Tag: #BDS

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Jewish leaders: You fought for the right to boycott — now let people use it

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Ultra-orthodox Jews of the Naturei Kartra movement during a protest outside the Capitol Hill where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress in Washington, DC, on Mar 3, 2015. (photo: Getty Images)

Have your feelings about BDS, but respect the constitutional right to boycott that you so proudly fought for during the Civil Rights Movement.

By Elias Newman | Forward | Feb 5, 2018

[The] right to boycott went all the way to the Supreme Court during the Civil Rights Era, when a judge in Mississippi ordered an NAACP chapter to pay damages to white shop-owners after the chapter ran a successful boycott campaign. The NAACP appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, asking how their actions were any different from the the American colonists who refused to buy English-made goods during the American Revolution. A unanimous court overturned the Mississippi ruling, solidifying non-violent boycotts as “speech, assembly, association, and petition” protected by the First Amendment.

If you’ve ever been to a synagogue around MLK Day, you probably heard about the role Jews played in the Civil Rights Movement. Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud that white Jews joined Freedom Rides and marched with MLK, and I have deep respect for Rabbis in the South who risked their jobs to support bus boycotters.

The hypocrisy in all of this current celebration, however, is that Jewish leaders are taking credit for Civil Rights work while simultaneously mounting an assault on the American right to boycott — a constitutional freedom fought for during the Civil Rights movement by Blacks and their Jewish allies. Boycotts are protected under the First Amendment and were vital to ending segregation, forcing politicians and shop owners to integrate or go bankrupt. Yet today, when boycotts in the U.S. increasingly target Israeli human rights abuses, Jewish leaders have no problem unraveling Civil Rights protections by leading the political movement to boycott all boycotts.

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BDS nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize

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The human rights movement is currently the subject of anti-boycott laws in Israel, the US, and elsewhere.

By Middle East Monitor | Feb 5, 2018

“We are well aware that the current right-wing government of Israel tends to try to criminalize any attempt to convince Israel to abide by international law and end the occupation and oppression of Palestine and the Palestinians.”
— Bjørnar Moxness, Norwegian Member of Parliament

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights has been nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Formal nomination for the prestigious award was made last week by the Norwegian MP and leader of the Red Party, Bjørnar Moxness.

In a statement announcing the nomination, the Parliamentary Group, which includes a number of left-wing parties, said that the selection of BDS for a Nobel Peace Prize reflected “the growing international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice, dignity and freedom from the Israeli occupation.”

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Quakers, Jews and Israel’s BDS Blacklist

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AFSC volunteer Evan Jones meeting with Palestinian refugees, 1949. (photo: AFSC)

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By Brant Rosen | Shalom Rav | Jan 11, 2018

“The AFSC helped thousands of people in the United States transfer small amounts of money to loved ones in French concentration camps, [and helped] hundreds of children, including Jewish refugees and the children of Spanish Republicans, come to the United States under the care of the US Committee for the Care of European Children in 1941–42.”
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Last Sunday, Israel revealed their list of 20 social justice groups from around the world it was henceforth banning from the country because of their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. For me, the list represented more than just another news item of the day. As staff person for one organization included on the list — the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) — this news struck home personally as well as professionally

As a rabbi who works for AFSC, I’m proud of the important historical connections between Jewish community and this venerable Quaker organization. As the US Holocaust Memorial Museum itself has noted, AFSC was at the forefront of efforts to help and rescue Jewish refugees after 1938, “assisting individuals and families in need . . . helping people flee Nazi Europe, communicate with loved ones, and adjust to life in the United States.”

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Israel’s BDS blacklist is straight out of apartheid

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A Palestinian navigates cement blocks at an Israeli checkpoint. Travel bans, evictions, and home demolitions have become part of daily life for Palestinian families. (photo: Abbas Momani / AFP / Getty Images)

Banning NGO’s that support the BDS movement is a desperate attempt to silence human rights defenders.

By Asad Rehman | The Guardian | Jan 9, 2018

The bans and blacklists that we face today are only a shadow of what Palestinians endure every single day. This year we remember that it is 70 years since more than 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes; they are still denied their right to return by Israel.

Over these seven decades, Israel has imposed travel bans, evictions, and home demolitions that have become part of daily life for Palestinian families. So are arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, collective punishment, violence, and torture without redress.

Israel’s “BDS blacklist,” published in the Israeli media on Sunday, bans 20 charities and human rights groups from entering the country, because they support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement — a campaign that holds Israel to account over violations of Palestinian rights and international law.

This repressive move is borrowed straight from the playbook of South Africa’s apartheid regime, which had the same aim of silencing critics. Ultimately, Israel’s blacklist will fail, just as South Africa’s did. But first and foremost, the ban calls for a robust condemnation from people of conscience around the world — and the UK government, which continues to conduct “business as usual” with Israel. [As does the US government.]

As one of the blacklisted organizations, War on Want is in good company, alongside groups such as the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee — a US Quaker group awarded a Nobel peace prize in 1947 for assisting people persecuted by the Nazis.

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Israel made itself a pariah by barring me and my fellow activists

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(photo: Getty Images)

The author with roots in Palestine speaks to her exile from her family’s homeland.

By Ariel Gold | The Forward | Jan 7, 2018

As BDS grows, builds and succeeds, Israel becomes more and more desperate to contain it. The latest effort is this blacklist. . . . By blacklisting organizations and banning even Jews and Quakers who take principled stances to support Palestinian human rights, Israel is isolating itself even further.

As a Jewish mother, one of the most important things to me is to instill in my children a sense of Jewish identity and values. For my now 15- and 16-year-old children, this has over the years included Tot-Shabbat at our synagogue, Hebrew school, Jewish summer camp and even Jewish youth group trips to Israel.

As a family, our history dates back to Rabbi Joseph Karo of 14th-Century Palestine, writer of the Shulchan Aruch (the codification of Jewish religious law). In 2015, I took my children to visit Karo’s grave, in the holy Jewish city of Safed. It was the most prominent grave in the cemetery. My son, daughter and I placed stones at the gravesite of the ancient rabbi our family descends from and said a short prayer.

But our identity as a Jewish family manifests in another way, too: in the responsibility to think critically and act as effectively and morally as possible. This means a commitment to ending the human rights abuses Israel commits against Palestinians.

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AFSC among human rights organizations barred from Israel

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(photo: AFSC)

Statement by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning peace organization on being blacklisted by Israel.

By American Friends Service Committee | Jan 8, 2018

“May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.”
— 17th-Century Quaker abolitionist John Woolman

Yesterday the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was included on a list of 20 organizations whose staff may be denied entry to Israel because of their support for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Motivated by Quaker belief in the worth and dignity of all people, AFSC has supported and joined in nonviolent resistance for over 100 years. We answered the call for divestment from apartheid in South Africa, and we have done the same with the call for BDS from Palestinians who have faced decades of human rights violations.

Throughout our history, we have stood with communities facing oppression and violence around the world. In 1947 we were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in part for our support for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. We will continue our legacy of speaking truth to power and standing for peace and justice without exception in Israel, occupied Palestine, and around the world.

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The full Israeli blacklist

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Members of Jewish Voice for Peace and Code Pink, both on Israel’s newly announced BDS blacklist, demonstrate against Israeli military operations in Gaza, Washington, DC, Jul 21, 2014. (photo: Atheer Ahmed Kakan / Anadolu Age)

Here is the complete list of international NGO’s blacklisted by Israel.

US Organizations

  • American Friends Service Committee
  • American Muslims for Palestine
  • Code Pink
  • Jewish Voice for Peace
  • National Students for Justice in Palestine
  • US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

European Organizations

  • The France Association Palestine Solidarity
  • BDS France
  • BDS Italy
  • The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine
  • Friends of Al-Aqsa
  • Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign
  • The Palestine Committee of Norway
  • Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden
  • Palestine Solidarity Campaign
  • War on Want
  • BDS Kampagne

Other Organizations

  • BDS Chile
  • BDS South Africa
  • BDS National Committee

Read the reference article here →

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I’m a US Jew on Israel’s BDS blacklist, I have family in Israel, but I won’t be silenced

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Rebecca Vilkomerson (right) in July 2016 with Caroline Hunter, who was part of the movement to end apartheid in South Africa. (photo: JVP)

Israel wants to intimidate the growing numbers of Jews fighting for equality and freedom for all people in Israel/Palestine. It won’t work.

By Rebecca Vilkomerson | Haaretz | Jan 7, 2018

As long as Israel continues to violate the fundamental rights of Palestinians, people will continue to speak out — Palestinians, Jews, and people of conscience the world over.

The first time I went to Israel I was four months old. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood I visited regularly: My grandparents, in Haifa; and my aunt, uncle and cousins, on a religious kibbutz near the Jordanian border. There was no place, with the exception of the town where I grew up, to which I felt more connected.

As an adult, married to an Israeli, we spent three years living in Tel Aviv with our two young daughters, who also have Israeli citizenship.

In March last year, the Israeli Knesset passed a bill that forbids entry to “foreign nationals who call for economic, cultural or academic boycotts of either Israel or the settlements,” and yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that as a result 20 organizations have been placed on a blacklist that would prohibit entry specifically to its leaders. That list was published in full Sunday. Jewish Voice for Peace, the organization of which I am executive director, is one of the organizations named.

Despite the fact that my grandparents are buried there, that my aging in-laws still live there, and my extensive ties of friendship and family, my support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) for Palestinian rights now excludes me from Israel.

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Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee banned from Israel

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Palestinians walk past a sign on a wall in Bethlehem calling for a boycott of Israeli products from Jewish settlements. (photo: Thomas Coex / AFP / Getty Images)

Israel imposes travel ban on 20 foreign NGOs over boycott movement.

By Peter Beaumont | The Guardian | Jan 7, 2018

“This move is reminiscent of South Africa’s apartheid regime which also prepared blacklists in order to punish people and prevent the entry of those opposed to its racist policies.”
— Hassan Jabareen, of the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

The prominent British campaign group War on Want has been listed as one of 20 foreign NGOs whose representatives are banned from visiting Israel over their support of the pro-Palestinian boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) movement.

The publication of the list, which also includes a well-known Jewish anti-occupation group and a Nobel peace prize-winning US Quaker group, had been threatened for months by Israel.

The organizations were singled out by Israel’s rightwing strategic affairs and public security minister, Gilad Erdan, for advocating boycotts of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

Human rights groups condemned the move as an assault on free speech. A number of individuals have been refused entry into Israel in recent months, including a prominent African theologian and official of the World Council of Churches.

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Israel blacklists 20 international organizations

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The Shuafat refugee camp, behind a section of Israel’s separation barrier in Jerusalem. (photo: Oded Balilty / Associated Press

Israel may also be compiling a blacklist of individuals to be barred from entry.

By David Halbfinger | The New York Times | Jan 7, 2018

“When Israel, which aims to portray itself to the world as liberal and democratic, blacklists activists dedicated to nonviolent organizing and dissent, it only further exposes itself as a fraud.”
— Yousef Munayyer, the director of the Campaign for Palestinian Rights

Israel on Sunday published a blacklist of 20 organizations, including a Jewish group in the United States, whose leaders it has barred from entering the country for supporting an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel.

The list was drawn up under a nearly year-old law enacted to combat the so-called boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which Israelis overwhelmingly oppose, consider anti-Semitic and view as calling for the country’s destruction.

Supporters of the pressure strategy favor the boycott of Israel until it ends the occupation of the West Bank, provides full equality under the law to Palestinian citizens of Israel and grants a right of return to Palestinian refugees. But refugees number in the millions, and their return would probably spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

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