"Dear Board of IGLYO,
It is with deep regret that we learned of your decision to hold you annual General Assembly in Israel after receiving money to do so by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. As an associate member of IGLYO, Helem urges you to reconsider this decision and heed the call sent by our sisters and brothers at Al-Qaws, Aswat, and Palestinian Queers for BDS to relocate your upcoming GA. If IGLYO maintains this decision, Helem will have to revoke its associate membership from the organization.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is a peaceful, non-violent tactic to pressure Israel to end its 63 year illegal occupation of Palestinian land, modeled after the successful strategy that ended apartheid in South Africa. BDS is not about punishing individual Israelis, but about securing the most basic and fundamental rights of Palestinians: the right to be free from violence, discrimination, and military occupation. Your insistence that dialogue holds a solution to this impasse false. The free exchange of ideas is indeed important, even when we disagree. However, dialogue does not replace mobilization for social change. Indeed, it is nothing without it, and it is often used as an excuse for inaction. Dialogue alone will not change relations of domination grounded in coercion."
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