Tag: Israel

Launch Declaration: Coalition for a Free Palestine

Coalition for a Free Palestine Launch Declaration

The historic launch of the Coalition for a Free Palestine (CfP) which took place Friday 28th September was a resounding success. Political parties, trade unions, faith based organisations, student movements and human rights groups spoke passionately about the freedom of Palestine; the CfP adopted a founding document, program of action and deceleration. Please see the declaration below:

Launch Declaration

28 September 2012

Johannesburg, South Africa

“The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice. “

Nelson Mandela, 4 December 1997

We, South Africans comprising of various organisations and institutions have over the years acted in solidarity with the Palestinians who are living under Israeli Apartheid and have been dispossessed in various waves of ethnic cleansing;

Gathered at Cosatu House, the headquarters of our country’s largest federation of trade unions, in Johannesburg on 28th September 2012;

Deeply conscious of the limitations of our society’s transformations and the long walk that our country still has to undertake towards a more just life for all, free from poverty, economic exploitation, sexism, racism and xenophobia;

Fully aware of the interconnectedness of all human suffering and the debt of solidarity that we owe each other and firmly believing that an injury to one, is an injury to all;

Rejecting the patent untruths of imperialism that this is a dispute by religious groups and those that attempt to set themselves up as honest brokers;

Expressing grave concern at the contravention of the UN resolutions and breach of international humanitarian law;

Mindful of

1. Apartheid Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the occupation and siege of Gaza;

2. The occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and e.g. the equally illegal and repugnant resettlement policies, eviction of families and communities, the demolition of homes and villages and land grab;

3. The contempt for the will of the Palestinian people displayed by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the free and open Palestinian elections of 2006;

4. The war crimes committed by apartheid Israel during the invasion of Gaza in 2009, and the 2010 massacre;

5. The continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within apartheid Israel;

6. The continued exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;

7. The knowledge that many governments have given and continue to provide apartheid Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allow it to behave with impunity;

8. The role of various institutions of global governance in obstructing diplomatic efforts by Palestinians towards their liberation;

9. The role of governments and multi-national corporations, in cooperation with apartheid Israel, in the plundering of Palestinian land and natural resources as well as entrenching apartheid, masquerading these as assistance to the Palestinian people.

Reaffirm our commitment to:

1. Palestinian self-determination

2. Ending the occupation

3. Oblige apartheid Israel to end complete disregard of UN and regional resolutions

4. Equal rights for all within historic Palestine

5. The full right of return for Palestinian refugees

6. The United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel

7. Ending imperialism and support the prosecution of perpetrators of violations of Palestinian rights

Deeply aware of how our own suffering under apartheid and colonialism was reduced by those opposed to our freedom to a dispute between Black and White people;

Asserting that even-handedness between oppressed and oppressor is escapism, acquiescence, cowardice at the very least and, at worst, complicity;

Immensely indebted to the international community – particularly those from the Frontline Countries in Southern Africa, the Non-Aligned movement and the numerous solidarity formations in Europe, North America and elsewhere who threw their lot in with the oppressed South African people despite their governments’ overwhelming support for the apartheid regime;

Respectful of the observations that the veterans and leaders of our own liberation struggle who have spoken of the daily persecution and humiliation of Palestinians in the shadow of Apartheid Israel; some of these observations include:

Israel’s policy towards her neighbouring Arab states clearly unmasks the true nature and character of the regime in Tel Aviv. It is this blatant arrogance, this open aggressiveness towards her neighbours and the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the Arab people of Palestine which compares Israel more and more to apartheid South Africa. The essence is that under the influence of exclusive nationalist ideologies both Afrikaner nationalists and Israeli Zionists, think and act towards the indigenous majorities in their countries and towards their neighbouring states with the callous inhumanity of all who consider others to be of “inferior races” and less human. (Alfred Nzo, Post-Apartheid SA’s first Foreign Minister)

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. (Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Winner)

The left and progressive forces need to intensive struggles against racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia as critical components of the struggle against the depredations of capitalism and imperialism. Most critically we call upon all left forces globally to intensive solidarity activities with the Palestinian people and their just struggle, and to pressure particularly European governments and the US to facilitate a just solution to the Palestinian and other Middle East problems. (Blade Nzimande, Secretary General of the South African Communist Party and Minister of Higher Education)

Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites. (Professor John Dugard. Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council)

It is perhaps the most pressing moral and ethical challenge of our time, in this the opening years of the 21st Century, that all of us in this world who are fortunate enough to be free should express our total support and solidarity with the Palestinian people in this hour of perhaps their greatest suffering and need but at the same time a period where their infinite and unconquerable courage and determination shines through. They will achieve their right to self-determination and join the liberated and independent nations of this world. They will survive and win and be able to contribute their great talents and energy in helping us all build a more prosperous and just world for this and future generations. I place myself unreservedly in the camp of all those who believe that justice for Palestine means peace, security and justice for all in the Holy Land be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or non-believers, be they Israelis or Palestinians. This is a just cause which should be supported by the entire international community, by all governments and people of whatever origin, with the same passion that enabled the anti-apartheid movement to see the birth of a non-racist, non-sexist, inclusive democratic South Africa. (Ronnie Kasrills, Former Leader of our country’s Liberation Army, Mkhonto we Sizwe and former Minister of Water Affairs and Intelligence)

I support a similar call for sanctions against the state of Israel as we had against Apartheid South Africa – Absolutely! Pressure, pressure, pressure from every side and in as many ways as possible: trade sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions, banking sanctions, sports sanctions, cultural sanctions; I’m talking from our own experience. In the beginning we had very broad sanctions and only late in the 1980s did we learn to have targeted sanctions. So you must look to see where the Israelis are most vulnerable; where is the strongest link to the outside community? And you must have strong international solidarity; that’s the only way it will work. You have to remember that for years and years and years when we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West. They came on board very, very late. (Professor Allan Boesak, Former Patron of the United Democratic Front)

Our role as activists in the face of what President Nelson Mandela called the greatest moral issue of our time is to raise our voices and mobilise others to stand united in solidarity with the oppressed masses of Palestine and others in the world. For to echo Che Guevara ‘as long as there is a single human being in the world suffering under the yoke of oppression, our struggle cannot be over. (Marius Fransman, Deputy Minister, Department of International Relations and Cooperation)

The occupation wall that the Israeli army has built and continues to build cuts through Palestinian land, separating farmers from their farms. Palestinian farmers experience the daily torture of trying to get to their farms. They have to go through checkpoints that are opened and closed at unpredictable times to tend their olive trees. Many times they are not allowed to and they watch through the barbed wire as their olive trees die – as they and their families get reduced to poverty. (Pregs Govender, SA Human Rights Commissioner)

Clearly, apartheid was a well-planned and oiled machine of racial segregation, designed from the very beginning to oppress, exploit and dehumanise Black South Africans, especially Black workers and the Black working class. While there are a number of differences between the situation of Black South African workers and Palestinian workers, the oppression and exploitation faced by the Black South African working class and the Palestinian working class resemble each other in many respects, while the Israeli Jewish working class resembles the White labour aristocracy in South Africa. (Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions)

Therefore;

Renew our commitment to act in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians inside the occupied territories, in the diaspora and within the Zionist state of Israel;

Agree to;

1. The founding principles, organisational structure, and coordination for an effective Coalition for a Free Palestine (CFP)

2. Implement a sustained programme of action and solidarity activities in support of Palestine. We particularly pledge our support to the following practical programmes/campaign actions:

2.1. Build mass education, research, and monitoring capacity for strengthening our campaign actions in support of the cause of the Palestinian people.

2.2. Build an international anti-apartheid movement against Israel with a specific focus on our region and the African continent;

2.3. Establish networked links and specific campaign actions with Palestinian organisations in the Occcupied Territories, inside apartheid Israel and the Palestinian diaspora particularly those in refugee camps;

2.4. Mainstream Israel as an apartheid state and expose Israel’s apartheid policies and practices;

2.5. Take stock of, raise the profile of, and build support for the Palestinian cause in all national, regional, continental and international fora;

2.6. Actively respond to and support the call from virtually all of Palestinian civil society for a Boycott of Israel in the broadest possible manner, Disinvestment from companies which deal with Israel and advancing sanctions against the Israeli regime (BDS);

2.7. Challenge the increasing use of the Israeli lobby and others (albeit in ignorance) in using the Bible, the Christian faith and religiosity in the service of apartheid; and support the prophetic (Palestinian) religious leadership – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – who, in the words of the Kairos Palestine Document poignantly remind us that “The injustice against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted.”

2.8. Launch a media offensive that highlights the plight of the Palestinian people under occupation and apartheid and exposes the media for their unbalanced coverage of the Palestinian question and the deliberate distortion of information relating to the struggle of the Palestinian people.

3. Continue to build the relationship between the various formations comprising the CFP and to welcome new organisations wishing to join the CFP.

4. Create public awareness around the CFP and its solidarity Program of Action

5. Build links with and support the work and programmes of other solidarity movements in order to give meaning to our belief that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Call upon our government to immediately end the trade with companies complicit in the Israeli Occupation and Settlements, to terminate diplomatic relations with the State of Israel until it abides by international law and to continue its support for Palestinian self-determination.

In fulfilling our objectives we undertake to adhere to the following guiding principles:

1. We derive our legitimacy from the people in whose name we are waging or supporting this struggle, the Palestinians themselves;

2. Subscribe to the principle of consultation, transparency, accountability and honesty in carrying out support work, raising resources, and advancing progressive views on the issues around Palestine’

3. Recognise the independence of individual organisations making up the Coalition, respecting our differences yet being a common voice built around the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people;

4. Respect for each other’s organisations and structures and the leadership of the Palestinian people’s organisations engaged in the liberation struggle.

5. Open and frank, yet comradely, critical engagement on issues of principle and views relating to activities to advance the Palestinian struggle;

6. Prioritise the needs of the people and organisations directly involved in the liberation struggle of Palestine;

7. Recognise and affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist their oppression and fight for their freedom and respect their means of doing so.

8. While rejecting with contempt the attempts to equate criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitism, or all Jewish people with Zionists, we oppose all forms of discrimination – including anti-Semitism and xenophobia – which sully our vision of a world wherein the dignity of all human beings are respected.

9. Develop close cooperation and solidarity with Palestinian organisations and other solidarity groups, including those comrades who conduct the struggle within the apartheid state of Israel.

10. Play our role in mobilising and participating in a coordinated international anti-apartheid movement such as the movement that assisted us in our liberation from apartheid with a special focus on Southern Africa and the rest of the continent.

Issued by Dr Stiaan van der Merwe, CfP National Working Committee Member and Tahir Sema, CfP National Working Committee Member and Convenor, October 1 2012

Israel, Iran square off at UN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Thursday that the international community impose a red line on Iran to prevent it from enriching enough uranium for a nuclear bomb.

“The hour is late, very late,” Netanyahu said, alleging Iran was already 70% of the way through the process of enriching enough uranium to fuel a bomb, and must be prevented from reaching the 90% level.

The Israeli leader even used the world stage at the UN to present a cardboard diagram of a bomb with different levels on it, drawing a thick red line across it with a marker pen for dramatic effect.

“Faced with a clear red line Iran will back down,” he said, insisting in a address to the United Nations General Assembly that imposing an ultimatum on Tehran would not provoke war but help prevent it.

Israel has warned that it could launch military action against Iran in order to prevent it reaching a certain nuclear threshold, and has urged the international community to force Tehran to abandon its atomic quest.

Iran denies it is building a nuclear weapon and has dismissed the Israeli threat.

US President Barack Obama vowed in his address to the United Nations on Tuesday that he would prevent Iran from getting the bomb but his administration has repeatedly rejected imposing a red line on Tehran.

With relations between Netanyahu and Obama already viewed as frosty, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this month highlighted the policy split further when he rejected Israel’s “red lines” outright.

“The fact is, look, presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country – leaders of these countries don’t have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions,” Panetta said.

“What they have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed to be taken in order to deal with that situation,” he told Foreign Policy magazine.

“I mean, that’s the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.”

The Iranian government, reacting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations, demanded that Jerusalem open its own nuclear installations to inspection before telling Tehran do so.

Using the U.N.’s “right of reply,” Iran’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Eshagh al Habib, told the General Assembly the Israeli prime minister “has admitted to the possession of nuclear weapons which has been repeatedly stated by the 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement ‘poses a serious and continuing threat to the security of states in the region.

“Instead of making baseless allegations,” he said, “this regime has ignored repeated calls by the international community to accede promptly and without any conditions to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons party and place all its nuclear-related facilities under the International Atomic Energy Agency verification system. … The international community should continue to exert the utmost pressure on this regime.”

The Iranians have long claimed to be sponsoring a movement to free the Middle East of any atomic weapons.

Israel, its conventional forces vastly outnumbered by neighboring Arabs, has long seen its nuclear stockpile as an equalizer should a new war erupt in the region.

Published reports claim Jerusalem has manufactured more than 200 low-yield nuclear warheads that have been stockpiled in a desert facility in the Negev.

The nuclear facility, near the hamlet of Dimona, has had sporadic visits by U.N. inspectors, but nothing unusual has ever been uncovered.

Late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein tried unsuccessfully to rocket bomb the Dimona facility in the 1991 Gulf War.

Today, the Dimona base is protected by the Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile system.

A group of Israeli diplomats sat stone-faced throughout the Iranian rebuttal, deciding not to challenge it.

The U.S.-U.N. mission did not attend the late-night General Assembly session. – AFP/WND

Why I am so sad

by Ilana Mercer

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come.

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any U.S. provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who “came, saw and conquered.”

To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed) private-property owner.

By extension, you have no universal right to “free speech” on another man’s land. More so than to America’s diplomats – Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to insert himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season and by so doing make Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy bellicosity look good to a war-weary people that can ill-afford it.

Now is not a good time, Bibi. Israel is a wedge issue in the coming election. If Israelis love Americans as Americans love Israel, they need to understand that, “The Titan is Tired”:

“We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own – be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because another 9/11 has come and gone. The polls indicate that Americans want to move on; have moved on. Perhaps Americans have realized that it behooves our “overlords who art in D.C.” to keep them stuck in grief. By stunning us like cattle to the slaughter, the statists have been able to perpetrate in our name crimes way worse than 9/11.

I AM SO SAD because my sweet, kind friend, Thomas Szasz, has passed away. Tributes merely touch on professor Szasz’ unmatched genius and attendant achievements (professor of psychiatry emeritus, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y., and author of the seminal work, “The Myth of Mental Illness”).

I attempted to word what Thomas Szasz did over decades, in the advance praise he requested for one of his many magisterial masterpieces, “Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry”:

“Bit by barbarous and bizarre bit, Thomas Szasz dismantles psychiatry’s rickety scaffolding, exposing over two centuries of physical torture and tortured logic. Professor Szasz takes the necessary analytical and empirical solvents to this state-empowered fraternity of sorceresses. He also supplies the only salve for the psychiatric violence he correctly dubs ‘psychiatric slavery’: abolition: Now, ‘Let the sunshine in.’”

“This will be hard to beat,” Tom quipped. (“Tom” was how he’d sign off.)

Allow me, then, to speak but briefly to the tender friendship professor Szasz and I developed over the years. Briefly, for the breezy ease with which my countrymen share their feelings with strangers is alien to me. Abreacting à la Oprah in public bespeaks a shallowness that was foreign to Tom too. Whenever we communicated, it was in succinct, intense and precise language. We spoke a similar language. Dare I say that it was our shared ancestry as European Jews that accounted for these cultural commonalities?

For example, we came together – yet stood apart from libertarian mainstream – on the all-time moral litmus test: the state-sanctioned, slow execution of Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo.

Even eerier was the way we both drew on the allegoric power of William Faulkner to capture the late Ms. Schiavo’s plight, before knowing one another. “A Rose for Emily” was Tom’s source of inspiration, in June of 2006; mine was “As She Lay Dying,” in March of 2005.

“Kindred souls” was Tom’s reaction.

Late in 2009, we decided to meet near Huntington Beach, where, Dr. Szasz, nearing 90, was to address a conference. Alas, he was detained on the East Coast by bad weather, and my husband and I went on to visit in the vicinity. “Maybe I’ll mobilize myself and visit you next summer in Seattle,” he promised.

I last heard from Dr. Szasz on July 27, this year. Characteristically, it was in response to a column I had written, “‘You didn’t build that’: Obama’s political epitaph.” As he would so often do, the great man excerpted his favorite lines. “BRAVO, AGAIN!,” he added in capitals.

I replied:

Thank you, my dear. It seems so futile.
But I like hearing from you.
How have you been?

Tom wrote back laconically but poignantly:

Yes. Disheartening. “Virtue is its own reward.” – I am OK.

Would that everyone rationed speech thus; the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.

Earlier this year – it was in May – I made my way to Manhattan, where it was my distinction to address Victor Niederhoffer’s New York City Junto gathering as featured speaker. I inquired whether Tom would be gallivanting around, as was his wont.

Ever sweet and affectionate, there was a finality to his reply:

Many thanks, dear Ilana. Sadly no. I am OK but progressively weakening and everything is too much of a schlep. I enjoy and agree with all that you send me.
Love (without a first sight), Tom.

“Promise me,” I wrote back, “that this will not be unrequited love.”

“It is NOT,” Tom replied.

South African Communist Party supports boycotts of ‘apartheid Israel’

The SACP commends the cancelation of a trip of various leaders of different sectors to visit Israel. Furthermore we welcome the statements of government as articulated by the Deputy Minister of International Relations, cde Ebrahim Ebrahim.

The SACP has witnessed attempts by the South African Zionist Federation, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the Office of the Chief Rabbi to isolate the Deputy Minister as if he is not expressing government policy. These remarks are consistent with government’s intention for instance to classify goods coming from the Israeli Occupied Territories as such. Similarly we recall that the University of Johannesburg has cut ties as well with the University of Ben Gurion. The comments by the Deputy Minister and the cancellation of the visits must be seen as part of a set of actions by progressives around the world to put pressure on apartheid Israel to change its policies regarding Palestine

Attempts to make turn these statements into individual comments smack of opportunism and are part of the divide and rule tactics which we should not accept. Our principled stance against apartheid Israel’s occupation of Palestine remains.

The SACP also wishes to strongly condemn the hypocrisy and double standards of the Israeli government when only a week ago it prevented a Non- Aligned Movement delegation, made up of no less than Ministers coming from different countries, to go to Ramallah in Palestine. Amongst these Ministers was our own Deputy National Chairperson, cde Thulas Nxesi, who was sent there by the South African government. It is time now that all the progressive forces must refuse to be intimidated by apartheid Israel and deepen solidarity actions with the oppressed people of Palestine.

Apartheid Israel has for all intents and purposes failed to adhere to international resolutions on the necessity to free the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspirations for an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The SACP supports the broad framework of boycott and divestment directed against apartheid Israel.

Statement issued by the SACP, August 15 2012

Mitt Romney’s ‘comments racist and out of touch’

Mitt Romney

JERUSALEM – Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the nearby Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel.

The reaction of Palestinian leaders to Romney’s comments was swift and pointed.

“What is this man doing here?” said Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official. “Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture. Isn’t this racism?”

The economic disparity between the Israelis and the Palestinians is actually much greater than Romney stated. Israel had a per capita gross domestic product of about $31,000 in 2011, while the West Bank and Gaza had a per capita GDP of just over $1,500, according to the World Bank.

Romney, seated next to billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson at the head of the table, told donors at his fundraiser that he had read books and relied on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great.

“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.”

Romney, in comparing the Israeli and Palestinian economies, made no mention of the fact that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem since capturing them in the 1967 war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but continues to control access, and has enforced a crippling border blockade since the Islamic militant Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

In the West Bank, Israel retains overall control, and Palestinians only have limited self-rule. Israel controls all border crossings in and out of the West Bank, and continues to restrict Palestinian trade and movement.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said repeatedly that the Palestinian economy can only grow if Israel lifts those restrictions.

“It’s Israeli occupiers and Palestinians under occupation, and that’s why Palestinians cannot realize their potential,” Erekat said.

The breakfast with top donors – including Adelson, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and hedge fund manager Paul Singer – concluded Romney’s visit to Israel, the second leg of a three-nation overseas tour designed to bolster the his foreign policy credentials.

Standing on Israeli soil for the first time as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Romney on Sunday declared Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state and said the United States has promised never to “look away from our passion and commitment to Israel.”

The status of Jerusalem is a critical issue in peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

During his visit to Israel, Romney did not meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas or visit the West Bank. He held a brief meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Romney’s campaign says his trip abroad, which began in England last week, is aimed at improving the former Massachusetts governor’s foreign policy experience through a series of meetings with foreign leaders. The candidate has largely avoided direct criticism of U.S. President Barack Obama while on foreign soil.

The Jerusalem fundraiser, however, was a political event that raised more than $1 million for Romney’s campaign. It marks at least the second finance event during his tour. The first, in London, attracted about 250 people to a $2,500 per person fundraiser.

Both presidential candidates have aggressively courted American donors living abroad, a practice that is legal and has been used for decades.

Romney’s declaration that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital was keeping with claims made by Israeli governments for decades, even though the United States, like other nations, maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv.

His remarks on the subject during his speech drew a standing ovation from his audience, which included Adelson, the American businessman who has promised to donate more than $100 million to help defeat Obama.

Adelson was among a several donors who flew to Israel for a day of sightseeing with Romney in addition to private meetings with top Israeli officials.

A group of donors also met with a top aide to President Benjamin Netanyahu, one donor said on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings.

Romney met with Netanyahu and other leaders before his speech Sunday. He also visited the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, where he was mobbed by worshippers.

In his remarks, Romney steered clear of overt criticism of Obama, even though he said the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran “has only become worse” in the past five years.

Romney flew to the Middle East from Britain, where he caused a stir by questioning whether officials there were fully prepared for the Olympic Games. A stop in Poland will complete his trip.

Four years ago, Obama visited Israel as a presidential candidate, part of a five-nation trip meant to establish his own foreign policy credentials.

A goal of Romney’s overseas trip is to demonstrate his confidence on the world stage, but his stop in Israel also was designed to appeal to evangelical voters at home and to cut into Obama’s support among Jewish voters and donors. A Gallup survey of Jewish voters released Friday showed Obama with a 68-25 edge over Romney.

Romney and other Republicans have said Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel.

South Africa – STILL Practising Apartheid

by Rolene Marks

During the Apartheid years, South Africa was seen as the world’s number 1 pariah state. Officially excluded from the family of nations, South Africa was subjected to harsh policies of academic, economic, sporting and other boycotts. Many, including poster-child for the BDS movement against Israel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have claimed that thanks to international policies of isolation and boycotts, the heinous Apartheid regime was brought to its knees and eventually ended.

Tutu and other proponents of the Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign rationalize their attempts to isolate Israel by making odious comparisons between the Jewish State and Apartheid South Africa. As someone who grew up in South Africa, bore daily witness to the daily workings of the Apartheid machine and now lives in Israel, this campaign is racist and nefarious to say the least. While Israel is far from perfect and there are instances of individual racism, just as there are in any other country, Israel is FAR from being an Apartheid State. Words like Apartheid have become the stick by which to smack the proverbial horse. Naturally there are those who will deny that these accusations are anti-Semitic by crying Mazel Tov! Gefilte Fish! We love the Jewish people – we just hate Israel. While in some circles it has become decidedly politically incorrect to attack Jews, the Jewish brand or State has been declared open season for battle.

This brings me back to the accusation I have made in the title of this post. The South African Ministry of Trade and Industry have passed a ruling calling for goods imported from the West Bank to have their “made in Israel” labeling removed. “For now, there is no decision but people should know that South Africa recognises Israel inside the 1948 UN borders,” Macdonald Netshitenzhe, the trade ministry’s director for trade policies and legislations, said. “Now coming to the issue of Palestine and Israel, a product from Israel has to be manufactured or produced within the borders of 1948.Under the 1948 boundaries, territories occupied after 1967 such as the Gaza Strip are not included. Therefore for the goods or vegetables which are grown in the area where Israel invaded other Arab countries, South Africa says, you better say these products are grown in Palestine or Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Netshitenzhe added. (courtesy News24.com)

It seems that the country that famously defeated discriminatory policies after the first democratic elections in 1994 has done an about turn and is fast hurtling downhill back towards its racist past. This time, instead of discriminatory laws being passed based on race; South Africa is claiming its “moral high ground” to pass racist laws against the Jewish State. And yes, they are racist. By singling out one country for opprobrium and sanction because its identity is defined along ethnic-nationalist lines, that is APARTHEID. By resorting to ridiculous kangaroo courts such as the Russell Tribunal which placed the State of Israel on trial for “crimes against Apartheid” you are perpetrating anti-Semitism. By ignoring the human rights abuse and transgressions of some of the world’s greatest offenders, one of which is on your border (hello Robert Mugabe) or ignoring the plight of your own citizens and rather choosing to focus on Israel that is Apartheid.

We should not dismiss the actions of the South African government or pooh-pooh them with the excuse that South Africa means little in the grand Western political scheme of things. We need to take heed very carefully. The actions of this government who many see at the benchmark by which we measure racism are proving popular with many other countries, including Denmark who may follow suit.

Many forget who truly stands to lose when boycotting Israeli manufacturers. Apart from hurting importers of Israeli goods, boycotts will lead to the loss of jobs for many Palestinian workers in factories or on farms. While proponents of this action are motivated by ideology the end result can prove to be disastrous for those they intend to help. Peace in my belief will come from the ground up and not by sowing division.

To the South African government whose policies of quiet diplomacy and lack of action have meant that dictators like Robert Mugabe can continue to starve their people, or red-carpet treatment of Jean-Bertrande Aristide of Haiti, Bashir of the Sudan, Assad of Syria or the Foreign Minister of Iran and others makes its own statement, I ask when are you going to start labeling goods from these countries? South Africa, where once you could have played a vital role in the brokering of a lasting peace in the Middle East, you have lost all credibility.

UN ‘Human Rights’ Official Attacks Israeli ‘Apartheid’ Policy

Richard Falk says the peace process is a trick, claims Israel’s treatment of PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria is apartheid.

By Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva
Judea and Samaria

The UN’s rapporteur for PA human rights launched a blistering attack on the international community on Monday.

According to an AFP report, Richard Falk accused the world of “conspiring in Israeli settlement policies”. He also branded the peace process a “trick.”

Falk also took aim at the Middle East Quartet’s peace envoy Tony Blair over his efforts in the region.

Speaking to reporters after addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Falk claimed that Palestinian Authority Arabs in the PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria were offered no protection in Israeli law and said that their treatment was akin to apartheid.

“I think one has to begin to call the reality by a name,” Falk said, according to AFP. He likened the “discriminatory dualistic legal system” in Judea and Samaria to the former system in South Africa.

In his report to the council, Falk expressed his concern about Israel’s use of administrative detention, the expansion of Jewish communities in the region and violence by local Jewish residents.

“The peace process is a trick rather than a way to find a solution to the problem,” Falk said, adding that envoy Tony Blair “has not much to show for his 86 visits to the Middle East… (it is) an extension of the peace process which I regard as a failure because while time passes the settlement culture continues.”

He added, “The international community is conspiring — maybe unwittingly — in a process that has no way of bringing justice to the people involved in this conflict.”

Falk said that at least 3,500 buildings were under construction in Judea and Samaria in 2011, adding that such building on “Palestinian” land “more or less closes the book on the reality and feasibility” of a two-state solution to the conflict.

“The credibility of the Human Rights Council is very much at stake if there is nothing that is done about the non-cooperation or non-compliance” by Israel with the council’s recommendations, he said.

“The language of censure doesn’t help the Palestinian people if there is no action,” claimed Falk.

He also denounced violence by Jewish residents against Palestinian Authority Arabs, claiming it was “a new feature of the drive to occupy the Palestinian territories.”

“Many people say the Israeli government is an extension of the settlers and I think that is an accurate description,” he said.

Falk has a long record of attacking Israel, including comparing Israelis to Nazis and criticizing Israel for keeping Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan in custody, even after a video of him pleading for suicide bombers to “carry the next explosive belt” was exposed.

Falk responded by criticizing the Jewish State and condemning the procedure of administrative detention, a procedure that also is used by the United States. He also castigated Israel for lack of compassion for the Islamic Jihad spokesman who launched a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him.

“There was not even the slightest show of respect for the dignity of Mr. Adnan’s long hunger strike or sympathy for the acute suffering that accompanies such a determined foregoing of food for an extended period,” Falk wrote.

He also claimed that “Mr. Adnan’s prior arrests stemmed from militant peaceful demonstrations that landed him in Israeli jails eight times, and induced him to undertake shorter hunger strikes on three previous occasions, one as recently as 2010. From what we can tell, Mr. Adnan is a committed activist who has associated himself with Islamic Jihad, but works on a daily basis as a baker and maintains an admired strong family role.”

Last year, the United States, joined by American Jewish groups, called on the United Nations to sack Falk after he posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his blog.

When criticized, Falk replaced the cartoon with an apology that claimed he could not detect the anti-Semitic content of the cartoon “until it was pointed out,” although it appeared to equate Jews with animals.

Inkatha Freedom Party protests against compulsory labelling of Israeli products in South Africa

by Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi

The Inkatha Freedom Party joins this march with a clear and unambiguous message. We oppose our Government taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly in an atmosphere of escalating tension that threatens to boil over into violence.

The IFP supports the two-state solution. We believe that both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist as sovereign states. We advocate a negotiated settlement and are vehemently opposed to violence, regardless of its origin.

We therefore view as gravely serious the public statement by the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces on 20 May 2012, that the cause of his nation is, and I quote, “the full annihilation of Israel”. We also reject the inciting statement of the Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution, that, and I quote, “The Zionist regime is a real cancerous tumour that should be cut and will be cut.”

The IFP is cognisant of the heated nature of the debate even within our own country, where opposition to Israel is gathering pace and exposure.

We note that the University of KwaZulu Natal bowed to pressure to retract an invitation to the Ambassador of Israel to address students. We note Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s public call for a boycott against Israel. We note that when Members of Parliament were invited to the second Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism, not one responded. We also note that Government was barely represented at the Israeli Embassy’s celebration of the 64th anniversary of Israeli independence.

South Africa has official diplomatic ties with Israel and recognizes its sovereignty. Yet our Government has maintained an unstated position with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has made no effort to conceal the fact that it supports the Palestinian cause. One seldom hears an unbiased statement in Parliament. Our Government has taken sides.

Against this background, the IFP opposes the move by the Department of Trade and Industry to require traders in South Africa to label products from the West Bank or Gaza as products from “Occupied Palestinian Territory”. There are no legal bases in our law or in international law to support this requirement.

The IFP believes this is a provocation aimed at promoting a consumer boycott.

This action on the part of the Department of Trade and Industry is not in the interests of South Africans. It reflects the political interest of the ANC which continues to utilise the State to pay off its political debts, confusing the national interests of South Africa with the private interests of the ANC.

Imposing this labelling requirement is detrimental to our national interests, to our trade relations, our economic growth and employment generation.

We remind our Government that consumer boycotts were the precursor to the persecution of Jews in Germany, which ended in the holocaust. Indeed, soon after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor in 1933, Nazi storm-troopers began posting signs on storefronts warning, “Kauft nicht bei Juden!”, “Don’t buy from Jews!”

Let us therefore remain vigilant against the escalation of tensions. The South African Government has a moral responsibility to support peace, non-discrimination and nonviolent negotiation wherever these are threatened.

The IFP recognizes that there is pain on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is tragedy on both sides and a story to be told from many different perspectives. Suffering is never something we can turn a blind eye to. We must support a peaceful outcome to this historic conflict to ensure that neither side sustains a loss of dignity or basic humanity.

We seek to stem the flow of blood and promote a different path forward that embraces compromise as well as the importance of accommodating different views. We seek to create peace.

By virtue of our long struggle for freedom, South Africa should relate to the heart’s cry of Israel. We sought peace and freedom for our own country.

How can we seek anything different for Israel?

We cannot accept the portrayal of the Israeli situation as an apartheid situation. I have been a victim of that kind of propaganda and know the damage it can cause. Indeed, in 1985, Prime Minister Shimon Peres told me, “We are brothers in suffering”.

Let me make the IFP’s message clear: We believe in the two state solution.

By engaging this march, we are not taking sides, but are telling South Africa’s Government in no uncertain terms that taking a stand against Israel is irresponsible, damaging and contrary to our country’s stated principles.

We call on the Minister of Trade and Industry to desist from imposing the new labelling requirements, as this is neither in South Africa’s national interests nor in the interests of Israel.

Israeli air strikes kill 12 in Gaza

Palestinian medical officials said early Saturday that a total of 12 people had been killed and 12 injured in a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli raids came as Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel, wounding four people, one seriously, Israeli military sources said.

One Israeli strike, on a car travelling in the Tel El-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees, Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.

Both the PRC and the military wing of Hamas threatened to retaliate for Qaisi’s death.

The Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said that strikes on the east side of the city had killed its members Obeid al-Gharabli, Mohammed Harara, Hazem Qoureqa and Shadi Seqali.

It said that another two of its members, Fayeq Saad and Moatasem Hajaj, were also killed in strikes.

The Israeli attacks came in response to Palestinian mortar and rocket fire which started on Friday morning. The Israeli military said that in the course of the day about 40 rockets and mortar rounds had landed in southern Israel.

The PRC and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel on Friday.

The official Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted a statement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinan Authority condemning the Israeli retaliation, saying it had created a “negative environment” that would “escalate the circle of violence in the region.”

The Israeli military said Qaisi “was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed” a deadly cross-border attack into southern Israel from Egypt’s Sinai last August.

In that incident, gunmen carried out a coordinated series of shooting ambushes on buses and cars on Route 12, which runs along the Egyptian border some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.

The shootings took place over several hours, leaving eight dead and more than 25 wounded.

The military statement said Qaisi was also involved in a 2008 attack on a terminal for pumping fuel from Israel into the Gaza Strip, in which two Israeli civilians were killed.

The statement added that both the dead men were “responsible for planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days.”

It said that other strikes were aimed at men about to fire rockets into Israel.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has maintained a tacit truce with Israel, but other armed Palestinian groups regularly fire rockets and mortars across the border, which can spark air strikes in response.

The relatively small Popular Resistance Committees is one of the most active, and it pledged to avenge its men’s deaths.

“We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this (Israeli) crime,” Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the PRC’s military wing, the Al-Nasser Salahadin Brigades, told AFP.

Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades also warned of retribution.

“Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr leader Zohair Qaisi and martyr Mahmud Hanani and confirms that their blood will not be wasted, the enemy’s crime will be a curse on him,” it said in a statement.

Its political leaders were more restrained.

“The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime, it comes as a part of the destabilization of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip” the Hamas-run Gaza government’s interior ministry said in a statement.

“We hold the international community fully responsible for the attacks.”

Before Friday’s air strikes, Israeli army radio quoted what it called “senior military sources” as saying the army “does not intend to allow the firing to continue.” – AFP

‘Israeli apartheid week’ in South Africa

It was reported in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post that “the Public Diplomacy Ministry [in Israel] plans to send 100 Israelis – abroad to represent and defend the state during [the upcoming] Israeli Apartheid Week.” South Africa, and Johannesburg and Cape Town in particular, have been targeted by the Israeli PR delegation.

According to the Jerusalem Post the participants of the Israeli “mission” have all “undergone several weeks of training in the Public Diplomacy Ministry” and will include settlers and “experts in national security”.

The Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy, Yuli Edelstein, said that “the answer” to initiatives such as Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and to delegitimization is “not to just give facts and data, but to bring Israel to them.” Edelstein further accused those organizing Israeli Apartheid Week of “hatred” and having the “disease” of ignorance.

Students React

The Israeli Apartheid Week South Africa Team (IAW South Africa Team) condemned the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy’s attempts to undermine the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week. Israel’s dispatch of propaganda is not new (the Israeli Public Diplomacy Ministry is often compared to Apartheid South Africa’s notorious Department of Information). However, the open aggression and arrogance of an official Israeli Minister, in his position as a Minister, is astonishing.

Sarah Boesak, an IAW organizer at the University of Cape Town reacted to the news: “We state unequivocally that our solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people comes not from ignorance but from our own experience of, and resistance to, Apartheid in this country.”

S’bu Mbambo, a member of the South African Students Congress (SASCO) wrote: “We as SASCO will not give in, as we are well informed of the conditions Israel puts on the Palestinians!”

“In fact, the comments by Yuli Edelstein show that Israel’s is the language of hatred,” commented Hussein Badat of Rhodes University, “we feel love and compassion for Palestinians and as South Africans we are in a privileged position to understand how important the love of freedom is”.

Also reacting to the accusation of being hateful, Durban-based IAW organizer, Iain Robinson, stated: “The defeat of Apartheid gave white South Africans their humanity back. IAW is also an attempt at assisting Israel and its citizens regain their rapidly diminishing humanity.”

The Israeli Apartheid Week Team, consists of 25 members stretching across South Africa and lists as partners: COSATU, SA Communist Party, SA Students Congress, Young Communist League of South Africa, SA Council of Churches EAPPI, the Tri-Continental Film Festival, BDS South Africa, the LGBTQ umbrella body Kaleidoscope, Kairos Southern Africa and several Palestine solidarity groups including the Coalition for a Free Palestine.

Not the first time SA has been targeted

This will not be the first time that Israel has targeted SA for such a propaganda delegation. Last year a 27 person Israeli PR delegation was sent to South African campuses to fix Israel’s “serious image problems”. At the time, a member of the Israeli delegation said: “We have to create some doubt in their [South African students’] minds.”

In a joint statement, the national representatives of the South African Union of Students (SAUS), the South African Student Congress (SASCO) and the Young Communist League (YCL) slammed the trip:

“Don’t patronize us! We lived apartheid, we suffered apartheid, we know what apartheid is, we recognise apartheid when we see it. And when we see Israel, we see a regime that practices apartheid. Israel’s image needs no changing; its policies do!”

About Israeli Apartheid Week

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events (including rallies, lectures, cultural performances and film screenings) held in cities and campuses across the globe. IAW seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians.

This year IAW will take place in over 100 cities, including 13 South African universities and towns. Some of the invited speakers for SA are: Minister of Education, Dr Blade Nzimande; General Secretary of COSATU, Zwelinzima Vavi; Rivonia trialist, Denis Goldberg; Robben Island prisoner, Ahmed Kathrada; ANC NEC member, Dr Pallo Jordan; South African struggle stalwart, Ronnie Kasrils; and public intellectual, Professor Steven Friedman.