#BDS: Boycotting the occupation bites again

"The Israeli security firm Hashmira, which is owned by the Danish concern G4S, announced last weekend it will stop providing equipment to security installations over the Green Line.

The move comes in the wake of public pressure in Denmark following a report from the Coalition of Women for Peace, which runs the “Who Profits?” projectmonitoring Israeli companies operating in the territories.

The report, released in November, says that Hashmira provides baggage scanning equipment and body scanners for the Qalandiya, Bethlehem, Sha’ar Efraim and Eyal checkpoints.

It also provided the Ofer base near Ramallah a peripheral security system installed on the security prison walls, and the central control room for the entire compound, which includes a jail for Palestinian prisoners, a lockup and a military court."

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#BDS: European initiative against settlement and wall

"AMSTERDAM, (PIC)– Pro-Palestinian organizations in Europe declared the launch of the European initiative for removing the wall and settlements in The Hague, Netherlands.

This came during “Palestina festival 2011…No occupation, no blockade” that was held earlier this week in Zazat Blaine hall in Rotterdam city.

The initiative is a consortium of many human rights organizations operating throughout the European continent and they oppose the construction of settlements and the segregation wall in occupied Palestine.

Head of the festival Amin Abu Rashid stated in a speech that this initiative is aimed at fighting Israel’s settlement activities and its construction of the apartheid wall in the occupied Palestinian territories, which constitute a flagrant violation of international law."

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#BDS: Israeli Apartheid Week: A Beginner’s Guide

"As activists around the world take part in Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), Zionist lobby groups have swung into action, pushing a mixture of candy-coated distractions, lies, and trained hasbarists. Here are five commonly heard objections to IAW, unpacked. 

1. “Arabs in Israel shop in the same markets, attend the same hospitals, sit in the same parks, etc.” 

This claim is sometimes supplemented by photos of Arabs cheerily – and no doubt gratefully – going about their everyday business or enjoying their leisure time in The Middle East’s Only Democracy™. However, Israel as a democratic, multicultural, shared space is undermined by examples such as – though not limited to – the following: 

• ‘Selection committees’ decide who gains admission to small communities based on criteria like "social suitability," a setup that operates in hundreds of towns (their use as a tool to exclude Palestinians could well be reinforced with a new law). A number of these communities were only established in the first place as part of a plan based on “ethnic discrimination” and “demographic phobia”.

• Palestinian ‘permanent residents’ of East Jerusalem, despite living in the so-called ‘unified capital’ of Israel, are unable to purchase property in most of West Jerusalem and a third of illegally-annexed East Jerusalem. That’s because “to qualify to purchase property on ‘state land’ the purchaser must either be a citizen of Israel” or “legally entitled to citizenship under the law of return (i.e. Jewish)”."

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#BDS: تمرين أردني ـ إسرائيلي حول احتمال وقوع زلزال في المنطقة

عمان - جرى مؤخرا تمرين مشترك في منطقة وادي عربة، لمحاكاة التحضيرات الإقليمية حول احتمال وقوع زلزال في المنطقة، وذلك بمشاركة حوالي 200 شخص من مؤسسة نجمة داود الحمراء الإسرائيلية، ومنظمة الهلال الأحمر الأردنية، وفقا لصحيفة جيروسالم بوست الإسرائيلية.

كما شارك في التمرين مختصون منهم أكاديميون وطلاب من جامعة بن غوريون، بينما ذكرت الصحيفة أن المشاركين قاموا أيضا بإنشاء مخيم لإيواء الناجين في "تيمناع" بالنقب.

وكانت الصحيفة بدأت خبرها بمقدمة قالت فيه "رغم وجود اختلافات بين الأردن وإسرائيل ومنذ زمن، وحتى بعد توقيع اتفاقية سلام، إلا أنهما يواجهان التهديد نفسه من وقوع زلزال في المنطقة، ما أدى إلى وجود تعاون بينهما، خصوصا بعد رؤية الدمار الذي خلفه زلزال اليابان".

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#BDS: Stop JNF – Help dismantle a colonial pillar of the Israeli Apartheid regime

"Occupied Palestine, March 26^th 2011 – Commemorating the Palestinian Land Day and the Global BDS Day of Action[1], the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on behalf of its constituent organizations and unions representing the majority of Palestinian civil society, together with many partners around the world, particularly the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, is hereby officially launching an international campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and strip it of its charity status everywhere. The BNC calls on people of conscience around the world to take civil and legal steps to oppose the presence and activities of the JNF in their countries due to its long-standing and intricate role in crimes of colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people. As a key pillar in Israel’s system of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, the JNF should lose its charitable status anywhere; it should also be comprehensively boycotted by international civil society and by governments that consistently uphold the primacy of international law.

Established in 1901 with the primary objective to “purchase, take on lease or in exchange or otherwise acquire lands….in the prescribed region [Palestine and the surrounding areas]…for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands”,[2] the JNF (also known as Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael or KKL) [3] has been a chief partner in the Zionist colonial drive to dispossess indigenous Palestinians of their land, culminating in the Nakba of 1948 when Zionist militias and later Israel expelled a majority of the Palestinian population in order to establish a state with a Jewish majority. Shortly after the Nakba, the government of Israel transferred the ownership of lands from 372 of the 522 ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages to the JNF-KKL in order to hold them “in the name of the Jewish people in perpetuity” and prevent the return of the rightful Palestinian owners."

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#BDS: !تل أبيب ــ بيروت: طائرة تخرق مقاطعة إسرائيل

عند الساعة الثامنة من مساء يوم الجمعة الماضي، حطّت طائرة في مطار بيروت الدولي قادمة من غينيا الاستوائيّة. لم تخرق فقط الأجواء اللبنانيّة، بل القوانين التي تحكم مقاطعة إسرائيل ومنتجاتها. فالطائرة وهي من نوع «Gulfstream G200» تنتجها «الصناعات الجويّة الإسرائيليّة» وفقاً لسجل البيانات الخاصة بتسجيل الطائرات، ومُنعت من الهبوط على الأراضي اللبنانيّة في شباط عام 2010، كما أنّها ممنوعة من الهبوط أو التحليق فوق بلدان عربية عديدة، بينها سوريا.

فماذا حدث لكي يتغيّر القرار وتحطّ الطائرة على مدرج مطار العاصمة اللبنانيّة؟ الواضح حتّى الآن، بحسب مطّلعين على أوضاع الطيران المدني، هو أنّ مديريّة الطيران المدني اللبناني، بإيعاز من وزارة الأشغال العامّة والنقل، منحت هذه الطائرة رخصة الهبوط في لبنان. والشركة التي تتولّى صيانة هذه الطائرة النفاثة الصغيرة التي تتسع لثمانية أو عشرة أشخاص، وهي طبعاً مخصّصة للرحلات الخاصة ونقل رجال الأعمال، هي «MED Airways». وتنتج شركة الصناعات الجويّة الإسرائيليّة (IAI) هذه الطائرة، وقد سوّق لها في الأساس عبر الشركة التابعة «Galaxy Aerospace»، التي استحوذت عليها شركة «Gulfstream» في عام 2001. وجرى تغيير اسم الشركة التابعة كلياً إلى اسم الطائرة المذكورة.

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