Everyone who has ever met me can attest I am a totally cool, calm and collected person. Not! I am completely beside myself about attending the PennBDS conference next month. I can't wait and am counting the days. I registered and booked my plane ticket! The idea of being at the conference with so many of us together in one place; focused, directed and empowered by the growing global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, in solidarity, has me bursting at the seams in anticipation.
(Graphic: pennbds.org)
Have you noticed the level of shrill discourse from hasbarists lately? The other side is freaking out because our diverse coalition united, empowered and in strength creates a political firewall they cannot compete with, and they know it. We know that they are hearing us when they use terms like warfare and weapons to combat the growing non-violent threat we have become.
Check out the line up of speakers assembled by the team at PennBDS? Out of the ballpark! (Okay okay, I know I should calm down but I can't). But that isn't why I am writing here today....
The organizers could really use some additional donations as they gear up to pay for a bunch of big expenses. The registration fee for this conference is so cheap (seriously, I was aghast when I went to register online, it's like the cost of 2 movie tickets for the friggin' weekend!), but unfortunately the overhead isn't. So if everyone and anyone who can afford it can just head on over to PennBDS website and make an extra donation that would be simply splendiferous and very much appreciated.
From Remi Kanazi's spoken word :
"Palestinian civil society has spoken
don't cross this picket line or cash in that paycheck signed apartheid
put down Stolen Beauty
cancel that gig
and join the rest of us on the right side of history."
See you there
finally we will get to meet kathleen!
Annie/Phil Mondo team. Ralph Nader on Washington Journal this past Saturday talking about New Hampshire, Obama’s policies being worse than Bush’s in regard to ignoring war powers act, drone bombings etc. Brings up Ron Paul’s stances. Or callers do and he responds.
Big news…..Hillary Mann Leverett on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program yesterday. Some intense go around on Iran with a four person panel. Hillary was fabulous. Would make a a great post on Iran. See what you miss on the MSM Annie (just teasing)
This is wonderful news. I hope that some campus is already pushing their student government for a divestment resolution to brag about at the conference. Any divestment resolution is a victory if it’s spread all over the campus media– regardless of the vote count.
This one actually won, at Wayne State University:
link to 4.bp.blogspot.com
Try one like it!
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According to The Economist, Israel’s economy is doing better than just about any other developed country’s. I understand the fun of getting lots of like-minded people in one venue, but can BDS credibly be said to be achieving anything tangible?
No, Winnica is right. BDS will not do any bad harm to Israel’s finances.
So why bother?
Because BDS also never did any bad harm to South Africa’s finances in the 1970′s and 1980′s.
Yet BDS killed Apartheid South Africa politically. It empowered Black people and their friends to strike a blow at the Apartheid State, and to encourage governments to do likewise, until South Africa stank like a pig in all international forums.
That is the value of BDS.
Flying thru the Tel Aviv airport not long ago, I was struck by the difference. Back in the 1970s, the flights were all to Western Europe and North America. Nowadays the flights are to all over: Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, even some flights to South America. Jerusalem is mobbed with tourists from Nigeria, Poland, Korea, and all sorts of other faraway spots, and in numbers way beyond the imagination of Israeli tourism officials in, say, 1982. What can I say: it doesn’t look like growing isolation to me.
Let us assume Wimnnica is right– that Israel is so damn popular that BDS will have no effect. Let’s assume that Palestinian life is worth nothing to anyone anyway.
Now recall 1960. No one on Earth was willing and able to defend Black life in Mississippi or in Sharpeville or the Congo. Black people could be annihilated with zero consequences, and both the U.S. and South Africa were White Teflon regimes with great, uh, popularity.
After the Black Power movement was finished, and BDS, the Apartheid regimes in South Africa and the American South were dead and buried forever.
Once you see five simultaneous campuses marching to boycott Israel — the Israeli State will be flushed down the Apartheid toilet to join its old (dead) buddies like Vorster and Botha.
Start the clock now. Who will be the first to march for boycotting “Israel”?
Thanks winnica for the strong argument against already over-burdened US taxpayers having to subsidize Israel to the tune of ~$3B per annum.
I think it’s closer to 2bn, for whatever it’s worth. Most of it must be spent in the US, so in effect it’s a job-creating scheme in which the Federal Government subsidises various parts of the American military industry. But yes, it would probably be better for all sides if the US government stopped presenting it as a subsidy for Israel, and instead Israel competed like anyone else for miltary tenders. If the European example is anything to go by, Israeli companies, research teams and so on would win large sums of American investment funds simply because they’d offer the best deals.
winni, there are multiple ways israel can get around that, and it does. one way is for people w/dual citizenship to set up a war profittering business here and then israel can spend that money on those businesses.
just saying.
See you there, Annie! Can’t wait. (I’ll be speaking at a panel on Sunday, but I’ll be there for the whole thing. Looking forward to catching up!)
great pam, it will be so much fun to spend some more time with you. i know about your panel, i have studied the program over and over. i already know you’re a really good speaker!
;)
Most developed nation? Ahead of Israel (in order as of November 2011):
Norway Australia Netherlands United States New Zealand Canada Ireland Liechtenstein Germany Sweden Switzerland Japan Hong Kong Iceland South Korea Denmark
The argument made in the Economist was referring to the book Start Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. I got sick of Senor’s face when he was the chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq where he did a bang up job, NOT!, with the economic development in that country.
When an economist reviewed their book, here’s what he said:
link to urdunmubdi3.ning.com
Long story short, Israel is addicted to American aid. If BDS can successfully interrupt it they will be like any other strung-out junkie. Begone concern troll!
The Economist has lists of economic indicators at the back of each issue. I was referring to them, not to a book.
hi winnica, why do you bother posting here if, as you claim, everything is going so swimmingly?
Just trying to learn and understand, that’s all. Like the one above about Israelis with dual citizenship et. al: never heard that one before. Do you have any evidence? I’d be interested.
Oh that. From the back cover of this week’s Economist of countries projected to grow faster than Israel in 2012:
China, Russia, Turkey, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malyasia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Latvia, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Ukraine, and Vietnam.
See you there. I’m about as excited as you, maybe even more!
I wish more people would indeed donate, especially those who wish to go but are unable to. The PennBDS organizers are brilliant and they deserve all the help we all can provide.
I am so excited – and I’m counting the days until I get to attend this inspiring event.
maybe even more!
so excited ;)
yeah, this is going to be so fun. can’t wait to meet you..will email..
Hi annie, mondo readers interested in the Penn State BDS conference may be interested in this report by Jeff Halper co-founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. ICAHD uses non-violent, direct-action means of resistance to end Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories.
Here’s an example of what Jeff Halper and his group are up against:
Jeff Halper
“This morning I got a call from Jawdi Jaber, a Palestinian friend from the Baka Valley near Hebron. Settlers from Kiryat Arba, the large settlement/city built on his land and literally on top of his house, had thrown a barrage of rocks and stones at his family’s home and had burned his car.
It wasn’t much of a car, a battered old 1979 Peugeot mini-van, but it was vital for his family. Jawdi used it to make frequent visits to the hospital with his ill 90 year-old mother, not being able to afford an ambulance each time. On very rainy days he’d take his kids to school: 4 miles on foot over rocky mountain paths on most days, and not infrequently the kids would be attacked by Israeli settlers in the area, sometimes with baseball bats. When he had something to sell (the Israeli authorities tore out all his irrigation pipes this year and most of his crops – tomatoes, cucumbers and grapes – dried up and died), he would load the vegetables in his van and take them to the market in Hebron. The car was “the arms and legs of the family,” he told me this family, his voice resigned and quiet.
It was one of those “little” incidents that never get reported, part of the fabric of daily violence suffered by Palestinians of all ages. “I have never known a day of just normal happiness my whole life,” Jawdi recently told me. In 2001 he tried to build a small home for his wife and five children on his family’ land adjacent to his parents’ four-room home in which 17 people were living; in 2002 it was demolished by the Israeli authorities, only one of the 26,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territory since 1967 because Israel refuses to grant Palestinians building permits.
Jawdi’s brother Atta, who lives on the hill opposite, has had his home demolished three times. In January, 2000, settlers invaded Atta’s house on a Friday, threw the family out of their home, stayed there over the Sabbath (under police protection), then, on Saturday night, burned the home, desecrated the Quranic passage over the door and left. No one arrested.
If anyone tries to tell you that Israel does not engage in ethnic cleansing or that what it does is for reasons of “security,” take them to the Jaber family. Nice people (Jawdi and Atta both speak fluent English) whose wives, Aisha and Rudina, will make you delicious maklubeh and who kids are bright and photogenic – but be aware, you are in the presence of genuine heroes. These are people who are scared, wounded, traumatized, sad, impoverished and oppressed, but they are sumud, steadfast. The Jabers will prevail. They have the strength to resist whatever violence, injustice and pain the Israeli government, its settlers and its apathetic population can bring to bear. Indeed, theirs are the shoulders upon which our world rests.
Only one thing can break them. Not the American “superpower” with its hi-tech military and “pro-Israel” Congress and Administration, not America’s European lackey governments with no courage to enforce the human rights they so loudly proclaim, but us. We can break the Jabers will to resist if we abandon them, if we, the good and privileged people, remain silent. Imagine yourself standing with Jawdi and his family this morning beside their smoldering car. What are you going to do about it?”
Best wishes for a successful conference. Wanted to donate some of the pocket money I occasionally receive from my wife, but banking charges are too high. Does anybody know about a company called Premier dead sea? They are selling cosmetics in a Vienna/Austria shopping mall. Are they “kosher”, or are they some kind of Ahava? I read somewhere they were kicked out of the UK.
Here is an idea from the anti-SOPA BDS that you may wish to steal:
link to occupyamerica.ning.com
Basically it is an Android app for your cell phone or tablet that scans the barcode of any product you are about to purchase, and it shows a red cross or a green arrow based on whether the product provider supports SOPA.
Should be easy to write/modify a similar one for the I/P BDS.
A new BDS handbook has just been released in the UK and is available for download at link to corporateoccupation.files.wordpress.com
It is 368 pages long and seems pretty comprehensive to me. Here the toc:
Targeting Israeli apartheid – a boycott, divestment
and sanctions handbook
Contents:
Part one: Overview of the Israeli Economy
Page 1 Israel’s export trade
Page 3 The effect of the BDS movement on exports
Page 5 Holding companies
Page 7 Banking and financial services
Page 16 Agriculture
Page 36 Extractive industries
Page 47 Energy
Page 55 Telecommunications
Page 61 Tourism
Page 68 Freight transport
Page 73 Public transport
Page 77 Academia
Page 88 Manufacturing overview
Page 91 Israel’s settlement industrial zones
Page 124 Military industry
Page 149 High-tech
Page 161 Diamonds
Page 168 Pharmaceuticals
Page 178 Construction and real estate
Page 215 Franchises
Part two: Geographical Case Studies
Page 221 The Syrian Golan
Page 230 The Jordan Valley
Page 240 East Jerusalem
Page 255 The Dead Sea
Page 259 The Naqab
Part Three: The UK – Bringing the Fight Home
Page 277 Arms companies in the UK
Page 288 Israeli companies with British shareholders
Page 291 Banks
Page 294 Retail
Page 307 Universities
Page 317 Pension funds
Page 329 Charities