[R-G] Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum
Anthony Fenton
fentona at shaw.ca
Sat Mar 7 11:29:12 MST 2009
MIDEAST: Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum
By Mel Frykberg
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45951
RAMALLAH, Mar 3 (IPS) - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is
the theme of this week's Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off
in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday.
A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions
is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism
Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy.
Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in
protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda.
The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city
Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the
conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.
U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel.
However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody
offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and
thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life
into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian
civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign "as a way of
bringing non- violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end
its violations of international law."
In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at
what they see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid
system and Israeli racism.
They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians
within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human
rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by
Israeli security forces.
During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were
extremely strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South
Africa's security forces as well as supplying the regime in Pretoria
with weapons.
Meanwhile, Toronto, where the Israel Apartheid Week movement was born,
will hold forums, film shows, cultural events and street protests to
mark IAW week. One of the guest speakers is former South African
intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils.
Kasrils is no stranger to controversy. His parents fled from Tzarist
Russian pogroms carried out against Jews, and immigrated to South
Africa at the beginning of the last century.
During white rule, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC),
working both in exile and underground in South Africa, he was reviled
by many white South Africans as a "terrorist".
He has also been labelled a self-hating Jew by many Israelis and South
African Jews due to the strong stand he and the ANC have taken against
Israel's policies.
Meanwhile, in New York, prominent IAW activist Nir Harel, a member of
Israel's Anarchists Against the Wall, will also be courting
controversy. His group regularly protests against Israel's separation
barrier, which divides Israel proper from the Palestinian West Bank.
The barrier deviates significantly from the Green Line, the
internationally recognised border, into Palestinian territory where it
has swallowed huge amounts of land, dispossessing farmers from their
agricultural crops.
Another Israeli activist, Matan Cohen, has been central in the first
U.S. college implementing a divestment campaign against Israel.
Hampshire College in Massachusetts called for divestment from over 200
companies that the college says is responsible for violating its
socially responsible investment policies in Israel.
The companies which provide the Israeli military with equipment and
services in the occupied West Bank and Gaza include Caterpillar,
United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and
Terex.
A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) petition for divestment was
supported by more than 800 students, professors, and alumni at the
college, that has only 1,350 students.
Hampshire college may be small but it has been big in social activism.
It was also the first U.S. educational institution to divest from
South Africa, ten years before other universities and colleges
followed suit.
U.S. campus activism is spreading. The University of Rochester in New
York and members of the community are also involved in boycott
activities.
Students from Macalester College, a liberal arts college located in
St. Paul, Minnesota, occupied the Minnesota Trade Office in January
and then picketed there Feb. 6, demanding that the state end all trade
with Israel. New York University students too began a divestment
campaign.
Professors and university employees in Quebec, Canada, endorsed the
Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and
Employees' call to boycott Israel.
SJP's actions at Hampshire College follow similar moves by the
National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in
the UK.
In London, students held sit-ins at Goldsmith University and the
London School of Economics, among other institutions. Similar protests
have spread throughout the U.K., with some winning concessions from
university officials.
At Manchester University, about a thousand students joined a campaign
equating Israel with apartheid-era South Africa, and called on the
administration and student union to boycott Israeli companies and
support Gaza and the BDS movement.
In Australia the University of Western Sydney's Student Association
recently joined the international BDS campaign. International trade
union support for political action against Israel has been seen from
Spain to South Africa.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, under directive
of the Council of South African Trade Unions, refused recently to
unload an Israeli ship which docked in Durban, despite threats and
pressure from both management and the Israeli lobby.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, with 600,000 members in 55 unions,
is preparing to start a boycott of Israeli goods.
Meanwhile, the biggest trade union in Canada's Ontario province, the
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), was forced under pressure
to moderate its call for a boycott of all academic institutions in
Israel. Instead it called for a boycott of Israeli institutions
engaged in research which aided the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). (END/
2009)
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