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!

1. Pampers

diapers and baby products
Pampers’ parent company Proctor & Gamble is the biggest client of Avgol Nonwoven Industries, one of the world’s leading diaper makers which supplies diaper fabrics.  Avgol’s lead manufacturing plant is located in the Barkan industrial zone, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.  According to international law, it is illegal for Israel, as an occupying power, to use occupied Palestinian territory for profit.
(Source:  Who Profits)

2. Sabra

hummus, baba ghanoush, and other refrigerated foods
This brand of hummus, baba ghanoush and other foods is co-owned by Pepsico and Israel’s second-largest food company, The Strauss Group.  On its “Corporate Responsibility” webpage, the Strauss Group boasts about “sweetening the special moments” of the Israeli military’s notorious Golani Brigade by supplying it with food products and political support.  In 2008, Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-Israeli soldiers came forward with documentation of the Golani Brigade’s torture and humiliation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
(Additional Sources:  Adalah NY, Ha’aretz)

3. Yes to Carrots

bath and beauty products
Israeli beauty manufacturer Yes to Carrots purports to make organic, “cruelty free” and all natural beauty products that “make a difference, not only to how you look, but also to how you feel about yourself and the world around you.”  Yes to Carrots also prides themselves in using minerals from the Dead Sea.   According to Oxfam International, the area where Yes to Carrots gets it minerals is Palestinian land illegally occupied by Israel and, according to international law, it is illegal for Israel to exploit these natural resources for profit.

For more information about Israeli products made illegally from Dead Sea natural resources visit www.stolenbeauty.org.

4. Osem

croutons, snacks, and couscous
Osem Investments Ltd is an Israeli-based food manufacturer and distributor, 39% of which is owned by Nestlé.  According to its website, Osem’s USA company reaches more than 1000 independent stores and 3000 supermarkets.  According to London-based NGO Corporate Watch, Nestlé has been implicated in a variety of harmful practices since 1977 including: the unethical and harmful promotion of its baby formula, farm labor violations, union busting, and environmental abuse.
(Additional Sources:  Oxfam International, Greenpeace, The Guardian)

5. Tribe

hummus
This 15 year old hummus company based in Massachusetts was recently sold to the Osem Investments (see above) for $57 million.
(Source:  Reuters)

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To view our complete list of Israeli products to boycott, click here.  To report new product sightings, email us at products@baceia.org.

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)

Our organizing is evolving! This month we have a packed newsletter. We begin this newsletter with news of an important development in our campaign: we are forming a coalition under the BACEIA name! Then, this month, we had a successful event with Dalit Baum representing the Israeli coalition behind the whoprofits.org website – a ground breaking source of information for BDS activists. Following the Gaza Freedom March in January to break the siege of Gaza, international delegates wrote and signed the “Cairo Declaration”, now BACEIA has signed on. Read below to find out why. The beginning of March is the internationally coordinated Israeli Apartheid Week… which is also the one year anniversary of the BACEIA campaign! More about this important week of action is below. Finally, bus stop advertisements highlighting BDS & U.S. coroporate involvement in Israeli apartheid were installed around the Bay Area. As a special item, we’ve included some pictures of these works of art to close off this month’s newsletter.

We hope to see you out at events and actions soon!

BACEIA

Read the full February E-Newsletter here >>>

Cal Students for Justice in Palestine: Third Annual (ANTI) ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK
March 1st-8th 2010

Monday, March 1st:
INTRO TO APARTHEID
Speakers: Joanna Manqueros, activist against South African apartheid and Doctor Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley Middle Eastern Studies Department
Location: Room 105, Boalt Hall School of Law – Bancroft between College & Piedmont
Time: 7 pm

Tuesday, March 2nd:
TO SHOOT AN ELEPHANT – film screening
Location: Room 2060, Valley Life Sciences Building
Time: 7 pm

Wednesday, March 3rd:
DEBATING BOYCOTT DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS
Speakers: Omar Barghouti, Co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Location: Room 105, Boalt Hall School of Law – Bancroft between College & Piedmont
Time: 6:30 pm

Thursday, March 4th:
STRIKE
Join the massive statewide Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education.
Strike agenda:
7am -12pm: Massive Picket Lines @ North Entrance, Sather Gate, Oxford & Center and California Hall
12pm: Rally @ Bancroft & Telegraph and March to Downtown Oakland for the Rally

Friday, March 5th:
CULTURAL CELEBRATION / FUNDRAISER
Arabic music ensemble directed by Elias Lammam
Poetry by Mahaliyah Ayla O, Dina Omar and Hadeel Ramadan
Middle Eastern food from local restaurants and cafes such as Sunrise Deli and Fertile Grounds
Debke (Traditional Palestinian Dance) by Al-Jathoor
Speaker: Ziad Abbas of Ibda’ Cultural Center and the Middle East Children’s Alliance
Proceeds will go to the Middle East Children’s Alliance “Maia” project for Gaza.
Location: MLK Multi-Cultural Center, Inside the ASUC building
Time: 7 pm

Monday, March 8th:
PALESTINIAN NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE & INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
Speakers: Lubna Masarwa, Alternative Information Center coordinator and Al-Quds University community organizer, Jerusalem
Other speakers: TBA
Location: Room 105, Boalt Hall School f Law – Bancroft between College & Piedmont
Time: 6:30 pm
* co-sponsored by: Law Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace

There will also be DIRECT ACTIONS and DEMONSTRATIONS on Sproul throughout the week between 10 am and 2 pm.

for more information about IAW, please visit apartheidweek. org
for more information about SJP, please visit calsjp.org
Contact SJP at admin@calsjp. org or on our facebook group: Students for Justice in Palestine

See the full post on Indybay >>>

On a normal Thursday evening, a group of protesters transformed San Francisco’s busiest shopping district into a scene which reflected the realities of Palestinian life in Hebron in the West Bank.

shuhada_sf1.jpg

We closed a major street running through the financial heart of our
city, to call attention to Israeli road closures and restrictions of
movement that are imposed every day on Palestinians in Hebron.

The blocking of major thoroughfares in the city culminated in nine
arrests, after protesters holding a banner that read “Israeli
Apartheid closes streets” closed off Powell Street and refused police
orders to disperse, while a crowd of hundreds looked on chanting and
cheering.

The People of Colour Action Theatre group re-enacted apartheid
separation under Israeli occupation, and disrupted business in front
of flagship stores which profit from the Israeli occupation.

Handing out Palestinian and Israeli “identification documents”, actors
playing Israeli soldiers in uniform forced “Palestinians” and
“Israelis” to walk on separate sides of the barrier; often roughing up
and harassing those playing Palestinians.

Unsuspecting passers-by were incorporated into the theatre performance
and forced to walk on one side or the other.

See the full post on Indybay >>>

Meanwhile, in Hebron, Palestinians are protesting Israel’s new “Heritage Plan” where they have laid out a plan to appropriate holy sites in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories as “Israeli Heritage”. Palestinians in Hebron, where sensitive sites have been named for appropriation by Israel, have protests have been on-going for 5 days.

See this news coverage >>>

Hewlett Packard (HP) owns EDS Israel which sells the Basel System to the Israeli government.  The Basel System biometrically controls the movement of Palestinian people at checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.  These checkpoints prevent students from getting to school, workers from making a living, and families from meeting and accessing medical care.
Hewlett Packard profits from Israeli Occupation and Apartheid, both of which are illegal under international law.
When you buy a computer or printer, choose a brand that Does Not Buy Into Apartheid and let
HP know you did!  Mark Hurd, CEO:  650.857.1501

Proctor and Gamble

Proctor and Gamble uses materials made in illegal West Bank settlements by Avgol Industries an Israeli company.  And, UNICEF partner with Pampers to fund it’s programs.
Let Proctor & Gamble know you don’t buy into Apartheid and they should not either.
P&G:  http://pg.custhelp.com

7 Eleven

What do Slurpees have to do with war crimes?!

The Alon Group is an Israeli company with a monopoly on the gas supply to Gaza.  They
switch it off at will depriving the population of essential services.  This is collective
punishment.  This is a war crime.  Alon USA owns 170 7 Eleven stores in the U.S..
Let 7 Eleven know you don’t buy into Apartheid and they should not either.
7 Eleven:  800.255.0711

Fueling Israeli Apartheid:
Corporate Profits and Accountability
a conversation with Dalit Baum of WhoProfits.org

Tuesday, February 16 • 7pm
El Centro Del Pueblo Auditorium
474 Valencia at 16th St., San Francisco
Donations requested at the door

Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in apartheid and occupation: in the construction of Israeli colonies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, in the settlements’ economy, in building walls and checkpoints, in the supply of specific equipment used in the control and repression of civilian populations. In 2007, the Coalition of Women for Peace initiated Who Profits from the Occupation, a unique on-line resource with research on hundreds of companies directly involved in the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, a major component of Israel’s apartheid structure, exposing many of the companies for the first time.

Dalit Baum, PhD, teaches Gender and the Global Economy at the Haifa university and Beit Berl College in Israel.

Organized by BACEIA, a coalition of: Break the Siege, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (Bay Area), Global Women’s Strike, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terror.  Co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee – Pacific Mountain Region.

Download and print the complete flyer!