis but also the growing impact of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against its involvement with Israeli apartheid infrastructure and transport projects. A recent merger between Veolia’s transport division and a subsidiary of the main French state investment fund indicates French industry and government have united to find a simple solution to Veolia’s problems: let the taxpayers finance Veolia’s income losses — and its complicity with Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.

On 4 August, Veolia management held a conference call with major financial analysts to defend the company’s latest figures. It wasn’t an easy task. Veolia’s management was forced to gloss over the terrible financial situation of the group that has forced it to draw up sharp cost reduction plans, initiate a complete restructuring of management, plan the pullout from more than forty countries and search for more investors to cover a high debt.

Veolia has lost more than 50 percent of its share value since March 2011, according to tear sheet data from The Financial Times (“Marketdata: Veolia Environnement Ve SA,” accessed 25 August 2011).

However, among the underlying financial data discussed — €67 million ($96 million) in net loss during the first half of this year; €15 billion ($21.6 billion) net debts; €250 million ($360 million) yearly cost reduction — one number did not come up: the massive financial damage the company has faced at the hands of the BDS movement. Since the beginning of the Palestinian-led campaign in 2005, Veolia has lost contracts worth more than €10 billion ($14 billion) following high profile campaigns.

Veolia’s chief financial officer Pierre-Antoine Riolacci had to admit that its municipal services are suffering a downturn in some countries “in particular with pressure on the downside, namely in the UK where things are rather difficult.”

Ignoring London loss

Surely the CFO had heard the news from across the English Channel the day before the conference call, where Veolia had failed to be selected for a £300 million ($493 million) contract by Ealing Council in London following a determined campaign by the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The worldwide campaign against Veolia was initiated in response to the company’s five percent stake in the consortium that is constructing the light rail project that links West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank, thereby cementing Israeli colonization and creating the necessary infrastructure for its further expansion. Moreover, Veolia holds a thirty-year contract for the operation of its first line, due to open later this month. Veolia and its subsidiaries also operate bus services, waste management and a landfill all deep within the occupied West Bank, and all for the use of Israeli settlers. All of these projects contribute to war crimes, as defined by the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Refusal to withdraw from Israel

Despite its apparent desperation to reduce costs, Veolia has yet to implement the most effective cost reduction strategy it could: including Israel in the list of countries it plans to withdraw from. Rather than divesting from Israeli colonization of Palestinian land, Veolia is turning to the French state for financial assistance, involving public money in operations abetting Israeli war crimes.

This spring Veolia Transport merged with Transdev into a newly created company Veolia Transdev (“Veolia Transdev: Creation of the world’s leading private-sector company in sustainable mobility,” press statement, 3 March 2011).

Transdev was a subsidiary of the French Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), a public investment authority that manages public funds and is overseen by the French parliament. The CDC is now a 50 percent partner in the newly created Veolia Transdev transport company. According to Veolia’s Pierre-Antoine Riolacci, the entrance of Transdev intp the group has allowed Veolia to “cut back our debt by €159 million [$229 million].” The degree to which Veolia Transdev has come under the protection of the French state is evident in the fact that during the conference call, Veolia Transdev issues were directly dealt with by the CDC’s chief executive Jerome Gallot.

On its website, CDC boasts that it exists to “serve the general interest and the economic development” of France. But pumping French tax money into Veolia to make up for its financial troubles, thus allowing it to push forward projects that serve illegal Israeli population transfers into occupied Palestinian territory, is unlikely to help attain either goal. Moreover, the Jerusalem light rail project contradicts French government policy that East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Promoting the project in 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated, “This [light rail] should be done … to strengthen Jerusalem, construct it, expand it and sustain it for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people and the united capital of the state of Israel.”

Even before its partial ownership of Veolia Transdev, CDC was involved in the light rail project through its subsidiary Egis Rail, which won a contract in 2008 to assist with managing the project. The current role of Egis Rail is unclear.

Private companies have long been heavily involved in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, such as building and maintaining the illegal settlement infrastructure, and the wall built on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. But by investing in Veolia, the French government is bucking a recent European trend of governments to start ensuring public enterprises and institutions are not complicit with Israeli violations of international law.

The German government recently responded to public pressure by taking steps to end the state-owned company Deutsche Bahn’s involvement in the construction of a train line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv passing through the occupied West Bank. Explaining its intervention, the German transport ministry pointed to the “potentially illegal” nature of the project and the fact that it is inconsistent with government policy toward Israel and the Palestinians (“Letter from German government to Die Linke parliamentarian concerning A1 train project,” 10 May 2011). The German foreign ministry has admirably published an alert on its website warning German companies about the potential legal consequences of Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank (“West Bank, Economy”).

Precedents set by other European capitals

The Norwegian government took a precedent-setting step when it excluded Elbit Systems from its investment portfolio. Elbit is an Israeli arms company involved in the construction of Israel’s illegal wall in the West Bank. It subsequently also excluded Africa Israel and Danya Cebus, two companies which build illegal Israeli-only settlements in the West Bank (“Norwegian government pension fund excludes more Israeli companies,” 23 August 2010).

The British government also took a stand on the issue when, in 2009, the foreign ministry pulled out of a deal to rent office space for its embassy in a building owned by Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond tycoon who owns Africa Israel and finances development of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The British government also withdrew export licenses to Israel from UK arms companies that provided the Israeli military with weapons or components that have been used during the winter 2008-09 attacks on the Gaza Strip (“Israel arms licenses revoked by Britain,” The Huffington Post, 13 July 2009).

In September 2009, the Spanish government excluded Ariel university from a state-sponsored architecture competition after having become aware that it was located in an illegal settlement.

The French government, however, has so far failed to take action to end such complicity. By doing so, France is not only undermining important precedents set by its allies. It also violates its obligations under international law and the voluntary commitments it has made regarding good governance and corporate social responsibility.

France must honor obligations

When the International Court of Justice ruled on the illegality of Israel’s apartheid wall and related infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, it also ruled that third party states are obliged not to aid or assist the maintenance of the unlawful situation created by Israel or infringements of the right to Palestinian self-determination. Two companies owned by the French state fund CDC — Veolia and Egis Rail — are involved with and profit from such unlawful acts. This calls France’s commitment to international law into question.

In June, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved its new Guiding Principles for the implementation of the Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework, designed to help states and businesses understand their duty to prevent corporate abuse of human rights and their obligations under international law (“Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework,” 21 March 2011).

According to these principles, “states should take additional steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that are owned or controlled by the state … [including by] denying access to public support and services for a business enterprise that is involved with gross human rights abuses and refuses to cooperate in addressing the situation.”

Involvement in the light rail project also violates the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s guidelines on multinational companies. Considering that Paris is the seat of the OECD, this is particularly ironic (“OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises,” 2008 [PDF]).

The OECD guidelines call for companies to “respect the human rights of those affected by their activities consistent with the host government’s international obligations and commitments.” Israel’s settlements and associated infrastructure violate several key international law treaties, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all of which have been ratified by Israel and France.

The French government has become a shareholder in Veolia in full knowledge of that company’s role in supporting Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land. The principal victims of this French policy are the Palestinian people. However, this development should also be of concern to all those who believe in the importance of a functioning system of international law and the implementation of human rights standards. The French people, whose taxes have financed the Veolia Transdev merger, should be especially concerned.

It will be up to campaigners in France and all around the globe to stop governmental buy-ins to illegal operations of private or state enterprises. It will be their task to ensure that the Transdev deal will not be enough to shield Veolia from the impact of the BDS movement’s demand for accountability. The group is in financial trouble and its CFO has admitted that Veoila is losing municipal service contracts in cities and regions that have seen meticulous grassroots campaigning. In December, Veolia will present the full list of countries which it is leaving (“Veolia to leave 37 countries as loss spurs quicker revamp,” Bloomberg, 4 August 2011).

This might be another chance for the company to show that it has learned that failure to respect human rights and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination comes with a price.

Maren Mantovani is coordinator for international relations with Stop the Wall, the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.

Michael Deas is Europe coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).

Original Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/french-giant-veolia-cut-down-size-abusing-palestinian-rights/10316

The OECD’s recent report on the statistics of Israel shows that the Israeli government succeeded in manipulating the organization into accepting Israel’s perspective – according to which Palestinians simply do not exist.

In May 2010, Israel was accepted into the OECD, the organization of developed democracies, and an exclusive club for the world’s richest 34 countries. It did so following heavy pressure by the U.S, to overlook Israel’s occupation of both Palestinian and Syrian territory.

 

Although OECD membership doesn’t bring direct material benefites, Israeli governments went to great lengths to gain entry, because membership of the organisation lends an air of legitimacy to Israel.

But the OECD had a serious problem with defining Israel, a country without defined borders, which occupies and illegally annexes large tracts of lands. European Union policy  prevents EU members of the OECD from recognizing Israel in the occupation borders.

The solution agreed upon was that Israel would produce statistical data that refers only to the population within its internationally-recognized green-line borders, within a year of its acceptance.

Unsurprisingly, Israel never produced this document. But the OECD needed these statistics, otherwise the compromise agreement on which it had accepted Israel as a member in the first place, would have been revealed as a sham and the OECD would have lost face. So its own statisticians recently produced a report, Study on the Geographic Coverage of Israeli Data (PDF), which attempts to resolve the issue on Israel’s behalf.

The report only uses data from Israeli sources (mainly the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, or ICBS). No attempt was made to challenge its validity or to compare it with data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and it seems that the OECD statisticians received very little, if any, cooperation from the ICBS.

The writers of the report, keenly aware of the treacherous legal and political ground they were treading, included a disclaimer that the OECD uses Israeli data “without prejudice” to the status of the occupied territories, as if a scientific discussion in the statistics of Israel/Palestine could take place without making any political, legal or moral comment. The report explains that, regardless of the legal aspects of the occupation, they are merely referring to the “economic territory” of Israel, which includes the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, which are effectively part of the Israeli-controlled economy.

Can this argument be acceptable? In truth, this report produces a better picture of Israeli economic realities by incorporating activity in territories beyond the green line. But it fails to include them all: four million Palestinians are missing from the account which ends up not simply as is a de facto acceptance of the occupation but of Israeli apartheid as well.

While the report often refers to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” (a biblical reference used by the Israeli government to justify the occupation and emphatically not accepted by the United Nations, or any other international body), the word “Palestinian” does not appear even once in the 58-page report.

In fact, the OECD decided to collect data about Israeli citizens and residents within Israel’s “economic territory”, and failed to notice approximately four million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation. Those four million include 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank (where the OECD counts only Israeli citizens and residents in its stats), and 1.5 million in Gaza, which remains part of Israel’s economic sphere and under full Israeli economic control, but do not figure into the OECD calculations at all.

How can one question that four million Palestinians who use Israeli currency, pay customs and various other taxes to the Israeli government, are subject to Israeli monopolies in water, energy and telecommunication (yes, I am talking also about Gaza, which Israel claims is “no longer occupied” but which pays customs and tariffs on imported goods and Value Added Tax (VAT) for Israeli products that are sold in Gaza.), are not part of Israel’s de-facto economic territory?

And yet, it seems that the OECD countries are intent on eliminating the Palestinians from the data, as if the area of approximately 27,000 square kilometers (Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights) was populated by only 7.5 million people, and not by 11.5 million.

Another example was the OECD’s tourism conference held in October 2010, which Israel won the right to host – in Jerusalem. On this basis, Israel’s minister of tourism announced that the OECD delegates, by attending, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Buses from one of Israel’s colonial companies (carrying names of illegal settlements) were used to transport the delegates.

In fact, if Palestinians would be included in the data pertaining to Israel’s “economic territory”, as they should be, a very different face of Israel would be revealed.. Israel would probably be revealed as the most unequal economy in the world. From the refugee camps in Gaza where most people live under the international poverty line, to north Tel-Aviv (about two hours drive from there) with neighbourhoods housing millionaires and billionaires…

Israel’s image as a developed economy and as a democratic country rests on its ability to separate Jews and Palestinians, citizens and subjects. This kind of separation is called apartheid.

While it is obvious why the Israeli government would like the world to forget about the existence of the Palestinians altogether, one wonders why the OECD countries go to such great lengths to help Israel conceal them.

Shir Hever is an Israeli economist and commentator who researches the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Original Link: http://www.jnews.org.uk/commentary/the-oecd-has-lost-4-million-palestinians

Divestment from Israeli occupation dominates CREF annual meeting in Charlotte; part of simultaneous 20-city protest against retirement giant.

Forty North Carolina activists and shareholders demonstrated in scorching temperatures outside the July 19 TIAA-CREF annual meeting while a dozen shareholders and proxies inside demanded company divest from corporations profiting from Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

[July 19, 2011-Charlotte, NC] For the second year in a row, the board of directors of the retirement giant TIAA-CREF got an earful from angry shareholders at their annual meeting about their refusal to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli illegal occupation. In Charlotte, NC today, 40 protestors outside and a dozen upset shareholders and local residents inside demanded to know why TIAA-CREF was refusing to let participants vote on a divestment shareholder resolution related to human rights violations.

The shareholders and activists are part of a broad-based campaign, endorsed by Nobel Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and American Friends Service Committee,  and supported by thousands of academics, medical and nonprofit workers who want TIAA-CREF to divest from companies that profit from Israeli violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Some 25,000 people have signed petitions and letters to the company.

The Jewish Voice for Peace-initiated campaign, WeDivest.org, is the target of the largest  divestment campaign for Palestinian human rights in US history.

TIAA-CREF barred the shareholders’ pro-divestment resolution from being voted on, and moved the meeting to Charlotte, NC instead of New York City where the meeting is typically held, presumably to avoid protests.  Shareholders flew in from across the country.

During the meeting, all questions but one focused on TIAA-CREF’s holdings with companies like Caterpillar, which profits from Israeli destruction of homes, and Veolia, which profits from bus lines that are segregated and serve illegal settlements.  About a dozen people challenged TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson on his seemingly inconsistent commitment to socially responsible investment, while just 4 people spoke against divesting from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation.

Additional protests were also held today in 20 cities across the United States including in Boston, Denver, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Lexington, Washington DC, Seattle and

• Chicago: where 30 protestors were met at the TIAA-CREF office by flanks of police officers and security guards
• Philadelphia: where 30 protestors were banned from the building.
• New York City: 80 people listened to Brokeback Mountain producer/Focus Films Head James Schamus  endorse divestment

TIAA-CREF Roger Ferguson admitted that his staff was erroneously telling concerned shareholders to switch investments into TIAA-CREF’s Socially Responsible Investment fund, even though the fund has shares in companies like Motorola and Caterpillar who profit from destruction of Palestinian homes and orchards.

Proponents also challenged his claim that there is not yet consensus on the occupation, and so it is too early for TIAA-CREF to act. “There is complete consensus in the human rights community that the Israeli occupation is illegal,” responded JVP Campaigns Director Sydney Levy.

QUOTES:

Heike Schotten,  Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts-Boston, said: “Last fall, when I and many other concerned UMass Boston faculty and staff raised our concerns with Mr. Ferguson about TIAA-CREF’s investment in companies that profit from Israel’s illegal occupation, we were told to shift our retirement funds into the company’s Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) options.  Imagine our surprise at learning that these SRIs still invest in Caterpillar and Motorola.  Because financial support for bulldozers, checkpoints, military surveillance, and weapons are not our idea of socially responsible investing, I’ve come here today all the way from UMass Boston to ask TIAA-CREF for a truly responsible investment portfolio.”

Deborah Rosenstein, , a North Carolina educator, said: “I was surprised when I learned CREF shareholders were going to meet in Charlotte, but I am pleased that I can attend the meeting and speak my mind as a TIAA-CREF investor. As a local educator here in North Carolina, I am eager to urge CREF to divest from companies that are profiting from the Israeli occupation and which are complicit in blocking Palestinian youth’s access to an education.”

Barbara Harvey,a Detroit labor rights lawyer, said: “As a TIAA-CREF client, I have a personal stake in the company’s financial success.  I am flying to Charlotte for the CREF meeting from my home in Detroit to emphasize how deeply distressed I am — along with the thousands of other TIAA-CREF participants who have joined our campaign — that TIAA-CREF compels me to retire in part on its profits from companies that continue to rob the Palestinian people of their ancestral homes, land, water, freedom, and happiness. We don’t ask TIAA-CREF to divest from the Israeli Occupation at a financial loss, but rather to look to more honorable equivalent investments, that do not seek profits from serious human rights abuses.”

Sydney Levy, Campaign Director at Jewish Voice for Peace, said: “The thousands of people who have signed our petition believe in the value of human dignity, in fairness and equality. I think that the TIAA-CREF Trustees share these values, but their investment decision so far –including in the so-called socially responsible investment funds–say otherwise. All we are asking is that TIAA-CREF aligns its actions with its values.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1984) said: “In South Africa we understood that true peace could  be built only on the basis of justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. I encourage TIAA-CREF, whose slogan is “for the greater good”, to heed the call for divestment, to refuse to profit from oppression of a people, and thus to stand on the side of what is right: a safe, secure and peaceful future for Palestinians and Israelis.”

Video, audio, and stills of the protests are available upon request.  Email lev AT jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Original Link: http://wedivest.org/2011/07/update-on-todays-tiaa-cref-protests/

Occupied Palestine – The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broadest Palestinian civil society coalition and the Palestinian leadership of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, commends human rights and Palestine solidarity organizations across Australia who signed a unity statement reiterating their support for BDS as the most effective and non-violent campaign to end Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people [1].  We stand with Australian activists in the face of the organized repression and smear campaign they have been facing for the past year, since the attempts to overturn the Marrickville council BDS motion.  As Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, refugees not allowed to return to our homes and Palestinians living as second class citizens in Israel – we are heartened by the courage of Australian activists and their commitment to building a grassroots movement across Australia in support of Palestinian human rights.

Most recently, the repression campaign has culminated with the Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien singling out Palestine solidarity organisations calling for them to be investigated by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for suspicion that they may be involved in ‘secondary boycotts’ against Israeli-owned businesses in Australia. An article in The Australian reported that the “Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien said the protesters had deliberately pinpointed businesses with Israeli ownership and who they believed traded with the Israeli government” [2]. This is a completely false accusation and a cynical attempt to smear BDS activism in Australia. Nowhere in the world are BDS activities about targeting specifically business with Israeli ownership, based on the nationality of their owner. Businesses and  institutions are rather chosen based on their direct contribution to  grave human rights abuses and international law violations of  the Israeli state and military, or to rebranding campaigns that attempt to whitewash Israel’s crimes.

We admit that it is confounding to Palestinians who lead the  BDS movement, that as youth across the Arab world take to the streets and risk their lives in the fight for basic democratic rights and freedom of expression – in countries that claim to be democratic, such as Australia, politicians are going to great length to curtail freedom of expression and shield the state of Israel from any criticism. The problem lies with staunch supporters of Israel who refuse to admit that universally recognised standards of international law and social justice apply as much to Israel as they do to any other state.

Israel’s long-standing, systematic and deeply consequential violation of international human rights and humanitarian law has come under global scrutiny and criticism like never before. “Apartheid” has, once again, become a household word. Whereas in the 1980s it became synonymous with South Africa, apartheid is now widely recognized as the foundational condition of Israeli policy and practices towards Palestinians. The Australian people played an important role in the South African anti-apartheid movement, unions implemented the oil embargo, a trade and arms embargo was carried out as well, and the sports boycott actions continue to be remembered internationally with great pride across social movements.  We are witnessing today politicians who attempt to criminalize these types of BDS actions, but just as Australians had a right to challenge apartheid then, they have every right to challenge Israel’s system of apartheid, colonialism and occupation as well. The Palestinian-led BDS campaign and supporters internationally will not be deterred by desperate attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

The curtailment of freedom of expression and the smear campaigns are unfortunately consistent with the Australian state’s support for Israel. Australian politicians across the spectrum have boasted about the “special relationship” and “bond” with the Israeli state. Inflammatory accusations of anti-Semitism are patently false, intellectually and morally dishonest, and serve to discredit and silence any form of criticism directed against Israel’s war crimes and human rights abuses.

We remind the government of Australia of its obligations under international law to respect basic human rights and end all support of Israel’s war crimes and other serious violations of international law. The Australian government must urgently end its arms trade with Israel and impose sanctions upon it rather than investigate dissident organizations who, in the tradition of principled international solidarity, are taking the moral responsibility to end Israel’s impunity and Australia’s complicity in it.

We will continue to work closely with human rights and solidarity organizations across Australia, despite all silencing attempts, until Israel respects international law and freedom, justice and equality are achieved for the Palestinian people.

Notes

1.Human Rights and Community Organisations condemn attempts to silence BDS Movement www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org/node/37

2. Israeli boycotts: ACCC Called In at www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/israeli-boycotts-accc-called-in/story-fn59niix-1226110465124

 

 

Apologists for Israeli occupation and apartheid claim that advocates for holding Israel accountable for its human rights abuses of Palestinians are “singling Israel out for extra scrutiny” or “holding Israel to a higher standard than other countries.”

Yet, ironically, Israel’s supporters also claim that U.S. military aid to Israel is sacrosanct and, unlike every other governmental program on the chopping block these days, cannot be questioned due to the “special U.S.-Israeli relationship.” Dan Carle, a spokesperson for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), has noted correctly that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

In response to an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz suggesting that the Vermont Senator will attempt to apply sanctions to certain units of the Israeli military for human rights violations, Carle explained that “the [Leahy] law applies to U.S. aid to foreign security forces around the globe and is intended to be applied consistently across the spectrum of U.S. military aid abroad. Under the law the State Department is responsible for evaluations and enforcement decisions and over the years Senator Leahy has pressed for faithful and consistent application of the law.”

The possibility of Senator Leahy consistently applying this eponymous legislation and holding Israel to the exact same standard as every other country has Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose office may have leaked the story in an effort to kill the initiative, in a tizzy.

The “Leahy Law,” as it is commonly known, prohibits the United States from providing any weapons or training to “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights.” In the past, this law has been invoked to curtail military aid to countries as diverse as Indonesia, Colombia, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Along with other provisions in the Foreign Assistance Act, of which it is a part, and the Arms Export Control Act, it forms the basis of an across-the-board policy that is supposed to ensure that U.S. assistance does not contribute to human rights abuses.

Ha’aretz reports that the Senator is looking to invoke this prohibition regarding “Israel Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force’s Shaldag unit.” The inclusion of specific units in the story may indicate that Leahy already has findings from the Secretary of State that these Israeli military units have committed human rights abuses.

If so, then this could be a much-overdue watershed in holding accountable Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, for its gross misuse of U.S. weapons to commit systematic human rights abuses of Palestinians living under Israel’s illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. During the last decade, on at least five occasions, Members of Congress have requested the State Department to investigate Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons; to date, the State Department has failed to notify publicly the Congress about any such violation. The State Department also has refused to disclose documents related to these investigations in response to a long-standing Freedom of Information Act request filed by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

It is time to end Israel’s impunity and hold up to the light of day the devastating impact that U.S. weapons transfers have on Palestinian civilians.  From 2000 to 2009, according to research conducted by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and published at www.weaponstoisrael.org, the United States appropriated more than $24 billion in taxpayer-funded weapons for Israel. With this munificence, the United States licensed, paid for, and delivered to Israel more than 670 million weapons and pieces of related military equipment. In just three years (2007-2009), the United States gave Israel more than 47 million pieces of ammunition, or enough bullets to kill every Palestinian living under Israeli military occupation more than 10 times over.

Tragically, the prospect of Israel misusing these U.S. weapons to kill Palestinian civilians has been borne out too frequently. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, from September 2000-December 2009, the Israeli military killed 2,969 Palestinians who took no part in hostilities, including 1,128 children. One such child, 10-year-old Abir Aramin, was killed by a rubber bullet, possibly supplied by the United States, which was shot into the back of her head when she was walking home from school.

For the sake of Abir and all Palestinians who are maimed, killed, or whose homes, farms, and infrastructure are wantonly destroyed in the course of Israel’s brutal military occupation, the United States must end taxpayer-funded weapons transfers to Israel and hold it accountable, just like every other country, for its violations of the law.  To do anything less would be to unfairly hold Israel to a different standard.

Josh Ruebner is the national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of 375 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. He is a former analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.

Original Link: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/177199-hold-israel-accountable-with-leahy-law?page=2#comments

Campaigners for Palestinian human rights today delivered rotten fruit to the lobby of the London office of the British-American investment firm Apax Partners over its ownership of major stakes in Israeli companies that profit from Israeli violations of international law.

The action was taken in line with the call, from Palestinian civil society, for divestment from Israeli companies.

Apax is a major shareholder in Agrexco*, the Israeli agricultural export company that plays a major role in the colonisation of Palestinian land by exporting 60-70% of agricultural produce grown in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

Having profited directly from Israeli colonisation of Palestinian lands and violations of international law since 2006, Apax Partners is now set to receive a huge windfall from the sale of the company. The Agrexco Agricultural Export Company is currently in the process of being sold to Israeli firm Kislev Forwarding and Customs Clearing Ltd for around £15.7m (NIS 90m). As a 11% shareholder, Apax Partners interest, Tnuva, will receive at least £1.72m for its shares. Non-Israeli companies have been successfully pressured not to buy the company.

Exports of agricultural produce help to make Israel’s illegal settlements economically viable and perpetuate the injustices faced by Palestinians. Apax Partners aided and abetted Israeli violations of the fourth Geneva Convention for five years and is now getting one final big rotten windfall. But this sale doesn’t absolve Apax of its legal and moral complicity with the illegal colonization of Palestinian land.

Agrexco recently filed for bankruptcy and was put on sale after running up large debts in the wake of a Europe-wide boycott campaign.

Agrexco is a major target of the global movement for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and has been subjected to popular boycotts, pickets and direct action. Some European supermarkets and fresh produce wholesalers have in recent years pledged to take action on Agrexco and its settlement produce in particular.

Quoted in a campaign press release earlier this month, Israeli economist Shir Hever said, “many Israeli farmers are abandoning Agrexco, possibly because of the campaigns against Agrexco in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and elsewhere. Maybe the Agrexco brand is no longer as appealing to farmers as it was before. It’s no coincidence in my opinion that Agrexco shows the first signs of strain.”

Palestinian solidarity groups from across Europe recently joined forces to escalate the campaign against the company.

After dropping rotten fruit on the floor of the lobby a picket was held outside the office.

As well as its stake in Agrexco, Apax Partners also has shares in Bezeq Communications, an Israeli telecommunications company that owns communication equipment that is situated in Israeli settlements on occupied territory.

Last September, campaigners disrupted an Olympic Ball sponsored by BT over its relationship with Bezeq (see  http://london.indymedia.org/articles/5604).

Since the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in 1967 Israel has moved over 260 000 illegal settlers into these territories, flouting international law and United Nations resolutions. Palestinians have been forced off their land to make way for the settlements and, in many places, face daily harassment from violent settlers trying to intimidate them into leaving their homes

* Apax holds a large amount of shares in Tnuva, who are a major shareholder in Agrexco

- For information on Agrexco see  http://www.whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=584
- For the info on the global campaign against Agrexco see  http://www.bdsmovement.net/activecamps/agrexco
- For info on Bezeq see  http://www.whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=738
- Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions -  http://www.bdsmovement.net/call
- This action was taken in memory of Simon Levin, lifelong campaigner for justice in Palestine, who died earlier this year – to read about Simon see  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/07/481974.html

Original Link: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/08/483495.html

- Previous Irish bidder Total Produce no longer looking to buy Agrexco
- Clear pattern of boycotted companies entering financial crisis
- Boycott campaign increases international pressure on Israel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, 15 August 2011

It emerged Thursday that Irish company Total Produce was no longer in the running to buy troubled Israeli exporter Agrexco. The Irish fruit company dropped out of the running after pressure from Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners, who had written because of Agrexco’s involvement in illegal West Bank settlements.

BDS campaigners in Ireland reacted swiftly to a call by the BDS National Committee (BNC) and wrote to Total Produce explaining how Agrexco was involved in the illegal and immoral occupation and exploitation of Palestinian land, urging them not to invest in Agrexco. They also warned the company that investment in Agrexco would turn Total into the next target of the BDS campaign.

“There is now a clear pattern of companies targeted by BDS campaigners going into serious financial meltdown” said Adel Abu Ni’meh, head of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union (part of the BNC). “Agrexco and Veolia, two major companies strongly linked to illegal Israeli settlements are both in serious trouble now. This shows that BDS hits companies complicit in Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid where it hurts: their bottom lines”.

The news come only days after Veolia, a French company targeted by the BDS campaign because of its involvement in illegal Israeli settlement projects, announced it would massively scale-back its global operations.

A Tel Aviv judge gave Agrexco bankruptcy proceedings a final extension Thursday, as Israeli company Kislev now seems to be the only serious buyer, according to Israeli financial news website Globes. There was one other bid from a Dutch company, but the judge dismissed it as “having more holes than Swiss cheese”.

Agrexco has been a prime target of Palestinian solidarity activists calling for BDS against Israel until it ends its illegal and criminal policies against Palestinians.

A new coalition of European campaigners last month promised to “put an end to Agrexco’s presence in Europe”. Twenty-three groups signed a declaration saying they had established mechanisms to coordinate boycott campaigns and court actions against the Israeli exporter.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

The Palestinian BDS National committee (BNC):
media@bdsmovement.net
www.bdsmovement.net

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

Sources:

Agrexco stay of proceedings extended”, Globes, 11 August; “Veolia, major target of Palestinian BDS campaign, in financial crisis”, BNC, 8 August; “Palestinian civil society warns Irish company against purchase of Israeli exporter”, BNC, 1 August.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups. It was formed as the Palestinian reference point in the broad campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which resulted in the July 2005 Palestinian Call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, with the initial endorsement of over 170 Palestinian organizations.

Sold under brand names such as Carmel, Coral, Biotop and Eco-Fresh, Agrexco products from illegal West Bank settlements have routinely been mislabelled and submitted with papers claiming they originate inside the Green Line. Such attempts to fraudulently qualify them for preferential customs treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement have led to censure in the British Parliament. Agrexco has recently suffered acute financial problems that have led to bankruptcy proceedings being brought against them in the Israeli capital Tel Aviv. In June, Israeli business publication Globes reported “heavy losses” for Agrexco, as the fresh produce company struggled to manage its debt. Fruitnet.com recently reported the company owed creditors €106 million. For more information see: http://www.bdsmovement.net/activecamps/agrexco

The Jerusalem Light Rail tramway that Veolia is involved in building and operating is explicitly designed to cement Israel’s grip on illegal West Bank settlements and tie them more firmly into the state of Israel. Veolia also operates other settlement infrastructure projects: It runs bus services for Israeli settlers on settler-only roads linking the settlements with Israel. These roads have decimated Palestinian towns and villages by stealing their land for construction and cutting them off from each other. Through its subsidiary TMM, Veolia also collects refuse from illegal settlements at buries it at the illegal Tovlan landfill site in the occupied Jordan Valley. For more background: http://www.bdsmovement.net/activecamps/veoliaalstom

Author and history professor Mark LeVine speaks with sociologist Lisa Taraki, a co-founder of the Palestinian campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Mark LeVine: What is the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement and how is it related to the academic and cultural boycott movement? How have both evolved in the past few years in terms of their goals and methods?

Lisa Taraki: The BDS movement can be summed up as the struggle against Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid. BDS is a rights-based strategy to be pursued until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and complies with the requirements of international law.

Within this framework, the academic and cultural boycott of Israel has gained considerable ground in the seven years since the launching of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in 2004. The goals of the academic and cultural boycott call, as the aims of the Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions issued in 2005, have remained consistent: to end the colonisation of Palestinian lands occupied in 1967; to ensure full equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel and end the system of racial discrimination; and to realise the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

The logic of the BDS movement has also remained consistent. The basic logic of BDS is the logic of pressure, not diplomacy, persuasion, or dialogue. Diplomacy as a strategy for achieving Palestinian rights has proven to be futile, due to the protection and immunity Israel enjoys from hegemonic world powers and those in their orbit.

Second, the logic of persuasion has also shown its bankruptcy, since no amount of “education” of Israelis about the horrors of occupation and other forms of oppression seems to have turned the tide. Dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, which remains very popular among Israeli liberals and Western foundations and governments that fund the activities, has also failed miserably. Dialogue is often framed in terms of “two sides to the story”, in the sense that each side must understand the pain, anguish, and suffering of the other, and to accept the narrative of the other.

This presents the “two sides” as if they were equally culpable, and deliberately avoids acknowledgment of the basic coloniser-colonised relationship. Dialogue does not promote change, but rather reinforces the status quo, and in fact is mainly in the interest of the Israeli side of the dialogue, since it makes Israelis feel that they are doing something while in fact they are not. The logic of BDS is the logic of pressure. And that pressure has been amplifying.

Institutional pressure

The Palestinian-led academic and cultural boycott is an institutional boycott; that is, it does not target individual scholars or artists. This point has also remained the same since the inception of the BDS movement. Yet it’s important to state here that all Israeli universities and virtually the entire spectrum of Israeli cultural institutions are complicit in the state’s policies, and as such are legitimate targets of the boycott. Guidelines and criteria for boycott, however, have been elaborated since the founding of the movement, as more experience is gained on the ground, and in response to requests for guidance from conscientious academics and cultural workers wishing to respect the Palestinian boycott call. PACBI in particular spends a great deal of effort guiding and advising international solidarity activists. Consistency is achieved through adhering to the guidelines developed by PACBI, in cooperation with other elements in the Palestinian BDS movement.

World renowned public intellectuals, academics, writers, artists, musicians and other cultural workers have now endorsed the academic and cultural boycott call; their names are too many to note here, but the interested reader can consult the PACBI website. In addition, several campaigns for academic and cultural boycott have been established around the world: in the UK, the USA, France, Pakistan, Lebanon, Germany, Norway, India, Spain, South Africa, and Australia, and many other countries. The newly established European Platform for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (EPACBI) is an important coordinating body in Europe.

The lethal Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009 and the murder of Turkish solidarity activists aboard the Mavi Marmara in May 2010 served as further catalysts in the tremendous spread of BDS actions around the world, which include cancellations of artistic performances in Israel, protests against complicit Israeli institutions’ performances abroad (such as the past and current protests around performances by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra), and many more creative forms of protest and boycott of Israeli and brand-Israel projects and institutions.

Israel’s crackdown on dissent

ML: The Israelis have recently passed a so-called “anti-Boycott law”, which opens Israelis who support any form of boycott, even if it’s limited to settlement products, to significant civil penalties and lawsuits to force them to stop their actions. Can you comment on this whole discourse, especially the commentary in the Israeli press critical of it, claiming it represents a move against democracy, towards fascism, and similar responses which seem to suggest these are unprecedented measures?

LT: The Palestinian BDS movement is encouraged by the adoption of the logic of BDS, and boycott in particular, by sections of the Israeli left, and feels it has been vindicated in its argument that pressure – and not persuasion – is the best way to make Israelis realise that the system of occupation, apartheid and colonialism must end. Having said this, I must note that there are at least two disturbing aspects to the new surge of activity surrounding the new anti-boycott law passed by the Israeli Knesset recently.

First, the boycott being defended by leftist and liberal Israelis targets institutions (such as the University Center of Samaria and the cultural center in Ariel) and products of the Israeli colonies in the West Bank only. This boycott, then, is silent on the complicity of all mainstream Israeli institutions – and indeed many industries, such as the weapons industry – in maintaining and legitimising the structures of oppression.

Second, this boycott is often cast in terms of “saving Israeli democracy”. As such, it is an Israel-centred discourse and project, and the point of reference is neither Palestinian rights as stipulated by international law nor an acknowledgment that they are heeding the call of the Palestinians. One outstanding exception is the Israeli group “Boycott from Within“, which explicitly endorses the Palestinian BDS call and considers it the basic point of reference for its agenda of activism – such as urging artists and musicians not to perform in Israel, supporting a military embargo of Israel, advocating for different divestment campaigns, and many other activities that target all complicit Israeli institutions. Other Israeli groups, such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, ICAHD, and others have also endorsed the Palestinian BDS call publicly.

ML: What is your impression of what happened with the latest Gaza flotilla? Some commentators have argued that the “successful” use of supposedly “non-violent” strategies by the government of Israel to put pressure on other governments to stop the flotilla before it got anywhere near Gaza represents a defeat for the rising tide of non-violent resistance, showing that the Israelis have learnt the lessons and are now able to beat the activists at their own game.

LT: I don’t agree with that assessment at all. I think the main aim of the flotillas, which has been to highlight, resist, and protest Israel’s illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, has been realised, despite Israeli efforts to bear extreme pressure against governments to prevent the vessels from sailing. The ridiculous Israeli response to the recent “Welcome to Palestine” campaign did more to publicise the campaign than would otherwise have happened.

You are right to frame the flotilla movement as a part of the international movement to isolate, expose, and bear pressure upon Israel to respect international law and end its system of colonisation, occupation, and apartheid. That this movement – still in its early stages – has achieved world recognition is attested to by the state of disarray in official Israeli and Zionist circles. Already, several conferences and strategy papers have been launched in Israel and abroad to counter what is being marketed as the “delegitimisation threat”. If BDS, the annual and growing Israel Apartheid Week events, and other resistance actions such as the waves of flotillas are mere nuisances, I doubt that so much effort would be invested merely out of an “academic” interest in them. Strong-arm tactics with some governments may have prevented the flotillas from reaching Gaza, but the strength of the BDS movement - and other solidarity actions – is that they are built on people’s initiatives, [these] cannot be easily suppressed, despite intimidation, legal threats and lawsuits, and other silencing tactics.

A wider perspective

ML: In the BDS literature, there is a critique of those, like myself, who argue that anyone who wants to join BDS for Palestine should also adopt similar actions vis-a-vis other countries involved in massive systematic oppression and/or occupation (China, India, the US, to cite the most obvious examples), and that the need to think systemically is not merely an ethical imperative but a strategic one as well. Your response, when we last met in Ramallah, was that this strategy is utopian, that Palestinians have enough trouble getting people to engage in BDS merely against Israel, and that enlarging it would be untenable.

Can you explain how BDS can become more effective without thinking of joining with other movements against oppression and occupation that might call for a similar campaign?

LT: The BDS movement does operate with a conceptual framework, of course. This includes an analysis of global and regional power relations. BDS is predicated on the fact that the collusion of the hegemonic, or major world powers of the so-called “international community” with Israeli impunity is the single most important factor that enables Israel to continue flouting international law. The hegemonic powers not only shield Israel from censure; they have also often turned a blind eye to grievous offences committed by their allies – but only when it serves their own interests. The inconsistency of US and European foreign policy is not something I need to stress, I believe. Plenty of rogue regimes continue to oppress and suppress their citizenry without international censure, as we all know.

What is important to note, however, is that when an oppressed people decide to appeal to the world to help them achieve self-determination and freedom through boycotts and other pressure mechanisms, as the vast majority of Palestinian civil society has done, then the response of all conscientious people would usually be to respect that appeal directly and immediately. It certainly was the case in South Africa. I don’t think anyone had the temerity to suggest, during the anti-apartheid struggle in that country, that the existence of a full-throttle anti-imperialist movement would be the precondition for supporting the boycotts called for by the oppressed in South Africa, or that a boycott of the US, the UK (and indeed Israel) was the only principled course of action to take. That would have been a recipe for paralysis.

Israel, unlike many other oppressive states, enjoys the full support of the hegemonic powers, as I have noted. Precisely because of this, since there is no other impetus for change, it is incumbent upon forces that support justice to heed the Palestinian call. If there were a robust BDS movement in China or in Morocco today urging a boycott of the existing regimes, then certainly it would be an obligation to respect the call of the oppressed.

The growth of the movement

ML: It seems increasing numbers of diaspora and Israeli Jews are supporting BDS, at least in principle – although as you alluded to – what they imagine BDS is and what it actually means can differ significantly. How is the growing support impacting the success of BDS? Do you think it is penetrating more into Israeli society? And have you seen any changes in the way the Israeli government deals with non-violent protest in the last year or so, given the increasing success of the movement?

LT: My comments concerning the Israeli boycott of the colonies in the West Bank are relevant in this context as well. I think most Israelis are very far from becoming convinced that BDS is an effective strategy for radical change of the status quo, and that is because Israeli society has no incentive to change the status quo. Only pressure, in the form of various BDS measures, can move the Israeli body politic. That is the logic of BDS, after all. As for the treatment of protests by the Israeli government and military, it’s obvious that they are continuing to reassess their on-the-ground tactics in the face of the continuing escalation of protests, both by Palestinians and international and Israeli supporters. The use of force has been a constant for several decades now and is nothing new. During the first intifada, which was a form of civil resistance and disobedience, the response of the Israeli military was deadly and violent, just as it is today. The language of force will not be abandoned. That is the logic of a colonial power, after all.

ML: Can you elaborate a bit more on what the initiators of the BDS movement mean when they describe institutions or artists/academics who “serve Brand Israel”. What is “Brand Israel” and whose interests does it serve?

LT: “Brand Israel” is a worldwide campaign launched in 2005 by some agencies of the Israeli government and major pro-Israel groups internationally, primarily in the United States. It’s a diffuse and diverse effort, but the main idea behind it is to portray and promote Israel as a normal country for tourism, youth culture, enjoyment of the fine arts, sports, and all other “normal” and “civilised” pursuits. Public relations firms have played an important role in crafting the Israeli brand. In addition, Israeli consulates and embassies as well as Jewish and Zionist organizations (such as Hillel in the US) are actively involved in promoting Israeli art, scientific accomplishments, and other “achievements” abroad. The modernity, diversity, and vitality of Israel are stressed in Brand Israel promotional activities.

I may add that the Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor has uncovered evidence of official Israeli sponsorship of Brand Israel-type activities, and with a price tag attached; in an article published in 2008, he revealed that any Israeli artist or cultural worker accepting financial support from the Israeli Foreign Ministry for exhibiting or showcasing his or her work abroad was obligated to sign a contract stipulating that he or she “undertakes to act faithfully, responsibly and tirelessly to provide the Ministry with the highest professional services. The service provider is aware that the purpose of ordering services from him is to promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel”.

What this reveals, then, is that, in light of the bad press Israel has been receiving in past years, it has been deemed necessary to make sure that artists and other cultural workers – perhaps because of their reputation as idiosyncratic or even eccentric – know what is expected of them when they accept state funding of their tours abroad. They are supposed to act as “cultural ambassadors” for Israel, which – in large part – is to become apologists for Israeli policies and practices that oppress the Palestinians.

ML: In terms of the academic boycott, if I have a student who needs to come to Israel to develop her or his Hebrew in order better understand the dynamics of the occupation and can only afford to do this through various programs such as Erasmus or Education Abroad Programs that involved affiliation with Israeli universities, or wants to do research at Israeli archives on the country’s history that require students to be affiliated to Israeli universities to obtain research clearance, what is the official position of PACBI towards this?

LT: The PACBI guidelines for the implementation of the academic boycott, which apply to international academics and students, are clear: any interaction with Israeli universities, regardless of the content or form (studying there, accessing archives, giving a course, attending a conference, conducting research) violates the academic boycott if such an interaction entails official contact with the institution.

This can include accepting an invitation to attend a conference, registering for a course, accepting employment or agreeing to conduct seminars, or conducting research in affiliation with such institutions. While using a university facility such as a library does not strictly violate the boycott, doing so in the framework of affiliation with the university would.

Institutional study abroad schemes, research activity conducted in the framework of institutional cooperation agreements – such as the various EU-funded programs, including Erasmus Mundus - violate the boycott. Regarding the study of Hebrew, I think that the international options for pursuing that are very wide indeed; most universities in the West offer Hebrew instruction.

In general, conscientious scholars and students are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the logic and aims of boycott and to abide by its spirit if situations other than the ones noted above are encountered. Since Palestinians – including academics and their representative body, the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Employees – have called for an academic boycott, it becomes a responsibility of conscientious academics and students considering visiting the area for research or study purposes to become familiar with the context, which includes thinking seriously about the meaning of their affiliation with Israeli universities in light of the boycott call.

ML: Critics might say that this response is explicitly putting politics – however worthy – ahead of the advance of scholarship. For historians, for example, it is impossible to produce new knowledge without accessing archives. For student historians, their degree depends on their access to archives. If the archives are controlled by the state, then is the mere fact of using them mean complicity with the state?

LT: This is not putting politics above scholarship; it is about applying ethical principles to the practice of scholarship. No scholarly activity takes place in a vacuum, and every scholar must consider the consequences of his or her research strategies when pursuing scholarly activity. State control of some archives does not necessarily preclude using them, as I noted earlier; usually, it is enough to prove one’s academic credentials to gain access to them. It is the same as using Israeli medical facilities or any other public service. The main issue is institutional affiliation.

Drawing inspiration

ML: Are there any lessons from the so-called Arab Spring, or from other mass mobilisations globally against oppression in the past year or two that can inform and even help the BDS movement and Palestinian resistance more broadly? Do the events of the last eight months give you hope, or is the situation in Palestine different enough – being at once a colonial situation and an internal struggle for democracy both within Israeli and Palestinian societies – that these other mass mobilisations can’t really help beyond inspiring Palestinians to stay the course?

LT: The revolutionary spirit that has ignited the Arab will no doubt make the question of Palestine more urgent than before, both in those countries that have begun the process of revolutionary transformation and those in which struggles for freedom and democracy are still unfolding. Once there are free and unrigged elections for new parliaments in Egypt and Tunisia as well as other Arab countries, the new parliaments will have to be sensitive to the views of the people – unlike the situation that has hitherto prevailed.

It is well known that Palestine is an Arab question, and that includes widespread rejection of Israel’s destructive role in the region. The forces of counterrevolution may try to combat popular sentiment, and there will be continuous contestation and ongoing struggles, but the policies of Arab countries will not be the same now that the revolutionary spirit has taken hold of the imagination of the Arab people.

ML: How do you think the sudden rise of the protest movement in Israel for “social justice” will impact the BDS movement and Palestinian resistance more broadly to the occupation?  Especially with the likely coincidence of renewed protests in Israel next month and a major Palestinian push for statehood at the UN, is there a space for Palestinians to make a significant intervention in the protest discourse inside Israel that helps reshape it towards broader ends? And if so, what role would BDS play in this?

LT: From all indications, the protest movement in Israel has nothing to say about justice for Palestinians, either as citizens or as occupied people. The Palestinian BDS movement does not address the Israeli public directly in order to persuade it or to appeal to its sense of justice. That is not the logic of BDS. It is up to Israeli political forces to make that connection and to influence their public. We expect that pro-BDS Israelis, however small their numbers might be, will be taking this up within their society.

Lisa Taraki is a sociologist at Birzeit University in the occupied Palestinian territories and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam and the soon to be published An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989.

Original Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201188976675245.html

Johannesburg’s international airport was put on red alert after its National Key Point status was activated this morning due to the expected arrival of a delegation from Israel. Plans of the delegation’s local host, the South African Union of Jewish Students, to welcome their Israeli “Hasbara” delegation were thwarted, with the Israeli delegation arriving at OR Tambo International Airport amidst much controversy.

Last week, the South African Students Congress (SASCO) issued a communiqué to its provincial branches urging “all students in all institutions of higher learning across Gauteng to boycott any activity organised by these [Israeli] agents. Any student who chooses to cooperate with the apartheid [Israel] regime is an enemy of progress.”

Expecting that their arrival to Johannesburg would not be a welcome affair, the Israeli delegation was forced to change their travel arrangements:

• the expected welcoming committee had to be cancelled;
• the airport was placed on high security alert, with the National Key Points Act being activated;
• members of the Israeli ’hasbara’ group had to be escorted through back entrances and under disguises. None were able to walk freely into the public area of the terminal sporting any Israeli paraphernalia.

SASCO and the Young Communist League, who had called for its members to be present at the airport, creatively bypassed all the obstacles put in place to limit any actions. SASCO had a 50 person strong team deployed from 06h00 at strategic points in the arrivals terminal of the airport. SASCO members were instructed to converge in pickets if the local hosts had made any attempts to welcome their Israeli counterparts.

On hearing that the Israeli delegation had to “come in like spies,” SASCO and YCL students rejoiced outside the international arrivals terminal. Joined by students from Wits University and the University of Johannesburg, the group simultaneously revealed red T-shirts (under their jackets) stencilled with various bold messages, including “Israeli apartheid unwelcome!”; “Israeli war criminals unwelcome!”; and “Israel guilty of war crimes”. They carried hand-crafted posters with similar messages and chanted in celebration.

Themba Masondo, a student at Wits University addressed the crowd: “Today we have made clear to these Israeli propagandists and indeed any supporters of Israeli apartheid that this agenda is not welcome in South Africa. We will protest. We will boycott. And we will call on our prosecuting authorities to arrest those involved in Israeli war crimes. . . [W]e are many, our cause is just and we will win.”

The visiting Israeli delegation advertises to be a group of students wanting to dialogue, however the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Working Group (a Johannesburg based organization) challenged this framing and revealed at a press conference last week Thursday that most of the Israeli delegates were not in fact students but part of an Israeli government trained PR group. For example, they showed that two of the Israeli student delegates claiming to be students worked at the Israeli parliament. One is a deputy spokesperson and another is an official policy advisor.

Further, the BDS Working Group pointed out that virtually the entire delegation have served or are serving in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), several in elite combat units and one even in the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2009.

On Monday, a progressive Israeli organization together with a European Union Human Rights laureate delivered a letter to the South African prosecuting authorities also reiterating the visiting Israeli group’s involvement in the IDF and probable connection to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kate Joseph, Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee member present at the airport commented: “If this [Hasbara] group came to do Israeli PR, they are doing a hopeless job. If anything, their arrival in South Africa has bolstered Palestine solidarity in general, and the growing call on our campuses for a broad-based boycott of Israel.”

Students at Wits, UJ, UCT and elsewhere have committed themselves to non-violent, direct actions in the coming days as the Israeli delegates are expected to attempt campus visits.

PHOTOS: www.flickr.com/bdssouthafrica

VIDEOS: www.youtube.com/bdssouthafrica

ISSUED BY BDS WORKING GROUP (www.bdssouthafrica.com)

For Comment

Muhammed Desai: 084 211 9988

Nurina Ally: 071 862 0076

Original Link: http://www.labournet.net/world/1108/sabds2.html