US trade unionists support Palestinian call for military sanctions on Israel

Submitted by nora on Fri, 07/15/2011 - 20:36

Following last week’s call by Palestinians for immediate military sanctions on Israel, “similar to that imposed against apartheid South Africa in the past,” US trade union members released a statement on 13 July announcing full support of the call, the BDSmovement, and inalienable rights for Palestinians such as the right of return.

Days ago, the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) also came out in support of the call for a military embargo against Israel and BDS as well. 

In a statement from Labor for Palestine, US-based trade unionists and labor activists called on labor bodies to divest from Israeli bonds, urged workers “not to handle weapons and all other military cargo destined for Israel,” and stated that these “and other necessary measures be maintained until the Israeli apartheid regime recognizes Palestinian human rights and self-determination.”

This statement has been signed by workers and organizers from a multitude of different labor unions from across the country, and follows in a strong tradition of solidarity with Palestinians by US labor groups. The International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU), a union that has a decorated history of strong support for anti-apartheid, anti-racist and anti-war political activism, last year prevented an Israeli cargo ship from being unloaded at the Port of Oakland in direct response to the ongoing blockade in Gaza and the lethal attacks by the Israeli navy on the Gaza flotilla weeks earlier. 

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on the day the Palestinian call for sanctions against Israel was announced, stated in a press release:

The largest Palestinian coalition encompassing all Palestinian political parties, trade unions, NGOs and mass organisations, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), today called 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.

The full text of the US-based Labor For Palestine network’s support for the Palestinian call for sanctions is below. The group is still collecting signatures from workers and union organizers.

Whereas, on May 4, 2011, the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (PTUC-BDS)specifically called “on trade unions around the world to actively show solidarity with the Palestinian people by… . divesting from Israel Bonds and all Israeli and international companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid”; and

Whereas, on July 8, 2011, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) urgently called for “immediate international action towards a mandatory comprehensive military embargo against Israel similar to that imposed against apartheid South Africa in the past”; and

Whereas, since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1947-1948, Israel has used at least $108 billion from the U.S. government to carry out ongoing war, ethnic cleansing, racism and apartheid against the Palestinians and many other Arab nations; and

Whereas, in the past ten years alone, the U.S. government — with overwhelming bipartisan support — has given Israel $17 billion in military aid; over the next decade, it will give another $30 billion; and

Whereas, as a result, Palestinian workers continue to be killed and maimed by U.S.-supplied naval vessels, jet fighters, Apache helicopters, white phosphorous and other weapons; and

Whereas, in 2008/2009 alone, Israel used these weapons to enforce the brutal and illegal siege by killing 1400 people in Gaza, most of them civilians — a massacre condemned by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, including those that are Israeli; and

Whereas, U.S. supplied-weapons were similarly used in the deadly May 31, 2010 Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and to kill scores of unarmed Palestinian refugees exercising their right to return in 2011; and

Whereas, in 2006, Israel turned Lebanon into a killing ground, slaughtering and maiming thousands of people, destroying the civilian infrastructure, and turning a quarter of the population into refugees in their own land; and

Whereas, the U.S. and Israel provided similar support to the apartheid South Africa regime, just as they now arm and finance dictatorships to suppress the Arab Spring; and

Whereas, veteran South African freedom fighters have observed that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “worse than apartheid”; and

Whereas, amidst spiraling economic crisis, workers in this country pay a staggering human and financial price for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation from Palestine to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan; and

Whereas, just as trade unionists fight “replacement” of striking workers, we stand against the dispossession, occupation and inequality inflicted on millions of Palestinian working people and their descendants for more than six decades; and

Whereas, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel has been endorsed by numerous labor bodies around the world, including the trade union congresses of South Africa, Egypt, Brazil, Ireland, Scotland and the UK, and labor bodies in Australia, France, Canada, Norway, Catalunya, Italy, Spain and Turkey; and

Whereas, numerous U.S. labor bodies participated in similar divestment campaigns against apartheid South Africa; and

Whereas, following the May 31, 2010 Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, members of ILWU Local 10 in Oakland courageously followed the South African dockers’ example by refusing to handle Israeli cargo; and

Whereas, such solidarity stands in the proud tradition of West Coast dock-workers who refused to handle cargo for Nazi Germany (1934) and fascist Italy (1935); those in Denmark and Sweden (1963), the San Francisco Bay Area (1984) and Liverpool (1988), who refused shipping for apartheid South Africa; those in Oakland who refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1978); and those at all twenty-nine West Coast ports who held a May Day strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2008).

Therefore, we join with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the Brazilian CUT, and other labor bodies, in specifically reaffirming support for an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo; and

Whereas, Israel has now sought to repress the growing BDS campaign by banning recognition of the 1948 Nakba or advocacy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions;

Therefore, we call on all labor bodies to divest from Israel Bonds; and

Therefore, we call on workers not to handle weapons and all other military cargo destined for Israel; and

Therefore, that these and other necessary measures be maintained until the Israeli apartheid regime recognizes Palestinian human rights and self-determination by immediately:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands (1967) 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.

 http://electronicintifada.net/blog/nora/us-trade-unionists-support-palestinian-call-military-sanctions-israel

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and editor with The Electronic Intifada, and contributes to Al-Jazeera English, Inter Press Service, Truthout.org, Left Turn magazine, and various other international media outlets. From 2003-2010, she was the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, an award-winning investigative newsmagazine operating out of KPFA/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California. Nora has been regularly reporting from Palestine since 2004.

European anti-arms trade network supports Palestinian call for arms embargo against Israel

Submitted by nora on Wed, 07/13/2011 - 15:34

Days after Palestinians called for comprehensive military sanctions against Israel — on the 7th anniversary of the ruling by the International Court of Justice that deemed Israel’s wall in the West Bank is in violation of international law — the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) came out in public support of the arms embargo and called for an end to “all military-related training and consultancies with the Israeli army, military companies and academic research institutions.”

Published to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee’s (BNC) website on 12 July, ENAAT’s press release stated as follows:

In support of the call of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee we, groups of the European Network Against Arms Trade ask the European Parliament and European countries to:

• Immediately cease any provision to Israel of arms and related material of all types, including the sale or transfer of weapons and ammunitions, military vehicles and equipment, para-military police equipment, including dual-use equipment, and spare parts; and also cease the provision of all types of equipment and supplies and grants of licensing arrangements for the manufacture or maintenance of these weapons.
• Stop all military and dual-use imports (equipment, assistance and munitions) from Israel.
• Stop the transfer of military products to and from Israel through national ports, territory and airspace.
• Stop cooperation with the Israeli army, military companies, and military-related R&D projects, including joint ventures (whether bilateral or multilateral).
• Halt all military-related training and consultancies with the Israeli army, military companies and academic research institutions.
• End all military aid to Israel.
• Refrain from any cooperation with Israel in the manufacture and development of nuclear weapons and mobilise for a nuclear-free Middle East.

The pledge was signed by nine separate anti-arms trade groups from the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Italy, Norway, Germany and Switzerland.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/nora/european-anti-arms-trade-network-supports-palestinian-call-arms-embargo-against-israel

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and editor with The Electronic Intifada, and contributes to Al-Jazeera English, Inter Press Service, Truthout.org, Left Turn magazine, and various other international media outlets. From 2003-2010, she was the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, an award-winning investigative newsmagazine operating out of KPFA/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California. Nora has been regularly reporting from Palestine since 2004.

Rights groups: anti-boycott law "effectively a legal annexation of W. Bank"

Submitted by maureen on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 11:16

Israeli activists protest in Tel Aviv following the passing of the “boycott law” on 11 July 2011.

 

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Oren Ziv

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ActiveStills

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Human rights groups in Israel are protesting the new Israeli law passed yesterday which “prohibits boycott of businesses, universities, and social and cultural institutions based in Israel and the illegal settlements, and imposes heavy financial sanctions against civil society organizations and businesses that participate in boycotts.”

In a press release issued today the groups — which include Adalah, Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR-I), the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the Coalition of Women for Peace — say they intend to challenge the law at the Israeli high court. PHR-I has called for civil disobedience of the law to “defend freedom of expression.” The full text of the statement is below.

The law is the latest piece of politically-motivated legislation generating comparisons to the escalation of repressive measures during the desperate last days of apartheid in South Africa.

And as the US government attempts to criminalize Palestine solidarity, one can only come to the conclusion that by creating legislative tools to repress direct solidarity like theboycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, both the US and Israeli governments feel like the status quo of Israeli impunity is being effectively challenged.

Legislation attacking Palestinian rights

Meanwhile, as The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this year, a bill is being circulated through the Knesset (parliament) to give a settler group direct control of an archaeological site in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which is being infiltrated by violent settlers who are occupying Palestinians’ homes.

And in March, as The Electronic Intifada reported, the Knesset passed a bill known as the “Nakba law” which requires the government to deny funding to any organization, institution or municipality which observes or commemorates the founding of the State of Israel as a day of mourning.

The Israeli Knesset has also considered a “loyalty oath” bill requiring organizations to pledge loyalty to the State of Israel as “Jewish and democratic.” The Electronic Intifada reported last December that “The legislation continues the trend of anti-democratic laws spreading throughout the country and threatens the existence of civil society organizations working for Palestinian rights within Israel.”

The full statement by the human rights groups in Israel follows:

A new law passed Monday, 11 July 2011, by Israel’s Knesset seriously harms freedom of expression and freedom of association, said leading human rights groups in Israel today. Moreover, it gives protection to the illegal West Bank settlements in Israeli law, by penalizing their opponents, they said.

According to the organizations, the law will in effect oblige individuals, companies and organisations to support the illegal settlements by doing business with them. ‘The bill seeks to enforce legal protection for an illegal project,’ said Hadas Ziv of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. ‘In other words, it signals a de jure annexation of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.’

According to Attorney Hassan Jabareen, Director of Adalah, ‘Defining boycott as a civil wrong suggests that all Israelis have a legal responsibility to promote the economic advancement of the settlements in the OPT. This means that Israeli organisations opposing the settlements as a matter of principle are in a legal trap.’

On Monday, Israeli human rights organisations wrote an urgent letter of protest to the Israeli Ministers of Justice and Finance and to the Knesset Chair, stressing that irrespective of their own positions regarding the tactic of boycott, outlawing it severely restricts freedom of expression, by targeting non-violent public expressions of opposition to Israeli policies.

Immediately following the Knesset vote on Monday night, the organizations declared they would challenge the law in Israel’s High Court of Justice. The Board of Directors of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel issued a harsh statement against the law, undertaking to disobey it and calling on others to use civil disobedience in order to defend freedom of expression in Israel.

According to Dr. Ishai Menuhin of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the law’s wording specifically targets those who promote boycott for political reasons due to their opposition to Israeli government policies and the occupation. It will harm freedom of expression through intimidation. ‘The law could lead state-funded institutions such as theatres to pressure their employees not to express their positions regarding the settlements, for fear of having their state funding withheld,’ he said.

Eilat Maoz of the Coalition of Women for Peace said, ‘This is a clear case of political persecution. The law will create an atmosphere of fear and seeks to incite the entire Israeli public against peace and human rights activists and organisations. Members of the Knesset are responsible for the further isolation of Israel as a country that intentionally violates human rights and civil liberties.’

The law will also affect freedom of association, said the organisations, since it will expose organisations engaging in public campaigning against the settlements and other human rights violations to legal and financial sanctions and costly compensations claims by settler organisations. ‘The EU and other foreign governments will no longer be able to fund human rights work in Israel if our organisations’ tax exempt status is revoked,’ they said.

The anti-boycott law

The ‘Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott – 2011,’ which was approved last night by a majority of 47 to 38 Members of Knesset, prohibits the public promotion of boycott by Israeli citizens and organisations, and, in some cases, agreement to participate in a boycott. It forbids not only a boycott of Israeli institutions but also of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

The law defines public boycott as a new type of ‘civil wrong’ or tort. It will enable settlers or other parties targeted by boycotts to sue anyone who calls for boycott, and the court may award compensation including punitive damages, even if no actual damage is caused to the boycotted parties.

Further, the law will revoke tax exemptions and other legal rights and benefits from Israeli individuals and groups, as well as academic, cultural and scientific institutions which receive any state support, if they engage in boycott.

Israeli businesses and industries will also be penalised by the law, if they work with the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian companies and accept their conditions that exclude trade with businesses that also trade with settlements. A recent example of this is the plan to build the new Palestinian city of Rawabi. Israeli contractors wishing to participate have been asked by Palestinians to refrain from also doing business with settlements. The law seeks to penalise such contractors and may in effect deter Israeli businesses from trading with Palestinian businesses more generally.

Maureen Clare Murphy is the managing editor of The Electronic Intifada and an activist based in Chicago.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/maureen/rights-groups-anti-boycott-law-effectively-legal-annexation-w-bank

After witnessing Palestine’s apartheid, Indigenous and Women of Color feminists endorse BDS

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 10:51

A group of Indigenous and Women of Color feminists who recently returned from a visit to Palestine has issued a strong statement endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Explaining their decision to travel to Palestine, the group wrote:

We wanted to see for ourselves the conditions under which Palestinian people live and struggle against what we can now confidently name as the Israeli project of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Each and every one of us – including those members of our delegation who grew up in the Jim Crow South, in apartheid South Africa, and on Indian reservations in the US – was shocked by what we saw. In this statement we describe some of our experiences and issue an urgent call to others who share our commitment to racial justice, equality, and freedom.

The eleven-strong group includes pathbreaking authors and activists: Rabab Abdulhadi, Ayoka Chenzira, Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Melissa Garcia, Anna Romina Guevarra, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Premilla Nadasen, Barbara Ransby, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Waziyatawin. Their statement culminates with a strong call to action:

Therefore, we unequivocally endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to pressure Israeli state-sponsored institutions to adhere to international law, basic human rights, and democratic principles as a condition for just and equitable social relations. We reject the argument that to criticize the State of Israel is anti-Semitic. We stand with Palestinians, an increasing number of Jews, and other human rights activists all over the world in condemning the flagrant injustices of the Israeli occupation. We call upon all of our academic and activist colleagues in the US and elsewhere to join us by endorsing the BDS campaign and by working to end US financial support, at $8.2 million daily, for the Israeli state and its occupation.

Read the full statement and affiliations (for identification) of the delegation members below.

Justice for Palestine: A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists

Between 14 June and 23 June 2011, a delegation of 11 scholars, activists, and artists visited occupied Palestine. As indigenous and women of color feminists involved in multiple social justice struggles, we sought to affirm our association with the growing international movement for a free Palestine. We wanted to see for ourselves the conditions under which Palestinian people live and struggle against what we can now confidently name as the Israeli project of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Each and every one of us—including those members of our delegation who grew up in the Jim Crow South, in apartheid South Africa, and on Indian reservations in the US -— was shocked by what we saw. In this statement we describe some of our experiences and issue an urgent call to others who share our commitment to racial justice, equality, and freedom.

During our short stay in Palestine, we met with academics, students, youth, leaders of civic organizations, elected officials, trade unionists, political leaders, artists, and civil society activists, as well as residents of refugee camps and villages that have been recently attacked by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Everyone we encountered—in Nablus, Awarta, Balata, Jerusalem, Hebron, Dheisheh, Bethlehem, Birzeit, Ramallah, Um el-Fahem, and Haifa—asked us to tell the truth about life under occupation and about their unwavering commitment to a free Palestine. We were deeply impressed by people’s insistence on the linkages between the movement for a free Palestine and struggles for justice throughout the world; as Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted throughout his life, “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Traveling by bus throughout the country, we saw vast numbers of Israeli settlements ominously perched in the hills, bearing witness to the systematic confiscation of Palestinian land in flagrant violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. We met with refugees across the country whose families had been evicted from their homes by Zionist forces, their land confiscated, their villages and olive groves razed. As a consequence of this ongoing displacement, Palestinians comprise the largest refugee population in the world (over five million), the majority living within 100 kilometers of their natal homes, villages, and farmlands. In defiance of United Nations Resolution 194, Israel has an active policy of opposing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes and lands on the grounds that they are not entitled to exercise the Israeli Law of Return, which is reserved for Jews.

In Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in eastern occupied Jerusalem, we met an 88-year-old woman who was forcibly evicted in the middle of the night; she watched as the Israeli military moved settlers into her house a mere two hours later. Now living in the small back rooms of what was once her large family residence, she defiantly asserted that neither Israel’s courts nor its military could ever force her from her home. In the city of Hebron, we were stunned by the conspicuous presence of Israeli soldiers, who maintain veritable conditions of apartheid for the city’s Palestinian population of almost 200,000, as against its 700 Jewish settlers. We crossed several Israeli checkpoints designed to control Palestinian movement on West Bank roads and along the Green Line. Throughout our stay, we met Palestinians who, because of Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem and plans to remove its native population, have been denied entry to the Holy City. We spoke to a man who lives ten minutes away from Jerusalem but who has not been able to enter the city for twenty-seven years. The Israeli government thus continues to wage a demographic war for Jewish dominance over the Palestinian population.

We were never able to escape the jarring sight of the ubiquitous apartheid wall, which stands in contempt of international law and human rights principles. Constructed of twenty-five-foot-high concrete slabs, electrified cyclone fencing, and winding razor wire, it almost completely encloses the West Bank and extends well east of the Green Line marking Israel’s pre-1967 borders. It snakes its way through ancient olive groves, destroying the beauty of the landscape, dividing communities and families, severing farmers from their fields and depriving them of their livelihood. In Abu Dis, the wall cuts across the campus of Al Quds University through the soccer field. In Qalqiliya, we saw massive gates built to control the entry and access of Palestinians to their lands and homes, including a gated corridor through which Palestinians with increasingly rare Israeli-issued permits are processed as they enter Israel for work, sustaining the very state that has displaced them. Palestinian children are forced through similar corridors, lining-up for hours twice each day to attend school. As one Palestinian colleague put it, “Occupied Palestine is the largest prison in the world.”

An extensive prison system bolsters the occupation and suppresses resistance. Everywhere we went we met people who had either been imprisoned themselves or had relatives who had been incarcerated. Twenty thousand Palestinians are locked inside Israeli prisons, at least 8,000 of them are political prisoners and more than 300 are children. In Jerusalem, we met with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council who are being protected from arrest by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In Um el-Fahem, we met with an Islamist leader just after his release from prison and heard a riveting account of his experience on the Mavi Marmara and the 2010 Gaza Flotilla. The criminalization of their political activity, and that of the many Palestinians we met, was a constant and harrowing theme.

We also came to understand how overt repression is buttressed by deceptive representations of the state of Israel as the most developed social democracy in the region. As feminists, we deplore the Israeli practice of “pink-washing,” the state’s use of ostensible support for gender and sexual equality to dress-up its occupation. In Palestine, we consistently found evidence and analyses of a more substantive approach to an indivisible justice. We met the President and the leadership of the Arab Feminist Union and several other women’s groups in Nablus who spoke about the role and struggles of Palestinian women on several fronts. We visited one of the oldest women’s empowerment centers in Palestine, In’ash al-Usra, and learned about various income-generating cultural projects. We also spoke with Palestinian Queers for BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions], young organizers who frame the struggle for gender and sexual justice as part and parcel of a comprehensive framework for self-determination and liberation. Feminist colleagues at Birzeit University, An-Najah University, and Mada al-Carmel spoke to us about the organic linkage of anti-colonial resistance with gender and sexual equality, as well as about the transformative role Palestinian institutions of higher education play in these struggles.

We were continually inspired by the deep and abiding spirit of resistance in the stories people told us, in the murals inside buildings such as Ibdaa Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, in slogans painted on the apartheid wall in Qalqiliya, Bethlehem, and Abu Dis, in the education of young children, and in the commitment to emancipatory knowledge production. At our meeting with the Boycott National Committee—an umbrella alliance of over 200 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the General Union of Palestinian Women, the General Union of Palestinian Workers, the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel [PACBI], and the Palestinian Network of NGOs—we were humbled by their appeal: “We are not asking you for heroic action or to form freedom brigades. We are simply asking you not to be complicit in perpetuating the crimes of the Israeli state.”

Therefore, we unequivocally endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to pressure Israeli state-sponsored institutions to adhere to international law, basic human rights, and democratic principles as a condition for just and equitable social relations. We reject the argument that to criticize the State of Israel is anti-Semitic. We stand with Palestinians, an increasing number of Jews, and other human rights activists all over the world in condemning the flagrant injustices of the Israeli occupation.

We call upon all of our academic and activist colleagues in the US and elsewhere to join us by endorsing the BDS campaign and by working to end US financial support, at $8.2 million daily, for the Israeli state and its occupation. We call upon all people of conscience to engage in serious dialogue about Palestine and to acknowledge connections between the Palestinian cause and other struggles for justice. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

• Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University*
• Ayoka Chenzira, artist and filmmaker, Atlanta, GA
• Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz*
• Gina Dent, University of California, Santa Cruz* G.
• Melissa Garcia, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University*
• Anna Romina Guevarra, author and sociologist, Chicago, IL
• Beverly Guy-Sheftall, author, Atlanta, GA
• Premilla Nadasen, author, New York, NY
• Barbara Ransby, author and historian, Chicago, IL
• Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University*
• Waziyatawin, University of Victoria*

*For identification purposes only
For press inquiries, please contact feministdelegation at gmail dot com

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/after-witnessing-palestines-apartheid-indigenous-and-women-color-feminists-endorse

Press Statement: Indian Artists Boycott Tel Aviv Museum Show

Indian Artists | 31 July 2011

The first major show of Indian art “Deconstructing India” is planned for Spring 2012 in the new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel.

We, the undersigned artists, who have been invited by the curators to participate in this show, have declined to exhibit our work, in solidarity with the International Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called by Palestinian intellectuals and artists, and the India Campaign. The Boycott, inspired by the earlier successful international boycott against Apartheid South Africa, is a peaceful, non-violent Gandhian campaign, which is directed at mainstream institutions and not at individuals, to pressurize Israel to recognize the rights of the Palestine people. 

The newly built Amir Wing of the Tel Aviv Museum designed by American architect Preston Scott Cohen is planned to be a showpiece for the discredited Israeli Government to increase its status and prestige internationally at a time when the country’s image is at its lowest ebb. 

By declining to participate in this show, we refuse to legitimize the illegal racist and apartheid policies of the Israeli Government against the people of Palestine and to become a part of “Brand Israel”.

Signatures :

Nalini Malani

Anita Dube

Amar Kanwar

Sakshi Gupta

Pushpamala N

In solidarity with the Boycott:

Artists

Vivan Sundaram

Ayisha Abraham

Ram Rahman

Sharmila Samant

Sunil Gupta

Gauri Gill

Inder Salim

Vibha Galhotra

Vasudha Thozhur

Tushar Joag

Indrapramit Roy

Arunkumar HG

Shakuntala Kulkarni

Archana Hande

Monali Meher

Suresh Jayaram 

Art Scholars

Geeta Kapoor

Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Chaitanya Sambrani

Kajri Jain

Nuzhat Kazmi

R. Nandakumar

Posted on 31-07-2011

http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1679