Month: July 2012

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Israel’s Criminal Treatment of Palestinian People Is Beyond Appalling

Water allocations - Israel and PalestineThree pieces today detailing crimes committed by the apartheid Israeli entity bring a sickening lurch to an already nauseated stomach and reaffirm the need for boycott, divestment and sanctions against it.

The first – where Israel is complaining like a torturer unsatisfied with the volume of the victim’s screams, is recorded by Ma’an News agency:

Israel’s military department governing civil affairs in the occupied West Bank regards a UN agency’s assistance to displaced Palestinians as illegal operations, a spokesman said Sunday.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported earlier that the department, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, are seeking to “reassess” the role of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the West Bank.

The UN office “are assisting Palestinian communities who have demolitions because they are built in an illegal way. OCHA gives them tents and by that is doing illegal work, without seeking Israeli permission,” COGAT spokesman Guy Inbar told Ma’an.

Humanitarian officials say providing a temporary tent to a displaced family falls under international definitions of emergency humanitarian assistance, rather than a building project that requires a permit.

Israeli authorities insist there is a legal process for Palestinians living in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israel civil and security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords, to build in their communities.

“In the last year (COGAT) approved many international projects, even UN OCHA projects, but not in an illegal way, like what they are doing in the south Hebron hills,” Inbar said, while warning: “International work does not get immunity.”

But the United Nations and humanitarian agencies say in reality it is almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain a building permit, and highlight that Israeli settlers in the same area are able to expand communities that are illegal under international law.

The south Hebron hills is one area of the West Bank facing repeated demolition orders. Israeli forces last month warned that they intend to demolish all 50 buildings in one village in the region, Susiya, after a settler group filed a legal petition calling for its removal.

A diplomatic source told Ma’an: “It is outrageous that (the Israeli) administration which condones illegal settlement construction is here using an argument against construction that helps some of the most disadvantaged communities, who have the right to protection under international law.”

Already in 2012, Israeli authorities have demolished 330 Palestinian buildings in the West Bank, displacing 536 people, half of whom are children, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk said in late June.

Meanwhile international law experts say that under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel must provide for the needs of the occupied Palestinian population, and are prohibited from demolishing any structure that has a civilian purpose.

Haaretz reported that COGAT asked the Foreign Ministry to lodge a formal complaint with the UN, and on July 10 Israel’s UN ambassador wrote to the UN humanitarian affairs chief asking for staff lists, past and future activities and a review of the agency’s role.

Israeli authorities are considering limiting visas for foreign OCHA employees and stopping work and travel permits for Palestinian staff members, the newspaper said.

Inbar said COGAT is perturbed that OCHA is over reaching its mandate through its work in Area C, while OCHA says it does not undertake building projects but is mandated to coordinate international agencies’ response to humanitarian emergencies.

The second gut-churning criminal abuse involves Israel’s continuing mistreatment of Palestinian children incarcerated in its dungeons. Unfortunate child prisoners are forced to stand in the sun for three hours and be strip-searched while their rooms are searched:

The administration of the Israeli Hasharon jail has forced Palestinian minors to stand in the sun heat for three hours at the pretext of searching their rooms.

Amjad Siraj, who is representing those minors, told a lawyer for the Palestinian prisoner’s society that the incident took place three days ago and that the rooms were turned upside-down in the savage search by the Israeli Nahshon unit members.

Siraj said that the conditions in the Israeli jails, as far as minors were concerned, did not change, adding that the prison administration only responded to a number of simple requests.

He said that the Nahshon unit members rummaged through the minors’ ward and forced minors to strip search.

Defence for Children International’s recent report details the deleterious extent of Israel’s disgraceful abuses against Palestinian children. In an urgent DCI appeal last week, this prestigious organisation revealed that

Since 2008, DCI-Palestine has documented 53 cases in which children have been held in solitary confinement in facilities located inside Israel, mainly Al Jalame and Petah Tikva interrogation centres, and Hasharon prison. The children report being held in isolation at these facilities for an average of 10 days.

In the third instance of unusual and cruel collective punishment, in which Egypt is also implicated, the people of Gaza are subjected to power cuts – 8 hours on and 8 hours off in blistering summer heat.

Ahmed Abu Amrain, the Director of Information Center of the Energy Authority, said during a press conference yesterday that the Authority and Gaza Electricity Distribution Company are working on scheduling the electricity consumption in order to manage the crisis noting that the electricity will be running for 8 hours then cut off for 8 hours, successively throughout the 24 hours.

He attributed the main reasons behind the deficit to the reduction in the amounts of fuel provided for Gaza and which is resulting from the Israeli arbitrary measures and Egyptian inaction in allowing the fuel donated by Qatar into the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Nutanyahoo brags about another 500 apartheid settler homes to be constructed in the illegal and brazenly named ‘national priority settlements’ in the Occupied West Bank, and La Ashton indicates her complicity with Israel’s criminal treatment of Palestinian prisoners in variance with the EU Parliament position. As Ali Abunimah has highlighted:

Moreover, the circumstances in which she gave her statement suggest Ashton acted in order to ensure that Israel’s human rights abuses would not be discussed by the Foreign Affairs committee of the European Parliament.

These vile, ongoing crimes remind us all, in the absence of action by governments, to support the international boycott of Israel called by Palestinian civil society until Palestinian people receive their full human rights which Israel denies them, including the end of Israel’s Occupation, apartheid and colonialism, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the recognition of right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Related Links

“Break your chains on your own” : Mustafa Barghouti urges Palestinian BDS against apartheid Israeli products in the Occupied West Bank

In New York, TIAA-CREF shareholders will be attending the annual meeting to question new trustees about their stance on profiting from companies whose products are used by the Israeli military in grave and systematic human rights violations. “We are here to remind TIAA-CREF that their investments destroy Palestinian schools, make Palestinian families homeless, and deny Palestinians freedom of movement,” said Allison Brown of Adalah-NY, a We Divest Campaign coalition partner. “These are not investments ‘for the greater good.’

Apartheid illegal settlers indulging in vitiwashing hasbara

Palestine / Israel Links

Would you trust the media spew from these hasbaroids?
Israeli government office burned, vandalized in solidarity with self-immolating protester

The empire is back to using the Egyptians as intermediaries, washing its hands of Obama’s failure to stop the settlements – not that he cared enough to put sufficient pressure onto Israel, in fact rewarded them with increased joint miltech projects.

Egypt’s new president signals there won’t be dramatic changes in Gaza policy

Contrary to what Baskin claims, Palestinian nationalists are talking (and working) with Israelis, if and when the Israelis fulfill the conditions set by the Palestinian national leadership. It is not and should not be a matter of negotiation between the Palestinian national movement and the tiny minority of Israelis supporting their rights. Israeli anti-occupation activists are not the UN, working between the two camps: either Israelis are with the Palestinian national struggle, or they are a kind of cover-up for the Israeli colonial occupation.

Histadrut still represents Israel Railway workers, National Labor Court rules

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The Great Apartheid Wall Land Theft

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released a report on the humanitarian impact of Israel’s apartheid wall, 85% of which snakes through the West Bank, appropriating 9.4% of West Bank land and isolating 23,000 Palestinians. The main points of the report are:

  • The Barrier consists of concrete walls, fences, ditches, razor wire, groomed sand paths, an electronic monitoring
    system, patrol roads, and a buffer zone.
  • The Barrier’s total length (constructed and projected) is approximately 708 km, more than twice the length of
    the 1949 Armistice (‘Green’) Line, which separates Israel from the occupied West Bank.
  • Approximately 62.1% of the Barrier is complete, a further 8% is under construction and 29.9% is planned but
    not yet constructed.
  • When completed, some 85%, of the route will run inside the West Bank, rather than along the Green Line,
    isolating some 9.4% of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
  • 71 of the 150 Israeli settlements in the West Bank and over 85% of the total settler population are located on
    the ‘Israeli’ side of the Barrier’s route.
  • Palestinians with West Bank ID cards who are granted special permits can only enter East Jerusalem through
    four of the 14 Barrier checkpoints around the city.
  • Around 7,500 Palestinians who reside in areas between the Green Line and the Barrier (Seam Zone), excluding
    East Jerusalem, require special permits to continue living in their own homes; another 23,000 will be isolated if
    the Barrier is completed as planned.
  • There are about 150 Palestinian communities which have part of their land isolated by the Barrier and must
    obtain ‘visitors’ permits or perform ‘prior coordination’ to access this area.
  • Access to agricultural land through the Barrier is channelled through 80 gates. The majority of these gates only
    open during the six weeks olive harvest season and usually only for a limited period during the day.
  • During the 2011 olive harvest, about 42% of applications submitted for permits to access areas behind the
    Barrier were rejected citing ‘security reasons’ or lack of ‘connection to the land.’
  • Despite the presence of the Barrier, Israeli sources estimate that some 15,000 Palestinians without the required
    permits smuggle themselves from the West Bank to look for employment in Israel every day in 2011 (Israeli
    Government Special Committee).
  • The UN Register of Damage (UNRoD) has to date collected over 26,000 claims for material damage caused by
    the construction of the Barrier in the northern West Bank.

In May 2012, Archbishop Desmond Tutu had this to say:

Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid.

Palestinians and their supporters who protest the illegal apartheid wall are subjected to attacks by Israeli Occupation Forces, as evidenced last Friday:

Yousef Abu Maria, coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Ummar, stated that the army violently attacked and clubbed the protests leading to several injuries.

Abu Maria added that the army also closed the area and declared it a military zone in an attempt to prevent the peace activists from holding their protest and to prevent them from reaching the lands that became isolated behind the Annexation Wall, in addition to the lands Israel intends to steal for settlement construction and expansion.

Similar to other villages and towns in the West Bank, Beit Ummar holds weekly protests against the wall and settlements; Israeli and international peace activists join these protests, Israeli soldiers continuously resort to the use of excessive force to stop these protests.

Israel’s land heist must be reversed, the apartheid wall torn down and the rights of Palestinians to their lands preserved.

Related Links

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Eightieth session
13 February – 9 March 2012

The Committee is particularly appalled at the hermetic character of the separation of two groups, who live on
the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal
access to basic services and water resources. Such separation is concretized by the
implementation of a complex combination of movement restrictions consisting of the Wall,
roadblocks, the obligation to use separate roads and a permit regime that only impacts the
Palestinian population (Article 3 of the Convention).

The Committee draws the State party’s attention to its General Recommendation 19
(1995) concerning the prevention, prohibition and eradication of all policies and
practices of racial segregation and apartheid, and urges the State party to take
immediate measures to prohibit and eradicate any such policies or practices which
severely and disproportionately affect the Palestinian population in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory and which violate the provisions of article 3 of the Convention.

In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”
Israeli Apartheid is Worse Than Apartheid Practised by White South Africa
End Israel’s Apartheid & Bring Down Its Illegal Wall
Israel’s Apartheid is ‘a present-day reality’ : Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Greater Israel Watch
Greater Israel Watch, Ctd

Palestine / Israel Links

Israel’s cruel imprisonment of Akram Rikhawi continues despite 94 days on hunger strike.
Reclaiming the PLO: an urgent call to unite all Palestinians
Reasons for optimism and answers to BDS critics. ‘This book is about much more than answering the critics of BDS, however. Hind Awwad, a coordinator with the BDS National Committee, makes a powerful argument for why BDS not only unites Palestinians but also unites the Palestinian struggle with other popular struggles, including those in the US that seek reforms in education, healthcare, and social justice. “The BDS movement,” she writes, “has provided a way for us to break our collective chains.”’
American Carolyn Cicciu after a visit to Palestine: “Why should we be sending money to a country that is enslaving a people?” she said. “We make it too easy for Israel to follow a military solution when they don’t get their way.”
Nutanyahoo bars access to sites of inquiry to an all female UNHRC panel set up to probe illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Zionist now supports BDS
‘Last night in Tel Aviv, during the social justice #J14 demonstration, a 57 year old man set himself on fire and is currently in the hospital. According to his letter, he was about to become homeless after going bankrupt and not receiving state assistance. In Israel, a person over the age of 55 is not eligible for housing assistance; a person who owned an apartment in the past 5 years – regardless of his current economic situation – is not eligible for rent assistance. These are the results of the continuous decline in eligibility for any form of social aid – this is part of the tragedy of the ongoing draining of social services, described by ACRI in this recently published report.’ (See ‘Crushing the opposition by delegitimizing labor unions and workers’ struggles’ – this is what fascist governments do.)
Juan Cole examines five key areas where Israel’s image is cracking like an old dry creek bed. Perhaps add another – institutionalised racism and bigotry which ridiculous mountains of hasbara highlight, rather than obscure.
Lecture in Melbourne, Victoria with Dr. Virginia Tilley

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Christian McBride, Please Support Justice, Don’t Play Your Double Bass for Israel

Christian McBride
McBride on Bass leads the tribute he wrote to Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Juilliard in 2009. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel’s borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people’s daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa.
Dear Christian McBride,

We are asking you to take a moment to learn about the cultural boycott of apartheid Israel. We hope you will be persuaded to choose to honour the boycott call, and refrain from playing your double bass in apartheid Israel, until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine determined last fall in Cape Town, South Africa, that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.[1] Palestinian jazz fans, in the occupied West Bank and particularly those in besieged Gaza, will not be allowed to attend your concert. Many people are unaware that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under a brutal and unlawful military occupation. In the West Bank, Israel restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks. All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006. As part of this siege, Israel has prevented not only various types of medicines, candles, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air prison [2].

It is not unusual for jazz artists to refuse to play in front of the segregated audiences at the Red Sea Jazz Festival. In 2011, Eddie Palmieri [3] and Jason Moran [4] both quietly cancelled their gigs. Tuba Skinny cancelled, stating … when we agreed to play the festival we were not aware that it was largely state sponsored, or that people on the other side of the wall would be denied entry.[5]

You can learn about the wall they were referring to in this video:

In April, Cassandra Wilson graciously bowed out of headlining an Israeli woman’s festival that would have ignored the suffering of Palestinian women and honoured only Israeli women. Wilson said “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel.” [6]

Roger Waters recently wrote:

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.[7]

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:

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.[8]

“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“.[9]

Today, due to the boycott call and its international magnitude, it is impossible for any international artist to play in Israel in a political vacuum. Your performance will be interpreted, especially by supporters of Israel, as an endorsement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said, in 2005 that “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”[10]

The Red Sea Jazz Festival’s top sponsors are the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport as well as the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

We urge you learn about the boycott, especially by reading the article Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid by J. K?haulani Kauanui, Robin D.G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, Nikhil Pal Singh and Neferti Tadiar. These courageous professors stated:

We refuse to be silent or passive in the face of gross violations of principles of universal human rights that both Israel and the US publicly purport to uphold. As was the case with the US removal of tribal nations, the US South under anti-black “Jim Crow” laws, or South Africa under apartheid, Palestine today is the measure of the meaning and value of human rights in our time.[11]

Learn about why Alice Walker supports the boycott by reading Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher. Walker writes:

When I was in the West Bank it was shocking to see the apartheid wall, which is immense and forbidding. And to realize that it’s purpose is not only to enforce segregation between Palestinians and Israelis but that it also steals huge amounts of Palestinian land. Land Palestinian farmers need to work in order to feed their families. I sat with a family of four and watched a huge Volvo digging machine dig the deep trench directly in front of their drive that the wall will be placed in. The noise was deafening and the vibrations shook the small house. The children, two young boys, will have to cross three check points each morning to go to school. The youngest boy had been severely beaten the week before our arrival by an Israeli soldier and was still so frightened he hid during most of our visit.[12]

The boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and instead, standing in solidarity with the oppressed. By cancelling your two planned performances at the Red Sea Jazz festival (July 31 and August 1), you would be helping greatly to stop this unjust apartheid which denies Palestinians their basic rights. Boycotts were effective in stopping South African apartheid, and they can also work to stop Israeli apartheid.

Warmest Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel

We are a group, of 850 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Notes

[1] Russell Tribunal on Palestine Findings of the South Africa Session http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/RToP-Cape-Town-full-findings2.pdf
In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa
[2] BBC Guide: Gaza Under Blockage http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm
[3]Latin Jazz Great Eddie Palmieri: Thank You for Cancelling Israel Performance
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/latin-jazz-great-eddie-palmieri-thank-you-for
[4]Jazz Musician Jason Moran Cancels Concert in Apartheid Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/jazz-musician-jason-moran-cancels-concert-in
[5] Tuba Skinny speaks out on cancellation of show at Red Sea Festival
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/adri-nieuwhof/tuba-skinny-speaks-out-cancellation-show-red-sea-festival
[6] Singer Cassandra Wilson cancels Israel show: “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel” http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1824
[7] Tear down this Israeli wall
I want the music industry to support Palestinians’ rights and oppose this inhumane barrier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[8] Divesting from Injustice http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
[9] Tutu urges Cape Town Opera to call off Israel tour
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[10] http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267
[11] Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid http://electronicintifada.net/content/educators-cant-stay-silent-about-israeli-apartheid/10928
[12] Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1942

SOURCE

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To the Sean Jones Quintet – Please Don’t Play for Apartheid Israel

Sean Jones
The Sean Jones Quintet is being asked to bring hope to people through heeding the anti-apartheid boycott.
Dear Sean Jones, Tim Green, Orrin Evans, Matt Clohesy and Obed Calvaire,

You are probably aware by now that your plan to perform in Israel is a controversial one. We hope you will take a stand as musicians of conscience and honour the Palestinian boycott call until Israel complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights, this call was made in 2005 and calls for a cultural, academic and sporting boycott. We hope this letter will provide you with some of the information you need to make the choice to side with justice and human rights.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine determined last fall in Cape Town, South Africa, that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.[1] Artists who would have refused to perform for white South Africa during apartheid there should easily understand why the current anti-apartheid boycott is so important.

It is not unusual for jazz artists to refuse to play in front of the segregated audiences at the Red Sea Jazz Festival. In 2011, Eddie Palmieri [2] and Jason Moran [3] both quietly cancelled their gigs. Six member band Tuba Skinny cancelled, stating … when we agreed to play the festival we were not aware that it was largely state sponsored, or that people on the other side of the wall would be denied entry.[5]

In April, Cassandra Wilson graciously bowed out of headlining an Israeli woman’s festival that would have ignored the suffering of Palestinian women and honoured only Israeli women. Wilson said “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel.” [5]

Roger Waters recently wrote:

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.[6]

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:

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.[7]

“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“.[8]

Today, due to the boycott call and its international magnitude, it is impossible for any international artist to play in Israel in a political vacuum. Your performance will be interpreted, especially by supporters of Israel, as an endorsement.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said, in 2005 that “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”[9]

The Red Sea Jazz Festival’s top sponsors are the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport as well as the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

We urge you learn about the boycott, especially by reading the article Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid by J. K?haulani Kauanui, Robin D.G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, Nikhil Pal Singh and Neferti Tadiar. These courageous professors stated:

We refuse to be silent or passive in the face of gross violations of principles of universal human rights that both Israel and the US publicly purport to uphold. As was the case with the US removal of tribal nations, the US South under anti-black “Jim Crow” laws, or South Africa under apartheid, Palestine today is the measure of the meaning and value of human rights in our time.[10]

Learn about why Alice Walker supports the boycott by reading Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher. Walker writes:

When I was in the West Bank it was shocking to see the apartheid wall, which is immense and forbidding. And to realize that it’s purpose is not only to enforce segregation between Palestinians and Israelis but that it also steals huge amounts of Palestinian land. Land Palestinian farmers need to work in order to feed their families. I sat with a family of four and watched a huge Volvo digging machine dig the deep trench directly in front of their drive that the wall will be placed in. The noise was deafening and the vibrations shook the small house. The children, two young boys, will have to cross three check points each morning to go to school. The youngest boy had been severely beaten the week before our arrival by an Israeli soldier and was still so frightened he hid during most of our visit.[11]

Sean Jones, the boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and instead, standing in solidarity with the oppressed. Please stay true to your words [12] that you want to bring hope to people via sound. By cancelling your two planned performances at the Red Sea Jazz Festival (July 31 and August 1), you would be helping greatly to bring hope to the Palestinian people that there will come an end to this unjust form of apartheid soon.

Warmest Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel
We are a group, of 850 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Notes

[1] Russell Tribunal on Palestine Findings of the South Africa Session http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/RToP-Cape-Town-full-findings2.pdf
In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa
[2]Latin Jazz Great Eddie Palmieri: Thank You for Cancelling Israel Performance
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/latin-jazz-great-eddie-palmieri-thank-you-for
[3]Jazz Musician Jason Moran Cancels Concert in Apartheid Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/jazz-musician-jason-moran-cancels-concert-in
[4] Tuba Skinny speaks out on cancellation of show at Red Sea Festival
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/adri-nieuwhof/tuba-skinny-speaks-out-cancellation-show-red-sea-festival
[5] Singer Cassandra Wilson cancels Israel show: “I identify with the cultural boycott of Israel” http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1824
[6] Tear down this Israeli wall
I want the music industry to support Palestinians’ rights and oppose this inhumane barrier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[7] Divesting from Injustice http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
[8] Tutu urges Cape Town Opera to call off Israel tour
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[9] http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267
[10] Educators can’t stay silent about Israeli apartheid http://electronicintifada.net/content/educators-cant-stay-silent-about-israeli-apartheid/10928
[11] Interview with Alice Walker after She Declines to Publish with Israeli Publisher http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1942
[12] Amazing trumpeter Sean Jones talks about the making of his new CD ‘The Search Within’ (youtube)

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Israel subjects Palestinians to a cruel system of dispossession and racial discrimination

Perhaps you are not familiar enough with Israel’s practices, widely acknowledged as violations of international law. If this is the case, then we hope you will reconsider your planned concert after thinking through some of Israel’s trespasses. Your performance would function as a whitewash of these practices, making it appear as though business with Israel should go on as usual. Concretely, Israel routinely violates Palestinians’ basic human rights in some of the following ways:

  1. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under a brutal and unlawful military occupation. Israel restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks strangling the West Bank. All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans.
  2. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel’s borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people’s daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa.
  3. Since 1948, when Israel dispossessed more than 750,000 Palestinian people in order to form an exclusivist Jewish state, Israel has denied Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their homes and their lands. Israel also continues to expel people from their homes in Jerusalem and the Naqab (Negev). Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees still struggling for their right to return to their homes, like all refugees around the world.
  4. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006. As part of this siege, Israel has prevented not only various types of medicines, candles, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air prison.

Israel uses arts and culture to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights.

In December 2008 and January 2009, Israel waged a war of aggression against Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinians, predominantly civilians, dead, and led the UN Goldstone Report to declare that Israel had committed war crimes. In the wake of this assault and to salvage its deteriorating image, Israel has redoubled its effort to “brand” itself as an enlightened liberal democracy. Arts and culture play a unique role in this branding campaign, as the presence of internationally acclaimed artists from the West is meant to affirm Israel’s membership in the West’s privileged club of “cultured,” liberal democracies. But it should not be business as usual with a state that routinely violates international law and basic human rights.

Your performance would serve this Israeli campaign to rebrand itself and will be used as a publicity tool by the Israeli government.
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1779#_ftn9

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Ali Abunimah Demolishes Jonathan Tobin on Democracy Now

Ali Abunimah’s calm, precise logic triumphs over a vexatious defence of land theft redolent with racism, flailing strawmen and turgid hasbara.

Related Links

Elise Hendrick’s piece exposes Tobin’s flaccid, desperate grasp of the San Remo document

Today’s Palestine/Israel Links

How obsession with “nonviolence” harms the Palestinian cause – As Lina says: ‘Oppressed people do not and should not have to explain their oppression to their oppressor, nor tailor their resistance to the comfort of the oppressors and their supporters.’

Yet Lina is noticing that Palestinian participation and leadership is limited by the current PSCC model, despite it being effective in terms of international awareness, and is funded inadequately by Fayyad who has his own dubious neoliberal, collaborator agenda, and foreign NGOs with their agendas. So how can this really be ‘popular’ resistance? instead, it can look more like normalisation – including with Fayyad’s neoliberalism. For a popular movement there has to be mobilisation.

The Legitimate Criticisms of the Popular Resistance

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Sciences academia declared a threat to the apartheid Israeli state

Ban on settlement goods wouldn’t break EU laws

Australia Links

The Australian government signals that it assumes all Australians are criminals

Reminder of how zionist Herschel Landes boasted about convincing Bob Brown to dump BDS