The group did not specify why they were pulling out of the show, which was due to take place in Tel Aviv on 9 June.

However, organisers said the decision was linked to Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last week.

Read the complete BBC article here.

Boycott From Within originally published an Open Letter calling on the Pixies to boycott Israel.

It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.

One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament.

He continues:

Sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.

Read the complete statement here.

This follows in the footsteps of a similar decision by Gil Scott-Heron.  Let’s continue to put pressure on others including Elton John and Joan Armatrading!

Read USACBI’s letter to Elton John here!

‘Out in Israel’ is a month-long festival taking place throughout the Bay Area during April 2010. It is a celebration of LGBT Israeli culture that is set to include film series, literary readings, musical performances, dance, and panel discussions on LGBT culture in Israel and from Zionist perspectives.

We, Palestinian Queer activists, living inside Israel and in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, are calling for queer communities in the Bay Area and around the United States to protest against such an event. ‘Out in Israel’ uses the name and the cause of queers to whitewash the image of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and to transform the focus from its human rights violations, occupation and war crimes, to the “liberal” and “gay friendly haven” of the Middle East.

We wish to salute the efforts of queer groups that refuse to keep a blind eye and a deaf ear to Israel’s double standards and who are loudly reminding the world that Israel’s multi-tiered oppression hardly makes a distinction between straight and gay Palestinians. ‘Out in Israel’ should be out against the multiple forms of oppression that the state of Israel is practicing against Palestinians, including the Palestinian LGBTQI community.

‘Out in Israel’ should be out against policies of discrimination practiced against all Palestinians, including LGBTQI’s. ‘Out in Israel’ should be a call for the state of Israel to be out of Palestine.

Say NO to ‘Out in Israel’; say NO to Israel’s double standards and refute the myth of Gay-friendly Israel. Say No to Israel’s propaganda to whitewash its occupying and oppressive image.

See our earlier post about the Out In Israel festival.

For further information about the organizations:
alQaws: for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
Aswat: Palestinian Gay Women:

Sweden’s national pension funds have dropped investments in an Israeli company that makes surveillance equipment for the West Bank barrier.

Israel said Thursday that the decision by the Swedish AP funds, which manage assets of more than 800 billion kronor ($110 billion) in the state pension system, was “regrettable” but made no official complaint.

Norway’s main pension fund has similar ethical guidelines and also dropped Elbit Systems Ltd. last year, prompting the Israeli government to summon the Norwegian ambassador.

The relationship between Sweden and Israel has been strained recently. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt called off a visit to Israel last year amid a diplomatic spat over a Swedish newspaper article that claimed Israeli soldiers harvested organs from dead Palestinians. Bildt also announced his support for the findings of a U.N.-appointed expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which concluded that both sides committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the 2008 Gaza war, in which 13 Israelis and almost 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including many civilians.

Read the rest of the article here >>

From the article:

Today, the first session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) will be held in Barcelona. The RTP is a peoples’ tribunal focusing not on Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL) such as the Fourth Geneva Convention, but on the obligations of the international community of signatory states which sustain and enable Israel’s continuous violations of international law…

Israel is an international entity, kept afloat not just financially and politically by international state partners and supporters, but “legally” by the continued legitimization of illegal acts and “facts on the ground” by these states. Israel’s most important market is not economic or military — it is the market of legitimacy, the permission it receives to normalize crimes against humanity to its own citizens and the international community. This can only happen with the complicity of non-IHL compliant states. The RTP is a way of publicly pointing the finger at these states and mobilizing public opinion towards holding them accountable for the ongoing human rights violations in Palestine.

And a particularly insightful section:

For too long Israel has been the focus of international campaigning as if it alone is responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people, and as if it has been acting alone. The RTP is about making the links between the crimes committed on the ground in Palestine and their international sponsors. If we want to popularize the notion of “normalization” of the occupation as a key obstacle to a just peace, then understanding how this “normalization” operates on an international legal level in the corridors of Washington, Brussels and London, as well as Tel Aviv, is a vital part of challenging it.

Read the complete article here.

View video from the first round of the tribunals here.

The first is from Democracy Now!, and features Omar Barghouti, one of the organizers for the BDS National Committee (note: opens in new window):

The second video comes from Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, featuring Israeli Apartheid Week organizer Hazem Jamjoum:

]]> http://www.baceia.org/2010/03/two-debates-video/feed/ 0 http://www.baceia.org/2010/03/we-must-boycott-both/ http://www.baceia.org/2010/03/we-must-boycott-both/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:07:15 +0000 hkornst1 http://www.baceia.org/?p=499 Check out this great article written by Rifat Kassis, the International President of Defence for Children International (DCI) and the Coordinator and Spokesperson of Kairos Palestine – A Moment of Truth. It has some really great thinking of why we need a BDS Movement, and answers some of the criticisms the BDS Movement has faced.

Some key arguments:

The injustices perpetrated by the State of Israel affect our economy, our education, our health and our mobility; they inhibit our most quotidian and our most far-reaching freedoms; they stigmatize our language and confine our travel; they stifle what we do and buy and make. The occupation is not a random onslaught of power, and it isn’t conducted on some remote soil: it is a complete matrix of control, a strategic, consistent, deliberate, historically constructed, externally condoned and internally sustained attempt to separate Palestinian and Israel rights and lives in the very place where we make and have always made our home. Boycotting Israel signifies boycotting this entire range of injustice.

The boycott is also the manifestation of our right as Palestinians to decide the terms of our own struggle and our own freedom. This certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t value the input of our supporters, both from within Israel and from elsewhere. But we as Palestinians ultimately have the right to choose our own methods of resistance. Resistance itself is a right guaranteed by international law, as expressed by Article 1(4) of Protocol 1 (additional to the Geneva Conventions), for “conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.” Boycott — which is a powerful yet totally nonviolent tactic — is part of our choice. Indeed, as is stated in “A Moment of Truth,” boycott and disinvestment are “not revenge but rather a serious action to reach a just and definitive peace that will put an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories and will guarantee security and peace for all.”

Another commentary on an additional source of criticism: some churches worldwide have likewise expressed their skepticism about our call for boycott, and have pushed us to adopt a more “positive” attitude. To them, we wish to say that there is nothing “positive” about the way the occupation is constricting us. Nor is there anything “positive” about the way the Israeli state responds to our dissent (by repressing it), to United Nations resolutions about refugee rights or illegal settlements or humanitarian crises (by ignoring them), or to the massive and vocal international support for the UN-commissioned Goldstone report (by rejecting it). The lofty goal of “balanced dialogue” is impossible in a place where there is no balance, a place that continues to silence our voices. To consult another model, advocating for “positive engagement” with the South African apartheid regime in order to “convince” it to be more humane in dealing with the oppressed proved to be condescending and ineffective.

The blockade of Gaza is enacted by the State of Israel; the State is the occupation. They are not separate, and they cannot be separated. We must boycott both.

Read the entire article here.

Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream company will open a new factory in the Beer Tuvia area in southern Israel, near Kiryat Malachi, in a facility that up until recently served as a soup factory and logistic center for food manufacturer Vita Pri Hagalil.

The company is investing $2 million (US) into this project.  Additionally, it plans to open new retail stores in Israel:

According to Ben & Jerry’s General-Manger Avi Zinger, another retail store is slated to open next month at the new Cinema City in Rishon Lezion, in addition to the one already operating in Glilot.

The company is currently holding negotiations for opening another store in Jerusalem as well. Ben & Jerry’s annual turnover in Israel is estimated at some NIS 30 million (appox. $8 million).

Along with the expansion of production facilities, Ben & Jerry’s is also planning on expanding to 16 ice-cream parlors and selling kiosks. According to Zinger, “Ice-cream parlors have regained momentum in recent years, and we have also returned to full activity.

“Ben & Jerry’s opened its first store in Israel in 1988 and operated 16 branches at its peak. In 2001 it began to close down its stores dew [sic] to losses suffered with the break of the intifada and the era of increased terror attacks [sic!],” Zinger said.

Ben & Jerry’s was sold to conglomerate Unilever in 2000, but is still widely thought of as a progressive company, primarily due to its leadership on sustainable environmental policies.

>> Contact Ben & Jerry’s to let them know you support the call for Boycott!

American Apparel (AA) bills itself as a socially conscious producer and vendor of “hip” clothing but there’s nothing progressive or admirable about supporting Israeli apartheid. On AA’s web site it is proudly asserted that AA “is part Israeli, literally.” When a pro-Israel blogger produced a parody “Zionist Apparel” ad, AA’s webmaster thought it was great and added it to their web site.

More importantly, contrary to the 2005 call of Palestinian civil society for “broad boycotts … against Israel,” AA has opened two stores in that country, one in Tel Aviv and another in al-Quds (Jerusalem) with plans to open another in Haifa. As the authors of the 2009 Toronto Declaration noted: “Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and … the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population.” The Tel Aviv store is in the Dizengoff Center, named after Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv. Dizengoff, who was born in Imperial Russia, first traveled to Palestine under the auspices of Baron Edmond de Rothschild’s colonization scheme.

While scouting locations for the al-Quds store, an AA employee took time out to mug for the camera with two armed soldiers from North America serving in an Israeli combat unit. The al-Quds store is located in/near the historic Mamilla district, “one of seven mixed or mainly Arab neighborhoods” that was “emptied of its Arab inhabitants” during the 1948 war (Bernard Wasserstein, Divided Jerusalem, p. 163). Today, despite protests and lawsuits a branch of the Museum of Tolerance is being built in an historic Muslim cemetery a couple of hundred meters south of AA’s al-Quds store (see mamillacampaign.org).

The planned location of AA’s third store is Haifa, one of the largest cities of Palestine to be ethnically cleansed during the Nakba–”Out of the 61,000 Palestinian Arabs who used to call Haifa home, only 3,566 Palestinians were allowed to stay.

And here’s more from American Apparel’s own website:

American Apparel is part Israeli, literally. Sylvia Safdie, mother of company founder Dov Charney, is from Israel. She moved with her family to Canada when she was 11 years old. Today she is an internationally known artist based in Montreal. Dov’s uncle, Israeli born Moshe Safdie, is a world known architect with a flourishing architectural practice which includes an office in Jerusalem. He has designed numerous public and private buildings of note in Israel which includes the Museum at Yad Vashem, Mamila Development Project, Ben Gurion Airside Terminal, David’s Village in Jerusalem and many more.

Dov’s mother’s family connection to Israel gives the Israeli stores special meaning for American Apparel.

We currently have a location in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, with plans for more. We’re also working on an Israeli Online Store so that our customers there will have the convenience of shopping in shekels. Eventually we also hope to open a store in Haifa, where Dov’s mom grew up.

And then there’s this quote from owner Dov Charney:

We believe in a new American imperialism. We are American imperialists who believe in life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness for every man worldwide, including prisoners in Guantanamo.

Gross!  Many of us have had our doubts about American Apparel for years now, due to their sexist ads and dubious labor practices, but this is just the icing on the cake.

Read more about American Apparel (note: some of these may be triggering!)

• American Apparel gives Palestinian student a laptop for winning “History of Zionism” contest (Jewlicious)
• American Apparel Opens in Tel Aviv (Jewlicious, with photo off their staff member posing with IDF while scouting for sites in Jerusalem)
• Porn Stars In My Underwear (SF Gate)
• American Apparel to Be Sold to Investment Firm (NY Times)