EDITOR: Shenanigans in Cairo – a little bird has whispered in my ear…
As aging President Mubarak, recently taken with installing his son (known in Egypt as the ‘Pharaoh-in-waiting’) Gamal as his political heir, has flown to Washington on the orders of the boss, and taken part in the rerun of the old comedy show, “Springtime of Peacetalks in Washington”, revived after many years, then it may be less than surprising that the rather ascerbic Al Ahram Weekly was pulled out of the ether and its website is missing this week’s edition – no doubt due to the many articles which attacked or criticised the ‘talks about talks’, as well as the complicit partners in this charade, in the service of Israel and the US President. We mustn’t upset the boss and paymaster, after all!
So it is with regret that I am writing this, unable to bring you the current thinking in Egypt on this topic, as the press throttling goes on, like so many times before!
Anti-Israel economic boycotts are gaining speed: Haaretz
The sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge. Boycotts by governments gives a boost to boycotts by non-government bodies around the world.
By Nehemia Shtrasler
The entire week was marked by boycotts. It began with a few dozen theater people boycotting the new culture center in Ariel, and continued with a group of authors and artists publishing a statement of support on behalf of those theater people. Then a group of 150 lecturers from various universities announced they would not teach at Ariel College or take part in any cultural events in the territories. Naturally, all that spurred a flurry of responses, including threats of counter-sanctions.
That was all at the local level. There’s another boycott, an international one, that’s gaining momentum – an economic boycott. Last week the Chilean parliament decided to adopt the boycott of Israeli products made in the settlements, at the behest of the Palestinian Authority, which imposed a boycott on such products several months ago.
In September 2009, Norway’s finance minister announced that a major government pension fund was selling its shares in Elbit Systems because of that company’s role in building the separation fence. In March, a major Swedish investment fund said it would eschew Elbit Systems shares on the same grounds. Last month the Norwegian pension fund announced that it was selling its holdings in Africa Israel and in its subsidiary Danya Cebus because of their involvement in constructing settlements in the occupied territories.
The sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge. Boycotts by governments gives a boost to boycotts by non-government bodies around the world.
New world
Human-rights organizations in Europe are essentially running campaigns to boycott Israeli products. They are demonstrating at supermarkets, brandishing signs against Israeli goods. Worker organizations, with millions of members, send circulars to their people calling on them to forgo Israeli products.
I talked with farmers who say there are retail chains in Europe no longer prepared to buy Israeli products. The same is true for a chain in Washington.
The world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem.
Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. They have a new ally: Islamic organizations that have strengthened greatly throughout Europe in the past two decades. The upshot is a red and green alliance with a significant power base. The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side has money. Their union is what led to the success of the Turkish flotilla.
They note that boycott is an especially effective weapon against Israel because Israel is a small country, dependent on exports and imports. They also point to the success of the economic boycott against the apartheid regime of South Africa.
The anti-Israel tide rose right after Operation Cast Lead, as the world watched Israel pound Gaza with bombs on live television. No public-relations machine in the world could explain the deaths of hundreds of children, the destruction of neighborhoods and the grinding poverty afflicting a people under curfew for years. They weren’t even allowed to bring in screws to build school desks. Then came the flotilla, complete with prominent peace activists, which ended in nine deaths, adding fuel to the fire.
But underlying the anger against Israel lies disappointment. Since the establishment of the state, and before, we demanded special terms of the world. We played on their feelings of guilt, for standing idle while six million Jews were murdered.
David Ben-Gurion called us a light unto the nations and we stood tall and said, we, little David, would stand strong and righteous against the great evil Goliath.
The world appreciated that message and even, according to the foreign press, enabled us to develop the atom bomb in order to prevent a second Holocaust.
But then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor, a darkness on the nations. And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott.
EDITOR: BDS good news!
The BDS campaign in Scotland is really taking off! Scotland was one of those places where the campaign hit the ground running; that may well be related to the English UK collaboration with Zionist policies and collusion over war-mongering in the Middle East, but it may well be closely related to the hardly-won struggle for devolution as well, and the higher value placed in Scotland on human and political rights, as well as political solidarity with other nations under the heel of colonial occupation and control.
Small shops Israel boycott goes nation-wide in Scotland: Acottish PSC
Anti-Israel boycott by Muslim shops goes Scotland-wide
by Jasper Hamill, Sunday Herald, 5 Sept 2010
Khalid Bashir, owner of the Red Sea Food Store in Nicholson Square, Edinburgh, is already boycotting Israeli goods and has agreed to display a poster. He said: “People ask about it all the time, but I am able to tell them I have been boycotting Israel for years. It should be easier now that I can display this poster.”
In Dundee, protesters targeted shops in the city centre. In Kirkcaldy, the three largest Muslim-owned shops all agreed to take part in the boycott. Shops in Glasgow’s West End are taking part; in Aberdeen, campaigners are preparing to talk to shops in the coming days.
A nationwide boycott of Israeli goods is being launched across Scotland this weekend as activists target Muslim-owned shops in an attempt to stop them selling produce from the Jewish state.
The boycott, which started in the south side of Glasgow last weekend, was deemed so successful that campaigners decided to expand it. Campaigners from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) are now targeting shops run by Muslims in the rest of Glasgow and in Fife, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.
In Glasgow, the protesters asked shop owners to take Israeli goods off their shelves and warned they would “name and shame” any store that did not do so. The SPSC says every shop it approached on the south side of the city backed the boycott.
However, prominent figures in the Jewish community warn that the “divisive” tactics of campaigners risked driving a wedge between communities instead of fostering dialogue.
Mick Napier, chairman of the SPSC, oversaw a “clean sweep” of all Muslim-owned shops near the Nicholson Street mosque in Edinburgh on Friday. About 40 protesters went door to door, asking store owners to support the campaign.
“All the shops we visited backed the boycott and are now displaying posters to that effect,” he said. “The support we received from customers and passers-by was overwhelming.”
He added: “It’s been 100% successful. We often met with a response immediately, with people saying they would not dream of stocking Israeli goods. The pressure we bring to bear is moral. We use the threat of publicity. There is no threat of strong-arming.
“The reality is that Israel makes it impossible for Palestinian farmers to export almost anything. Palestinians were kicked off their land to make way for the illegal settlements, but the good news is that the boycott is kicking back. It’s great to see small shops in Scotland standing up for human rights.”
Napier also added that every shop visited in Dundee backed the boycott. Shopkeepers backing the boycott have put up a poster in their stores saying: “This shop supports the Palestinians. No Israeli produce sold here.”
Khalid Bashir, owner of the Red Sea Food Store in Nicholson Square, Edinburgh, is already boycotting Israeli goods and has agreed to display a poster. He said: “People ask about it all the time, but I am able to tell them I have been boycotting Israel for years. It should be easier now that I can display this poster.”
In Dundee, protesters targeted shops in the city centre. In Kirkcaldy, the three largest Muslim-owned shops all agreed to take part in the boycott. Shops in Glasgow’s West End are taking part; in Aberdeen, campaigners are preparing to talk to shops in the coming days.
Today, members of all faiths will meet to break the Ramadan fast at the Woodfarm Educational Trust in East Renfrewshire.
Dianna Wolfson, a prominent member of Glasgow’s Jewish community and a former convener of the Interfaith Council, which promotes dialogue between religions, will be attending. She warned that boycotts could derail the relations between communities.
She said: “There are people on both sides who would like to see peaceful settlements. This boycotting is not helpful. More needs to be done to explore how we can have peace with each other, rather than emphasising the warring aspect and divisive aspect of it.”
She added: “If people of different faiths were getting to know each other, they would be more likely to listen and hear the other side of the argument … to emphasis what is good on both sides, and come together.”
Wolfson said she would not consider boycotting goods from a country “that didn’t like Israel. It’s just not my thinking and I find it hurtful.”
Original article at the Sunday Herald, 5 Sept 2010
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Scottish PSC adds:
Boycott is a peaceful, democratic method to make our feelings known at a time when the Government ande Labour opposition are complicit in Israeli crimes and support the charade of the ‘peace process’ at the same time Gaza is under siege, the illegal apartheid Wall remains in place.
The use of boycott to secure Palestinian human rights is the most effective way for British citizens to oppose the British Government’s political, diplomatic, economic and military support of Israel.
Dianna Woolfson of SCoJeC (Scottish Council of Jewish Communities) has a brazen cheek to suggest that peaceful boycott will damage community relations in Scotland when SCoJeC works – in vain – to implicate all Scottish Jews in Israel’s most revolting crimes. The Jewish Chronicle reported recently that “Glasgow Jewish Representative Council president, Edward Isaacs led a four person delegation” to oppose “a motion passed by the council condemning the Israeli action against the flotilla to Gaza, in which nine Turkish activists died.”
SPSC has made clear on earlier occasions that interfaith discussions are irrelevant to the struggle for Palestinian freedom and those that compromise on human rights are tainted.
There is no such thing for decent people as collective guilt; each of us is responsible for our own actions. Jews are no more responsible as a group for Israeli crimes than British citizens as a whole are responsible for the violent invasions and mass killings of Iraqis and Afghans by the British Army (the current as well as the earlier ones).
Equally, we all have a duty to speak out against the crimes of those – the British and Israeli governments – who claim our support for those crimes.
We note the retreat by SCoJeC from its knee-jerk previous failed attempts to smear Scottish PSC as ‘anti-Semitic’ but we condemn this organisation’s claims that Scottish Jews as a whole have an interest in supporting Israel’s mounting criminality.
In a faint echo of the deceit underpinning the so-called “peace process”, Dianna Woolfson claims that “More needs to be done to explore how we can have peace with each other”. But we don’t need to explore anything; he problem is that SCoJeC claims on the one hand to be a representative Jewish community organisation while, on the other hand, it supports Israeli crimes such as the Mavi Marmara massacre.
Stop supporting theft of land, colonisation, murder and kidnapping of Palestinians who resist and embrace human rights equal to your own for those same Palestinians. Then there can be peace in that land brutalised by the Zionism of Liebermann and Netanyahu.
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 5 September 2010
Clinton warns of ‘last chance’ for Mid-East peace talks: BBC
Hillary Clinton said Mr Netanyahu and Mr Abbas “can actually do this”
The US secretary of state has said the current round of Mid-East peace talks may be “the last chance for a very long time” to resolve the conflict.
In a joint interview with Israeli and Palestinian media, Hillary Clinton said failure would embolden “the forces of destruction” on both sides.
Time was “not on the side” of Israeli and Palestinian hopes, she added.
Mrs Clinton spoke after Israeli and Palestinian leaders began their first direct peace talks in nearly two years.
Continue reading the main story
Israel and the Palestinians
Mrs Clinton acknowledged deep scepticism about the talks on both sides but said she was “absolutely convinced” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could succeed.
“It’s clear to me that the forces of growth and positive energy are in a conflict with the forces of destruction and negativity,” she said.
Mrs Clinton’s remarks came a day after the US Middle East peace envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, described the initial talks as “constructive”.
President Barack Obama, who opened the negotiations on Wednesday with bilateral meetings with Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu and a dinner for them and the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, has said the goal is a permanent settlement that ends the Israeli occupation of territory captured in 1967, and an independent, democratic Palestinian state existing peacefully beside Israel.