El ministro israelí de Servicios de Inteligencia,
Yisrael Katz, había llamado el pasado lunes 1° de enero en su Twitter
“a ejecutar a los presos palestinos que se encuentran en las cárceles
israelíes”. Inmediatamente casi 700 palestinos presos en los campos de
concentración israelí comenzaron una huelga de hambre.
En
medio de un silencio apabullante de la comunidad internacional, los
organismos de derechos humanos y violando las obligaciones de Israel en
virtud del artículo 6 del ‘Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y
Políticos’ implementado por la ONU el 23 de marzo de 1976, que en su
‘Parte III, articulo 1, dice: “El derecho a la vida es inherente a la
persona humana. Este derecho estará protegido por la ley. Nadie podrá
ser privado de la vida arbitrariamente”.
El Knesset israelí aprobó
la primera lectura sobre una propuesta de enmienda al Código Penal para
legalizar la ‘pena de muerte’ contra los palestinos, que ellos,
arbitrariamente consideran que atacaron a soldados o civiles israelíes.
Con 52 votos a favor y 42 en contra se aprobó el proyecto de propuesta
de ‘la ley de Muerte’ presentada el pasado 30 de octubre, por el
extremista partido Yisrael Beitenu liderado por el ministro de Defensa
Avigdor Liberman, para allanar el camino de la ‘condena de muerte a los
presos palestinos’ sin requerir de un consenso de opinión entre los
jueces, sino solo una mayoría ordinaria sin posibilidad de conmutar la
sentencia.
En este sentido el ministro israelí de Servicios de
Inteligencia, Yisrael Katz, había llamado el pasado lunes 1° de enero en
su Twitter “a ejecutar a los presos palestinos que se encuentran en las
cárceles israelíes”. Inmediatamente casi 700 palestinos presos en los
campos de concentración israelí comenzaron una huelga de hambre.
La
ley que aún necesita la aprobación de otras 2 lecturas para entrar en
vigor dejó claro las virtudes criminales de la potencia ocupante israelí
que el mundo lo asimila sin una reacción acorde con el terrorismo de
Estado israelí y si bien la Unión Europea condenó la ley, en la práctica
se mantiene pasiva.
The movement for Palestinian rights continues to grow across the world. (Alisdare Hickson/Flickr)It took just four days for a world famous singer to cancel her Tel Aviv show in response to her fans’ urging her to respect the international picket line.
Lorde’s decision on Christmas Eve to pull the Tel Aviv show from her
world tour – remarking that booking the gig in the first place “wasn’t
the right call” – completed a successful year for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
2017 saw artists, performers, athletes, politicians, cultural
workers, faith-based organizations, students, academics, unions and
activists grow the movement for Palestinian rights.
Israel has been taking notice, of course.
Early on in the year, key Israel lobby groups admitted in a secret report
– obtained and published in full by The Electronic Intifada – that they
had failed to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly
increasing their spending.
The report outlined Israel’s failure to stem the “impressive growth”
and “significant successes” of the BDS movement and set out strategies,
endorsed by the Israeli government, aimed at reversing the deterioration
in Israel’s position.
Similarly, in March, Israel’s top anti-BDS strategist conceded
that the boycott Israel movement is winning – despite the Israeli
government’s allocation of tens of millions of dollars and the formation
of an entire governmental ministry whose sole focus is to combat BDS.
Speaking at an anti-BDS conference in New York, Israeli ambassador
Danny Danon stated that “the BDS movement is still active and still
strong. Every day, academic and religious groups, student unions and
investment firms are all falling prey to boycott calls.”
“Our South Africa moment is nearing”
As Israel’s strategists and representatives panicked over their failures to stem the BDS tide, polls in the UK, Canada and the US all showed that mainstream, public support for boycott and sanctions on Israel is growing apace.
In California, the state’s Democratic Party chapter approved a resolution
– without debate – that condemned Israel’s illegal settlement
activities in the occupied West Bank and the denial of entry to
activists who criticize the state.
It also, notably, signaled support for organizers who engage with the BDS movement and who face expanding repression on campuses and by local, state and federal legislatures.
In the UK in December, the Labour Party’s shadow development minister
Kate Osamor, a strong ally of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted her explicit approval of BDS.
Over the summer, the High Court in London ruled
that the Conservative government acted unlawfully in trying to prevent
local councils in the UK from divesting from firms involved in Israel’s
military occupation, dealing a blow to Israel’s representatives seeking
to criminalize the BDS movement.
Meanwhile, in the face of Israel’s overt attempts to silence him and crush the popularity of BDS, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the BDS movement, urged people around the world to increase boycott campaigns as the best way to show support for him and for the Palestinian people.
Barghouti won the Gandhi Peace Award in April for his work as a human rights defender. He had been subjected by Israel to a travel ban and open threats by that state’s top ministers last year.
In March, Barghouti praised a landmark report
published by the United Nations which concluded that Israel is guilty
of the crime of apartheid, drawing praise from Palestinians and ire from
Israel and its allies.
Barghouti said the UN report was a sign for Palestinians that “our
South Africa moment is nearing,” adding that the report was “a stark
indicator that Israel’s apartheid is destined to end, as South Africa’s
did.”
He remarked that the report “may well be the very first beam of light
that ushers the dawn of sanctions against Israel’s regime of
occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
Here are some of the other victories of the BDS movement in 2017, as reported by The Electronic Intifada.
Athletes, writers, chefs and artists ditched Israel
In February, professional US football players pulled out of a propaganda tour
to Israel, with Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett announcing he
would “not be used” by Israel’s government to whitewash its violations
of Palestinian rights.
“I want to be a ‘voice for the voiceless,’” Bennett added, “and I cannot do that by going on this kind of trip to Israel.”
In August, nine international artists pulled out of the Pop-Kultur festival
in Germany because it accepted funding from the Israeli embassy.
Palestinian campaigners said the “eloquent statements from the artists
stand in stark contrast to the festival’s crude attempts to falsely
portray the Palestinian boycott call as directed at individual Israeli
artists, shrewdly omitting the fact that the protests were clearly aimed
at the Israeli government involvement.”
German media also joined in the smears, giving a platform to false
accusations the boycott was an “anti-Semitic” move by “participants from
various Arab nations.” But the pro-Israel spin was ably confronted by German Jewish and Israeli activists, who fully backed the boycott.
Over the summer, a group of filmmakers, artists and presenters canceled their scheduled appearances
at TLVFest, Israel’s premier LGBTQ film festival in Tel Aviv, following
appeals by queer Palestinian activists and boycott supporters to
withdraw.
The high-profile cancellations in support of the BDS campaign prompted The Jerusalem Post to admit that while the festival “has been around for more than a decade, it has never faced a campaign this successful against it.”
Later in the fall, some of the world’s top chefs pulled out of Round Tables, an Israeli government-sponsored propaganda initiative that uses international cuisine to gloss over Israel’s image.
“The Round Tables festival is taking place while the Israeli military
and Israeli settlers illegally living on stolen Palestinian land attack
Palestinians during their annual olive harvest,” said Zaid Shoaibi,
from PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel.
And the literary group PEN America quietly revealed that it was no longer accepting
funds from the Israeli government for its annual World Voices festival,
following appeals from more than 250 high-profile writers, poets and
publishers.
The group had come under heavy criticism for using funds from the
Israeli government, which jails Palestinian journalists and writers in
Israel and the occupied West Bank for their work.
BDS endorsed by cities, churches, political groups and unions
Norway’s largest and most influential trade union organization called for a full boycott of Israel in May, just days after the Norwegian municipality of Lillehammer passed a resolution to boycott Israeli settlement goods.
Lillehammer became the third city in Norway to call for a settlement boycott, following Trondheim and Tromsø.
The city council of Barcelona voted to uphold the right to boycott Israel
in April, while condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land,
calling for an end to the Gaza blockade and ensuring that the city’s
public procurement policies exclude companies that profit from Israel’s
human rights abuses.
In July, the 95,000-member strong Mennonite Church USA
joined a growing number of Christian denominations that have taken
action to support Palestinian human rights over the last few years.
In a resolution approved by 98 percent of delegates
at its Florida convention, the church voted to condemn Israel’s
military occupation and to support divestment from companies that profit
from violations of Palestinian rights.
On 7 July, the World Communion of Reformed Churches called
on the more than 80 million people in its member churches worldwide to
examine their investments related to the situation in Palestine.
A month later, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) overwhelmingly voted to endorse the BDS call.
“Just as we answered the call to boycott South Africa during
apartheid, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the DSA
deputy national director stated.
The largest democratic socialist organization in the United States
with more than 25,000 members, DSA has seen its membership quadruple
with the resurgence of left-wing politics in the US and Europe,
particularly since the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
In the UK, Jewish members of the Labour Party founded a new group
– Jewish Voice for Labour – that presents a challenge to an existing
Israel lobby group positioning itself as the representative of Jewish
members of the party.
Jewish Voice for Labour’s founding document
upholds “the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage
in solidarity activities, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions.”
Also in the UK, the country’s largest union for school teachers launched a boycott of HP over the technology giant’s role in the Israeli occupation.
G4S was further ostracized
The world’s largest private security company, G4S, continued to face heavy financial losses around the world as its profiteering from human rights abuses came under further scrutiny.
G4S has helped operate Israeli prisons where Palestinians are tortured and has managed juvenile prisons, detention and deportation facilities in the US and UK.
The firm has also been implicated in labor and human rights abuses from Africa to the offshore facilities where Australia detains refugees and asylum seekers.
An Ecuadorian research institute announced in February that it had dropped its contract with G4S after meeting with activists.
Following a campaign led by Jordan BDS, UN Women in Jordan dropped its G4S contract in October, becoming the fifth UN agency in Jordan to do so.
And the transportation board of Sacramento, California, moved to dump its security contract with G4S following work by campaigners to highlight the company’s role in rights abuses in Palestine and the US.
Last year, G4S announced
that it was dropping a slate of controversial businesses, including its
Israel subsidiary and juvenile detention services in the US. The Financial Timesdescribed the move as an attempt by G4S to distance itself from “reputationally damaging work.”
But campaigners around the world vowed to maintain pressure on the
company as long as it remains complicit in violations of Palestinian
human rights.
Students fought
South Africa’s Tshwane University of Technology announced in December
that it will respect the call for the boycott of Israeli institutions
complicit in the violation and denial of Palestinian rights.
“As a progressive university in a democratic South Africa, we want to
affirm that TUT will not sign any agreements or enter into scientific
partnerships with any Israeli organization or institution until such
time that Israel ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory,”
the university stated, citing a decision taken by its governing council
in November.
And college students across the US continued to mobilize for
Palestinian rights despite increasing repression by administrations and
outside Israel lobby groups.
Divestment resolutions were passed at Tufts University in Boston, the University of Michigan, California State University - Long Beach and at De Anza Community College in California.
A resolution passed by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted unanimously
to back a broad-based resolution calling on the university to drop its
ties to companies that profit from mass incarceration, theft of
indigenous land, police violence, the US-Mexico border wall, economic
injustices against people of color and Israel’s human rights abuses in
Palestine.
In New York, students at Fordham University brought violations of their rights to organize and assemble to court, challenging the decision by an administrator to ban Students for Justice in Palestine.
And in the UK, the annual, global Israeli Apartheid Week – a series of events meant to raise awareness of Israel’s policies of apartheid – took place on more than 30 university campuses across the country despite a government backed campaign of repression.
Anti-BDS legislation was challenged
Two federal lawsuits were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
which challenge the basic constitutionality of state and federal anti-BDS laws.
Israel lobby groups have accelerated their promotion of legislation
aimed at chilling free speech and blacklisting advocates for Palestinian
rights. By December, 23 states passed anti-BDS laws.
There is also a bill pending in Congress – the Israel Anti-Boycott Act
– that could impose large fines and long prison sentences on companies
and their personnel if they are deemed to be complying with a boycott on
Israel or its settlements called for by an international organization.
A lawsuit was filed against the state of Kansas
in October on behalf of a public high school math teacher, Esther
Koontz, who participates in the consumer boycott of Israeli goods.
Koontz is a member of the Mennonite Church USA, which passed a resolution in July in support of divestment from companies that profit from violations of Palestinian rights.
Another lawsuit was filed against the state of Arizona
in December on behalf of an attorney who contracts with the government
to provide legal advice to incarcerated persons, according to the ACLU.
He participates in the boycott of Israel.
But in Oregon, three separate bills impugning the BDS movement failed to get a hearing, following sustained pressure by human rights activists and faith leaders across the state.
The bills were backed by Jewish communal groups that organize nationwide efforts to combat the movement for Palestinian rights.
Activists said that the failure of the bills should encourage
campaigners fighting back against similar anti-BDS measures in state
legislatures and the US Congress.
