A coalition of Florida organizations are calling for a boycott of Duty Free Americas over its financial support for racist, ultra-nationalist Israeli settler groups in the West Bank. “The call for boycott of Duty Free Americas is especially important for us Floridians to answer because the owners of this company are our neighbors, and we must hold them responsible and accountable for the millions of dollars they have donated to the ongoing Nakba,” CAIR-Florida’s Central Florida Regional Coordinator Lara Abu Ghannam tells Mondoweiss.
The Israeli government has approved initial plans for thousands of new housing units in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, along with hundreds of Palestinian units in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full control of the Israeli government. “It seems that the approval of a handful of plans for the Palestinians is only intended to try to reduce criticism of the government and to please the US administration ahead of Prime Minister Bennett’s expected visit to Washington in the coming weeks,” settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement.
Reactions to Ben & Jerry’s announcement that it is ending business in Israeli settlements shows a new consensus is forming in the Palestine solidarity movement. Many activists are shifting focus from simply boycotting Israeli settlements to boycotting Israeli Apartheid.
Meretz represents the far left of Israeli politics and even its leader says even he buys settlement products. This more than anything shows the overwhelming Israeli political consensus behind the settlements.
Religious zealots have established an “outpost” settlement in West Bank lately and Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians protesting the landgrab. The story is getting wide coverage in Palestine but not in the United States, though these lands are the supposed basis of a “Palestinian state.”
It was not Naftali Bennett or Avigdor Lieberman who finally dethroned Benjamin Netanyahu, but the Palestinians themselves.
Florida protestors tell Duty Free Americas to stop funding expulsion of Palestinians. “Quite simply, our groups are in front of Duty Free America offices today because Israel encourages the construction of illegal settlements, and international philanthropy pays for it,” explained protestor Hiba Kakli.
The New York Times runs “hasbara” or Israeli propaganda about coexistence in Haifa, including humans with wild boars. But Alice Rothchild writes that boars are actually a tool of occupation: Jewish settlements outside Nablus frequently blocked access to the local villages, burned their farms and olive trees, and raised wild pigs that they released into Palestinian farms.
Nathan Thrall tells the story of the death of Milad Salama in occupied territory in 2012 to illuminate one lesson: Palestinian lives are all but disposable in the Zionist vision of settling the land. The “New York Review of Books” article contrasts Milad’s misfortune to be born in a bantustan to the good luck of Thrall’s own daughter– “a Jewish girl living a life of privilege on the other side of the wall.”