Stand by George Galloway’s call for a boycott of Israel – let’s make our entire country an “Israel-free zone”!
As millions of people around the world demonstrated in support of Palestine last Saturday, and as millions more began to wake up to the all-too-clear reality of the horrific slaughter being perpetrated in Gaza by the fascistic zionists thugs of Israel, George Galloway MP quite correctly called for a boycott of all things Israeli.
In a well-reported speech, picked up by the corporate media with the intention of painting Galloway in a black light, he was reported to have declared:
“We don’t want any Israeli goods. We don’t want any Israeli services. We don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college. We don’t even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford – even if any of them had thought of doing so.
“We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel … We have declared Bradford an Israel-free zone.”
Galloway’s comments have infuriated…
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The Jewish Plan For The Middle East and Beyond
By Gilad Atzmon
Surely, what’s happening now in Iraq and Syria must serve as a final wakeup call that we have been led into a horrific situation in the Middle East by a powerful Lobby driven by the interests of one tribe and one tribe alone.
Back in 1982, Oded Yinon an Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published a document titled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’This Israeli commentator suggested that for Israel to maintain its regional superiority, it must fragment its surrounding Arab states into smaller units. The document, later labelled as ‘Yinon Plan’, implied that Arabs and Muslims killing each other in endless sectarian wars was, in effect, Israel’s insurance policy.
Of course, regardless of the Yinon Plan’s prophesies, one might still argue that this has nothing to do with Jewish lobbying, politics or institutions but is just one more Israeli strategic proposal except that it is impossible to ignore that the Neocon school of thought that pushed the English-speaking Empire into Iraq was largely a Jewish Diaspora, Zionist clan. It’s also no secret that the 2nd Gulf War was fought to serve Israeli interests – breaking into sectarian units what then seemed to be the last pocket of Arab resistance to Israel.
Similarly, it is well established that when Tony Blair decided to launch that criminal war, Lord Levy was the chief fundraiser for his Government while, in the British media, Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were busy beating the drums for war. And again, it was the exact same Jewish Lobby that was pushing for intervention in Syria, calling for the USA and NATO to fight alongside those same Jihadi forces that today threaten the last decade’s American ‘achievements’ in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Yinon’s disciples are more common than you might expect. In France, it was the infamous Jewish ‘philosopher’ Bernard Henri Levy who boasted on TV that ‘as a Jew’ campaigning for NATO intervention, he liberated Libya.
As we can see, a dedicated number of Jewish Zionist activists, commentators and intellectuals have worked relentlessly in many countries pushing for exactly the same cause – the breaking up of Arab and Muslim states into smaller, sectarian units.
But is it just the Zionists who are engaging in such tactics? Not at all.
In fact, the Jewish so-called Left serves the exact same cause, but instead of fragmenting Arabs and Muslims into Shia, Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds they strive to break them into sexually oriented identity groups (Lesbian, Queer, Gays, Heterosexual etc’)
Recently I learned from Sarah Schulman, a NY Jewish Lesbian activist that in her search for funding for a young ‘Palestinian Queer’ USA tour, she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:
“A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the Institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran…for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (Sarah Schulman -Israel/Palestine and the Queer International p. 108).
The message is clear, The Open Society Institutes (OSI) wires Soros’s money to Jordan, Palestine and then back to the USA in order to “inspire queer Arabs in Egypt and Iran (sic).”
What we see here is clear evidence of a blatant intervention by George Soros and his institute in an attempt to break Arabs and Muslims and shape their culture. So, while the right-wing Jewish Lobby pushes the Arabs into ethnic sectarian wars, their tribal counterparts within George Soros’s OSI institute, do exactly the same – attempt to break the Arab and Muslims by means of marginal and identity politics.
It is no secret that, as far as recent developments in Iraq are concerned, America, Britain and the West are totally unprepared. So surely, the time is long overdue when we must identify the forces and ideologies within Western society that are pushing us into more and more global conflicts. And all we can hope for is that America, Britain and France may think twice before they spends trillions of their tax payers’ money in following the Yinon Plan to fight ruinous, foreign wars imposed upon them by The Lobby.
The Yinon plan: “Greater Israel”, Syria, Iraq, and ISIS
By: ANON
Source: http://www.timesofpol.com/
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, also known as the Yinon Plan, is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
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BOYCOTT ISRAEL (VIDEO)
Boycott Israel: Now More Than Ever
For many decades, Israel waged genocidal war against millions of defenseless Palestinians with impunity.
Accountability is long overdue. High crimes against peace were committed. Culpable Israeli officials must be punished to the full extent of the law.
The global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for freedom, justice and equality works. Applying them with stepped up teeth more than ever is vital.
It bears repeating what other articles stressed. Israel is a lawless, racist, apartheid, rogue terror state. It must be held accountable for collectively punishing Palestinians lawlessly.
Enough is enough. After 66 years of Palestinian slaughter, mass destruction, displacement, occupation, and oppression, as well as international dismissiveness and complicity, global action more than ever is essential.
In 2004, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:
“The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure – in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s.”
“Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation.”
Israel must be held accountable. World leaders won’t do it. Grassroots movements must lead the way.
In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the Global BDS movement for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights” for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and diaspora Palestinian refugees.
Since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions condemned Israel’s colonial occupation, its decades of discriminatory policies, illegal land seizures and settlements, international law violations, as well as oppression of a civilian population to no avail.
Gaza is besieged. Palestine remains occupied. Its people continue to suffer. Their human rights are denied. These abuses no longer can be tolerated.
Growing numbers of people of conscience “call upon international civil society organizations and (supporters everywhere) to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to (apartheid) South Africa.”
“Pressure is needed for “embargoes and sanctions…for the sake of justice and genuine peace.”
Nonviolent punitive measures should continue until Israel:
- recognizes Palestinian rights to self-determination;
- respects international laws, norms and standards;
- ends its illegal occupation unconditionally;
- ends Gaza’s siege unconditionally;
- ends illegal aggression and other hostilities in all forms;
- dismantles its Separation Wall;
- frees all Palestinian political prisoners unconditionally;
- grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews;
- end its racist apartheid system;
- complies with UN resolution 194 affirming the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homes and property or be fully compensated for loss or damage if they prefer;
- recognizes East Jerusalem as Palestine’s exclusive capital within June 1967 borders; and
- gives Palestinians control over their land, borders, air space, coastal waters and resources.
Nothing short of long denied peace, equity and justice is acceptable. Israeli equivocation and refusal to cooperate no longer wash. Pay back time is now. So is ending long denied justice.
The Global BDS Movement lists nine ways to effectively support Gaza by boycotts, divestment and sanctions:
1. Boycott Israeli companies’ goods and services as well as international companies “involved in Israel’s human rights violations.”
2. Follow BDS campaigns online and through the social media. Urge others to do the same.
3. Learn more about BDS activities and spread the word.
4. Get involved in your area for long denied justice.
5. Take action online and through the social media.
6. “Campaign against your own community’s complicity in Israel’s violations of international law.”
7. Urge organizations you’re involved with to endorse BDS.
8. “Organise a boycott action at a retailer that sells Israeli goods.”
9. “Share this list.” Urge others to act for justice.
On July 30, the Global BDS Movement headlined “Stand with Palestinian workers in Gaza: a call for trade union solidarity,” saying:
The Palestinian trade union movement unanimously urges other trade unions internationally to act on behalf of besieged Gazans and hold Israel accountable for high crimes against peace.
Entire families were massacred. Large parts of Gaza lie in ruins. Around 2,000 were murdered in cold blood. Many thousands more were injured.
Israel committed one of history’s great crimes. An unconscionable humanitarian disaster persists.
Critical shortages of housing, food, water, medicines and supplies as well as power and other vital infrstructure exacerbate horrific conditions with little relief in sight.
Pro-Israeli propaganda substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Palestinians are wrongfully blamed for its crimes.
World leaders able to act responsibly yawn and do nothing to help. Israel is free to commit crimes of war, against humanity and genocide with impunity.
Enough is enough. This no longer can be tolerated. Sustained, committed, intensified Global BDS actions against Israel can work as intended.
The movement recommends the following actions:
“1. Stop handling goods imported from or exported to Israel.
2. Divest your trade union pension – and other – funds from Israel Bonds as well as from corporations and banks that complicit in Israel’s occupation and human rights violations.
3. Dissociate from Israeli trade unions which are complicit in the occupation.
4. Support our call for a military embargo on Israel.
5. Share information with your members about the siege and destruction of Gaza and ask your members to boycott Israeli products and to share their knowledge with family, co-workers, and friends.”
Isolate Israel effectively until it complies fully with international laws, norms and standards.
Ordinary people committed for equity and justice can make a difference.
On August 1, the Global BDS Movement reported the loss of a large export deal because of Israel’s Gaza aggression.
The fruit juice producer Priniv was affected. Mounting evidence shows a growing “silent anti-Israeli boycott” by European companies fearful of being associated with a lawless, racist terror state.
Business deals are being cancelled. Others aren’t be negotiated. Israel is being hit harder where it hurts most – in its economy.
On August 1, the Global BDS Movement headlined “Round-up: Israel’s massacre in Gaza prompts international sanctions and boycott action,” saying:
- Chile suspended Israeli trade agreement negotiations;
- five Latin American countries recalled their Israeli ambassadors – Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and El Salvador. Perhaps others will follow;
- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff condemned what she called Israel’s “massacre;”
- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel’s Operation Protective Edge “genocide.”
- Bolivia’s Evo Morales calls Israel a “terrorist state.” He expressed solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians and besieged, suffering Gazans. He encourages BDS.
- South Africa’s ruling ANC party parliamentary group called for the government to recall its ambassador and expel Israel’s envoy.
- Spain announced a “provisional” suspension of military exports to Israel.
- Politicians and political parties worldwide urged similar actions.
- the Maldives government cancelled three bilateral agreements with Israel. It may prohibit importation of Israeli products.
- Six Nobel laureates, dozens of celebrities, other prominent figures, and thousands of ordinary ones urged a military embargo on Israel.
- BDS initiatives are growing worldwide.
According to BDS spokesperson for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, Zaid Shuaibi:
“The trade and diplomatic sanctions taken in particular by countries from the global south are a hugely welcome step that we urge other governments to follow.”
“States have a legal and moral obligation to do all that they can to hold Israel to account for its violations of international law, including by cancelling free trade agreements and imposing a military embargo, as a first concrete step.”
“All across the world, people are echoing the call from Palestinian civil society for a full military embargo on Israel as the most urgent measure of accountability.”
Israel’s on-going massacre, its deliberate and premeditated targeting of schools, hospitals and civilians, including children, in accordance with its criminal Dahiya Doctrine, makes any continued military cooperation with Israel an indefensible act of conscious complicity.
While most governments support Israel, growing numbers of officials and other figures in them are reconsidering what’s no longer justified.
It’s long past time Israel and its culpable officials were held accountable for high crimes against peace too grave to ignore.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said earlier:
“Those who choose not to act to stop Israel’s massacre, especially those whose governments are implicated in Israeli war crimes, are choosing the “side of the oppressor.”
On Saturday, August 9, the largest ever Palestinian solidarity demonstrations occurred in US cities and others worldwide.
Hundreds of thousands participated for long denied justice. It shows growing numbers of ordinary people care. They no longer tolerate Israeli high crimes against peace.
America and Israel far and away have the world’s worse human rights records. No other nations approach their unprincipled history from inception.
They’re guilty of virtually every high crime imaginable and then some. They remain unaccountable. It’s long past time that changed.
It bears repeating. Committed ordinary people can make a difference. It’s the only way constructive change is possible. Bottom up alone works. Never top down. Israel’s day of reckoning awaits.
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Who’s behind this US boycott?
Buycott app gets public to boycott Israeli produce
As critics of Israel’s policy in Gaza lose faith in governments to take action, a new app is helping them to it themselves. Buycott is one of the hottest items on the market as shoppers are using it in their droves to avoid purchasing Israeli products.
The Buycott app has a number of groups, which its users can join, with one of the most successful being the “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel” group. Numbering just a few hundred users in mid-July, it has surged in popularity in a month, with over a quarter of a million people currently signed up, according to the Buycott website.
The “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel” group on the Buycott app was set up in April by a British teenager. It is going from strength to strength. The group saw traffic grow by almost 30 percent in just 12 hours on the morning of Thursday 7.
“I noticed three weeks ago that we were seeing an unusual spike in traffic, but there hadn’t been any articles written about the app or Israel campaigns,” said Ivan Pardo, speaking to Forbes. “Next thing I knew Buycott was a top 10 app in the UK and Netherlands, and #1 in a number of Middle Eastern countries. Word was spreading through social media.”
The groups mission is about, “ordinary people around the world using their right to help bring an end to the oppression in Palestine. It’s a peaceful means of putting international pressure on the state of Israel and follows in the successful boycott against South African apartheid,” a message on the “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel” application stated.
The app works by allowing shoppers to scan barcodes of food products, such as a tub of hummus, to see if it was produced in Israel, or has any links with companies that support Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The scanning process takes just a few seconds and then provides information about the company, such as its location and its website.
The Long Live Palestine, boycott Israel group has 49 companies on its ‘companies to avoid’ list, which range from Victoria’s Secret, which is one of the largest clients of Delta Galil, who operate a textile factory in the West Bank industrial zone of Barkan, to Volvo, who’s machinery has been used to destroy Palestinian settlements in violation of international law.
In contrast, the group also supports four companies, such as the Taybeh Brewing Company, which operates a Palestinian owned brewery and winery in the West Bank. Also on the list is the UK cosmetics firm Lush, which has striven to raise awareness of the struggle for human rights in Palestine.
Social media has been playing its own part in trying to put economic pressure on Israel to halt its actions in Gaza. The Israeli company SodaStream, which is also on “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel’s” list has come in for particular criticism.
SodaStream has its main plant in the industrial zone of Mishor Edomim, which is an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, while the Boycott website also states that Palestinians who work there are paid less than half the minimum wage.
The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement targets products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions.
In February, BDS hit the headlines when it demanded Oxfam drop Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson as an ambassador for her endorsement of SodaStream. They argued that Johansson’s role in Oxfam undermined the organization’s supposed condemnation of economic corporation with Israeli settlements.
“A refusal to part ways with Johansson will tarnish the charity’s credibility among Palestinians and many people of conscience around the world,” said the BDS in a statement.
Meanwhile, SodaStream’s UK operations were dealt a blow in July after department store John Lewis decided to stop stocking the product in its shops, while another store in Brighton, which had endured protests for two years, also decided to close.
Sarah Colborne, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, attributed the closure of the Brighton store as well the decision by John Lewis, directly to pressure from the BDS movement.
“The news that SodaStream is closing its main UK store and that John Lewis is taking Soda Stream products off its shelves is a major success for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” she said, according to Haaretz.
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Why Israel Fears the Boycott
JERUSALEM — IF Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempts to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail because of Israel’s continuing construction of illegal settlements, the Israeli government is likely to face an international boycott “on steroids,” as Mr. Kerry warned last August.
These days, Israel seems as terrified by the “exponential” growth of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or B.D.S.) movement as it is by Iran’s rising clout in the region. Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively declared B.D.S. a strategic threat. Calling it the “delegitimization” movement, he assigned the overall responsibility for fighting it to his Strategic Affairs Ministry. But B.D.S. doesn’t pose an existential threat to Israel; it poses a serious challenge to Israel’s system of oppression of the Palestinian people, which is the root cause of its growing worldwide isolation.
The Israeli government’s view of B.D.S. as a strategic threat reveals its heightened anxiety at the movement’s recent spread into the mainstream. It also reflects the failure of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s well-endowed “Brand Israel” campaign, which reduces B.D.S. to an image problem and employs culture as a propaganda tool, sending well-known Israeli figures around the world to show Israel’s prettier face.
Begun in 2005 by the largest trade union federations and organizations in Palestinian society, B.D.S. calls for ending Israel’s 1967 occupation, “recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,” and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which they were forcibly displaced and dispossessed in 1948.
Why should Israel, a nuclear power with a strong economy, feel so vulnerable to a nonviolent human rights movement?
Israel is deeply apprehensive about the increasing number of American Jews who vocally oppose its policies — especially those who are joining or leading B.D.S. campaigns. It also perceives as a profound threat the rising dissent among prominent Jewish figures who reject its tendency to speak on their behalf, challenge its claim to be the “national home” of all Jews, or raise the inherent conflict between its ethno-religious self-definition and its claim to democracy. What I. F. Stone prophetically wrote about Israel back in 1967, that it was “creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry” because of its “racial and exclusionist” ideal, is no longer beyond the pale.
Israel is also threatened by the effectiveness of the nonviolent strategies used by the B.D.S. movement, including its Israeli component, and by the negative impact they have had on Israel’s standing in world public opinion. As one Israeli military commander said in the context of suppressing Palestinian popular resistance to the occupation, “We don’t do Gandhi very well.”
The landslide vote by the American Studies Association in December to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, coming on the heels of a similar decision by the Association for Asian-American Studies, among others, as well as divestment votes by several university student councils, proves that B.D.S. is no longer a taboo in the United States.
The movement’s economic impact is also becoming evident. The recent decision by the $200 billion Dutch pension fund PGGM to divest from the five largest Israeli banks because of their involvement in occupied Palestinian territory has sent shock waves through the Israeli establishment.
To underscore the “existential” danger that B.D.S. poses, Israel and its lobby groups often invoke the smear of anti-Semitism, despite the unequivocal, consistent position of the movement against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. This unfounded allegation is intended to intimidate into silence those who criticize Israel and to conflate such criticism with anti-Jewish racism.
Arguing that boycotting Israel is intrinsically anti-Semitic is not only false, but it also presumes that Israel and “the Jews” are one and the same. This is as absurd and bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self-defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, because of its horrific human rights record, would of necessity be Islamophobic.
The B.D.S. movement’s call for full equality in law and policies for the Palestinian citizens of Israel is particularly troubling for Israel because it raises questions about its self-definition as an exclusionary Jewish state. Israel considers any challenge to what even the Department of State has criticized as its system of “institutional, legal and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens as an “existential threat,” partially because of the apartheid image that this challenge evokes.
Tellingly, the Supreme Court recently rejected an attempt by Israeli liberals to have their nationality or ethnicity listed simply as “Israeli” in the national population registry (which has categories like Jew, Arab, Druse, etc.). The court found that doing so would be a serious threat to Israel’s founding identity as a Jewish state for the Jewish people.
Israel remains the only country on earth that does not recognize its own nationality, as that would theoretically avail equal rights to all its citizens, undermining its “ethnocratic” identity. The claim that B.D.S., a nonviolent movement anchored in universal principles of human rights, aims to “destroy” Israel must be understood in this context.
Would justice and equal rights for all really destroy Israel? Did equality destroy the American South? Or South Africa? Certainly, it destroyed the discriminatory racial order that had prevailed in both places, but it did not destroy the people or the country.
Likewise, only Israel’s unjust order is threatened by boycotts, divestment and sanctions.
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