http://www.palestinecampaign.org/palestine-solidarity-centre-stage-at-unison-conference/
maandag 29 juni 2015
maandag 22 juni 2015
Will US churches help bring down Israel’s prison walls?
The Electronic Intifada
18 June 2015
The discussions are taking place amid strenuous efforts by the Zionist lobby to counter the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire and mega-donor to the Republican Party, recently hosted a conference in Las Vegas to raise a reported $50 million to put more “boots on the ground” in the “war” against BDS.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, has endorsed the divestment call. In a message to the United Church of Christ this week, he affirmed that “economic pressure can force the most powerful to the table.”
All of the resolutions in question cite the Kairos Palestine document, signed by some 3,000 Palestinian Christians, which calls for “boycott and disinvestment as tools of nonviolence for justice, peace and security for all.”
The resolutions follow initiatives taken by other churches in response to the Palestinian call for BDS.
Last year, the Presbyterian Church USA decided to divest from Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Caterpillar, all of which have supplied equipment to the Israeli military.
In 2012, the United Methodist Church voted against divestment, while approving a boycott of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The church’s pension board has since decided to divest from the security firm G4S, which provides services to Israeli prisons where Palestinians are tortured and held without charge or trial.
Several Quaker bodies have undertaken similar divestment actions.
A resolution drafted by the Episcopal Committee for Justice in Israel and Palestine recommends that investments “that support the infrastructure of Israel’s occupation” should be identified. If those companies continue providing such support, the church would then divest from them.
The resolution also promotes the boycott of settlement products and businesses.
It is one of several resolutions relating to Palestine proposed for the church’s convention.
Two other resolutions name Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Caterpillar. A separate one targets G4S.
Israel meets definition of apartheid
One indicator of the challenge faced by BDS advocates in the Episcopal Church is that Katharine Jefferts Schori, who serves in its top leadership role as presiding bishop, recently undertook a pilgrimage in Palestine, accompanied by Steve Gutow, a rabbi who heads the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. A year ago, Gutow denounced the Presbyterian Church USA divestment vote as “outrageous” and “divisive.”The two resolutions more likely to gain Jefferts Schori’s support avoid BDS and instead urge members “to take immediate steps to increase their understanding of the issues” and to encourage “peacemaking and mediation” based on “civil dialog over controversial and confounding issues.”
The United Church of Christ convention will also consider multiple resolutions on these issues, including one declaring that Israel’s occupation meets the definition of apartheid under international law. A separate resolution drafted by the UCC Palestine Israel Network calls for a settlement boycott and divestment from Hewett-Packard, Motorola, Caterpillar and G4S, as well as Veolia, the French corporation that has been involved in building a tramway in occupied East Jerusalem.
The resolution notes that “despite years of corporate engagement and the submission of shareholder resolutions … few companies have withdrawn any of their operations that support the occupation.”
Organizers are optimistic about the resolution’s chances, since it passed easily in each of the regional conferences where it was considered, including the most recent vote at a Minnesota conference where it was passed by 90 votes to 60. UCC Palestine Israel Network’s resolution was even highlighted on the church’s Facebook page.
The UCC Palestine Israel Network has raised concerns, however, that a resolution on “socially responsible investment” proposed by United Church Funds and the church’s pension boards could “inappropriately restrict the freedom” of the church regarding “economic leverage.” This proposal would reserve the right of these church investment bodies to determine when divestment was appropriate as a “last resort.”
“Follow your conscience”
“Investment in Palestine — without divestment from the Israeli occupation — only continues to underwrite the status quo,” the Palestinian businessman Sam Bahour has stated. “We don’t want a more beautiful prison to live in. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from Palestinians to come down, and that won’t happen unless economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation.”The Mennonite Church USA has only one resolution addressing “how our financial lives are enmeshed in the policies of occupation, through our investments, individual purchases and tax dollars.” It does not name specific companies, but would require an annual review of church investments “for the purpose of withdrawing investments from corporations known to be profiting from the occupation and/or destruction of life and property in Israel-Palestine.”
It calls on members to avoid settlement products, and consistent with its pacifist tradition, calls for “an end to US military assistance to all countries, including Israel.”
The Mennonite Palestine Israel Network drafted the resolution. Some leaders of the church are likely to be sympathetic as they are known to have participated in “come and see” tours to Palestine, which exposed them to the realities of Israel’s occupation.
MCUSA cooperated with the Mennonite Central Committee, the church’s relief, development and advocacy organization, and Everence, a Mennonite-affiliated financial services firm, to organize and fund the tours.
“My worldview changed as a result of visiting Palestine-Israel,” Joy Sutter, an MCUSA executive board member, told The Electronic Intifada. Since returning she has found it challenging “to help others understand that we have an apartheid situation in this conflict.”
Each of these churches has received offers of support from Jewish Voice for Peace, which had previously assisted Presbyterian Church USA members wishing to express solidarity with Palestine.
“When we were in Detroit last year, we were saying to the Presbyterians that whatever decision they were going to take — for or against divestment — they are going to have a number of Jews upset at them, because Jews are divided on this issue,” Sydney Levy, Jewish Voice for Peace’s advocacy director, told The Electronic Intifada. “Their job is not to please the Jews. Their job is to follow their conscience and do so based on principle.”
While Jewish Voice for Peace’s budget cannot compare with Adelson’s coffers, its membership has soared over the past year as the only major US Jewish group that supports BDS. It is now raising funds to send Levy and other staff to the Episcopal and UCC gatherings.
“Churches have been relatively shy because of their concerns about relations with Jewish communities,” said Levy. “What we are telling them is that now is the time to take action.”
Sheldon Adelson warned at his Las Vegas fundraiser that “We are losing the war against the boycott.”
It may be too early for Zionists to make such sweeping statements. But if three US churches vote to divest from corporations aiding Israeli apartheid, then it will certainly represent a defeat for Adelson.
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Episcopal Church resolution was drafted by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship Palestine Israel Network. It has been corrected to state that it was drafted by the Episcopal Committee for Justice in Israel and Palestine.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is a freelance photojournalist and member of the ActiveStills collective and lives in Oslo, Norway.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/will-us-churches-help-bring-down-israels-prison-walls/14624
zondag 21 juni 2015
De noodzaak van de Palestijnse bevrijding
The Imperative of Palestinian Liberation
Jun 18 2015
The increasing activities of solidarity with Palestine represents an important step in the right direction. (ActiveStills.org)
Before 1948, there was no country, nation-state, in historic Palestine called Israel. Israel founded itself by the conquest and exclusion of others, the Palestinians, the rightful owners of Palestine. This is the most basic fact that is often forgotten or ignored altogether among the supporters of Israel. Palestine as a name and reality that encompassed diverse ethnic populations living with each other is what that piece of land had been known for and always represented in terms of its Palestinian Mediterranean identity, not a western-supported colony, as Israel certainly is in origin. The extraordinary concoction of the idea of ancient Israel as an effort to provide a reference point for Zionism and Israel’s establishment is so misconstrued and deliberately deceptive. Whitelam puts the record straight in his book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestine History, when he contends that, “viewed from the longer perspective, the history of ancient Israel is a moment in the vast expanse of Palestinian history”.
The establishment of Israel is therefore an anomaly, an exceptionally unfair one at that. Israel and its supporters, however, tend to make Israel so natural and normal a state as if it has had existed for thousands of years, and as if its present Jewish population is the direct ancestors of those who trod the same territory more than two thousand years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is so trampled upon and bypassed by Israeli supporters is the fact that that land is Palestinian by virtue of historical continuity, legal basis and social cohesion and ethical precedence and indeed geographical and aesthetic integrity. Palestine has been inhabited by an Arab Palestinian population that saw many small powers and empires fall and assume other political realities. This is while Palestine in the identity of its people continued until the Zionism of Israel, born and bred in Europe, drove its population away and imposed upon the land and its topographical milestones and features other names and appellations than the ones by which the country was known for amongst its native Arab Palestinian inhabitants. Zionism as a program of power and conquest settled on peddling unethical narratives that fabricated and exercised precedence for the Jews worldwide in Palestine over the Palestinians who have had known no other land as a homeland other than Palestine, the territory over which Israel founded its colonial and unashamedly expansionist state.
Many supporters of Israel conceal or pay no attention whatsoever to this most basic of historical facts sketched briefly above, conjuring up myths and exhibiting political bravados at the expense of human and political rights. Their narrow streak of nationalism, which does not see in the Palestinians legitimate inheritors of their own land, makes them so overzealous over Israel, no matter its horrendous violations of human rights and norms on a daily basis. Such violations include further expansion of illegal settlements, besieging and starving Palestinians in Gaza, restricting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to small Bantustans while taking away their land and limited resources, intruding and desecrating religious sites of immeasurable spiritual significance like those in Jerusalem, confining thousands of Palestinian prisoners in squalid conditions in Israeli prisons that lack basic elements of human survival and dignity, discriminating against Palestinian Arabs inside Israel in blatant and fascistic ways as well as attempting with intransigent insensitivity to block the Palestinian narrative from being heard in international forums and arenas.
Israel and its supporters are deeply stuck in hurting the Palestinians and frustrating their aspirations towards self-determination and rectifying major historical injustices in meaningful ways that include the right of return for the Palestinians who were forcibly evicted from their homes in 1948 and who continue to suffer untold woes in refugee camps, particularly in war-disgraced Syria, vulnerable Lebanon and elsewhere.
Yet, despite the blatant fact that Israel is an apartheid state not only against the Palestinians but also exclusively privileging western Jews in particular, the insatiable narrative of Israel for security and recognition is embraced by powerful western lobbies and figures, particularly by officials at the helm of American power where Israel is treated with crazed respect. In particular, American officials seem to cower before criminal Israeli politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu, applauding him and nursing his penchant for wars.
In addition, many Israeli intellectuals and others do not see Israel as an apartheid state and resist this increasingly used description (see e.g. Benjamin Pogrund in the Guardian, 22sd May 2015). They focus on aspects where Arabs and Israelis are perceived to be treated as equal and see this equality as better than what persisted under apartheid South Africa. What is so missing from this manipulated account is the on-going historical, political and human injustices at a myriad of levels whereby Israel practices active discrimination against all Palestinian Arabs, whether they are in Israel or in the occupied Palestinian territories; and that Israel’s raison d’être as it exists is discriminatory in essence.
This discrimination is underlined by Israel’s vision of itself as an exclusive territory for the Jews and its position that this exclusivity should be guarded at all costs. In the application of such exclusivity, apartheid is what Israel has achieved for itself: it does not accept Palestinians as potentially legitimate and rightful owners of Palestine and institutes a range of practices that unabatedly shuts the Palestinians out from enjoying full human and political rights in their own land. Without equal political and human rights for all the inhabitants of historic Palestine, Israel will continue to be identified by many as an apartheid state.
Yet, Israel is internalized and taken to be a haven of safety and democracy for Jews, whose terrible blight in the Second World War added momentum to the originally and indeed ever uncaring and single-mindedly colonialist Zionism. Indeed, the Holocaust against the Jews constituted a crime against humanity of the first order; and no decent, thinking human being could not sympathize with the Jewish population subjected to annihilation by such an endlessly absolutist and destructive ideology as that of Nazi Germany. Yet, no rational or decent being could accept that this colossal tragedy should be solved and covered at the expense of another population of the Palestinians whose agonies have been enormous and unbearable because of Zionism and its relentless viciousness. In addition to the litany of crimes, massacres and woes it has committed against the Palestinians since its founding, Israel continues to subject Gaza to cruel siege that leaves hundreds of thousands of people destitute and psychologically maltreated to extremes. While the supporters of Israel blame the Palestinian Hamas and its resistance for Israel’s brutal siege, they seem to forget or are uninterested altogether in the fact that Gaza was miserable before Hamas was in charge; and that Hamas is an outcome of the countless miseries that Israel has unleashed on Gaza not only in the period between its formal annexation in 1967 and alleged withdrawal in 2005 that would mark yet another siege of the area; but since 1948 when it waged criminal raids and attacks against its overcrowded population in order to obliterate its resistance to the colonizers and the robbers of the land.
Israel has consistently failed all the offers of peace from the Palestinian side, including from Hamas, resorting instead to tactics of merciless pressure and destruction, expecting the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere to bow down before its perverted exercise of power. The Palestinians, including Hamas and other factions, are entitled to resist the Israeli occupation for the liberation of their land and the restoration of their rights that have been belittled and disregarded. Indeed, there is no other choice for the Palestinians except resistance, even though it is the view of this writer that this resistance must undertake the utmost care in avoiding civilian targets and civilians in general.
Resistance must take human rights and ethics seriously, notwithstanding the fact that Israel is the principal instigator of violations for these rights in Palestine in the first place. But Israel must come to understand that Palestinian liberation is non-negotiable; and that the tragedies it has had inflicted on the Palestinians obstruct any chances for peace and coexistence, which is what the region urgently needs.
Needless to say that much has had happened since 1948; but the original source of the conflict, Israeli colonialism, remains the hurdle of all hurdles for peace and normality in Palestine. Israel is established and its people are there. Because of the apparent solidity of Israel with some western media behind it giving it the veneer of normality which it certainly does not deserve as a colonial state, Israel seems like an ancient stone preserved in the most well-guarded museums. It appears unaffected by the goings-on around it. The Arab world, particularly in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and other areas, is wildly tearing itself apart. So many utterly inhumane practices take place in these Arab places of conflict and tragedy that Israel seems immune from it all. Israel uses this bleak picture of the present Arab world, one featuring mass violence, backwardness, corruption, rampant patriarchal practices and human deprivation to a very disturbing level, to entrench its abuses against Palestine and its people. But the persistent reality remains that Israel is an occupying power, presiding over an awful, criminal occupation in its seventh decade, and increasingly remorseless in its theft of land and aggression against the Palestinian people.
As we Palestinians live through and commemorate the tragic memory of the 67 years of eviction, occupation and destruction of our homeland since Israel was established in 1948, we see the world through the blood, sweat and tears of our grandparents and our present brothers and sisters who continue to struggle and reclaim Palestine from occupation, a Palestine that we should will to accommodate of all its citizens on a humane, inclusive and democratic basis. The great insights of the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said (1935-2003), who wrote as far back as 1979 in his important book The Question of Palestine, still aptly holds: “My belief is that both Palestinians and Jews in Palestine have much to gain — and obviously something to lose — from a human rights view of their common situation, as opposed to a strictly national perspective on it”.
Israeli supporters should pause to think hard about supporting a country that is mired in historical injustices which it repeats every day. No one benefits from supporting inhumanity, not even Israel itself in its descent towards further expansionism and cruelty against the Palestinians. Not least, the terrible reality of Palestinian prisoners, some held for decades now, in degrading Israeli prisons testifies to how unrepentant Israel is on robbing Palestine of its leaders, youth and socio-political sustainability. According to the latest report from the Palestinian committee for prisoners, Israel has imprisoned more than a million Palestinian since 1948, some of them perished unnoticed by the relevant humanitarian or political bodies. Nonetheless, the Palestinian memory and will cannot be bullied to irrelevance by people oblivious to human and political rights. The virtual world might have provided some uneducated, misinformed or badly-intentioned people to wade into every discussion, and to respond and play with every piece of writing that does not concur with their narrow exclusivist views of Zionism, wishing the Palestinians to vanish in silence. But the reality of the Palestinian people remains one of resistance and steadfastness against one of the most brutal and deceitful occupations in history. Many people of good will and understanding in the world have already come to see what Zionism stands for — aggression, expansionism and denial.
The increasing activities of solidarity with Palestine as led by movements such the B.D.S. movement (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) which targets Israeli academic institutions complicit in the sustenance of the Israeli occupation represents an important step in the right direction. Indeed, no amount of normalization or excuses in favor of that occupation could conceal the fact that Israel is an occupying power, exercising vicious domination over a civilian population in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, a population struggling to maintain its survival and regain its abrogated rights against seemingly insurmountable Israeli pressures. It is fair that the Israelis should live in peace and security like other people; but it is neither realistic nor fair to think that this could happen with Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ claims to their history while attempting to suppress their precious memories of their homeland.
Peace cannot happen without Israel accepting and recognizing Palestine as a dignified place and people under the sun yearning to be liberated from its dark colonial yoke.
- Atef Alshaer is a Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Westminster. He has several publications on the Arab world in the field of literature, language and Politics. He was educated at Birzeit University in Palestine and SOAS, University of London, where he obtained his PhD and taught for a number of years. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
zondag 14 juni 2015
Zwarte lijst van pensioenfonds Noorwegen
German, Mexican firms blacklisted by Norway pension fund over Israeli occupation roles
Activism and BDS Beat 12 June 2015
KLP has blacklisted Germany’s HeidelbergCement and Mexico’s Cemex because of their exploitation of Palestinian natural resources in the occupied West Bank.
Military occupation ought to be temporary but exploitation of natural resources in occupied territory “offers a strong incentive to prolong a conflict,” KLP says in its press release.
Earlier, KLP excluded Africa Israel, Shikun & Binui and Danya Cebus for their roles in the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
Arms manufacturer Elbit Systems was excluded because it provided electronic surveillance equipment that is part of Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank that has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Building materials conglomerates HeidelbergCement and Cemex are both involved in operating quarries in the occupied West Bank.
The Electronic Intifada has documented the transportation of raw materials from the West Bank to present-day Israel.
Illegal
The exploitation of nonrenewable resources from occupied territory by Israel for its own sole benefit is a violation of international law.The UN General Assembly expressed “its concern at the exploitation by Israel of the natural resources of the occupied Palestinian territory,” in 2010 and called upon Israel “not to exploit, cause loss or depletion of or endanger the natural resources” in those regions.
KLP’s decision to exclude HeidelbergCement and Cemex was not only based on the unlawful exploitation of Palestinian natural resources, but also aimed at deterring the occupation from continuing. As noted, the fund argues that the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources is a strong incentive to prolong the conflict.
The same applies to cosmetics firm Ahava’s plundering of minerals from the part of the Dead Sea that is inside the West Bank.
Grassroots pressure
In Germany, the Catholic peace group Pax Christi and critical shareholders raised their voice at HeidelbergCement’s annual general meeting last May.They called on the company to end quarrying in the occupied West Bank and respect international law and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
One year after blacklisting Cemex, Swedish state pension fund AP7 also blacklisted HeidelbergCement over violations of human rights, again in relation to the extraction of natural resources in the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Nordea, a large Nordic financial institution headquartered in Sweden, adopted a responsible investment policy specifically on Palestine.
Nordea will engage with companies that are violating international norms during their operations in the occupied West Bank through direct involvement in settlement activity, extraction of nonrenewable resources or providing products and services to the settlement security infrastructure.
Cemex is already excluded from Nordea’s investment portfolio.
The recent divestments from Cemex and HeidelbergCement show there is potential to push ethical investors act responsibly.
They also show that in spite of the fact that the Israeli government and its allies have injected millions of dollars to fight it, BDS – a movement that operates on a shoestring to advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people including the right of return – is still gathering pace.
donderdag 11 juni 2015
BDS-activist Ronnie Barkan op Israelische TV
BDS activist Ronnie Barkan in an 'interview' on Israeli Ynet channel
Here's a glympse into Israeli media and its misinformation of the BDS campaign. In this 'interview', Ronnie Barkan explain the campaign to a less than appreciative journalist. June 4th, 2015.
http://www.palestinasolidariteit.be/content/bds-activist-ronnie-barkan-interview-israeli-ynet-channel
dinsdag 9 juni 2015
Boycott to continue until Orange cuts Israel occupation ties, campaigners say
Activism and BDS Beat
4 June 2015
Reuters
Orange today confirmed that it intends to end a brand licensing agreement with its Israeli affiliate Partner Communications.
The announcement has been given a cautious welcome by French and Palestinian human rights and labor organizations that have long campaigned for an end to the French multinational’s operations in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the French government denounce comments by Orange chief executive Stephane Richard.
At a press conference in Cairo on Wednesday, Richard said his company would cut its ties with Partner Communications “tomorrow” if it were not for contractual obligations.
Richard’s remarks were an attempt to defuse growing pressure in Egypt just two weeks after BDS Egypt launched the Mobinil boycott.
Instead he set off a firestorm, making Orange front page news across Israeli media.
Orange operates in Israel through a franchise agreement with independently owned Partner Communications Ltd. Partner pays royalties to Orange and a share of its profits for using its brand name.
Partner’s controlling shareholder is the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, who is spearheading a new initiative by anti-Palestinian donors to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Partner shares plunged on the Tel Aviv stock exchange today.
Through this arrangement, Orange participates in systematic violations of Palestinian rights, according to an investigation published last month by a coalition of French and Palestinian human rights and labor organizations.
Partner operates hundreds of communications towers and other infrastructure, much of it on privately owned land confiscated from Palestinians.
There has been widespread anger over the fact, revealed by The Electronic Intifada, that Orange Israel sponsors two Israeli military units, one of which – the Ezuz tank brigade – directly participated in some of the bloodiest incidents in last summer’s assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians.
Israeli rage
“I call on the French Government to renounce publicly the miserable statements and the miserable actions of a company of which it holds partial ownership,” Netanyahu said on Thursday.The French state holds a quarter of the shares of Orange Group.
“This theater of the absurd, in which a human rights respecting democracy which is forced to defend itself from rockets and terror tunnels and then is subject to automatic condemnations and attempts to boycott it – this theater of the absurd will not be forgiven,” Netanyahu added.
Israel’s culture minister Miri Regev, notorious for referring to migrants and refugees from African nations as “cancer,” demanded that French President François Hollande fire Richard if he does not “apologize for his anti-Semitic comments.”
Politicians across Israel made similar outraged remarks, while employees of Orange Israel held a rally, draping their company headquarters in national flags.
Many Israelis took to social media to vow that they would drop Orange as their mobile phone provider. But education minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the extreme anti-Arab Jewish Home (Habayit Hayehudi) party, urged them to stand by the company.
“Partner is the victim, not the aggressor,” Bennett said.
Similarly, Orange-Israel CEO Itzik Benvenisti hailed Israelis who “understand that a customer who disconnects from Orange-Israel is serving pro-Palestinian goals and disconnects Israel from the world.”
Orange confirms
Orange confirmed today that despite the angry Israeli reaction it plans to end the deal with Partner, though it gave no definitive time frame.It also tried to extricate itself from a growing political storm.
“The Orange Group is a telecoms operator and as such its primary concern is to defend and promote the value of its brand in markets in which it is present. The Group does not engage in any kind of political debate under any circumstance,” the company said.
It added that its agreement with Partner, “which was signed prior to the acquisition of Orange by France Telecom in 2000, is the only long-term brand licence agreement within the Orange Group. In line with its brand development strategy, Orange does not wish to maintain the presence of the brand in countries in which it is not, or is no longer, an operator. In this context, and while strictly adhering to existing agreements, the Group ultimately wishes to end this brand licence agreement.”
According to Israel’s financial news publication Globes, Orange has already filed an official request to terminate its contract with Partner.
In his Cairo remarks, CEO Richard had suggested that extricating Orange from the agreement could be hampered by penalty fees mounting to hundreds of millions of euros and challenges in Israeli courts.
The current agreement is set to last until 2025.
France stands back
In a terse statement on Friday, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said: “If it is up to the president of Orange to define the commercial strategy of his company, France is firmly opposed to the boycott of Israel.”But the double-edged statement can hardly be seen as an endorsement of the Israeli position. It adds: “France and the European Union have a position on settlement construction that is constant and well-known by all.”
By introducing the issue of settlements into the government’s response, Fabius is, if anything, endorsing the reasons many have demanded Orange end its relationship with Partner.
The French government seems to be saying to Israel that it is not going to interfere if Israel’s settlement policy forces companies to make “commercial” decisions to end their business. The French position appears to be in line with the government’s warning to its companies last year that doing business in Israeli settlements entails legal, moral and financial risks.
Delay “unjustifiable”
The coalition of French and Palestinian human rights organizations that issued last month’s report into Orange’s violations today cautiously welcomed Richard’s announcement as “an important development that must now be translated into concrete measures.”“Orange’s insistence on the need to avert legal and financial risks which it expects to incur as a result of the contract’s early termination, however, suggests that it may delay the implementation of these measures,” the groups warned.
“Under the company’s current contractual obligations, the brand license agreement is intended to continue for 10 more years. Given the ongoing colonization policy by the Israeli authorities and the human rights violations entailed, such a delay is unjustifiable.”
The groups also urged the French government to “take immediate action vis-à-vis” Orange, in “accordance to its international human rights obligations and public policy commitments on the illegality of Israeli settlements.”
The coalition is made up of FIDH - International Federation for Human Rights, with its member organizations Al-Haq, Ligue des droits de l’Homme, CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Association France Palestine Solidarité, Union Syndicale Solidaires and the French trades union federation Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT).
Boycott to continue
BDS Egypt, whose campaign targeting Mobinil dramatically ratcheted up pressure on Orange, reacted to the company’s announcement by vowing the boycott would continue.In a statement sent to The Electronic Intifada, BDS Egypt rejected Orange CEO Richard’s excuses for delaying an end to the contract in similar terms to the human rights and labor organizations.
“BDS Egypt confirms the continuation of the boycott of the company until it ends its participation in violations of Palestinian rights,” the statement added.
“If the millions of euros Orange fears losing in penalties is more important to it than respecting the rights of the Palestinian people, then the Egyptian people are capable of imposing far bigger penalties because they will not accept to pay their money to a company that participates in the crimes of the occupation,” BDS Egypt said.
With thanks to Dena Shunra for assistance with research and translation.
Bron http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/boycott-continue-until-orange-cuts-israel-occupation-ties-campaigners-say
The Month in Pictures: May 2015
The Electronic Intifada
5 June 2015
Men search for survivors amid the rubble at a site which activists said was hit by barrel bombs launched by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Yarmouk refugee camp, southern outskirts of Damascus, 26 May. Reuters
More on http://electronicintifada.net/content/month-pictures-may-2015/14583
zaterdag 6 juni 2015
BDS: Israel protesteert bij Frankrijk tegen uitlatingen directeur Orange
Orange leverde tijdens de aanval op Gaza in 2014 gratis diensten aan de militairen die aan de aanval deelnamen.
Israel heeft bij Frankrijk geprotesteerd tegen uitlatingen die de directeur van de Franse telecommaatschappij Orange, Stéphane Richard, woensdag heeft gedaan in Cairo. Stéphane zei daar op een persconferentie dat hij de banden van Orange met de Israelische maatschappij ''Partner Communications'' nog ''morgen'' zou willen verbreken, maar dat hij dat voorlopig niet zal doen, omdat het Orange op een miljoenenclaim zou kunnen komen te staan wegens contractbreuk.
Het Israelische protest is de zoveelste ontwikkeling betreffende BDS (Boycott, Desinvestment and Sanctions) dat langzamerhand volledig het Israelische nieuws lijkt te zijn gaan beheersen. In het geval van de uitlatingen van Richard ging het om een recente ontwikkeling in Egypte. BDS Egypte maakte onlangs bekend dat het een boycot is begonnen van de Egyptische mobiele telefoonaanbieder Mobinil, die sinds enkele jaren vrijwel volledig eigendom is van Orange.
Aanleiding voor de boycot, die onverwacht veel steun kreeg in Egypte, is het feit dat het Israelische bedrijf Partner Communications, dat een overeenkomst met Orange heeft waarbij het onder de naam Orange mag opereren, actief is in de bezette gebieden en daar onder meer de communicatie van de bewoners van de nederzettingen verzorgt. Orange is overigens wegens de banden met Partner ook al een tijdje mikpunt van acties van de BDS-beweging in Frankrijk zelf.
Het protest van de Israelische regering tegen de uitlatingen die Richard in Cairo deed, kwam in de vorm van een boodschap van de Israelische ambassadeur in Parijs, Yossi Gal, waarin hij de Franse regering vroeg afstand te nemen van Richard's opmerkingen. Gal's redenering daarachter luidde dat het Franse staats-telecombedrijf France Télécom voor 25% eigenaar is van Orange, zodat het de Franse staat rechtstreeks aangaat. Maar die redenering snijdt waarschijnlijk geen hout, Orange is gewoon een privé-onderneming waarin de Frase staat - indirect - een belang heeft. De Israelische stap, waartoe opdracht was gegeven vanuit het Israelische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, geeft goed weer hoe Israel langzamerhand geobsedeerd raakt door de telkens terugkerende neuwsberichten betreffende BDS.
Woensdag debatteerde de Knesset, het Israelische parlement, ook over BDS. Minister van Justitie Ayelet Shaked zei dat BDS voortkwam uit klassiek anti-semitisme, de radicale islam en simpele naïviteit. Zij bepleitte contra-boycots, onder meer naar aanleiding van het recente bericht dat de Britse Studentenbond zich achter BDS heeft gesteld. ''We moeten terugschieten, '' zei de minister zonder overigens aan te geven hoe en waarmee. Dat was kenmerkend voor het hele debat. Het leidde niet tot enige concrete stap.
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)