Media release, 7 July 2011
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel to hit the streets of Brisbane.
Anti-apartheid protesters will rally and march on the streets of Brisbane on Saturday July 9 at 1pm in King George Square to demand that Israel dismantle its apartheid “separation” wall.
Seven years after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel’s Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal; Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court’s decision. Forty-four years into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall. Israel is also expanding colonies in the West Bank. Sixty-three years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel’s entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.
In 2005 more than 170 Palestinian organisations, including political parties, trade unions and civil and community groups called upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.
The situation is not one of two warring religions or groups between Palestinians and Israelis but one of racial oppression and segregation. Israel, with one of the world’s most powerful armed forces, imposes separate rules based on people’s ethnicity in both Israel and the Palestinian territories they occupy. They even have Jewish only roads, something not even brutal apartheid South Africa had. While Federal politicians have attempted to discredit the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and the Victorian Police recently violently broke up a peaceful BDS protest in Melbourne more people are recognising the apartheid nature of Israel and joining the BDS movement.
Saturday’s rally will end at the Myer Centre to demand the removal of the Israeli owned “Seacret” cosmetics stall. “Seacret”is a cosmetics company that exploits minerals from the Dead Sea. While they profit from this resource, the indigenous Palestinian people who live on the land surrounding the Dead Sea are regularly denied access. Palestinian access to the Dead Sea is prevented by Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands, which include networks of checkpoints, Israeli only roads and the Apartheid Wall.
TEAR DOWN THE WALL!
End the occupation of Palestine!
Equal rights for Palestinians!
Right of return for Palestinian refugees!
For more information:
Phone: 0401 586 923, 0400 720 757
Email: contact@justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org
www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org
About 50 people rallied and marched in support of the BDS action to bring Justice for Palestine.
They were met at the entrance of Myers by police and security guards. Myers is the location of the Israeli Cosmetics firm called Seacrets.
Myer management have defended this Israeli government backed PR outfit that steals minerals from Palestinian land (the Dead Sea) and sells them abroad as cosemetics.
Myer management has been zealous in defending the indefensible – all they have to do is to refuse to allow this firm that supports Israeli apartheid to operate in their centre.
This campaign against Seacrets in Brisbane (and elsewhere) has been conducted under the banner of the international BDS campaign.
Justice for Palestine (Brisbane) meets fortnightly at the TLC Building @ 16 Peel St South Brisbane. Their meetings are advertised on WBT.
The Zionists have got the Murdoch press, Kevin Rudd and the Victorian Police on their side. We’ve got Noam Chomsky, Carlos Latuff, the MUA, Norman Finkelstein and Anthony Lowenstein, amongst others. How can we lose!
Everyone needs to come along to show their support for the next BDS action in Brisbane, outside Max Brenner in South Bank. Saturday 27 August. Meeting at 1 pm in the park on the corner of Merivale & Glenelg Streets, Southbank for a march to the Max Brenner store.
Our civil liberties are at stake – we’ve got to resist the attempt to criminalise BDS actions!
Tom
Ref –
http://boycottisrael19.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/famous-pro-palestinian-cartoonist-supports-the-boycott-israel-19/
Hi everyone,
There’s a Justice for Palestine meeting tonight (Wednesday, 27 July 2011), 6:30pm at the TLC Building (2nd floor), 16 Peel St, South Brisbane.
in solidarity,
Kathy
[youtube=http://youtu.be/92FlHekXe6k]
I agree with Ray. The Zionist misinformation campaign, probably State sponsored, must have a series of stock replies to deceminate. This “Roots of the Apartheid Comparison” campaign line appears to be one of them.
I long ago gave up the thesis that those subject to racism or oppression could not be later be racist or oppressors themselves. A most important struggle after liberation for the Palestinians will be to not repeat the Zionist occupation and revival of racism in Palestine that followed when the European settlers created the State of Israel on Arab lands. It is my great hope that the new Palestinian uprising (including the right to return), that is just beginning, will sweep away this racist past and create a democratic secular Palestine for all its inhabitants. Ray has succintly exposed the disinformation campaign inserted here by A.
JosephM
What a total conceptual reversal of oppression in the Middle East is this “ROOTS OF ‘APARTHEID-COMPARISON’ THESIS”!
Observe the recent murders by NATO supported Libyan rebels of Libyan black Africans who have equal rights with non-black Africans in the not-yet-conquered-by-the-imperialists Jamahariyya!
Observe the lack of even the most basic human rights under Zionism like freedom of movement and the right to own, leave and return to one’s home!
True there is much racism throughout the world including throughout the Middle East but it becomes legally-sanctioned “apartheid” only under Western imperialism and Zionism.
Beyond these obnoxious ideologies the whole Arab world has long been multi-ethnic.
ARAB-NAZISM & GENOCIDE = ROOTS OF ‘APARTHEID-COMPARISON’ THESIS
Ahmad shukairy Arab-nazi has invented the apartheid slur (upon pluralistic democratic Israel, six years before the so-called “occupation” excuse came about) in 1961. [“Politics, lies, and videotape: 3,000 questions and answers on the Mideast crisis” – Page 392 – Yitschak Ben Gad – SP Books, 1991 – 479 pages] He helped the (ally of Adolf Hitler, al-Husseini, better known as the) Mufti and aided in extermination of Jews in WW2, according to testimony in Congress. [Congressional record: proceedings and debates of the United States Congress: Volume 113, Part 12 – United States. Congress – Govt. Print. Off., 1967 – Page A-525]. The same Shukairy admitted in 1956 that so-called “Palestine” is NOTHING but a part of Syria… [United Nations review: Volume 3 – United Nations. Dept. of Public Information, United Nations. Office of Public Information – 1957 – Page 8] Then, in 1963, he changed his mind, and the ‘new nationalism’ is ‘conveniently’ used -since then- by Arab immigrants’ children who call themselves as “Palestinians” [mainly] since about that same year. He’s more famous for coining the Palestine Liberation Organization’s genocide slogan ‘Drive the Jews into the Sea’ [America’s Two Holy Wars – John Tyler – Page 246].
ARAB MUSLIM APARTHEID
All the while the Arab world and the Muslim world are the largest practitioners of racial and religious apartheid. Where not one minority has equal rights with the governing power. Not to mention the still-practiced racist slavery on Asians and on blacks by Arabs. And the ethnic cleansing by the Arab world including by anti-Christian, anti-Jewish Arab-Islamic-Apartheid-Palestine.
To quote from books: The Islamic world “the world’s largest practitioner of both religious and gender apartheid.” [Israel: And the Palestinian Nightmare – Page 158 – Ze’ev Shemer – 2010 – 244 pages] “The Islamic culture of “religious intolerance, economic backwardness, gender apartheid, muzzled press, militarism, terrorism.” [A theory of international terrorism: understanding Islamic militancy – Page 153 – L. Ali Khan – 2006 – 371 pages] The “antisemitism of the Arab world and the Muslim world.” The racist “long history of oppression against minorities in Arab countries.” [U.S. news & world report: Volume 131, Issues 8-18 – U.S. News Pub. Corp., 2001 – Page 120]
PALLYWOOD
The lying Arab-Palestinian Goliath machine not only lies and denies Israel’s extending more rights to Arabs than to Jews (like favortism in court, affirmative action and exemption from military service), but also fabricates “memorandums” like a supposed speech by N. Mandela which was actually written by an Arab residing in the Netherland… The Arab lobby also aided J. Carter (the one who wrote a hate book in 2006 with almost an exact title of that by Palestinian-Arab M. Bishara in 2002), who uttered anti-Jewish bigoted statements like: ‘stating Freeman’s recommendations for council board members contained “too many Jews.”‘ [Living in the Times of the Signs – Page 219 – David R. Barnhart – 2007 – 492 pages]
AIM
The racist Arab “apartheid” slander campaign (like infamous ‘apartheid week’) has been rocked by usual anti-Jewish hatred outbursts, including calls to kill Jews, Swastikas, etc. [M. Ignatieff: Israel Apartheid Week and CUPE Ontario’s anti-Israel posturing should be condemned.” National Post, March 05, 2009] [“Swastikas and Ku Klux Klan Symbols during ‘Apartheid Week…” Israel National News, 3 Mar 2010]