[R-G] Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum

[Anthony Fenton]

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)