#BDS: The Silence of the Israeli Intelligentsia

The ongoing buzz in the Israeli media around statements issued by artists and academics against lecturing or performing in the colony of Ariel – built on occupied Palestinian land – betrays a stark contradiction in the positions of the Israeli intelligentsia. While they are now calling for a boycott of settlements, they have remained apathetic or even content regarding the far more significant heavy hand of the military-security-political establishment in society, including in academia and cultural institutions.

Another recent controversy has raged around academic freedom and the autonomy of the university. It was occasioned by attacks by two right-wing organizations, the Institute for Zionist Strategies and Im Tirtzu, on the alleged post-and anti-Zionist bias in social science departments at some Israeli universities.

The connection between the two controversies may not be apparent at first. However, they both demonstrate that the liberal-to-left Israeli intelligentsia’s mindset is fully in line with the reigning orthodoxy that accepts the military as a benign fact of life.

#BDS: British Palestinian rapper conducts a 'musical intifada'

"It's a musical intifada, a musical uprising," says Shadia Mansour squinting in the sunshine outside the hip hop workshop she is running in the West Bank city of Hebron.

From inside, a DJ can be heard cutting out beats on his decks.

Ms Mansour has been dubbed "the first lady of Arabic hip hop", but she is perhaps the only lady of Arabic hip hop.

The 24-year-old British Palestinian rapper grew up in South London, but she is currently on tour in the West Bank.

Ms Mansour is giving concerts in Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah but is also working with local young rappers in free flowing jam sessions.

#BDS: Palestine Direct Action Fundraiser at Ratstar

Direct actions in support of Palestine, such as blockades of Ahava or Carmel Agrexco don’t pay for themselves, van hire, D-locks etc all cost cash money. Therefore a network of people who carry out such actions are putting on a fundraiser to pay for future actions. Come on down, with a banging line up and a great social centre to have a party in (the Ratstar comes with 2 rooms of music, a cinema room and even a roof terrace, oh yes), there has never been a funner way to support a great cause.
The day kicks off at 4pm, with workshops on direct action, Palestine related film screenings and a Palestinian cafe. Music kicks off at 8pm.
When: Saturday 11th September 4pm – 4am
How much: free before 8pm, £5 suggested donation afterwards, but pay what you can afford
Transport: 10 mins walk from Oval tube station, well serviced by local bus routes
MUSIC
from banging techno to punk to hip hop to dubstep to drum and bass to accoustic, whatever your into we got you covered.
live bands
Anarchistwood – punk with a very twisted twist
52 Commercial Road – Epic post-rock
The Lightbulb Amnesty – Quirkyness aplenty
Sarah Bear – Acoustic songs on a soulful/political tip
Saul Wright - Psychedelic folk from the man that never really really left the 60’s behind
live hip hop
Cross Bone T – Hard raps and sick beats with a serious message
H.L.I. (thewhatsupreme and Sensei C) – two hip hop veterans collide showcasing new material. Expect heaviness
Deir Yassin – Rising British Palestinian rap star Deir Yassin ain’t afraid to spit the truth about his homeland
EDMC – EDMC AKA Ed Greens brings some politics for your ear
DJs
We Are Dubbist – No intro needed, the legendary DJ/MC dubstep crew bless us with their presence
Random – Bristols finest bringing the Techno/Breaks
DJ Hamza – eclectic mash up to get you dancing
Sammy B-Side – Cambridge’s veteran Hip Hop selector takes a break from his album to spin for us
Krank – Banging, banging Techno
DJ Deadlybuzz – Whomping Dubstep from the Dissident Island radio DJ
Skanksta – Drum and Bass with a Reggae twist

#BDS: Rabbi urges boycott of visits to Israel

A British rabbi says Jews should avoid visiting the Israeli-occupied Palestine territories, since it would contribute to further occupation of the region.

"Jews who realize the human rights deprived of the Palestinians, would not want to visit any place in occupied territories,” British rabbi Yacov Weisz told Press TV on Saturday. 

"They would boycott visiting the Western Wall and Hevron and a few other places and places of worship. Because if I were to go there, I would contribute to the occupation," he said. 

Weisz, who is a member of Rabbis for Palestine, a self-described orthodox Jewish human rights organization based in London, opposes 'Zionism' and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the Israeli regime. 

"If I were to go there [to the occupied territories in Palestine], I would contribute to the occupation," Weisz told Press TV on Saturday.

"A general problem with this regime" is that it "doesn't understand what peace means, [it] doesn't understand what respect and dignity for someone else means at all," he said. 

#BDS: ISRAEL: Actors threaten settlement boycott, lawmaker acts up

Israel is dogged by boycott initiatives from different directions. Academic, commercial and cultural ties are threatened as organizations and individuals protesting Israel's policies turn to boycotting in an attempt to apply practical pressure that will lead to change -- or at least exact a tangible price.

Some direct their efforts against any kind of collaboration with Israel. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine movement, or BDS, says academic and cultural cooperation with Israel boosts its international image and that refusing to take part in any exchange can send Israel the message that its "occupation and discrimination against Palestinians in unacceptable."

Other efforts are more selective, boycotting Israeli products and produce originating in the territories, such asAhava. A while back, a campaign to boycott the popular Dead Sea cosmetics was dubbed "stolen beauty" and called on consumers to shun the products made with "stolen Palestinian natural resources." "Sex in the City" actress Kristin Davis, who promoted Ahava products, wasentangled in the controversy, losing her position as anOxfam ambassador.

#BDS: Mira Awad to perform before Clinton, Blair

Israeli Arab singer invited to sing in special ceremony next week in which former British premier will be awarded medal for his efforts for peace in Northern Ireland

Israeli Arab singer Mira Awad has been invited to sing before former US President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Florida on Monday as part of a special ceremony in which Blair will be awarded the Liberty Medal for his efforts to promote peace in Northern Ireland.

Awad's musical partner Noa, with whom she performed in 2009's Eurovision Song Contest, was also invited to perform but will not be able to attend.

#BDS: Boycott leadership: solidarity with French activists

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on behalf of its constituent organizations and unions representing the majority of Palestinian civil society, strongly condemns the decision taken by French authorities to prosecute people of conscience for calling for a boycott of Israeli produce. These state-sanctioned forms of repression amount to active support for Israeli violations of international law and have serious implications on political freedoms in France and across Europe.

On 13 September, five members of the group "Boycott 68" will appear in court charged with "incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence" after distributing leaflets asking shoppers to boycott Israeli products ("Halte aux procès politiques contre les défenseurs du droit!" BDS France). Last year, Sakina Arnaud was fined 1000 euros for attaching a "Boycott Israel" sticker to a fruit juice carton. Arnaud will appear in court again on 24 September to appeal the decision. The campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005, is a nonviolent, just and effective way of pressuring Israel to comply with international law and end its institutionalized discrimination and violence towards Palestinians. People of conscience all over the world, including many progressive Israelis and Jews, engage in BDS campaigns as a form of solidarity with an oppressed people, suffering under Israeli occupation and apartheid. BDS is based on unambiguous respect for international law and universal human rights; as such, it is categorically opposed to all forms of racism and racial discrimination, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. The BNC is therefore deeply troubled by state-sanctioned smear campaigns against BDS activists.

#BDS: Jeff Halper: Pete, join the artists who are boycotting Israel

All the best from your friends in Israel/Palestine. In that spirit, I was surprised to hear of your planned participation in With Earth and Each Other: A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East. While at first blush it might seem to have something in common with the work of ICAHD and other Israeli and Palestinian peace groups — attempting to build bridges between peoples — it is actually something quite different.

One of the lead partners in the effort is the Jewish National Fund, which is responsible for the allocation of land in Israel. As such, it is a mainstay of the ever-increasing apartheid system there. Among their most recent activities has been the planting of a forest to cover a Bedouin village in the Negev from which the residents have been forcibly removed. They are in fact engaged in various tree-planting exercises that brand them as an environmental organization, when in fact their purpose is to secure the land of Israel, if not all of Palestine, for Jews only. That is their historical role, and so it remains. Efforts to paint Israel as environmentally concerned are mere greenwashing. Israel has repeatedly torn down Palestinian neighborhoods by declaring them green zones.

#BDS: عشرات الفنانين الأميركيين يؤيدون مقاطعة المستوطنات

أعلنت مجموعة يهودية في الولايات المتحدة، أمس، أنّ أكثر من 150 فناناً مسرحياً وسينمائياً أميركياً وقعوا على عريضة أعربوا فيها عن تأييدهم لقرار زملائهم الإسرائيليين مقاطعة المستوطنات اليهودية في الضفة الغربية.

وجاء في العريضة «إننا، كممثلين ومخرجين وكتاب مسرحيين ونقاد أميركيين، نحيّي موقف نظرائنا الإسرائيليين في قرارهم الشجاع... ومن المدهش أن نرى هؤلاء المسرحيين الإسرائيليين يرفضون استخدام أعمالهم كأداة لتشجيع احتلال وحشي ينتهك القانون الدولي».

(«السفير»، أب)

#BDS: نائبتان أوروبيتان تدعمان فرنسيين دعوا لمقاطعة منتجات إسـرائيل

أعلنت نائبتان أوروبيتان، أمس، دعمهما لخمسة ناشطين فرنسيين مؤيدين للفلسطينيين سيمثلون الاثنين المقبل أمام محكمة فرنسية لدعوتهم داخل متجر كبير إلى مقاطعة السلع المستوردة من إسرائيل.

وقالت النائب الأوروبية الشيوعية الفرنسية جاكي اينان، في مؤتمر صحافي في استراسبورغ، «في هذه القضية، يتم استخدام القضاء لأغراض سياسية»، فيما علقت زميلتها نيكون كيل نيلسن من حزب الخضر «يبدو أن وزيرة (العدل) الفرنسية ميشيل اليو ماري زودت النيابات تعليمات بانتهاج الشدة».

وسيمثل الناشطون الخمسة أمام محكمة الجنح في ميلوز شرقي فرنسا بتهمة «الحض على التمييز والكراهية والعنف». واتهموا بأنهم شاركوا في أيلول العام 2009 في تظاهرة داخل أجنحة متجر كبير قرب ميلوز دعوا خلالها إلى مقاطعة السلع المستوردة من إسرائيل.

وينتمي الناشطون إلى حملة «بي دي اس» الدولية (مقاطعة، وقف الاستثمار، عقوبات) ويرفضون أن تصدر إسرائيل سلعا مصدرها المستوطنات في الضفة الغربية وإظهارها على أنها منتجات مصدرها المناطق الأخرى، الأمر الذي يمنحها التسهيلات الجمركية نفسها التي تتمتع بها السلع الإسرائيلية.

وأثار تحركهم «غير العنفي» استياء المكتب الوطني لرصد مناهضة السامية الذي تقدم بشكوى. وقال رئيس المكتب سامي غزلان «في المجموع، تقدمنا بأكثر من 80 شكوى تتصل بوقائع مماثلة، في كل أنحاء فرنسا». وأفضت إحدى هذه الشكاوى في شباط الماضي إلى تغريم ناشطة في رابطة حقوق الإنسان في بوردو بألف يورو للصقها شعار «قاطعوا التمييز العنصري الإسرائيلي» على علب عصير. (أ ف ب)

#BDS: One Nation Working Together

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is proud to endorse "The Peace Table," the peace and anti-war voice of the "One Nation Working Together" October 2 march on Washington, DC "for a future of justice at home and peace abroad, where we create good jobs for all of us and take on the great challenges we face as a nation." This march will bring together hundreds of thousands of people from trade unions, faith-based organizations, and activists for economic and racial justice, environmentalists, and the peace and justice movement. We'll be there to support demands for jobs and economic justice by calling for the United States to end military aid to Israel and redirect that money to unmet needs here at home. We'll have signs, banners, fliers, and petitions, but we need you and your organization to help us organize and make the demand for ending U.S. military aid to Israel front and center at this year's most important Washington, DC peace and justice rally! Join the US Campaign to form an "End U.S. Military Aid to Israel" contingent, and help us organize march participants to redirect $30 billion in military aid to Israel to unmet needs here at home. Learn more below.

Call to Action Find out why you should join.

Sign Up to Organize for the March Help us organize marchers to redirect $30 billion in military aid to Israel to unmet needs in our communities.

Organize Locally to End Military Aid to Israel Sign up as a local volunteer organizer to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel and take part in local coalition-building efforts to redirect our country's economic priorities.

Learn More about the Cost of Military Aid to Israel Click here to find out how much money your community gives in military aid to Israel, and what that money could be used for instead to meet the needs of people in your community.

#BDS: US Campaign endorses push for divestment at TIAA-CREF

The US Campaign has endorsed an exciting petition at Jewish Voice for Peace (a US Campaign member organization), pushing US financial services giant TIAA-CREF toward divestment from companies involved in Israel's theft of land and abuse of human rights. Check out JVP's campaign page, sign the petition and get resources to join this promising effort!

#BDS: The reasons the BDS movement is ‘gaining speed’

On September 5, 2010 the Israel newspaper Haaretz published an article the headline of which read "Anti-Israel Economic Boycotts are Gaining Speed." The subtitle went on to state that "the sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge." Actually, what seems to have triggered the piece was not international. Rather, it was the decision of a "few dozen theater people" to boycott "a new cultural center in Ariel," an illegally settled town in the Occupied Territories. This action drew public support from 150 academics in Israel. The response from the Israeli right, which presently controls the government and much of Israel’s information environment, was loud and hateful.

Though this affair was domestic, it provided a jumping off point for Haaretz to go on and examine the larger international boycott of Israel which is indeed "gaining speed." It noted that Chile had recently pledged to boycott products from the Israeli settlements and Norway’s state pension plan had divested itself of companies involved in construction in the Occupied Territories. The Haaretz article pointed out that these incidents (and there are others that can be named in such countries as Ireland and Venezuela) are signs that the boycott movement –so long the province civil society– is now finding resonance at the level of national governments. The Israeli paper declared that "the world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem."

The article puts forth two explanations for this turn of events one of which is problematic, and the other incomplete. Let’s take a look at them.

#BDS: Refusing to Normalize a Cruel Occupation: A PACBI Open Letter to American and British Artists Supporting the Cultural Boycott of Israeli Colonies

Occupied Ramallah, 9 September 2010 -- The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) warmly salutes the tens of American and British theater, film and TV artists for their recently published statement [1] supporting the spreading cultural boycott of Ariel and the rest of Israel's colonial settlements illegally built on occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) due to their violation of international law.[2]  We also express our gratitude to Jewish Voice for Peace for its crucial role in bringing this statement to the light.  We view your courageous collective condemnation of Israel's settlements and "ugly occupation," your expression of "hope for a just and lasting peace" [emphasis added] in our region, and your endorsement of the logic of boycott to end injustice as a groundbreaking, precedent-setting initiative that will significantly contribute to ending Israel's impunity and status as a state above the law of nations in the United States, the United Kingdom and far beyond.

PACBI hopes that your position, which reflects a growing sentiment in the Western mainstream, particularly among cultural figures, will be consistently upheld against all institutions in Israel and elsewhere that are in violation of international law or complicit in covering up and whitewashing this violation.  We sincerely hope that this step will usher in further, more effective and bolder steps leading to a comprehensive cultural boycott of Israel -- and its complicit institutions – similar to that imposed on apartheid South Africa.  As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.”[3] 

#BDS: Divestment: from the campus to the streets

Following a sharp increase in divestment efforts across North American college campuses last spring, this academic year promises an even greater number of initiatives. The success and near-success of efforts at several campuses last year, coupled with Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla this summer, has inspired new efforts among peace and justice activists to target companies that profit from and abet Israel's apartheid regime.

Perhaps the largest divestment initiative is taking shape in California. The California Israel Divestment initiative is seeking to put a ballot measure to California voters that requires the state pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), to divest from companies enabling or profiting from Israeli occupation and systematic violations of Palestinians' human rights. Although not a university-based effort, it is being led in large part by faculty members and students. Their goal is clear: faced by stonewalling from university administrations, the case is being taken directly to California voters.

Students from the University of California (UC) and California State (CSU) campuses are coordinating a major drive to collect the 440,000 signatures required for the ballot initiative, and the list of volunteers keeps growing. The initiative has already received the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Professor Noam Chomsky, a number of other public and religious figures, and CalPERS and CalSTRS members.