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MIDEAST: Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum
By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Mar 3 (IPS) - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week's Israel
Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across
the globe Sunday.
A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is
gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism
Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy.
Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in protest
over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda.
The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in
2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference,
accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.
U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel.
However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody offensive into
Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more
wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest,
Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil
society groups to launch a divestment campaign "as a way of bringing non-
violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of
international law."
In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they
see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid system and Israeli
racism.
They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within
Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses
against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces.
During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were extremely
strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South Africa's security forces as
well as supplying the regime in Pretoria with weapons.
Meanwhile, Toronto, where the Israel Apartheid Week movement was born,
will hold forums, film shows, cultural events and street protests to mark IAW
week. One of the guest speakers is former South African intelligence minister
Ronnie Kasrils.
Kasrils is no stranger to controversy. His parents fled from Tzarist Russian
pogroms carried out against Jews, and immigrated to South Africa at the
beginning of the last century.
During white rule, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC),
working both in exile and underground in South Africa, he was reviled by
many white South Africans as a "terrorist".
He has also been labelled a self-hating Jew by many Israelis and South
African Jews due to the strong stand he and the ANC have taken against
Israel's policies.
Meanwhile, in New York, prominent IAW activist Nir Harel, a member of
Israel's Anarchists Against the Wall, will also be courting controversy. His
group regularly protests against Israel's separation barrier, which divides
Israel proper from the Palestinian West Bank.
The barrier deviates significantly from the Green Line, the internationally
recognised border, into Palestinian territory where it has swallowed huge
amounts of land, dispossessing farmers from their agricultural crops.
Another Israeli activist, Matan Cohen, has been central in the first U.S. college
implementing a divestment campaign against Israel. Hampshire College in
Massachusetts called for divestment from over 200 companies that the
college says is responsible for violating its socially responsible investment
policies in Israel.
The companies which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services
in the occupied West Bank and Gaza include Caterpillar, United Technologies,
General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex.
A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) petition for divestment was supported
by more than 800 students, professors, and alumni at the college, that has
only 1,350 students.
Hampshire college may be small but it has been big in social activism. It was
also the first U.S. educational institution to divest from South Africa, ten years
before other universities and colleges followed suit.
U.S. campus activism is spreading. The University of Rochester in New York
and members of the community are also involved in boycott activities.
Students from Macalester College, a liberal arts college located in St. Paul,
Minnesota, occupied the Minnesota Trade Office in January and then picketed
there Feb. 6, demanding that the state end all trade with Israel. New York
University students too began a divestment campaign.
Professors and university employees in Quebec, Canada, endorsed the
Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees' call
to boycott Israel.
SJP's actions at Hampshire College follow similar moves by the National
Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK.
In London, students held sit-ins at Goldsmith University and the London
School of Economics, among other institutions. Similar protests have spread
throughout the U.K., with some winning concessions from university officials.
At Manchester University, about a thousand students joined a campaign
equating Israel with apartheid-era South Africa, and called on the
administration and student union to boycott Israeli companies and support
Gaza and the BDS movement.
In Australia the University of Western Sydney's Student Association recently
joined the international BDS campaign. International trade union support for
political action against Israel has been seen from Spain to South Africa.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, under directive of the
Council of South African Trade Unions, refused recently to unload an Israeli
ship which docked in Durban, despite threats and pressure from both
management and the Israeli lobby.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, with 600,000 members in 55 unions, is
preparing to start a boycott of Israeli goods.
Meanwhile, the biggest trade union in Canada's Ontario province, the
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), was forced under pressure to
moderate its call for a boycott of all academic institutions in Israel. Instead it
called for a boycott of Israeli institutions engaged in research which aided the
Israel Defence Forces (IDF). (END/2009)
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