International boycott Israeli goods (BIG) day
Layla - Dublin | 10.05.2002 16:17
Saturday May 11 is International Boycott Israeli Goods (BIG) day. This is a global initiative, which aims to bring pressure on the Israeli government to 1)end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem 2)stop its human rights violations and 3)comply with UN resolutions
Saturday May 11 is International Boycott Israeli Goods (BIG) day. This is a global initiative, which aims to bring pressure on the Israeli government to 1)end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem 2)stop its human rights violations and 3)comply with UN resolutions. We aim to bring awareness to the consumer that the choice of goods purchased can make a difference as it did to South Africa. By boycotting Israeli products and leisure tourism we are also letting the besieged Palestinian people know that they are not forgotten.
As well as the Boycott of Israeli goods and services, the Campaign aims to persuade businesses to stop trading with Israel and to lobby for an end to European Union and national trade agreements with Israel.
The fact is that money talks. Businesses will abandon their support of Israel if their economic interests are threatened. These boycott campaigns will continue to grow until Israel withdraws from the occupied territories, respects human rights, and obeys International law.
THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY
In addition to their economic effects, activists can and have used boycotts and divestment campaigns as educational tools. We must educate universities, corporations, and consumers about the support we provide Israeli aggression by our purchases and investments. Reports from activists have been encouraging and are similar to the early successes that grew quickly into the pressure on South Africa that ended Apartheid. Let us do for the Palestinians what the world did for the South Africans.
TAKE IT FROM THE SOUTH AFRICANS
To mark the UN anti-racism conference in Durban, the South Africa Palestine Solidarity Committee recently issued a statement, which said:
"We, South Africans who have lived through apartheid cannot be silent as another entire people are treated as non-human beings; people without rights or human dignity and facing daily humiliation.
"We cannot permit a ruthless state to use military jets, helicopter gun ships and tanks on civilians. We cannot accept state assassinations of activists, the torture of political prisoners, the murder of children and collective punishment…
"Israel is, simply, an Apartheid state… We support the demand to isolate Apartheid Israel, the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees and the dismantling of racist settlements.
"We pledge ourselves to be part of a new International Anti-Apartheid movement against Israel".
WHY BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS?
Israel has been accused of war crimes such as unlawful executions, torture and indiscriminate use of force against civilians. Both during this current Intifada (uprising) and prior to it, Israeli soldiers, military and political commanders, and Israeli settlers, have committed serious breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under Article 147.
Article 147 of the Geneva Convention IV 1949 ("Convention"), provides that:
"Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment,…willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person,…willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
Israel has been accused of the following breaches of the above Geneva Convention:
-Extra judicial executions
-Use of innocent civilians as human shields
-Willfully causing great suffering or serious
-injury to body or health
-Torture or inhuman treatment
-Unlawful transfer or confinement of protected persons
-Collective punishments
Evidence of Israel’s inhumane treatment of civilians is widely documented in the form of testimonies from Palestinians and other nationals, photographs and videos. On October 19 2001, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) adopted a resolution condemning Israel's "disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force" against Palestinian civilians as clashes continued in the Middle East. In this fifth emergency session of the UNHRC, the Commission accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This resolution was passed within two weeks of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1322 (October 7 2001) and an October 20 General Assembly resolution, both of which condemned the "excessive use of force" by Israel, although Israel was not specifically named in 1322.
According to an article in the Irish Times on May 4 2002, “the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs. Mary Robinson, urged Israeli authorities yesterday to seriously consider a ‘credible’ report by Human Rights Watch that its soldiers committed war crimes in the Jenin refugee camp. Human Rights Watch said: ‘Many of the civilians were killed wilfully or unlawfully’ and the Israeli army ‘used Palestinian civilians as human shields and used indiscriminate and excessive force during the operation.’”
We call for mass consumer action, along the lines of the boycott of South African produce during the anti-apartheid campaign. By joining this boycott individuals and organizations can take concrete steps to stand up against the gross human rights violations by the Israeli State.
We call for an immediate, unconditional lifting of the siege of the occupied territories, an end to the illegal occupation, and the implementation of UN resolutions and international humanitarian law in relation to the Palestinian people.
Our message to any business in Ireland supporting Israeli goods is this:
We want to make you aware that a boycott is being organized in Ireland against Israeli products and other exports – including holidays. This boycott is in response to the intolerable policies the Israeli government is following in regards to the Palestinians and specifically, the recent West Bank incursions. Israel’s refusal to allow a UN investigation team into the Jenin refugee camp is particularly disturbing.
If you do not agree with Israel’s policies, then let your government know that Israel has fallen from grace in the eyes of the world and its actions have to end. The threat of danger to the state of Israel is not from the Arab populace but from the policies of the Israeli government itself.
If you are in agreement with Israel’s policies, we can only ask you to think about what is taking place in Palestine, now apparent to the world, after so many years of being hidden. Many Israeli citizens probably find it hard to face up to the atrocities that their nation is committing. It will be difficult to break with this thinking, but every nation on earth that has committed atrocities has felt the same way. To break with this thinking will require reason, perspective, wisdom and compassion – for all of humanity.
We have no desire to cause harm to your business but in light of Israel’s refusal to allow a UN investigating team into the Palestinian territories, and before that, a UN observation force, it is obvious that Israel has something to hide. We, the people, cannot stand by and let the atrocities continue unchecked.
A spokesperson from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) said:
"There have been strong calls to impose trade sanctions on Israel from members of the Irish government. A recent poll revealed that 60% of Irish people supported economic sanctions against Israel. Boycotts are a fine Irish tradition, that were employed to great effect in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. It is a way in which people can take individual actions that send a strong moral message with economic consequences."
For more details please contact the IPSC office on 01 677 0253 or
087 743 5297.
As well as the Boycott of Israeli goods and services, the Campaign aims to persuade businesses to stop trading with Israel and to lobby for an end to European Union and national trade agreements with Israel.
The fact is that money talks. Businesses will abandon their support of Israel if their economic interests are threatened. These boycott campaigns will continue to grow until Israel withdraws from the occupied territories, respects human rights, and obeys International law.
THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY
In addition to their economic effects, activists can and have used boycotts and divestment campaigns as educational tools. We must educate universities, corporations, and consumers about the support we provide Israeli aggression by our purchases and investments. Reports from activists have been encouraging and are similar to the early successes that grew quickly into the pressure on South Africa that ended Apartheid. Let us do for the Palestinians what the world did for the South Africans.
TAKE IT FROM THE SOUTH AFRICANS
To mark the UN anti-racism conference in Durban, the South Africa Palestine Solidarity Committee recently issued a statement, which said:
"We, South Africans who have lived through apartheid cannot be silent as another entire people are treated as non-human beings; people without rights or human dignity and facing daily humiliation.
"We cannot permit a ruthless state to use military jets, helicopter gun ships and tanks on civilians. We cannot accept state assassinations of activists, the torture of political prisoners, the murder of children and collective punishment…
"Israel is, simply, an Apartheid state… We support the demand to isolate Apartheid Israel, the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees and the dismantling of racist settlements.
"We pledge ourselves to be part of a new International Anti-Apartheid movement against Israel".
WHY BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS?
Israel has been accused of war crimes such as unlawful executions, torture and indiscriminate use of force against civilians. Both during this current Intifada (uprising) and prior to it, Israeli soldiers, military and political commanders, and Israeli settlers, have committed serious breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under Article 147.
Article 147 of the Geneva Convention IV 1949 ("Convention"), provides that:
"Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment,…willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person,…willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
Israel has been accused of the following breaches of the above Geneva Convention:
-Extra judicial executions
-Use of innocent civilians as human shields
-Willfully causing great suffering or serious
-injury to body or health
-Torture or inhuman treatment
-Unlawful transfer or confinement of protected persons
-Collective punishments
Evidence of Israel’s inhumane treatment of civilians is widely documented in the form of testimonies from Palestinians and other nationals, photographs and videos. On October 19 2001, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) adopted a resolution condemning Israel's "disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force" against Palestinian civilians as clashes continued in the Middle East. In this fifth emergency session of the UNHRC, the Commission accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This resolution was passed within two weeks of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1322 (October 7 2001) and an October 20 General Assembly resolution, both of which condemned the "excessive use of force" by Israel, although Israel was not specifically named in 1322.
According to an article in the Irish Times on May 4 2002, “the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs. Mary Robinson, urged Israeli authorities yesterday to seriously consider a ‘credible’ report by Human Rights Watch that its soldiers committed war crimes in the Jenin refugee camp. Human Rights Watch said: ‘Many of the civilians were killed wilfully or unlawfully’ and the Israeli army ‘used Palestinian civilians as human shields and used indiscriminate and excessive force during the operation.’”
We call for mass consumer action, along the lines of the boycott of South African produce during the anti-apartheid campaign. By joining this boycott individuals and organizations can take concrete steps to stand up against the gross human rights violations by the Israeli State.
We call for an immediate, unconditional lifting of the siege of the occupied territories, an end to the illegal occupation, and the implementation of UN resolutions and international humanitarian law in relation to the Palestinian people.
Our message to any business in Ireland supporting Israeli goods is this:
We want to make you aware that a boycott is being organized in Ireland against Israeli products and other exports – including holidays. This boycott is in response to the intolerable policies the Israeli government is following in regards to the Palestinians and specifically, the recent West Bank incursions. Israel’s refusal to allow a UN investigation team into the Jenin refugee camp is particularly disturbing.
If you do not agree with Israel’s policies, then let your government know that Israel has fallen from grace in the eyes of the world and its actions have to end. The threat of danger to the state of Israel is not from the Arab populace but from the policies of the Israeli government itself.
If you are in agreement with Israel’s policies, we can only ask you to think about what is taking place in Palestine, now apparent to the world, after so many years of being hidden. Many Israeli citizens probably find it hard to face up to the atrocities that their nation is committing. It will be difficult to break with this thinking, but every nation on earth that has committed atrocities has felt the same way. To break with this thinking will require reason, perspective, wisdom and compassion – for all of humanity.
We have no desire to cause harm to your business but in light of Israel’s refusal to allow a UN investigating team into the Palestinian territories, and before that, a UN observation force, it is obvious that Israel has something to hide. We, the people, cannot stand by and let the atrocities continue unchecked.
A spokesperson from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) said:
"There have been strong calls to impose trade sanctions on Israel from members of the Irish government. A recent poll revealed that 60% of Irish people supported economic sanctions against Israel. Boycotts are a fine Irish tradition, that were employed to great effect in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. It is a way in which people can take individual actions that send a strong moral message with economic consequences."
For more details please contact the IPSC office on 01 677 0253 or
087 743 5297.
Layla - Dublin
Homepage:
http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=4285
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
International Boycott of Israel News
10.05.2002 19:20
The following site has updates...
Dr
"Israeli" - or do you mean "Jewish"?
10.05.2002 19:56
And if this is a boycott against Israel : why do so many of the protest orgaganised as part of this campaign (in Britain anyway) focus on the store Marks & Spencer ?
marks & sparks doesn't have ANYTHING to do with israel
---- it's owners/founders are jewish though.--------
what does protesting outside a supposedly "jewish" store have to do with a boycott of israel? apart from, maybe that "israel" is just a code for "jewish" and in reality anti-semistism is at play here.
????
comments wanted.
Alan Questioning
Marks and Sparks
10.05.2002 20:28
Marks and Spencers don't have 'anything' to do with Israel?...well I'm afraid they do in a BIG way...
HISTORICAL ZIONIST FOUNDATIONS
Marks & Spencer (M&S) was founded in 1884 by a Russian Jewish refugee Michael Marks. Since then, the UK-based firm has been linked inextricably to Zionism.
When he became chairman in 1916, Simon Marks made a number of commercial changes. But his greatest brain wave was to take on his boyhood friend Israel Sieff as company director. The Marks-Sieff partnership went beyond business, into Zionist activity. Sieff had supported Zionism since meeting Chaim Weizmann in 1913. Together with Weizmann, Marks and Sieff helped set in motion the train of events that culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The following year Israel Sieff headed a Zionist commission, and then served as Weizmann's secretary at the Versailles Conference. Sieff's wife (and Simon's sister) Rebecca helped found WIZO, the Women's Zionist Organization, in 1920, and ran it for 20 years with Vera Weizmann. And the Daniel Sieff Institute, set up in memory of his son who had died, served as the base when the Weizmann Institute of Science was set up in 1948 (extract from Lawrence Joffe, 'End of a Jewish Saint', Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000)
Indeed, in a book on M&S, Lord Marcus Sieff - long time Chairman of M&S - wrote that one of the fundamental objectives of M&S is to aid the economic development of Israel (Management: The Marks & Spencer Way, Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1990).
CONTINUING LINKS WITH ISRAEL
Barry Kosmin of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research thus recalls the firm's once legendary bonds to the Jewish community: "M&S was prominent, even essential, to Anglo-Jewry from the 1960s through to the 1980s ... partly because of its strong historical links with Zionism; and partly for its success in getting Israeli goods to the British marketplace..." (cited in Lawrence Joffe, 'End of a Jewish Saint', Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000)
These firm bonds to the Zionist regime, based on the fundamental objective of aiding the economic development of Israel (Lord Marcus Sieff), have continued unimpeded into recent times.
ONGOING SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
Lawrence Joffe writes for the Jerusalem Report, that "Still, M&S continues its 'special relationship' with Israel at the shop floor level. It was M&S which introduced Israeli avocados to Britain. Scientifically bred crustacea from Israel fill the famous M&S prawn with mayonnaise sandwich, the UK's top seller in the late 90s. M&S still relies heavily on Israeli manufacturers - suits from Polgat, underwear from Delta Galil and lingerie from Triumph. Richard Sheldon, head of M&S operations in Israel, says the firm's Israeli purchases amounted to $233 million last year. And M&S is maintaining its Israeli connection: This summer it's due to open up five outlets, selling men's underwear and lingerie, in Golf Kitan stores around Israel, two years after it closed down a cooperative retailing venture with the Hamashbir department store chain." (Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000)
Thus, as far as trade with Israel is concerned, M&S supports Israel with approximately $233 million in trade every year (Jerusalem Report, 5 June 2000) Indeed, according to one report, M&S sales of Israeli imports last year amounted to £240 million (Jewish Chronicle, 8 December 2000). Other reports have given even higher figures. For instance, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) in New York reports: "The clothier bought about $325 million worth of merchandise from Israel last year. That figure includes products produced in Jordan and exported via Israel." (Richard Allen Greene, 'British store shrugs off boycott threat from Muslims', JTA, 13 December 2000)
The British Israel Chamber of Commerce, another Zionist trade organisation with overlapping membership, has held meetings at the M&S store in Baker Street (Jewish Chronicle 20 October 2000). So much does Israel appreciate the firm's support that it was included among several British businesses honoured in London by the Israeli Ambassador to England for their commercial support of Israel. The JTA reported that "The Israeli ambassador to England recently honored Marks & Spencer for the company's continued support of Israel." (JTA, 13 December 2000. Also see Jewish Chronicle, 24 November)
Additionally, a spokeswoman for M&S stated that "We are a global player and we support many countries, including Israel." She emphasised, moreover, that: "We have a history and a background with Israel that we are very proud of." (JTA, 13 December 2000) Indeed, more recently another M&S spokesperson explicitly confirmed that "We are as close to Israel as we have ever been" (Jewish Chronicle, 22 December 2000). This is highly disconcerting, considering the fact admitted by former M&S Chairman Lord Marcus Sieff, that one of the aims of M&S is to aid the economic development of Israel (Management: The Marks & Spencer Way, Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1990).
In other words, M&S' support of the Zionist regime remains as strong as it ever was. It is thus clear that M&S is, if not the leading, one of the leading commercial supporters of Israel in Britain.
Dr
Boycott the U.S. also!
11.05.2002 17:58
BOYCOTT U.S.MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS!
BOYCOTT ISRAEL!
STOP NYC Inc.
Homepage:
http://www.inminds.co.uk/