Without hesitation, she said: “To slip into your suitcase when you head back to Palestine, to go home.”

The Stop the JNF Campaign argued that the primary purpose of the JNF has always been to remove Palestinians from their land and replace them with Jewish only settlements. As such, the JNF does not act for public benefit, which is a requirement of all charities in the UK.

Furthermore, the JNF promotes racism through Zionist education, and is a ‘para-statal’ organisation, recognised in statute as part of the State of Israel.

The JNF controls 13% of the land of Israel.  The remains of Palestinian villages are still visible under JNF ‘Parks’, examples are the village of Ajjur in the JNF British Park and Imwas village in JNF Canada Park.  Today, Palestinian Bedouins, who are citizens of the state of Israel, are being ethnically cleansed from the Negev (Naqab) to make way for a JNF forest.  JNF support for the of Judaising East Jerusalem made one JNF director resign.

The JNF is openly racist.  This is what it said to an Israeli Court “the JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel. Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel… The JNF, in relation to being an owner of land, is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”

In a reply dated May 15, the Charity Commission refused to JNF charities from the register of charities.  It has however decided to investigate whether the discrimination practised by the JNF is lawful under the Equalities Act 2010.

Sofiah Macleod, from Stop the JNF said that “we are glad that the Charity Commission is at last looking at the JNF’s systematic racist discrimination.  There is enough evidence showing that JNF UK and JNF Israel are so tied together that they cannot be described as separate organisations. Yet the Charity Commission shows a wilful blindness on this issue.  We very much look forward to hearing how the JNF will attempt to show that its racial discrimination is for the public benefit.  The Stop the JNF Campaign will be seeking to make the necessary legal challenges to force the Charity Commission to do its job, to remove the JNF charities from the register”.

Download copy of Charity Commission letter to Stop the JNF UK Download

More info: stopthejnf.org

“The projected six-lane highway extending 1.5km will do irreparable damage to the community, cutting off local roads and blocking access to kindergartens, schools, health clinics, offices, and places of worship,” warned the independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

“The residents of Beit Safafa, who were not consulted at any stage of the planning, will be placed in an absurd situation where places within their own community – previously accessible within ten minutes’ walk – would require travel by car on bypass roads and a bridge,” he said.

The Special Rapporteur noted that the highway purpose is to annex the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and pave the way for further expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements around East Jerusalem. “It will consolidate the highway network from Gush Etzion settlement in the southern West Bank through West and East Jerusalem, leading to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc and the E1 area,” he said.

Mr. Falk recalled the recent findings* of the International Fact Finding Mission on Israeli settlements, which recommended that private companies should no longer be able to profit from their involvement in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise.

“Companies taking part in the construction of the illegal highway in Beit Safafa, under the auspices of the Moriah Jerusalem Development Company and their implementing partner, D.Y. Barazani Ltd., must be held responsible,” the independent expert stressed. “Earth moving equipment of Volvo, CAT, Hyundai and JCB has been seen at the construction sites.”

The Special Rapportuer noted that the road project, which began in September 2012, was challenged in the Jerusalem District Court last December, but the residents’ petition to stop construction was rejected. An appeal filed with the Israeli High Court against the District Court’s decision was also rejected in March 2013. An appeal hearing as to the petition has been scheduled in the High Court for 26 June 2013.

(*) Check the report by the International Fact Finding Mission: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A-HRC-22-63_en.pdf

ENDS

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council designated Richard Falk (United States of America) as the fifth Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Learn more, log on to: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/countries/ps/mandate/index.htm

Sisters and brothers of South Africa, dear to our hearts,

Fraternal greetings from Palestine,

We address you today as we commemorate the grim anniversary of our Nakba, our national catastrophe, and as our days continue to be filled with calamities and sufferings. While the living conditions of our fellow Palestinian refugees outside Palestine are worsening by the day, inside the occupied Palestinian territory we are faced with the daily discriminatory and racist acts and decisions of the Israeli Occupying Power aimed at stealing our lands and turning Palestinian towns into isolated cantons. This continued oppression and injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people is possible because of the absence of international pressure on part of governments, and Palestinian workers, who form the bulk of the Palestinian people, bear their full share of oppression due to Israeli Apartheid policies. Thus on this sad day, we direct the following message to you:

On behalf of all Palestinian postal workers, we would like to thank you for your solidarity with our Palestinian cause and for organizing this demonstration on the day of our commemoration of the Nakba. We highly appreciate your support for the boycott campaign against Apartheid Israel, and we are asking you to broaden the appeal for the boycott of all Israeli organizations and products in order to pressure Israel to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people, including its illegal appropriation of postal revenues and physical attacks against Palestinian postal workers. We call for a continuation of this boycott until Israel recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to return, our right to a life in dignity and our right to self-determination.

.

Dear sisters and brothers,

Dear comrades of the South African Communication Workers Union (CWU),

The Palestinian Postal Service Workers’ Union proudly stands in solidarity with your labor demands and your struggle against unjust and exploitative anti-worker practices in the South African communications sector. We ask the South African Post Office to respond to your demands, end its unfair treatment of communication workers and improve their situation, and ensure full respect of workers’ fundamental human rights.

Our message to your government is that dialogue is the only way to solve all labor crisis and the real key to partnership and respect of human rights.

Long live Palestine, may it be free and independent at last!

Long live the friendship and solidarity between the workers of Palestine and South Africa!

May the communication workers of South Africa achieve all their demands!

(PPSWU)  State of Palestine 15/5/2013

Palpostmen@gmail.com

The YWCA was one of the first NGOs (nongovernment organizations) to provide services for Palestinian refugees. Before UNRWA was established, the YWCA responded to the emergency needs of the population, and later created women’s training centers and pre-schools in what is now the Aqabet Jaber Refugee Camp Center near Jericho. In 1951 the YWCA of Jordan was formed with branches and centers in the refugee camps on both the East and West Bank of the River Jordan.

Since 1991, and through the Resolutions issued in its World Council Meetings, the
YWCA has affirmed all UN Resolutions, including the right of return for all Palestinian
refugees and Palestinians living in exile. This is part of the YWCA’s continued
commitment to Peace with Justice and the right of all peoples to self-determination,
freedom, and dignity. Like all refugees, Palestinian refugees have an internationally
recognized right to repatriation and compensation for their suffering. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 states that “Refugees wishing to return to their
homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest
practical date.”

The YWCA of Palestine believes that 65 years far exceeds “the earliest practical date.” It
also believes that the Ongoing Nakba of Israel’s ongoing denial of displaced
Palestinians’ right to return as well as the ongoing experience of forced displacement
and dispossession is the result of Israeli policies and practices to forcibly transfer
Palestinians out of Palestine.

On this 65th anniversary, we urge the YWCA’s around the world, our global
partners, and major human rights organizations throughout Palestine and the
world to:

1. Join us in remembering the terrible events of the Nakba. We invite you to pray
and organize/join Nakba events in your countries and communities.

2. Continue to hold Israel accountable to humanitarian and international law.

3. Urge your governments to call on Israel to respect and implement all UN
Resolutions pertaining to Palestine, including the 242, 338 and 194, so the
Palestinians can practice their right for self-determination and establish their own
state.

4. And most importantly to continue to advocate for an end to Israel’s continued
displacement and dispossession laws, policies, and practices by putting pressure
on Israel to comply through morally responsible investment initiatives like
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

National President – Abla Nasir
National General Secretary – Mira Rizeq

Check out the following sources for information, advocacy and action:

65 Years of Impunity by Saeb Erekat, PLO Executive Member and Chief Palestinian
Negotiator’s Op Ed: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=595459

TEDX Ramallah video with Sam Bahour on Refugees Waiting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCLQICeZMq4/

Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights www.badil.org.

The YWCA of Palestine has selected 6 of the destroyed or depopulated villages
from refugees in Jalozoune Refugee Camp, and will be designing dolls for sale, to
support refugee women programs. Each doll comes with in an embroidered dress
unique to the village or region, information about the Nakaba, the village, and an
oral history. For more information, write to us at council@ywca-palestine.org

According to Ludo De Brabander, spokesperson for the three organisations: “Both Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), two Israeli weapon manufacturers, provide equipment for the Israeli wall that has been declared illegal by International Law. Both are important market leaders of drones that are used for militairy operations in the Palestinian Territories that are illegaly occupied. These same companies receive European funds by particiapting in several research programs under FP7 worth 235,8 million euro.”

Two activists clothed as businessmen from the Israeli arms industry entered the building of DG Enterprise (EU Commission) to ask for more funding of common research programs under the new Horizon 2020 program. Acting in front of security officers they said: “We represent the Israeli arms manufacturing Industry. We’re here to ensure that the very generous research funding that our members currently receive from the European Commission will continue under the coming Horizon 2020 program.”

In a cynical manner both actvist/businessmen pointed to widespread Israeli human rights violations: “you can rest assure that previous money committed under the Framework Program 7 has been spent well,” referring to the funding of drone programs in European Security Research projects with the participation of Israeli arms producers. Israeli Airospace Industries (IAI), the biggest Israeli arms company, has been involved in at least 69 Research and Development programs subsidised by the EU.

Palestinian victims, represented by blood covered activist, showed their suffering as a result of numerous operations by the Israeli military. They unfolded a banner with the message: “Stop EU funding of the Israeli Military industry.”

The actvists demand that in the future Horizon 2020 program, starting in 2014, participation in EU research funding will be subject to ethical criteria to avoid funding of companies and institutions involved in human rights violations.

On July 9 2011, the largest Palestinian coalition encompassing all Palestinian political parties, trade unions, NGOs and mass organisations, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), issued a call for an immediate and comprehensive military embargo on Israel.

“A comprehensive military embargo on Israel is long overdue. It forms a crucial step towards ending Israel’s unlawful and criminal use of force against the Palestinian people and other peoples and states in the region, and it constitutes an effective, non-violent measure to pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law,” reads the BNC’s call.

Reports and pictures (free use) can be downloaded through: http://www.militair-embargo-israel.be/pers/

“While we appreciate the American Pavilion’s desire to be more environmentally friendly and socially responsible by avoiding the wasteful use of cans, these efforts are completely negated and overshadowed by accepting sponsorship from a company like SodaStream, which is complicit in serious human rights abuses,” said Donna Hicks of the Interfaith Boycott Coalition, comprised of organizations of Catholic, Church of the Brethren, Episcopalian, Jewish, Lutheran, Mennonite, Muslim, Presbyterian, Quaker, Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist traditions. “We hope that the Pavilion’s founder Julie Sisk will see that a commitment to the environment cannot be detached from respect for human rights and international law.”

Because it has production facilities in the illegal settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, SodaStream pays taxes to its municipal government, which are destined exclusively for Ma’aleh Adumim’s growth and development, to the detriment of Palestinians living nearby on whose land Ma’aleh Adumim was built. Additionally, far from protecting the environment, SodaStream contributes to the pollution of Palestinian land and water. The Ma’aleh Adumim settlement manages the Israeli landfill at Abu Dis, also built on land confiscated from Palestinians. More than 1,100 tons of waste from Jerusalem and Israeli settlements is dumped there daily. The Israeli Ministry for the Environment has stated that the landfill is “polluting nearby streams and land.”

The international coalition — which includes the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition of more than 400 U.S. organizations, and Association France Palestine Solidarité — is urging industry professionals attending Cannes to boycott the SodaStream bar at the American Pavilion, and is calling on the general public to ask retailers to remove SodaStream products from their stores. See here for a video uploaded on Monday recalling the U.S. creative community’s long history of standing up for social justice issues, and urging Cannes attendees and the general public to support the boycott of SodaStream.

Endorsers:

The 8.5-minute video focuses on the firm’s factory located in Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone of the illegal Israeli settlement Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank, and its Palestinian workers. The underlying message throughout the video is that the company’s settlement factory is a “fantastic sanctuary of co-existence” and, despite being built on stolen Palestinian land, is beneficial to the Palestinian economy and workers.

The video was recently shown to M., a Palestinian employee of SodaStream who has worked on the assembly line at Mishor Adumim for a long time and lives under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. M. spoke to The Electronic Intifada on condition of anonymity.

His immediate reaction to the blissful setting presented in the video was one of shock.

“Lies”

“I feel humiliated and I am also disgraced as a Palestinian, as the claims in this video are all lies. We Palestinian workers in this factory always feel like we are enslaved,” M. said.

The release of the video coincided with the launch of SodaStream boycott campaigns in the US, considered the company’s most important market. Taking advantage of the company’s major marketing offensive in the US, including a $4 million Super Bowl ad, boycott campaigns succeeded in garnering press coverage exposing SodaStream’s complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

M. and his fellow workers were unaware of the boycotts. “They never told us about boycotts at all,” he remarked.

Instead the premise for the video presented to the workers was nothing less than a way to maintain their jobs, otherwise at risk due to a lack of orders. M. said that “When they came and told us about the video, they announced that they wanted to market SodaStream globally, with a special presentation to the US, and they wanted to show the work and how it was improving.”

M. and his coworkers had been told that the company planned to “let some of the workers go before the end of the year,” but a $500-million order from the US had changed things and a “campaign to support the company’s sales” would save their jobs.

The YouTube video is clearly part of SodaStream’s public relations campaign, which lately has focused on the company’s Palestinian workers. In a speech given in early February at an Israel Advocacy Seminar in Johannesburg, Amir Sagie, director of the civil society affairs department for the Israeli foreign ministry, stated, “SodaStream have appointed lobbyists — an initiative that is paying dividends” (“Trends to expect from BDS & how to klap them,” MyShetl, 6 February 2013).

According to M., the workers appearing in the video were given instructions on what to say. “I actually saw the company preparation work [for the video]; they were preparing all the workers and telling them what to say and how to say it,” he said.

In the video, Sodastream’s chief executive Daniel Birnbaum appears as if he’s a constant presence in the Mishor Adumim factory. M. explained that this is not at all the case.

“I have worked here for a long time, and I have never seen him at the factory. This is the first time I see him [in the video]. They have their offices in Israel, and they do not come here,” he said.

By M.’s estimates, SodaStream employs 800-850 workers on the factory floor, 90 percent of whom are Palestinians. The only Jewish Israelis doing “hand work” are “new immigrants, as they call them; olim hadashim or the ‘black Jews’ as they describe them.”

Only a tiny fraction of the Palestinians employees hold higher level positions and there are none at all in management. “In all of SodaStream, there are only two foremen who are West Bank Palestinians, and they are supervised by two Israeli Arabs,” said M.

Discrimination

When asked if there was discrimination between black and white Jews, M. replied, “Yes, for sure. You will not [find] white Jews wearing yarmulke [a skull cap] doing the hard work or ‘hand work.’ The supervisors who run the factory are mainly Russian and they are managed mainly by the white Jews, and we are ‘Palestinians,’ only workers.”

M. also talked of discriminatory hiring practices, explaining that “most Israelis are hired through the company directly,” while West Bank Palestinians require “a special security permit to be employed.” The settlement factory has an internal security officer who “takes care of applying for the permits from the Israeli authorities.”

M. added that Palestinian workers from Jerusalem, along with immigrant workers and African Jews, work through external manpower companies and may be hired after nine months “if they prove to be good workers.” Otherwise, he said, “they are let go.”

The recent report from the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements notes that a “stringent system of permits and quotas that determines employment in Israel and the settlements lends itself to abuse by contractors and middlemen.”

“Not allowed to pray”

The video touts an onsite mosque where SodaStream’s Muslim workers go to pray. M. told a very different story.

“A good example that shocked me was the claims [in the video] about the freedom to practice our prayers,” he said. “Those claims are all false. There is a full discrimination against the [Muslim] workers and we are denied our right to practice our religion.”

M. noted that the mosque shown in the video “is just the locker room,” and that supervisors had “even hidden the carpets from the workers” in an attempt to prevent them from praying.

Restrictions on are especially severe on the assembly line, where most West Bank Palestinians work. M. explained that they are only allowed to pray if prayer times fall “during their lunch break,” otherwise “they are not allowed to pray at all.”

This is not the first time SodaStream has put its celebration of multiculturalism on promotional display. In 2009, following extensive negative press in Sweden, the workers’ rights organization Kav LaOved reported that SodaStream organized “a party celebrating the factory’s multicultural makeup: Sudanese, Ethiopian, Russian and Palestinian.” The group noted that “some of the Palestinian workers, who had not registered for the event, were only allowed to participate for one hour, and then returned to work while others continued to celebrate multiculturalism in their name” (“Multiculturalism at the Soda Club factory,” 2 May 2009).

While M. confirmed Palestinian workers are currently paid “three or four times the salary we can get at the Palestinian Authority” — not the four to five times more mentioned in the video — this only came about following workers’ struggles and protests in which many lost their jobs, the intervention of Kav LaOved and negative publicity in Europe, as documented by the group Who Profits from the Occupation? in a report on SodaStream (“SodaStream: A case study for corporate activity in illegal Israeli settlements,” January 2011 [PDF]).

“From work to bed”

However, the same job insecurity and harsh working conditions reported by Who Profits remain. M. described the working week at the factory as “from work to bed,” leaving little free time for anything else. Employees work on a “four-two” system, meaning that they work for four days, 12 hours per day, with two days off — totaling 60 hours of work in a seven-day period.

According to the Israeli Hours of Work and Rest Law, a working day “shall not exceed eight working hours” and shift workers “shall not be employed for more than one hour of overtime per day, and that the average for three weeks shall not exceed 45 working hours per week.”

The SodaStream factory has two shifts, day and night, and M. explained that workers change shifts every four days with “no day that you leave early.”

Requests to leave early are rarely approved. These working conditions apply to both men and women. M. explained that women workers also work night shifts and 12-hour shifts.

He also noted that “there is no extra pay for overtime or night shifts,” in violation of the Hours of Work and Rest Law.

Making the work day or night even longer, Palestinian workers must allow two additional hours for transportation to and from the Israeli settlement, where they are not allowed to live. “They pick us up at six in the morning or the evening, and we arrive home at least an hour after work. Around 14 hours you are away from home, and there is no time to see our families,” M. explained.

One big family?

SodaStream’s CEO Daniel Birnbaum has referred to the factory workers as one big family. M. disputed this portrayal, and explained some of the job insecurities Palestinian workers face: “They treat us like slaves. This has happened many times on the assembly line: when a worker is sick and wants to take sick leave, the supervisor will fire him on the second day. They will not even give him warning or send him to human resources, they will immediately fire him.”

Birnbaum also claims in the video that SodaStream received no government incentives for its settlement factory. However, all three of the company’s own annual reports filed with the Security and Exchange Commission in the US, including the report for 2012, clearly stated that transfer of their production facilities “to a location outside of the disputed territories” may “limit certain tax benefits” (“United States securities and exchange commission, SodaStream International Ltd.”).

M. noted that some production is currently being shifted to a new factory at Alon Tavor in the Galilee, within present-day Israel. “Now they have a new assembly department inside Israel, and [the factory] is getting less work. They are forcing the workers to work less, sometimes only for two or three days a week only, which means less salary.” Those unhappy with just 10 to 12 work days per month “are ‘free to go,’” he added.

The rumors at the Mishor Adumim factory are that it will soon close, with all production moving inside Israel. Despite the conditions, M. and others “are hoping that the workers will be able to move and continue working there too.” As M. explained, “All of the workers have no other choice but to work in the settlement factory; we want to feed our children and there are no work opportunities in the Palestinian Authority.”

Cover for illegality

A recently-published update from Who Profits on SodaStream’s facilities showed that the Alon Tavor site serves as cover for the company’s illegal settlement factory. Who Profits cites an article from the Israeli business publication Globes, in which Birnbaum claimed products sold in countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, and France are manufactured at Alon Tavor due to “the sensitivity in these countries to Israeli products manufactured beyond the green line.”

However, examining details on production facilities listed in SodaStream’s own annual report for 2012, WhoProfits demonstrated that it would not possible for a complete SodaStream machine to be produced at Alon Tavor.

The company has also won a 25-million-shekel ($7 million) government grant for construction of a new plant in the Idan Industrial Zone in the Negev (Naqab), capable of housing all of the company’s production under one roof (“SodaStream wins NIS 25 m grant for Negev plant,” Globes, 4 April 2013).

Birnbaum recently threatened to move production to another continent if Israeli government subsidies, such as grants and tax breaks, are reduced. According to SodaStream’s 2012 annual report, its effective tax rate was 1.7 percent for 2012, and 10.9 percent for 2011. The corporate tax rate in Israel is 25 percent (“SodaStream CEO: More Israel investment depends on incentives,” Globes, 24 April 2013).

While Birnbaum, beholden to his Nasdaq investors, concentrates on the bottom line, his settlement factory is part of a system described in the United Nations Human Rights Council report on settlements as exerting “a heavy toll on the rights of the Palestinians.”

This systematic denial of basic rights outlined in that report creates the conditions that force Palestinians to turn to settlement companies for job opportunities. The report maintains that “the inability for the Palestinian economy to expand and offer opportunities, high unemployment rates and falling wages in the Palestinian labor market, inflation and increasing poverty are factors that drive Palestinians to seek employment in the settlements and in Israel.”

In an email to The Electronic Intifada, a spokesperson for Who Profits stated that Israeli settlement companies exploit Palestinian laborers while claiming that the work benefits them. “A business that operates unlawfully cannot demand legitimacy on behalf of the workers and at their expense,” the spokesperson said. Who Profits added that in other cases of exploitative employment, “civil society worldwide rejected employers as legitimate representatives of their workers” and maintained instead that “major corporations and colonial powers be held accountable for their actions.”

In 1996, Sodastream made a decision to locate its production facilities in an area under military occupation and has maintained them there ever since. When confronted with this clear violation of international law, the company chose not to address it but rather sought to use its Palestinian workers to deflect attention away from its role in maintaining Israel’s unjust colonial system.

What we can do as people of conscience genuinely concerned for Palestinian workers, is to step up boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against companies like SodaStream, to ensure we can soon celebrate true multiculturalism, with guarantees of equal rights for all.

Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen based in Rome, Italy. Her articles have been published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Electronic Intifada, In These Times and Z Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @stephinrome.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/sodastream-treats-us-slaves-says-palestinian-factory-worker/12441

The motion was brought forth in response to attacks against Associate Professor Jake Lynch for refusing to assist Dan Avnon – a visiting academic from Hebrew University in Israel – in December.

The Student Representative Council (SRC) also voted to support an end to all university ties with Technion University in Haifa, Israel.

Dr Lynch, who is the director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies said: “By continuing institutional links to Israeli high education, universities here risk unwittingly becoming indirectly complicit in violations of international laws and abuses of human rights.”

Erima Dall, the SRC member who put the motion forward, said boycotting institutional links with Israel is a necessary action.

“We cannot normalise relations with Israeli institutions complicit in the occupation of Palestine. Students at the University of Sydney should not, and do not, want to be endorsing these crimes. A clear message needs to be sent – Israel needs to end the occupation and its colonisation of Palestinian land, end apartheid, stop building its settler-colonies, and allow the right of return to Palestinians,” she said.

Suzanne Asad, the president of Students for Justice in Palestine at USYD, echoed these sentiments and said students and citizens of conscience should stand up for justice and human rights in Palestine, and support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

“If we don’t end Sydney University’s links with the Technion and other Israeli institutions, then we are implicated in the crimes committed against Palestine,” she said.

The statement, which the SRC voted to sign and publish, states:
“Israel is a state that systematically defies international law. It has occupied Palestinian territories in defiance of the UN Security Council for over 40 years, expanding settlements which are regarded as illegal by the international community.

“Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a non-violent and effective strategy to help end Israeli impunity and move towards the realisation of the Palestinians’ rights. The Hebrew University is clearly implicated in the illegal occupation as its Mount Scopus campus occupies land in East Jerusalem which is internationally recognised as being on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.”

Technion University is involved in manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles and the building of illegal separation wall annexing Palestinian land in the West Bank. The statement states: “Technion…is an Israeli university uniquely and directly implicated in war crimes. (Its) research history includes the development of the remote control D9 bulldozer used to demolish Palestinian homes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and it has strong links to Elbit Systems – the company that produces technology for the apartheid wall declared illegal by the International Court of Justice.”

State Labor MP, Lynda Voltz, said it is appropriate for the SRC, given its strong tradition of supporting oppressed people and injustice, to support their academic staff in calling for an end to ties with Technion.

“Israel continues to ignore the United Nations. It builds illegal settlements on the land of the Palestinian people, destroys their houses, builds a wall around their homes and blockades the Port of Gaza to punish the 1.6million men, women and children who live there,” she said.

“Israel does not listen to words or motions and continues to abuse human rights and to act in violation of international laws.  As in South Africa, it is only through the peaceful actions of campaigns such as the BDS that any change will happen,” Voltz said.

The statement has been endorsed by Mary Kostakidis, the Convener of the Peace Prize jury and co-winner of the University of Sydney Alumni Award for Community Achievement, and Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees who is the Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Jennine Abdul Khalik, Australian Students for Justice in Palestine executive, said she commended the SRC for choosing to stand on the right side of history.

“Australian universities, including the University of Sydney, need to condemn Israeli apartheid and follow the example of academic institutions and student unions throughout North America, Europe, and South Africa that have endorsed BDS and boycotted and divested from Israel,” she said.

Good afternoon, Excellencies, members of the committee for the protection of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and staff of the Division for Palestinian rights, ladies and gentlemen.

On 9 July 2005, Palestinian civil society and political organisations – about 200 in total – issued a call to the people of the world to implement boycotts, divestment and sanctions on Israel, in what is now famously known as the BDS call.

Four days later, on 13 July 2005, the Call received its first global endorsement when the UN International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Middle East Peace, held in Paris, endorsed the call in its civil society ‘Action Plan 2005’. (‘We recognize that, as an international network, our strength lies in our ability to work collectively in unified campaigns and actions. To that end, we urge international, national and regional social movements, organizations and coalitions to support the unified call of Palestinian civil society for a global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to pressure Israel to end the occupation and fully comply with international law and all relevant United Nations resolutions… We call on our partner organizations to intensify all our activities, focusing on the BDS campaign so that together we will end the Occupation.’)

Since then, the BDS Call has become the touchstone, reference point, uniting symbol and tactical (even strategic for some) programme for civil society globally.

And so, in talking about civil society initiatives for a comprehensive, just and lasting solution of the question of Palestine, we must necessarily focus on the global BDS movement.

The Call has three basic demands on Israel:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

All three demands are, of course, based on international law and UN resolutions.

Let me deviate slightly for just a moment to refer to the strategy for overcoming apartheid in South Africa, in order to make a point later.

In South Africa, we refer to the ‘four pillars of struggle’ that formed the basis of the struggle against apartheid. These were:

1. The armed struggle;

2. The internal underground;

3. International solidarity and, through it, international isolation of the South African state; and

4. Mass mobilisation within the country.

While we South Africans like to think that other people can learn from our experiences – both good and bad, we, together with the rest of civil society, acknowledge that our activism on Palestine must respond to what Palestinians request of us.

Currently, that request is, in the main, to support and participate in the non-violent campaign of BDS. For South Africans, this was our third pillar. (Let me note here that we acknowledge that, in South Africa, the third and fourth pillars – international solidarity and mass mobilisation – were the most effective ones.)

From the Israeli perspective, of course, BDS is referred to as the main leg of a ‘delegitimisation campaign’.

Over the past almost eight years, the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved more successes in various parts of the world than South Africa’s campaign had in about twenty years.

For South Africa, we had painstakingly begun with building a cultural and sports boycott, academic boycott, then a consumer boycott, followed by campaigns for divestment, sanctions and diplomatic isolation. These were long and hard campaigns, developed both within and without South Africa. And it took decades before we made any gains. By the time our liberation movements were unbanned, numerous western countries, in particular, were still staunchly refusing to entertain the notion of sanctions.

Like in the Palestinian case now, ours was a campaign of delegitimisation and of isolation of the apartheid state. Allow me to say at this point that for those who seek a just peace, there can be nothing wrong with delegitimising or isolating an occupying, colonial or apartheid state. Indeed, when that state was as strong (militarily, economically and diplomatically) as apartheid South Africa was or as Israel is, then such strategies are often the best strategies for foreign solidarity movements. (And, for Ambassador Ilan Baruch, let me respond here to his requested, in almost the words he used: ‘What bars us from engaging normally with Israel is not you, Israeli people, but the policies of your successive governments,’ their violations of international law and human rights. And, to add, firstly, that we in global civil society who are in solidarity with the Palestinian people have no problem engaging with Israelis who support justice – for Palestinians and themselves, international law and UN resolutions as they relate to Israel. And, when Israel complies with all international laws and UN resolutions we will be ready to end its isolation.)

The BDS campaign focuses its attention on the Israeli state, institutions and companies linked to settlement activity and to the state, as well as, for various reasons, on academic institutions.

In the past eight years, then, the Palestinian campaign has seen victories.

At the consumer level – resulting, for example, in Israeli company Agrexco filing for liquidation in 2011 and Ahava closing its main London store and being boycotted by retailers in UK, Norway, Japan, Canada and South Africa.

At the academic level – the most recent being the decision by the Association for Asian American Studies to endorse the academic boycott, and, two years ago, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa deciding not to enter into any institutional relations with Israeli institutions.

At the cultural and sports level – with an increasing number of artists and writers refusing to perform in Israel and issuing statements or having performances in support of the Palestinian people and the BDS campaign. Bono, Snoop Dogg, Jean Luc Godard, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron, Carlos Santana, Devendra Banhart, Faithless, the Pixies, Cassandra Wilson, Cat Power, Zakir Hussain, Roger Waters, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, John Berger, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, Ken Loach, Arundhati Roy, Angela Davis, Sarah Schulman, Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

At the commercial level there have been some successes with companies like G4S (the European parliament decided not renew a contract with G4S because of protests) and Veolia and in, South Africa, for example, where a company producing dates bowed to pressure and severed its relationship with Israeli company Hadiklaim.

Divestment decisions by churches and other civil society groups as well as, for example, the Norwegian finance ministry deciding to exclude Israeli company Elbit from the investment portfolio of the Government Pension Fund Global. Several European banks have also divested from Alstom, one of Veoilia’s partners in the Jerusalem Light Rail project.

At governmental level, in the case of South Africa and some European countries poised to pass legislation to label settlement products.

In addition, there has also been an increase in attention given to the Jewish National Fund in some countries – such as the United States, South Africa and Scotland. In South Africa, for example, a group of South African Jews have set up an organisation called Stop the JNF to convince Jews in South Africa not to support the JNF because of the use of its funds to effect theft of Palestinian land, building of settlements, etc. One of the painful aspects of JNF activity for many South Africans is that the destroyed village of Lubya, in the north of Israel, most of whose residents have been internally displaced, has been covered by the JNF, using South African funds, with what is called the ‘South Africa Forest’ – under the guise of an environmental project.

The JNF, along with other arms of the Israeli state, have, however, been working with determination in various parts of Africa. In South Africa, for example, the JNF has an environmental project in a poor township called Mamelodi. There are also various Israeli agricultural projects in South Africa and other parts of Africa. This makes tackling the JNF more difficult.

Indeed, the penetration of the Israeli state in Africa – particularly through various African governments – is disturbing and poses a serious challenge to civil society organisations. Not only is this a concern from the perspective of Palestinian solidarity but, in some cases, it is also a concern for the sovereignty of these countries themselves and for the rights of their citizens. When private security services supported by a foreign state begin replacing policing, for example, this is a concerning trend that poses risks for the country concerned.

Let us be honest, despite all the good talk about Africa’s support for the Palestinian struggle (and I gratefully acknowledge Ambassador Ka’s comments in this regard), many African countries today are not playing the necessary role in opposing the occupation and supporting the Palestinian people. In my own country, for example, trade with Israel since 2005 has been increasing by more than fifteen per cent on average year-on-year. Various other African countries have a range of overt and covert relationships with Israel, including in the fields of security, intelligence and defence. On our continent, civil society has a huge task to monitor and lobby the relationships of our governments with Israel. And this despite the fact that many of our countries and peoples have intimate connections with the Palestinian people. South African freedom fighters trained and fought with Palestinian fighters; some of our comrades were even with the PLO in Beirut in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. Now is not the time to drop the ball and betray the Palestinian people!

Speaking about Palestinian solidarity in Africa, it must be noted that while numerous countries in Africa have Palestinian solidarity organisations, they have, however, failed thus far to develop a continent-wide solidarity network that could make all their activities more effective. This remains an urgent task for these organisations.

The role that global society can and should be playing, then, in attempting to work towards a just peace and the liberation of Palestinians and Israeli Jews, is to broaden and deepen the BDS campaign. African civil society has been somewhat lacking in this regard and it is about time civil society groups on this continent responded vociferously to the BDS Call. The Call places on African and global civil society groups an immense task and responsibility to push forward the isolation of the Israeli state until it abides by international law and UN resolutions.

30 April 2013

http://unispal.un.org/databases/dprtest/ngoweb.nsf/f12fded4d0597000852573fc005b9471/aa987555796e811085257b3300638819?OpenDocument