Jews plan Israel's boycott

[ahsanshaheen]

The JC has revealed plans developed by Jews For Justice For Palestinians (JFJFP) to cause maximum damage to Israel by extending boycotts.

At the anti-Israel organisation’s recent annual meeting, activists discussed a survey of its members which showed clear support for a comprehensive boycott. More than 400 JFJFP activists responded to the survey.

The meeting considered three options, based on the survey results: “1. That we maintain our present position; 2. That we will consider, on a case-by-case basis, smart boycotts against the occupation; 3. That we will consider, on a case-by-case basis, smart boycotts but
not restricted to the occupation.”

The meeting voted for the third option, which would enable JFJFP to initiate or support boycotts of all Israeli goods and services.

In a letter sent to members on Monday, after the meeting, the executive recommends option two, which would widen the group’s activities beyond its current focus on the settlements to taking in everything connected to what it terms the “occupation”.

This would mean boycotting companies, goods and services that could be shown to be connected directly to the Occupied Territories. That would include targeting those who refuse to say whether or not they worked in the Occupied Territories.

In explaining the detail of this option, the JFJFP executive say: “By targeting Israel’s policy of colonisation, this also avoids the accusation — important for an organisation like JFJFP — of being anti-Israel.”

Recommending option two, the executive say it is, among other things, best “for minimising the inevitable misrepresentation of our position in such a way as to make work directed at those who belong to Jewish communal organisations much harder than it is at present”.

The survey shows that the executive is worried about the impact of adopting a wider boycott strategy on the group’s reputation among Jews. Question two asks: “Do you think adopting a broader boycott position would make JFJFP more, or less, attractive to Jews in Britain who take issue with Israeli policy but have not chosen to express that concern by becoming a JFJFP signatory?”

Two-hundred and forty seven out of the 417 respondents said they thought JFJFP would be much less attractive. Another 96 stayed neutral.

JFJFP currently supports a ban on the importation of all settlement produce and claims it was “a very significant contributor to the process whereby the UK government strongly objected to the mislabelling of goods produced in the occupied Palestinian territories”.

It also supports the boycott of companies such as Caterpillar, which it says is “involved in home demolitions and the destruction of, for example, olive groves in order to build the barrier”.

It backs the boycott of companies involved in supporting settlements and demands “an end to the sale of arms to Israel and any purchase of arms or security equipment from Israel”.

The meeting also included a series of workshops exploring how anti-Israel activists should respond to various situations, using recent events as the basis for discussion.

These included the Zionist Federation’s hire of the Bloomsbury Theatre, the Edinburgh Film Festival’s acceptance of Israeli sponsorship and the announcement of a Leonard Cohen concert in Israel.

 

[muse]

To my understanding of events, many Pakistanis and Israelis share the sense that what was once so infused with noble intent, is today' it's mockery - Pakistanis forever wonder, how did they allow it happen to Jinnah's Pakistan, they are not alone in their soul searching:



Our responsibility
Uri Avnery



I have received a distressing letter that Dov Yermiya recently sent to a limited number of friends. He paints the Israeli reality in dark — but true — colours, and ends by cutting his ties with it.

“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has ploughed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel, declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.”

Since I first met Dov, some fifty years ago, I have always considered him the salt of the earth. He were born in a village, the son of a farmer, was a fighter in the 1948 war and later a Colonel in the army, a modest man, a moral person in every fibre.

In the first Lebanon War, he exposed the atrocities committed against the Palestinian refugees in the Tyre-Sidon area, and his courageous report shocked me no less than those of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He did not hesitate to break the silence, as the “Breaking the Silence” youngsters are doing now, knowing full well that his peers in the officers’ corps would excommunicate him.

He is a man of my heart, Dov. That is why his words distress me so much.

I think it important to share the statement of a man of his calibre with those in our camp who spend sleepless nights worrying about the situation of our state.

Most of his fierce accusations concern Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. “And thus, for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!

“The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labour, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.

“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.”

But I believe that the abysmal despair echoed in his words has other roots, too. It is a feeling that troubles the heart of many of our generation, the feeling that “they have stolen our state”, that there is no resemblance between the state which we dreamed of and fought for and the thing that has taken its place.

Yes, we did create a state. As the old song goes: “On the battlefield, a town is now standing”. We have brought millions of people to this country. From a Hebrew community of 650 thousand we have grown into a population of 7.5 million. A fourth and fifth generation speaks Hebrew as their mother tongue. Our economy is large and solid, even in these times of crisis. In several fields we are in the first rank of human endeavour.

But is this the society, is this the state, which we saw in our mind’s eye on the day it was set up? Is this the army that we swore allegiance to on the day it was founded?

Did we dream of this corrupt society, a society without compassion, where a handful of the very rich live off the fat of the land, with a large band of politicians and media people and other lackeys grovelling in the dust at their feet?

Did we dream of a state that is an isolated and shunned ghetto in the region, lording it over an oppressed Palestinian ghetto-within-a-ghetto?

There were days when we could stand up anywhere in the world and proudly declare “I am an Israeli”. No one can do that now. The name of Israel has become mud. Since the Gaza War, in which our army poured molten lead onto men, women and children, many Israelis avoid speaking Hebrew in the streets of foreign cities and the IDF has ordered the faces of some of its officers — those whose rank equals yours — be obscured in pictures published in the media.

Why did this happen? When did this happen?

On one thing I agree with Dov entirely: that the fatal step was taken then, on the morrow of that war, when we had the choice between the shining gold of peace and the base metal of annexation, and stretched our hands out towards the latter.

My personal conscience is clean. I am proud that I was one of the few in the country, and the sole voice in the Knesset, who proposed even during the war to turn over the occupied territories to the Palestinian people, so as to enable them to set up their state. This unique opportunity was missed, as you point out in your letter, because of the greed of the founders of the settlement movement, the champions of a Greater Israel.

From there things rolled on, as in a Greek tragedy, to where we are now, with an assorted crew of settlers, racists, nationalists, messianic zealots and ordinary fascists in charge of the state, turning the Knesset into a circus, undermining the Supreme Court, perverting the army, imposing obscurantist religious laws, handing the public treasury to unbridled tycoons, polluting the education system with a primitive nationalist indoctrination, persecuting poor asylum seekers, oppressing the national minority and planning military attacks that will wreak death and destruction on civilian populations.

This is the state that Dov detests. I have no quarrel with him about that.

But we and all the members of our generation, who were among those who created this state, bear a heavy responsibility for it. A responsibility to our offspring, to those oppressed by this state, to the entire world. From this responsibility we cannot escape.

True, 61 years ago we had another state in mind. Now, after our state has tumbled to where it is today, we must remember that other state, and remind everybody, every day, what the state should have been like, what it can be like, and not allow our vision to disappear like a dream. Let’s lend our shoulders to every effort to repair and heal!

Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist who has advocated the setting up of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He served three terms in the Israeli parliament (Knesset), and is the founder of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc)

 

[Righteous_Fire]

^ Thats two Ideological States down the Drain muse!

 

[Developereo]

Another group of jews who oppose Israel: Jews Not Zionists

 

[Durran3]

Just by reading that article you can sense the bitterness and anger coming from this World War 2 vetern. If there is anything that needs to be learned its to not turn a blind eye to the basic fundamental of why a nation comes into existence and what purpose does it serve.

The United States Constitution is poetry at its best and is one of my most favourite constitutions that clearly defines what the nation is and what it stands for. To bad it lost its track on many occasions over the past 50 years, but lets not confuse these fundamental principles with change because change can be a good thing.

 

[dabong1]

Make the jews and palestinian live together in one country as equals......no two state solution.... lets just have one democratic nation where both peoples can live in peace and freedom.

 

[pak-marine]

the title should be altered to "5 jews plan to bycott israel"

 

[COBener]

the title should be altered to "5 jews plan to bycott israel"

That's true . 99.999% of Jews are not Protesting Israel.