John Minto, the famous campaigner against Apartheid South Africa, also accuses Israeli of practicing Apartheid and calls for everyone to boycott Israel, divest themselves of any Israeli investments and to sanction Israel until it bends to the movement’s demands:
The boycott campaign against Israeli apartheid heats up – Sodastream and the Batsheva Dance Company
By John Minto , February 2, 2014
The parting of the ways between actor Scarlett Johansson and aid agency OXFAM was inevitable.
The parting of the ways between actor Scarlett Johansson and aid agency OXFAM was inevitable.
Johansson is advertising Sodastream which operates a factory in a Jewish-only settlement on occupied Palestinian land. Under international law such production is illegal and Johansson should be supporting a boycott of Sodastream but she’s doing the opposite – for money of course.
Here in New Zealand a boycott campaign of Sodastream is just getting underway and it’ll be a big job because major retailers like Harvey Norman, the Warehouse, Farmers, Foodtown, Countdown, Pak n Save, New World, Briscoes, Noel Leeming and Mitre 10 are among the companies which sell these boycott-breaking contraptions.
In the meantime the boycott debate is heating up further with the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company due to perform at the New Zealand Festival of the Arts in Wellington later this month.
Palestinian human rights groups have written to the government asking that visas be denied to this group because it also breaches the international boycott campaign called by Palestinian groups.
No-one’s holding their breath that our obsequious Foreign Minister Murray McCully will step in despite the United Nations General Assembly proclaiming 2014 “the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People so a protest is being organised for the Batsheva performances. (If you are in Auckland then come down in the bus to Wellington for the 22nd February protest)
Israel is subject to an international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because of its unashamedly racist treatment of its Arab-Israeli citizens (See www.adalah.org/eng/ for the more than 50 laws which discriminate against Arab-Israelis); the on-going construction of illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land; its brutal military occupation of the West Bank Palestinian territory and its inhuman blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Even the US Department of State has criticised Israel’s system of “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens.
The BDS campaign was launched in 2005 by some 260 Palestinian civil society organisations as the best way for the international community to support the Palestinian struggle for justice and human rights.
It is similar to the calls for an international boycott of South Africa which were made by black South African organisations from the late 1950s. So for the same reason New Zealanders called for the end to rugby links with apartheid South Africa we are calling for the cutting of ties with apartheid Israel – economic, academic, cultural, political and sporting links are all in the frame.
What makes Batsheva so much worse is that it is part of the Israeli propaganda effort to deflect criticism of its appalling policies towards Palestinians.
The Dance Company is largely funded by the Israeli Ministry of Culture & Sport, the City of Tel Aviv and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs who praise the troupe as “ambassadors of Israeli culture”. The company’s participation in the NZ Arts Festival is also partially sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.
We stood alongside black South Africans in the struggle against South African apartheid – now it’s time to stand beside Palestinians in the struggle against Israeli apartheid.
Source: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/02/the-boycott-campaign-against-israeli-apartheid-heats-up-sodastream-and-the-batsheva-dance-company/#comment-185608
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