The Right to Education (R2E) Student Committee in Birzeit University welcomes the motion passed by UNISON, the biggest trade union of public workers in the UK, and calls for student-wide mobilisation on boycotting Israel as a means to defend the right to education of Palestinians and end the occupation.
To read the full text and for links to relevant UNISON webpages, click here.
“that the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council, should consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the Wall and the associated régime, taking due account of the present advisory opinion.”
The opening of "Israel Week" at the Galeria Kaufhof department store in Berlin spurred a demonstration Saturday against Israeli food products originating in the territories. Protesters held signs reading "No to settlement products" and "Stop the Israel-EU Association Agreement." Groups protesting included The Jewish Voice, a Jewish-German organization opposed to the occupation, and Solidarity with Palestine, German teenagers affiliated with the radical left. Germans protest sale of food from West Bank settlements
Ratcheting up the simmering debate over how Protestant denominations should express their concern about Israel, the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church is advising congregations and individuals to divest their holdings from a wide variety of American corporations that the United Methodists believe support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
"We congratulate UNISON on their courageous move to speak out against the Israeli policy of tyranny and isolation of Palestine, especially at a time when the international community is silent and vicious witch-hunts were carried out against those who dared speak up.
For years, some diplomatic missions in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) -- including East Jerusalem -- have sponsored, organized, or otherwise facilitated joint Palestinian-Israeli projects that obfuscate or altogether ignore the reality of Israeli colonial and racist policies against the people of Palestine.
Israel’s military occupation -- the longest in modern history -- is not an abstract notion to us. It manifests itself in wilful killings of civilians, particularly children; wanton demolition of homes and property; uprooting of more than a million trees; incessant theft of land and water resources; denial of freedom of movement to millions; and cutting up the occupied Palestinian territory into Bantustans, some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks.
Academic boycott has been advocated in the past as an effective tool in resisting injustice. In the 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi called for boycotting British-run academic institutions, to increase Indian self-reliance and also to protest the role of those institutions in maintaining British colonial domination over India. In the 1950s, the African National Congress (ANC) called for a comprehensive boycott of the entire South African academy, as a means to further isolate the apartheid regime. To their credit, British academics were among the very first to adopt the latter boycott.
As a Palestinian academic, I find the argument about academic freedom insensitive and offensive. Do Palestinian universities somehow fall outside the remit of the "universal" principle of academic freedom? The Israeli academics who argue for their unfettered access to international academic networks, grants, visiting professorships, fellowships and other benefits of the academic system, have paid scant attention to the total denial of the most basic freedoms to Palestinians, academics or otherwise.
Heartened by the growing international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, Palestinian academics, trade unionists, professionals, and human rights activists will be eagerly following the deliberations of the Council when it convenes on May 30. The British academics’ initiative is particularly timely due to Israel’s escalation of its oppression of the Palestinian people.
Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era. We all remember how leading Rolling Stones musicians played a prominent role in enforcing a cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1980’s, and participated in recording the timeless song, Sun City, which had a singular influence on raising public awareness about apartheid and its injustices. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof.
