Photo: Ahmad Shehade

Ramallah – 18 June 2013 – On 8 June 2013 the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)[1] organized its “Fourth National BDS Conference” at Bethlehem University, under the slogan: “Boycotting Israel and opposing normalization contribute to Liberation, Return of Refugees, and Self-Determination.” With 700 participants, mostly representatives of the national committee member entities, including political parties, trade unions, women’s organizations, professional syndicates, youth and student groups, and other civil society organizations, the conference was hailed by several commentators as a “turning point” for the BDS movement’s local work. A substantial part of the credit goes to the selfless efforts of tens of — mainly youth — volunteers who worked for long weeks on organizing all aspects of the conference with dedication and aptitude.

Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the PLO Executive Committee also took part in the conference, underlining official recognition of the BDS Movement’s increasing clout and impact.

This national BDS conference provided a distinguished platform for exchanging ideas among Palestinian youth and student activists, trade unionists, women activists, decision makers, intellectuals, academics, representatives of the private sector, and leading NGO networks.

The conference aimed to promote and enable Palestinian society’s effective development of sector-based BDS campaigns with clear strategies and leadership teams. Recognizing how Israel is increasingly seeking Palestinian and other Arab “fig-leaves” to cover up its intensifying occupation, colonization and apartheid, one of the main themes addressed was the economic, academic, cultural, youth and IT sector normalization with Israel and ways of confronting it.

Following the National Anthem, Ms. Haitham Arar, Representative of the General Union of Palestinian Women to the BNC, introduced the guest speakers of the Opening Session, titled “Boycotting Israel: Rooted, Contemporary, Universal Resistance.” Brother Peter Bray, President of Bethlehem University, opened with a welcoming speech highlighting the importance of the BDS movement as an effective framework for nonviolent education and action that raises public awareness and empowers various sector of society to participate in the struggle for freedom and human rights. Mrs. Fadwa Barghouthi read a message of support from Marwan Barghouthi, a key Fatah leader and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who is illegally incarcerated by Israel. Mrs. Abla Saadat then delivered a support message from Ahmad Saadat, the imprisoned Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The two messages confirmed the firm endorsement of BDS — as a main strategy of resistance and global solidarity with Palestinian rights — by leaders of the Palestinian national struggle.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, delivered a speech on behalf of the National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, a main pillar of the BNC, in which he reiterated the firm conviction of Palestinian political parties of the futility of negotiations under the current imbalance of power and U.S. hegemony. Dr. Barghouthi emphasized that national unity, growing popular resistance, and effective international solidarity, particularly in the form of BDS, are the necessary components of a Palestinian strategy to end Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and to achieve self determination, the return of refugees and the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. He warmly saluted the BNC and the BDS movement, locally and internationally, for its recent spectacular successes and called for escalating the comprehensive boycott of Israel to isolate it as apartheid South Africa was.

Photo: Ahmad Shehade

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the highest-profile supporters of BDS against Israel, addressed the conference via a recorded video message, saying he was “certain” that the Palestinian people will achieve their freedom one day, when they will walk tall with dignity in a free Palestine, drawing thunderous applause. This was followed by another recorded solidarity message from Roger Waters, a world celebrity and founder of Pink Floyd, in which he saluted the conference and reaffirmed his firm support for BDS until the Palestinians enjoy freedom, justice and equal rights.

The Opening Session was concluded by the main BNC speech, presented via videoconference by Dr. Haidar Eid, associate professor at Al-Aqsa University in the besieged Gaza Strip and Steering Committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Dr. Eid explained the BDS philosophy, strategies, South African inspiration, and some of its main successes. He also gave an overview of the multiple challenges, internal and external, facing the movement, highlighting some of the most important evidence of the movement’s impact on Israel’s system of occupation, colonization and apartheid.

Photo: Ahmad Shehade

Under the title “BDS Initiatives: Local, Arab and International,” the First Session started, chaired by Ms. Rif’a Abu-Reesh, representative of the Global Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, the largest alliance of Palestinian groups, inside and outside Palestine, advocating for the right of return for Palestinian refugees. It included a number of reports of actual boycott experiences and important lessons learned. Archbishop Attallah Hanna spoke about the experience of the “Kairos Palestine” group and its role in spreading BDS among churches worldwide. Dr. Samah Idriss, a well-known Lebanese publisher and author, spoke via videoconference from Beirut about the pioneering Lebanese experience in boycotting corporations that are complicit in Israel’s occupation and violations of international law. Dr. Tayseer Maray introduced the special forms of boycott adopted in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in spite of the siege and isolation imposed by Israel. Dr. Mohsen Abu Ramadan, representative of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) to the BNC, spoke from Gaza about the boycott experiences there and its main successes.

Activist Yafa Jarrar, who lives in Toronto, Canada, presented a report on “Israeli Apartheid Week” the leading annual campus-based BDS activity. Activist and lawyer Nisreen Al-Haj Ahmad presented the main elements of the Arab BDS campaign against G4S and its strategy. Dr. Samia Botmeh, director of the Birzeit University Center for Development Studies and PACBI Steering Committee member, highlighted some of the main success stories in the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Imad Temiza, the young and determined head of the Palestinian Postal Services Workers’ Union, presented his union’s strategy in promoting a boycott of Israel’s postal services. Activist Mazen Al-Azzeh, a Bethlehem leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, spoke about the most important features and successes of the local “Bader” Campaign for boycotting Israeli products. A youth leader from Salfit, Diaa’ Shtayyah, presented a campaign to declare Salfit free of Israeli goods. Amjad al-Kassis, an international law expert from the Badil Center in Bethlehem, tackled Israel’s systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities and the importance of sanctions in confronting it. Finally, Raja Zaatry, the head of the Haifa branch of the Israeli Communist Party, represented the newly-formed group, BDS48, explaining the main prospects and challenges facing the group in spreading BDS among Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The Second Session, titled “Forms of Normalization and combating it,” was headed by Mr. Rasem Obeidat from the Civic and National Commission in Occupied Jerusalem. Dr. Islah Jad, director of the Center for Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and Steering Committee member of PACBI, presented the principles and guidelines of the Normalization Definition document, which was adopted by representatives of the absolute majority of civil society at the First National BDS Conference in 2007. Then Mrs. Rania Elias, director of Yabous Cultural Center in Jerusalem and PACBI Steering Committee member, gave an overview of cultural normalization projects and some success stories of BDS activists thwarting such projects, especially in Jerusalem. Dr. Yousef Abd Al-Haq, a leading economist, tackled the issue of economic normalization which he argued was the most dangerous form. Dr. Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh presented a compelling argument against academic normalization, giving examples of how it undermines the struggle for self determination. The last paper in this session was presented by the youth activist Zaid Shuaibi, Networking and Outreach Officer at the BNC, on youth and student normalization and its role in occupying the minds and hindering the struggle for Palestinian rights.

At the end of the session a display screen was revealed, surprising the audience with a picture of the renowned Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifeh, who addressed the conference from Beirut, stressing the importance of “saying NO” and standing up to tyranny. He saluted the boycott movement, focusing on the role of cultural boycott in the Palestinian and Arab struggle for freedom and emancipation. Sustained, loud applause was the audience’s response.

Under the title, “Facing the Public: Palestinian Officials and Civil Society Representatives Answer Questions About Boycotting Israel and Countering Normalization,” the Third Session of the conference, and by far its stormiest, was headed by Nasfat Khuffash, representative of the National Institute of NGOs to the BNC Secretariat. He introduced the panel speakers: Dr. Taisir Khaled, member of PLO Executive Committee, Dr. Jawad Naji, Palestinian Minister of the National Economy, and Omar Barghouti, representing the BNC. This session provided a rare forum for democratic accountability and questioning of officials. A large number of critical questions and interventions were raised, some of which were hard-hitting, even angry, reflecting the Palestinian public’s general discontent with the PA’s and PLO’s performance as far as resisting the occupation and struggling for Palestinian rights go.

In spite of a verbal altercation between the PA minister and a member of the audience that created temporary chaos in the large hall and eventually resulted in the minister’s departure from the conference, this experience in popular democracy in itself underscored the importance of freedom of expression, respect for difference of opinion, and holding officials to account in everything related to citizens concerns, especially those pertaining to national rights and ways to defend them.

Following the third session, Alaa Muhanna, a young Druze Palestinian writer and conscientious objector from the Galilee shared his experience in refusing the compulsory military service in the occupation army, analyzing the growing trend of Druze Palestinian rejection of military service as a form of boycott and an expression of the unity of the Palestinian people everywhere.

At the end of the conference the hundreds of participants split into concurrent sector-based workshops that culminated many preparatory workshops held in few months leading to the Fourth National BDS Conference. Effective sector-based, one-year BDS action plans were drawn and follow-up teams were formed in the 9 parallel workshops. It is worth mentioning that the General Union of the Palestinian Women was the most active member of the BNC in organizing preparatory workshops prior to the conference — it held 7 such workshops in the different governorates in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The Fourth National BDS Conference was by far the most successful BDS event to be held in Palestine. While there remains much to do, the BNC is hopeful that the conference will significantly contribute to enhancing grassroots BDS activism among Palestinians everywhere and setting the stage for the long-awaited take-off of BDS campaigning in the Arab world.

Ismail Coovadia, whose term came to an end in December last year, told the Mail & Guardian that when he returned to South Africa he opened the certificate, expecting it to acknowledge his period of ambassadorial service but was disturbed to learn that the trees had been planted in his name and without his permission in a forest planted by the JNF.

According to an article published by Human Rights Watch, “Erasing Links to the Land in the Negev”, the “Ambassadors Forest” was inaugurated in December 2005 and lies on the demolished Bedouin village of al-Araqib. It is one of several forests planted by the JNF in Israel.

Others include Switzerland Forest, Canada Park, British Park, Norwegian Kings Forest and South Africa Forest.

In a letter sent to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement of South Africa, Coovadia stated that the certificate was “nothing less than an offence to his dignity and integrity”.

“Regrettably, my permission was not sought to plant a tree in my or the name of a South African ambassador on usurped land, the rightful land of the Palestinians and Bedouins. … I was not a party to, and never will be, to the planting of ’18 trees’, in my ‘honour’ on expropriated and stolen land.

“In view of this inhuman act against ordinary people, I shall be returning the ‘certificate’ to the director general of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs with a humble request to remove the “18 trees … planted … in my ‘honour’.”

Political point-scoring

Meanwhile, two members of Stop the JNF – a worldwide group which campaigns against the fund – Alan Horwitz and Shereen Usdin, said they had also received letters from the South African chapter of the organisation informing them that trees had been planted in their names. Horwitz said he believed this constituted a case of political point-scoring on the part of the JNF.

“They want to show us they can co-opt us in, whether we like it or not,” he said.

Asked whether it was ethical to plant trees in the name of individuals without first acquiring their permission to do so, Amber Cummins the deputy director of JNF South Africa, said: “We are just the organisation that received the donation and were just carrying out the donor’s wishes.

“This was an unusual case. Usually it’s for their own family members that people make donations, for example people donate money to put up plaques in the name of their deceased parents. But in this case, we received an anonymous donation and were told to put up a plaque in their names [Horwitz and Usdin] and that’s what we did,” she said.

Cummins said the fund was responsible for forestry throughout Israel. It had “originated in 1901 as the financial arm of the Zionist movement and had distributed charity boxes to Jewish families all over the world into which people would put coins. The purpose was to purchase land wherever available in Palestine at full prices, from whomever was willing to sell it in the hope that this area would eventually become Israel,” she explained.

“In terms of Ottoman Law, if one purchased land and one wasn’t a resident on that land, one way of securing the land was to plant trees on it. So this became a major focus of the JNF. At that time the land was as barren as is possible – the greening of the land was very important to the pioneers as well as in terms of settling the land, and it was also beneficial to the entire Middle East in terms of the benefits of afforestation.”

JNF South Africa is largely responsible for South Africa Forest, which is featured in a documentary, The Village under the Forest, that recently premiered at the Encounters Film Festival.

In her production notes, filmmaker Heidi Grunebaum writes that the forest was planted on a destroyed Palestinian village “Lubya was forcibly depopulated in mid-July 1948 by Israeli military units, during what is called The War of Independence in Israeli nationalist histories and what Palestinians call the Nakba [Catastrophe],” she wrote.

However, Cummins questioned whether Lubya existed in 1948.

“The information I’m getting from Israel – which is not confirmed –indicates that it didn’t even exist at the time of 1948. It had, in fact, been destroyed many years before that and nobody had even lived there; it was just rubble with a few structures and olive trees and they are trying to investigate that now.”

Grunebaum said that Palestinian oral historian Dr Mahmoud Issa wrote a book about Lubya, in which his parents had lived.

“His book is based on years of archival research and on oral recordings from 700 interviews with Lubyans inside Israel, in the Palestinian diaspora in Arab countries and in European countries.”

Self-exile claim  ‘is a fabrication’ 

Every year on May 15 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba (Catastrophe) in remembrance of the displacement that preceded and followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948.

According to the Jewish National Fund’s Amber Cummins, 711000 Arabs left their homes voluntarily “in the face of the war of aggression against Israel”.

“We know that at the time that Israeli independence was declared, the surrounding Arab countries called on Arabs who lived in Israel to move out, to flee, promising them a swift victory over Israel and that they would wipe Israel off the face of the map whereupon they would be able to return to their homes with more land than they had before.

“With that … Arabs left voluntarily. There was no expulsion/nakba, it was an evacuation, a voluntary evacuation, they fled. Everybody was leaving, so in all probability, the people who didn’t want to leave also left when they saw those people leaving,” she said. “Israel didn’t have the military force available to expel these people. Most of them were Holocaust survivors being pushed from pillar to post around Europe. The whole country had three or five tanks. It is made out that this vicious Israeli army carried out this expulsion. How could they have?”

But Ran Greenstein, a professor of sociology at Wits University who specialises in the study of Israeli/Palestinian and South African history and politics said that the facts of the war were well documented by Israeli historians, Palestinians scholars, as well as the verbal accounts of survivors on both sides. “The Institute of Palestine Studies has created a site that includes dozens of memoirs, analyses and records about the Nakba,” he pointed out.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, said: “It’s a fabrication that there was a call from the Arabs to leave.  The professional Israeli historiography found out that there was no such call. Recently, in Haaretz, it was revealed how this lie was marketed after the war as part of a propaganda effort to cover the ethnic cleansing.

“Arab armies entered Palestine on May 15 1948, when 300 000 Palestinians had already become refugees. By that time, the whole Palestinian population of Haifa and Jaffa, nearly 110000 people altogether, had been expelled. The Arab governments did not want to send in their armies, but after the massacre of Deir Yassin on April 9 1948, there was public pressure to stop the ethnic cleansing and hence, the entrance of the armies to Palestine.”

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-14-00-not-in-my-name-rages-sa-diplomat

The diminutive Palestinian soccer player is sitting in a small cafe in central London, tired but otherwise surprisingly healthy for a man who had lost half his body weight during a hunger strike 12 months ago.

It is his first visit to the British capital but, like many who try to leave Gaza, his journey was long and far from easy.

“The Rafah border (between Gaza and Egypt) was closed for days because of the kidnapping of soldiers in Egypt. It was hectic,” explains Sarsak, a talented striker who had once been called up to the Palestinian national team squad.

“I managed to cross the border by miracle. I was the last one to be allowed to cross.”

But Sarsak says he wasn’t in London to pursue his dream as a professional soccer player, or to spend time there as a tourist. He was there to protest outside the UEFA Congress, held recently in the UK capital, to campaign for a boycott of the European Under-21 Championship which started in Israel on Wednesday.

“How did UEFA give this to Israel?” he says, shaking his head. “Why did they think it was acceptable despite knowing the violations of human rights the Israeli state conduct on a daily basis?”

Sarsak claims he has experienced this first hand. In fact, he says he is lucky to be alive.

This time last year he was on the verge of death, he says. The 23-year-old says he had lost half of his body weight in a three-month hunger strike after being held without charge in administrative detention by Israeli authorities for three years.

Under administrative detention, a person can be held indefinitely without charge or trial on secret evidence.

The Israelis have accused Sarsak of having links with the extremist organization Islamic Jihad and of being involved in terrorist activities. A senior Israeli security source with knowledge of his case, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN: “The individual in question was held in administrative detention due to security-related matters, including involvement in attacks on Israeli forces, and planned to perpetrate suicide bombings.” But Israeli officials offered no specific response to questions about why Sarsak was released.

He was let free last July, emaciated and pale, after the likes of FIFA president Sepp Blatter intervened on his behalf, appealing to the Israel Football Association for help.

For much of the past year, campaign groups and famous names in soccer, including former Mali international Frederic Kanoute, have called for a boycott of the U21 tournament due to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including athletes like Sarsak.

A petition was raised by the pro-Palestinian campaign group Red Card Israeli Racism, attracting more than 8,000 signatures. An open letter was also sent to British newspaper The Guardian in May, signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as well as a raft of other politicians and celebrities.

“UEFA is rewarding Israel’s cruel and lawless behavior by granting it the honor of hosting the European Under-21 finals next month,” the letter read.

“UEFA should not allow Israel to use a prestigious football occasion to whitewash its racist denial of Palestinian rights and its illegal occupation of Palestinian land.”

But, for some of those campaigning for a boycott of the tournament, they say the most damning evidence comes from Sarsak’s own experiences while in detention.

“This (hunger strike) was the only way left to achieve my liberation,” he claims. “The Israelis killed my hope, killed my dreams, killed everything. It was either to live in dignity or be buried underground.”

Sarsak grew up in Rafah, a Palestinian city in southern Gaza, with little other than soccer.

“It runs through the family blood. All of my brothers played,” he says.

“When I was growing up I looked up to Palestinian players. We didn’t have TV so we didn’t know anything of any international players. We looked up to them because they were so confident and happy. They made people smile. They brought spirit and life into the destructive places we were living in. That’s what I wanted to do. Put smiles onto people’s faces in such a hard place to live.”

It soon became clear that Sarsak had talent. At 14 he became the youngest player to represent the Rafah soccer team, and was called up for an international tournament in Norway. Soon he came to the attention of the Palestinian national team, which has been recognized by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, for more than 15 years.

But it wasn’t until 2009 that Sarsak was offered a professional contract with a team in the West Bank. Finally he managed to secure the hard-to-come-by permit required by Palestinians to leave Gaza.

“I was delighted,” Sarsak recalls of the day he left his home.

“Through football I would be able to help my family survive. I was on my way to establishing myself as an independent person. Building a home, building a family. The day before I traveled, all my friends came and celebrated. Everyone was delighted.”

That dream turned sour. When he arrived at the Erez Crossing into Israel the situation quickly deteriorated, he said.

“A woman soldier and officer said I should go for an investigation. I wasn’t worried as lots of people were being investigated,” he said.

“I was surprised when my hands and legs were chained immediately. No-one else was. I thought, ‘OK, something is happening.’ ”

It was the start of a three-year nightmare for Sarsak.

“They searched me and then put big black glasses on my eyes so I couldn’t see. They took me with my chained arms and legs down into what felt like a big bunker underground. When I got there and took the glasses off I was sitting on a chair in front of an interrogator.

“I was harassed, brutalized, hit on the head with the guns they were using. They took me off into an army center where they called my brother and told him I was in prison. I spent 45 days there. I saw death many times throughout that period.”

Sarsak claims that during this period he was physically and psychologically tortured.

“A human being is being kept in a place not suitable for an animal. It is a two-meter-by-two-meter bunker,” he recalls.

“Damp. No sun. No air. It is not a place where even animals should be. At first I had 18 days of investigation. I was chained to a chair. My eyes were closed. I was not allowed to sleep for 18 days. I was beaten up, humiliated. I was put in a fridge for a time where I was frozen almost to death and then straight from there to the hospital. Every time you go through these cycles you feel like you are going to die. And you could die at any moment under those conditions.”

The Israeli authorities deny any allegation that Sarsak was tortured. “Any claims he was physically mistreated in any way are totally baseless,” the senior security source said. They also believe that administrative detention is a vital, and legal, security tool.

“Administrative detention is legal under international law,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said when asked about the use of administrative detention and why Sarsak was not brought to trial.

“We prefer not to use it, we prefer open court but sometimes this proves impossible. If you have sensitive intelligence material, hard-line terrorist groups will immediately and violently eliminate our intelligence sources. We use this sparingly. Where a situation like this arises we need to protect our security sources.

“The process is not arbitrary. There are checks and balances in place. You cannot be held for a few days before being brought before a judge. They can appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. The Israeli judiciary is fiercely independent and has no issue ruling against the government.”

Sarsak maintains his innocence.

“If I actually had links with terrorists, why was I never charged? Never brought to trial justly?” he says.

“I spent three years in prison with no accusation. If I did have links I should have been brought to court. But in reality they had nothing on me. This was a false charge under which they kept me in prison. I lost three years of my life.”

Back in London, later in the day, Mahmoud Sarsak joined a small but vocal protest outside the Grosvenor House hotel where the UEFA congress was taking place. He personally delivered the petition calling for the boycott of the tournament.

“I have great respect for the Palestinians,” UEFA president Michel Platini told CNN when asked about the protests.

“We have solidarity with Palestinian football … we have sent money, letters to press for the release of players and to get visas (but) Israel has just as many rights as anyone else to host a tournament. This shouldn’t affect a youth tournament.”

For the Israelis, the European Under-21 Championship is arguably the most prestigious international sports tournament ever held in the country. It is particularly poignant given that Israel used to be part of the Asian Football Confederation, even qualifying for the 1970 World Cup finals, until a boycott by its Arab neighbors forced the Israeli Football Association into the wilderness.

It was eventually accepted as a permanent member of UEFA — European football’s governing body — in the 1990s. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on hosting the tournament. Two state-of-the-art stadiums have been built, and two more renovated.

“Four years of hard work by all involved are coming to fruition,” Israel Football Association spokesperson Michal Grundland said.

“We hope viewers and tourists will see Israel for what it really is — a vibrant country with a rich culture, an absolutely phenomenal place for young people and tourists to enjoy and have fun, peacefully — and not what it is perceived to be from the way it is usually represented in the foreign media.”

For many Israelis, talk of a boycott is counterproductive. They say soccer is one of the few areas in Israeli society where Arabs, who make up around 20% of the country’s population, are well represented. Virtually every Israeli league side has Arab players, with the exception of Beitar Jerusalem — one of Israel’s best supported teams — which has never had an Arab player on its team. Five Israeli Arabs have been called up to the Israel side for the tournament.

“(That is) a much higher percentage than in the general population,” Grundland said. “Soccer in Israel is a uniting sport. Four of the five Arab Israelis in the squad will be part of the starting XI.”

Yet, as the protesters chanted outside the Grosvenor House Hotel for the tournament to be stopped, others within Israel believe that boycotts harm the Palestinian cause. Only recently, distinguished British scientist Stephen Hawking controversially boycotted a major international conference in Israel over the treatment of the Palestinians, sparking a debate as to how effective such actions actually are.

“You call these groups calling for a boycott pro-Palestinian. They are not. They are nihilistic and anti-Israeli,” said Regev.

“These groups calling for a boycott of football are the same groups who call for a boycott when the Israeli philharmonic orchestra plays overseas. They boycott Israelis. I challenge you to find one person calling for the boycott of this football tournament who isn’t calling for other boycotts too. They demonize Israelis and harm the creation of a Palestinian state.”

The two-week tournament, which began Wednesday with Israel drawing 2-2 against Norway, is expected to go ahead as planned. Sarsak will spend the next couple of weeks touring the UK, speaking at public meetings about his experiences and why he believes UEFA is wrong to allow Israel to host the tournament.

“Michel Platini came to Palestine and saw the real situation. He said that he will carry the Palestinian cause and would advocate against the oppression of the Palestinian people,” Sarsak says.

“He has completely changed his mind. He has given Israel a present on a platter of gold by giving them the honor of hosting the tournament.”

Sarsak has made a good physical recovery from his hunger strike. As the tournament kicks off, he says he is haunted by the memories of his detention, the time he has lost and the mental scars he still endures. But, one day, he hopes to play soccer again.

“I still want to pursue my dream,” he says, “because the Israeli intention was to destroy my dream and stop me playing football.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/06/sport/football/israel-sarsak-uefa-u21-football/index.html

The GMB, which has over 617,000 members from an array of sectors, voted on Thursday at its annual conference in Plymouth to uphold a 2011 decision to “take a lead in driving forward the boycott and divestment initiatives of “companies who profit from illegal settlements, the occupation and the construction of the wall.”

Last week, after the motion was moved and seconded by far-left anti-Israel activists, the union noted that “a major priority” of TUFI is to fight the boycott [of Israel] which they said “campaigns against the policy of this union.”

Hence it determined that GMB members be banned from participating in TUFI sponsored visits to Israel or from speaking to TUFI platforms.

The union also reaffirmed that it “unashamedly” is affiliated to the radical fringe group Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Friday, a spokesman for the union – which is one of the three largest affiliates to the Labor Party – confirmed its position saying it did not want to be associated with an organization that fights the boycott call.

“This is a freedom of association issue. The Congress does not want the union to be associated with an organization fighting a boycott of trade with illegal settlements in occupied territories. Their decision is binding on the union as an organization.”

The spokesman denied it was a ban.

“They will not be funded or facilitated which is very different. What they do as individuals is a matter for them,” he added.

The motion was actually opposed by the leadership of the GMB, the Central Executive Committee, however their stance was shunned by the congress.

“The CEC stance on the motion was not accepted by congress after a debate. This is democracy in action in the union and the resolution is now GMB policy,” the spokesman told the Post.

The controversial motion was submitted by Julie Hunt, from the northwest London branch of the GMB. Last year she was a signatory of a letter that called “to break all links with the Histadrut as it is not a trade union, but has been an integral part of the racist Zionist state since its inception.”

Trade Union Friends of Israel said it was disappointed with the decision.

“It’s important that British trade unionists visit the region and meet with trade unionists on both sides, supporting cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian workers, helping them to realize their hopes for a peaceful and better future,” said Stephen Scott, director of TUFI, on Friday.

“It is important to have an open, public debate about the role of the trade union movement in Israel and Palestine, and ensure that alternative voices are heard about the current situation in the Middle East,” he added.

TUFI said the motion specifically targets its opposition to the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign noting that the Labor Party totally opposed any form of boycott.

“We think it’s important to note that GMB are an affiliate of the Labour party, and the official policy of the Labor party is opposition to BDS, with Labor Leader Ed Miliband saying earlier this year “I think the boycotts of Israel are totally wrong. We should have no tolerance for boycotts.”

“TUFI and the Labor party share our opposition to the boycott movement, and we do not believe this should be a reason to break links between the GMB and TUFI, but rather provides an area for future debate and discussion,” TUFI added.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/British-trade-union-to-ban-member-visits-to-Israel-315857

Reports on Saturday’s fourth national Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference inBethlehem tended to focus on the shaming of Palestinian Authority minister Jawad Naji (including my own initial one). But the conference itself was a bigger story.

The main reason the audience was so angry with Naji was that the focus throughout the day was on local boycott initiatives. The PA undermines these through its many contacts with Israeli officials and institutions.

Despite the minister’s walk-out and his thugs’ subsequent bloody attack on Nizar Banat (the man who supposedly “insulted” PA leader Mahmoud Abbas), the conference was a vibrant and exciting event.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights today called for an investigationinto the attack on Banat.

Normalization slammed

Several speakers from the platform [PDF] denounced efforts by Israel and its collaborators to normalize the occupation. Many of those who spoke from the floor demanded the PA make laws to punish normalization. Several said the PA was undermining boycott efforts through joint initiatives. An-Najah University economist Yousef Abdul Haqs said of such efforts: “We have breached our boycott movement.”

Samia Botmeh of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel talked about efforts in schools to combat normalization initiatives like OneVoice, which target the minds of children, she said. OneVoice is group founded by Israeli businessman Daniel Lubetzky, which seeds to bring the “two sides” together in dialogue.

Ziad Shuaibi of the BDS National Committee talked about Seeds of Peace, another normalization initiative, which sends Israeli and Palestinian youth on summer camps abroad together. He described how it uses powerful financial initiatives to entice participants, such as potential scholarships in foreign universities and the chance of travel. Normalization is a form of “social engineering” by Israel, he said, concluding: “we will not allow them to occupy our future.”

BDS in the West Bank

The “ubiquity” of Israeli products in Palestinian stores in the West Bank was also a major talking point from both speakers and participants.

From the platform, Mazen al-Azzah said that Palestinians are the first market for Israeli goods. He said this was largely down to the greed of Palestinian capital. But he cautioned that emptying Palestine of Israeli products would not be enough to pressure Israel, and that international successes would still be needed. However, he said local initiatives like the relatively new Bader initiative to boycott Israeli products could be a model for the international community.

Khaled Zahd, a local activist from Salfit, talked about the incredibly difficult situation there, where Israeli settlers now outnumber Palestinians in the region. He described the situation as a crisis the PA should pay more attention to. Nonetheless, a local “Olive Convention” was formed which called on stores to boycott all Israeli products, with certificates being issued to those who agreed.

An all-Palestine event

The event was organized by the BDS National Committee, who said that approximately 700 persons attended. There were almost 30 speakers, and the day concluded with several concurrent workshops.

BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti told me the day was: “By far the most successful BDS conference in Palestine… for the first time we had such a huge cross section of Palestinian society everywhere. It was unprecedented in that sense.”

“This conference’s slogan was spreading BDS locally: as campaigns,” he explained. “Emotionally, symbolically, we have wall-to-wall support … but to translate that into effective projects, effective programs, BDS campaigns in each sector … this is the first time we do this. So the workshops, instead of the normal recommendations … each sector was supposed to develop a plan of action until next year … Israel is very worried that BDS is spreading effectively much more in the occupied territories than before.”

People from all over Palestine were bused into Bethlehem for the day. Coaches were organized from Ramallah, Hebron, Haifa, Jenin, Salfit, Tulkarem, Jerusalem, Qalqilya, Lydda, Jaffa and Nablus. Palestinians from exile came from abroad, and several Israeli activists from Boycott From Within also attended.

Several of the speakers had to use Skype to give their talks, including the BDS National Committee’s Haidar Eid who spoke from Gaza, criticizing normalization as a deliberate attempt to undermine BDS. Activists with BDS campaigns from Jordan and Lebanonalso used video conferencing to communicate in the same way.

Famous names

Archbishop Atallah Hanna on the Kairos Palestine document.

(Asa Winstanley / The Electronic Intifada)

Videos of support for the conference from veteran anti-apartheid figure Desmond Tutu, rock legend Roger Waters and renowned Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife were screened. Tutu said of the Israelis: “they might be strutting around as if they are invincible, but they are on the side of the wrong… one day Palestinians will walk tall, free citizens of a free Palestine.”

The conference was opened by Brother Peter Bray, the head of the university, who expressed his support for BDS. The Electronic Intifada understands this was the first time he’d ever done so publicly.

Then followed messages of solidarity from imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, the “engineer of the intifada,” and Ahmad Saadat, the jailed leader of the Popular Font for the Liberation of Palestine. Their respective partners, Fadwa and Abla, read the statements.

Marwan Barghouti called for a “comprehensive boycott of Israel” and said it was high time for Palestinians to bet on themselves rather than US negotiations. Ahmad Saadat said that BDS is similar to other anti-globalist movements, and emphasized the necessity of BDS when the Zionist entity (referring to Israel) depends on international support from imperialist forces.

To loud applause, former presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti hailed famed British academic Stephen Hawking’s recent decision to join the academic boycott. Barghouti criticized some Palestinian academics (though he didn’t name them) for attending the event Hawking pulled out of.

There was a session where speakers gave examples of successful BDS campaigns from around the world. Archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Orthodox church spoke about the Kairos Palestine document endorsing BDS, and how it has triggered a backlash from supporters of Israel around the world. The document asserts Christianity is oriental, Middle Eastern and Palestinian, he said. Kairos is part of the religious curriculum in many schools now, he added. Hanna spoke of the need to confront normalization in all its forms.

“You blame the PLO”

Economy minister Jawad Naji before he was compelled to leave.

(Asa Winstanley / The Electronic Intifada)

The controversial session that ultimately led to the PA’s minister being effectively chased out was titled: “Facing the Public,” and was focused on questions from the floor. The other two speakers were Palestine Liberation Organization representative Taisir Khaled and the BDS National Committee’s Omar Barghouti.

Khaled was a more slick speaker than the crude pro-Abbas sloganeering of Naji. Khaled responded to criticisms that had already arisen in discussion during the previous session: “you blame the PLO a lot” and “are dissatisfied with the PLO,” but, he said “the PLO still exists” and disputed a claim that the only PLO department left was negotiations.

After the minister’s walk-out, Khaled said he was against the Paris protocol (a one-sided economic deal with Israel that followed Oslo) and security coordination with Israel, but said it was nothing new, and claimed many in the PLO executive were against security coordination.

But he said he was not in favor of “abusive language” towards the minister, which he said was “not acceptable.” Khaled said nothing about the minister’s abuse of conference participants, however.

Omar Barghouti put the focus on the importance of people taking the initiative themselves. The BDS National Committee is not some well-funded nongovernmental organization, he said, and the conference grew this year without funding. Take the initiative and resist; don’t wait for anyone’s permission, he said.

Naji claimed the private sector is “the engine behind development and growth.” He pointed towards the PA’s 2010 “Dignity” settlement goods boycott campaign (despite the fact it is now defunct) and claimed credit for moves in the European Union towards labeling of settlement goods.

Where Naji seemed to start rub the crowd up the wrong way was when, after several critical contributions from the floor, he responded by complaining about having to wait an hour till after his scheduled time to speak. (Organizers told me his was because several speakers were added to the program at the last minute, including the messages from Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat. No one else apart from Naji complained about this, despite being equally effected by it.) He also said: “this is the government of the Palestinian people” (whether you like it or not, seemed to be the implication).

It all went downhill from there for him. He claimed he had never heard of even a single joint Palestinian-Israeli official project, despite several being named throughout the day. Responses from the floor were immediate: Rawabi. Paltrade has projects with the Peres Center.

Naji responded by calling the woman who’d pointed this out a “girl” and said she was mixing up between the private sector and civil society.

Eventually, Nizar Banat called out Mahmoud Abbas on coordination with Israel, and Naji responded with insults, which led to Naji being run out of the conference, as I reported Saturday.

Successful conclusion

Despite a brief moment of chaos, the conference resumed following the walk-out. The conclusion before breaking into workshops was a presentation from Alaa Muhanna, a Palestinian member of the Druze religious minority who has refused to serve in Israel’s army. He received perhaps the loudest applause of the day, and the chair told him “welcome home.”

Muhanna started by denouncing the minister for insulting Banat, but then proceeded with this prepared remarks. These were a passionate and emphatic affirmation of the Arab Palestinian identity of the Druze community. He claimed those who thought like him were the majority of Druze and those who did serve in the Israeli army were the victims of Zionist brainwashing: “we refuse military service everywhere, we are growing everywhere.”

Perhaps the comment that summed up the day best came from the floor. One contributor said the conference was “a great indicator of the unity of our people.”

Asa Winstanley is currently reporting from Palestine. Simultaneous translation from Arabic was provided by the conference organizers.

Palestine solidarity activists, Stop G4S campaigners and a Danish member of parliament combined to take over the annual general meeting of G4S in London Thursday afternoon and focused the spotlight on the security company’s complicity in human rights abuses against Palestinians and others. G4S is a British-Danish firm which provides services to Israeli military checkpoints and prisons as well as security contracts worldwide.

Just minutes after it started, the meeting was disrupted by the sound of a horn which was the signal for approximately ten Stop G4S campaigners to rush to the front of the room, where the CEO and board members were seated, shouting “Who killed Jimmy Mubenga? G4S did!”

The reference was to Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old Angolan who died while handcuffed to G4S security guards on board a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2011. He was being restrained during deportation.

The protest was a bad start to the afternoon for Ashley Almanza, G4S’ new CEO, who took over the post on 1 June. He remained silent as the campaigners unfurled a banner with the words “Stop G4S” and read out details of Mubenga’s death.

They did not have time to read a prepared protest poem about the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli jails before they were removed by security.

Their exlusion, however, didn’t result in an improvement in the situation for Almanza or the board.

Torture in Israeli jails

As chair, John Connolly, struggled to bring the AGM back to its more normal concerns of shares and profits, activists from Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and War on Want intervened.

Question after question was put to the board about G4S’ contracts with the Israeli prison service by campaigners who had bought shares in order to attend the meeting.

The first was from Danish MP, Nikolaj Villumsen, of the Red-Green Alliance, who had flown to London specifically to attend the AGM.

Villumsen asked how G4S could square its claims to be committed to human rights, made in its corporate social responsibility report, with the service it provides to Israeli prisons. In these jails, Villumsen pointed out, “Palestinians are imprisoned and, the UN says, tortured.”

In response, Almanza made the extraordinary claim that G4S does not believe “breaches of international humanitarian law” are taking place inside Israeli jails.

He added: “The board and management commissioned an independent review of our operations in Israel. This was carried out by Professor Hjalte Rasmussen at Copenhagen University, and he concluded that our activities are all consistent with international humanitarian law.”

Almanza was immediately challenged by Salim Alam, a member of PSC’s executive committee. Alam informed G4S’ CEO that Rasmussen had written his report in 2010 without visiting any Israeli jails.

Alam added: “Before you opine on something as serious as that, you would normally go on a field visit.”

Public relations disaster

From then on, the meeting quickly descended into a public relations disaster for the world’s largest security company. Of the 16 questions asked during the two-hour meeting, seven were about G4S’ Israeli prison contracts.

These were tweeted to the outside world by national newspaper journalists, who had been invited to attend. Reports later that same day in the Guardian described how Almanza “faced a barrage of tough questions over the security company’s business in Israel at his first meeting with shareholders.”

The Telegraph reported how “shareholders urged G4S to drop the ‘toxic contract’” with Israeli prisons in “a meeting dominated by questions over three Israeli prison contracts in occupied Palestine and the death of Jimmy Mubenga.”

It was an unusual move for G4S to invite journalists into its annual general meeting. If it had thought that it could control the story and portray a new face, with a new CEO, following the public relations fiasco of its Olympics security contract last year, it was sorely mistaken.

The Palestinian agenda and Jimmy Mubenga dominated the day, both inside the meeting room and on the street outside, where noisy activists, headed by samba musicians, sang and chanted to a backdrop of a mock apartheid wall and prison cage, complete with hooded “prisoner.” All other business was completely overshadowed.

Inside, as campaigners brought up the issue of child prisoners and repeatedly demanded to know when G4S would end its contracts with Israeli prisons, G4S Chair John Connolly was forced to admit: “We’re not blind to the observations and questions that have been raised a number of times today.

“We have no business to be associated with inappropriate breaches of the type that have been referred to today. We will constantly keep under review any developments, including those that you have referred to. I can assure you that the consequences of this review will be appropriate.”

However, like Almanza, Connolly insisted that no breaches of “humanitarian international law,” as he also referred to it, were taking place in Israeli prisons.

No profiting from occupation

G4S has operations in approximately 125 countries across the globe. It equips and provides services to Israeli prisons where Palestinian children, women and men are held, often without trial, and routinely abused and tortured. It also supplies full body scanners and luggage scanning equipment to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, and full body scanners to the Erez checkpoint in Gaza.

Its complicity in, and profiting from, Israel’s illegal occupation and its persecution of the Palestinian people has turned the company into a major target for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Speaking after the Annual General Meeting, which he attended, Hugh Lanning, Chair of PSC, said: “G4S has learned from today’s AGM that there’s a price to be paid for profiting from Israel’s crimes. PSC’s campaign against G4S will continue until it stops making money from human rights violations, illegal detention and torture against Palestinians and withdraws from doing business with Israel’s prison service.”

Rafeef Ziadah, War on Want’s senior campaigner, was also in the meeting. She said afterwards: “G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli prisons where Palestinian political prisoners, including child prisoners, are detained and tortured illegally inside Israel. We are taking our message directly to the G4S board of directors and shareholders at their annual meeting, in order to call for an end to G4S complicity in Israel’s occupation.”

The BDS campaign against G4S is already bearing fruit. Charities in the Netherlands have cut ties with the company in protest at its involvement in the Israeli occupation, while, in Norway, a campaign by students and academics led to the University of Oslo terminating its G4S contract. Student unions in Scotland have forced their universities to take the same action.

Thursday’s actions brought the message directly to G4S’ CEO, its chair and its board members, who sat stony faced throughout what must have been an unexpected ordeal. If they didn’t know before this meeting how much heat the BDS campaign is prepared to put on their company, they certainly do now.

You can read more about the demonstrations at the G4S AGM at the links below. 

Guardian: Israeli prison contracts take centre stage at G4S shareholder meeting

Financial Times: G4S shareholders lambast the board

Telegraph: G4S annual meeting stormed by protesters

The US is now the only Western country that holds favorable views of Israel and in some European countries, including Germany, positive views of Israel are in the single digits.

The 2013 Country Ratings Poll, conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA for the BBC among 26,299 people around the world between December 2012 and April 2013 found that:

Iran is once again the most negatively viewed country, with negative ratings climbing four points to 59%. Most people also give negative ratings to Pakistan (56%, up five points), North Korea (55%, up three points) and Israel (52%, up one point).

The persistent association of Israel with the world’s most negatively viewed countries will come as a disappointment to Israeli government and other hasbara officials who have invested millions of dollars in recent years to greenwash and pinkwash Israel as an enlightened, democratic and technological “Western” country.

US is only western country with favorable views of Israel

And the news only gets worse. Here are some of the highlights from the BBC poll:

• On average, in the 22 tracking countries surveyed both in 2012 and 2013, 52 percent of respondents had negative views of Israel’s influence in the world, an increase of two points from last year.
• Out of the 25 countries polled in 2013, 20 lean negative, three lean positive, and two are divided.
• The United States is the only Western country surveyed holding favorable views of Israel, and the only country in the survey with a majority of positive ratings (51 percent, stable).
• Views of Israel in Canada and in Australia remain entrenched in negative territory with respectively 57 and 69 percent of unfavourable views.
• In the EU countries surveyed, views of Israeli influence are all strongly negative and have either hardened further or remained stable.
• The United Kingdom is the most unfavorable country towards Israel in the EU with 72 percent of Britons holding negative ratings.
• The UK is followed by Spain (70% negative) where views have deteriorated due to a loss of positive ratings, now at just 4 percent (down from 12 perent).
• Positive views have dropped eight points in Germany over the past year, down to 8 percent in 2013 while negative inclinations have remained stable at 67 percent.
• In France, the picture is stable with 21 percent giving positive views (vs 63 percent negative) France is the EU country with the highest proportion of favorable ratings.
• Newly asked countries Poland and Greece have negative pluralities of 44 and 46 percent respectively, while just 15 percent lean positively towards Israel in both countries.

Also see from last year: “Israel’s popularity sinks even lower in 2012, new BBC global survey confirms.”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-one-worlds-most-unpopular-countries-and-its-getting-worse-bbc-survey

Invitation 

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC)
cordially invites you to actively participate in its

Fourth National BDS Conference
Saturday, 8 June 2013
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Bethlehem University 

See Attached Conference Program in English and Arabic

According to the 25 May Weekend Australian, a “Coalition government would block all federal funds to individuals and institutions who speak out in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel”. Julie Bishop, the opposition deputy leader and foreign affairs spokesperson, who has previously labelled the BDS campaign “anti-Semitic”, told the newspaper: “The Coalition will institute a policy across government that ensures no grants of taxpayers’ funds are provided to individuals or organisations which actively support the BDS campaign”. Funds would be cut not only for BDS-related activities, but also for any research, educational or other purpose.

The BDS campaign was initiated in 2005 by 171 Palestinian organisations and is inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid. It is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and fully complies with international law. Far from being “anti-Semitic”, it opposes all racism, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

In 2011, when similar charges were made against Australian BDS campaigners, the Palestinian BDS National Committee issued a statement saying such claims were “a cynical attempt to smear BDS activism in Australia”. It noted that politicians in Australia and elsewhere were “going to great lengths to curtail freedom of expression and shield the state of Israel from any criticism”, but the real problem lay “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”.

Not unique

The attempt to paint pro-BDS campaigners as anti-Semitic isn’t unique to Australia. In March, pro-Israel pressure groups in the UK suffered a major defeat when they attempted to repress Palestine solidarity activism, accusing the University and College Union of anti-Semitism. On 22 March, the UK Employment Tribunal dismissed a case brought by Academic Friends of Israel director Ronnie Fraser, who claimed that BDS was anti-Semitic and he had suffered anti-Semitic harassment as a result of the union’s pro-BDS policy. The tribunal dismissed Fraser’s complaint as “without substance” and “devoid of merit”, saying it was troubled by the claim’s “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”. Similarly, on 15 December 2011, a French court dismissed charges brought against 12 BDS activists for supposedly “inciting discrimination and racial hatred towards a group or nation”. The ruling reinforced a July French court ruling acquitting another BDS activist of similar charges.

In the wake of Israel’s Knesset (parliament) passing a law in July 2011 making it an offence to call for a boycott against Israel or its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Amnesty International noted that such laws have “a chilling effect on freedom of expression”. Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, called the anti-BDS law “a blatant attempt to stifle peaceful dissent and campaigning by attacking the right to freedom of speech”.

Bipartisan support for Israel

The Coalition’s attack on academic freedom comes after weeks of non-stop reports, editorials and op-eds in theAustralian that have explicitly sought to equate support for BDS with anti-Semitism. While the Australian, Labor and the Coalition have been making reckless and unfounded accusations against BDS, they’ve had little to say about Israel’s ongoing occupation and human rights abuses against the Palestinians.

Bishop, writing for the Australian Jewish News on 24 January, all but ignored Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies. Rather than calling for Israel to cease its illegal settlement building and blockade of Gaza, Bishop placed blame for the failed “peace” negotiations on the Palestinians.

Federal Coalition leader Tony Abbot has similarly failed to hold Israel accountable. Last December, Abbott attended the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue forum in London, along with Israel’s deputy PM and other Israeli government officials. In a speech read by Senator George Brandis on behalf of Abbott at the forum dinner, Abbott praised Israel as a “bastion of Western civilisation in a part of the world where human rights, including the value of respectful dissent, are not well appreciated”. But Israel isn’t a bastion of human rights.

According to the Israeli human rights group Adalah, more than 30 Israeli laws discriminate against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. In June 2011, Adalah noted “a further escalation in the legislation and enactment of discriminatory and anti-democratic laws by the Israeli Knesset between January and April 2011”, including laws that “threaten the rights and harm the legitimate interests of Arab citizens of Israel on the basis of their national belonging”. Adalah stated: “The laws concern a broad range of rights including land rights, citizenship rights, the right to political participation, the rights to freedom of expression and association and the rights to a fair trial and freedom from torture and ill-treatment”.

Bipartisan support for Israel, however, is a hallmark of Australian parliamentary politics. Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have given Israel unequivocal support. Just days before the 2007 federal election, Rudd announced his undying support for Israel at an event organised by the Australian Israel Cultural Exchange, saying “Israel is in my DNA”.

In 2009, when Israel began its three-week assault on Gaza, resulting in the death of more than 1400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, Gillard defended the bombing.

Who is attacking free speech and academic freedom?

Many of Israel’s advocates who’ve sought to paint the Palestinian BDS campaign as anti-Semitic and an attack on academic freedom are now supporting the Coalition’s sweeping attack on free speech and academic freedom.

Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, is quoted in the 25 May Australian welcoming the Coalition policy. Rubenstein, who had previously signed on to a 2011 pro-Zionist statement denouncing BDS as “antithetical to principles of academic freedom and discourag[ing] freedom of speech” is apparently happy to support suppression of academic and democratic rights in the service of Israel.

The accusation that BDS is an attack on free speech or academic freedom is of course false. The campaign focuses on institutions, not individuals, and doesn’t prevent any student or academic from carrying out research, authoring papers or participating in conferences simply because they are Jewish or Israeli. In Australia, pro-BDS groups have hosted a range of Israeli and Jewish academics and activists, including the renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who was the keynote speaker at the 2012 Australian BDS conference.

However, the double standard of Rubenstein and other pro-Israel advocates comes as no surprise. Rarely do pro-Israel advocates who denounce BDS acknowledge the right of Palestinians to academic freedom. Under Israel’s occupation, Palestinian education is severely restricted. During the 1987-1993 intifada, Israel closed most Palestinian universities, schools and kindergartens, making it illegal for Palestinians to get an education.

During the first intifada, Birzeit University was closed by Israeli military order 15 times, the longest closure lasting four and a half years. Today, Palestinians are regularly prevented from getting an education by Israel’s occupation – campuses often being raided by the Israeli military and teachers and students regularly arrested, tortured and killed. It is still exceedingly common for Palestinian teachers to conduct classes at checkpoints because they and their students can’t get to their educational institutions because of the apartheid wall and checkpoints.

Attempts to cut federal funding to individuals or organisations that support BDS should be rejected by anyone who supports free speech and academic freedom. Bipartisan attacks and dishonest reporting by the Australian will not deter BDS campaigners. We will continue to campaign against Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies and demand human rights, justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.

• The General Council Executive receives the report of the General Secretary, Yellow Sessional Committee pages 87–92.
• The General Council Executive directs the General Secretary to activate The Palestine Israel Education and Economic Action Campaign beginning Spring 2013, in the following phases:
• from June 2013: engagement with select companies and retail stores, and selection of target items;
• from September 2013: consumer economic action, highlighting spiritual reflection and action for Advent, Christmas and Lenten seasons;
• July–December 2014: Evaluation, follow-up actions, and preparation of report for March 2015 Executive Meeting.

Gilo settlement, near Bethlehem
Photo: Dale Hildebrand

The campaign has been named Unsettling Goods: Choose Peace in Palestine and Israel, which focuses on the illegal Israeli settlements and the obstacles they pose for peace. The campaign will encourage economic action against several settlement products. The General Council Office staff has been researching companies that have production in one or more Israeli settlements. Three companies have been selected for engagement:

• Keter Plastic, a company that manufactures a range of home and garden products such as storage containers, planters, toolboxes, toys, and patio furniture. Keter has a factory in the Barkan Industrial Zone near the Israeli settlement of Ariel, as does its wholly owned subsidiary, Lipski Plastic Ltd.
• SodaStream, a company that manufactures home sodamaker devices and ingredients. SodaStream’s main production facility is in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem in the West Bank.
• Ahava, a cosmetics company that sells skin care, bath, and other personal cosmetic products. Ahava operates its factory in the Mitzpe Shalem settlement on the shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

Over the next several months, the United Church will engage in dialogue with these companies regarding their involvement in the settlements and request that they cease all production in the settlements. They will be informed that failure to do so will result in economic action against their products.

The products of Ahava, SodaStream, and Keter can be found across Canada in major retail stores such as Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Rona, Future Shop, The Bay, Walmart, Sears, and Costco. The United Church will also begin engagement with select Canadian retailers to inform them about the origin of the settlement products of Ahava, SodaStream, and Keter and request that these items no longer be sold in their stores.

Depending on the responses of the three companies operating in the settlements and of the retailers selling their products, United Church people will be invited to initiate economic actions to avoid identified products and to continue engagement with the companies and retailers. These actions will begin in the fall of 2013 and continue until the companies and retailers disengage from their association with the settlements, or until directed otherwise by the Executive of the General Council or the General Council.

Campaign resources will be developed for use by United Church people for the fall and winter of 2013/14. These will include worship materials, advocacy tools, and other resources to help congregations, community ministries, small groups, and individuals to engage in education and economic action initiatives focused on the Israeli settlements.