[News] Palestine - BDS: Upholding our Rights, Resisting the Ongoing Nakba
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon May 15 18:32:38 EDT 2017
https://bdsmovement.net/news/bds-upholding-our-rights-resisting-ongoing-nakba
BDS: Upholding our Rights, Resisting the Ongoing Nakba
May 15, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is possible…
It is possible at least sometimes…
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear.
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers
– Mahmoud Darwish
<http://www.thehypertexts.com/Mahmoud%20Darwish%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm>
May 15, 2017 marks the 69th anniversary of the1948 Nakba
<https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba>, the mass
expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Between 1947 and 1949,
Zionist paramilitaries, and subsequently Israeli forces, made 750,000
<http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/20100118141933.pdf> to one million
<http://books.google.com/books/about/The_ethnic_cleansing_of_Palestine.html?id=pFxrGQAACAAJ>
indigenous Palestinians into refugees to establish a Jewish-majority
state in Palestine.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee
(BNC <http://www.bdsmovement.net/bnc>) calls on people of conscience the
world over to further intensify BDS campaigns to end academic, cultural,
sports, military and economic links of complicity with Israel’s regime
of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid
<https://bdsmovement.net/colonialism-and-apartheid/summary>. This is the
most effective means of standing with the Palestinian people in pursuing
our inherent and UN-stipulated rights, and nonviolently resisting the
ongoing
<http://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/continuous-displacement-palestinian/>,
intensifying
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/ethnic-cleansing-everyday-reality/16691>
Nakba.
The Israeli regime today is ruthlessly pursuing the one constant
strategy of its settler-colonial project —the simultaneous pillage and
colonization of as much Palestinian land as possible and the gradual
ethnic cleansing
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-palestinian-israel-un-idUKBREA2K1JM20140321>
of as many Palestinians as practical without evoking international
sanctions.
Following in the footsteps of all previous Israeli governments, the
current far-right government, the most openly racist in Israel’s
history, is heeding the words of the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky
whowrote <http://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf> in 1923:
Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it
has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of
being colonised. [...] Zionist colonisation must either stop, or
else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that
it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that
is independent of the native population—behind an iron wall, which
the native population cannot breach.
Sixty-nine years after the systematic, premeditated uprooting and
dispossession of most of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs from the land
of Palestine at the hands of Zionist gangs and later the state of
Israel, the Nakba is not over. Israel is intent on building its “iron
wall” in Palestinian minds, not just our lands, through its sprawling
illegal settlements and concrete walls in the occupied Palestinian
territory, its genocidal siege
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562>
of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, its denial of the Palestinian
refugee’s right to return
<https://imeu.org/article/the-right-of-return-palestinian-refugees>, its
racist laws <https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771> and policies
against Palestinians inside Israel, and its escalating, violent ethnic
cleansing in Jerusalem
<https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773721>, the Jordan Valley
<http://mondoweiss.net/2013/02/ethnic-cleansing-valley/> and the Naqab
<https://www.adalah.org/uploads/Adalah-Summary-Umm-el-Hieran-Case-12-May-2015.pdf>(Negev).
It is sparing no brutality in its relentless, desperate attempts to sear
into our consciousness the futility of resistance and the vainness of hope.
The present mass hunger strike
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/palestinian-prisoners-enter-4th-week-hunger-strike-call-bds-related-solidarity-action>
by over one thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the
grassroots support that it has triggered give us hope.
The growing support for BDS among international trade unions, including
the most recent adoption by the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions
(LO)
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/norway%E2%80%99s-largest-trade-union-federation-endorses-full-boycott-israel-advance-palestinian-human>
-- representing over 910,000 workers -- of an “international economic,
cultural and academic boycott of Israel” to achieve comprehensive
Palestinian rights, gives us hope.
The fact the none of the 26 Oscar nominees
<http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.773274> offered a free,
$55,000-valued trip by the Israeli government accepted the propaganda
gift and that six out of eleven National Football League players
<https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/15/nfl-players-israel-trip-michael-bennett>
turned down a similar Israeli junket gives us hope.
The BDS movement has succeeded in sharply raising the price of corporate
complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. It has
compelled companies of the size of Orange
<http://bdsmovement.net/2016/orange-drops-israel-affiliate-13648>and
Veolia
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/bds-marks-another-victory-veolia-sells-all-israeli-operations>to
end their complicity and pushed global giant G4S
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/under-bds-pressure-g4s-ends-most-illegal-business-israel>to
begin exiting the Israeli market. Churches, city councils and thousands
around the world have pledged to boycott Hewlett Packard (HP
<https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp>) for its deep complicity in
Israel’s occupation and apartheid. This gives us and many human rights
campaigns around the world great hope.
The Barcelona
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/historic-decision-barcelona-city-council-votes-end-complicity-israeli-occupation-illegal>municipality’s
decision to end complicity with Israel’s occupation, coming on the heels
of tens of local councils in the Spanish state declaring themselves
“Israeli apartheid free zones
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/dozens-spanish-cities-declaring-themselves-free-israeli-apartheid>,”
give us hope.
The divestment by some of the largest mainline churches in the US,
including the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA
<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/us/presbyterians-debating-israeli-occupation-vote-to-divest-holdings.html>
and the United Church of Christ
<https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/united-church-of-christ-calls-for-boycott-and-divestment-from-companies-profiting-in-israels-occupation>,
from Israeli banks
<http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/israeli-banks-on-ineligible-list-for-pensions-agency>
or complicit international corporations gives us hope.
The spread of remarkably effective BDS campaigns from South Africa to
South Korea, from Egypt to Chile, and from the UK to the US gives us
real hope.
The growing intersectional coalitions
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/palestinians-welcome-movement-black-lives-platform>
that are emerging in many countries, organically re-connecting the
struggle for Palestinian rights with the diverse international struggles
for racial, economic, gender, climate and indigenous justice give us
unlimited hope.
In 1968, twenty years after the Nakba but unrelated to it, Dr.Martin
Luther King
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/31/897655/-Forget-Glenn-Remembering-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-in-his-own-words>
said, “There can be no justice without peace and there can be no peace
without justice.” For seven decades, and against all odds, Palestinians
have continued to assert our inalienable right to self-determination and
to genuine peace, which can only stem from freedom, justice and equality.
But to reach that just peace we realize that we must nourish our hope
for a dignified life with our boundless commitment to resist injustice,
resist apathy and, crucially, resist their “iron walls” of despair.
In this context, the Palestinian-led, global BDS movement with its
impressive growth
<https://bdsmovement.net/news/2016-bds-impact-round-up> and
unquestionable impact is today an indispensable component of our popular
resistance and the most promising form of international solidarity with
our struggle for rights.
No iron wall of theirs can suppress or overshadow the rising sun of our
emancipation.
/The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC
<http://bnc.createsend1.com/t/r-l-yudtlyn-l-u/>) is the largest
coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Visit www.bdsmovement.net
<http://bnc.createsend1.com/t/r-l-yudtlyn-l-o/> and follow @BDSmovement
<https://twitter.com/BDSmovement>/
--
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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