Thursday, September 30, 2010

South African university to cut its ties with Israeli university unless it stops supporting Israeli military:


"...University of Johannesburg threatens to sever ties with Israeli Ben-Gurion University if certain conditions are not met.

by Azad Essa, 30 Sep 2010
ALJAZEERA.net



The South African University of Johannesburg (UJ) senate has threatened to end its relationship with the Israeli university, Ben-Gurion (BGU), unless certain conditions are met.


In a statement released on Wednesday, the South African university's highest academic body said Ben-Gurion University would have to work with Palestinian universities on research projects and stop its "direct and indirect support for the Israeli military and the occupation".


"The conditions are that the memorandum of understanding governing the relationship between the two institutions be amended to include Palestinian universities chosen with the direct involvement of UJ," the university said in a statement.



"Additionally, UJ will not engage in any activities with BGU that have direct or indirect military implications, this to be monitored by UJ's senate academic freedom committee.


"Should these conditions not be met within six months, the memorandum of understanding will automatically lapse on April 1 2011," UJ said.


Describing the afternoon senate meeting on Wednesday as mostly "tense", the UJ senate also called on BGU to "respect UJ's duty (and) to take seriously, allegations of behaviour on the part of BGU's stakeholders that is incompatible with UJ's values".


'Human dignity'


Adam Habib, the UJ's vice-chancellor told Al Jazeera that the decision was based on two principles.


"Firstly it was important to identify with an oppressed population and secondly, it was about creating an enabling environment for reconciliation and the achievement of human dignity."


Habib said his university will be engaging Palestinian academic institutions in a bid to solicit advice on mapping a way forward, and that the current memorandum of understanding (MOU) between UJ and Ben-Gurion would have to broaden.


"For instance, we know that the BGU has collaborative projects with the Israeli army and we also know that the university implements state policy, which invariably results in the discrimination of the Palestinian people," Habib said.


"Crucially, there can be no activities between UJ and an Israeli educational institution that discriminated against the Palestinian people."


Habib said that while the decision still had to be ratified by the university council, these changes would have to happen over the next six months, or the existing MOU would collapse.



'Unprecedented momentum'


Salim Vally, a senior researcher at the Faculty of Education and spokesman for the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC), told Al Jazeera that the move to sever academic ties with BGU "has created an unprecedented momentum and has galvanised academics towards fighting for social justice".


"While the PSC supports an unequivocal and unambiguous boycott of all Israeli state institutions, this is a move in the right direction and we are confident that it would lead to a more comprehensive boycott of Israel in the future.



"We know that they have a relationship with the military, making them complicit in the acts of the army, and in the next six months we will prove that the relationship with BGU should be severed completely," Vally said.


Relations between Ben-Gurion University and the University of Johannesburg, formerly the Rand Afrikaans University, a formerly all-white university under South Africa's apartheid system, began in 1987.


The University of Johannesburg, created in 2005, took over various campuses including Rand Afrikaans University and a university in the black township of Soweto as part of efforts to ensure higher education was transformed with the rest of South Africa after the end of apartheid.


The current partnership with Ben Gurion dates back to August 2009 when the universities signed an academic cooperation and staff exchange agreement, concerning water purification and micro-algal biotechnology research.



Academic dissonance


The re-established relationship drew sharp criticism from the university community and catalysed the formation of a petition that has drawn some of the biggest academics, authors and social activists in South Africa.


Desmond Tutu and around 250 other prominent South African academics have supported ending UJ's links with the Israeli institution.


"Israeli universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice,'' Tutu wrote in an essay that appeared in a South African newspaper on Sunday.


"While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation.''


Academic boycotts of Israeli universities have been inspired by boycotts of South African institutions during apartheid.



A 2003 proposal for British universities to sever all ties with Israeli academic institutions was
defeated.


Two years later Britain's Association of University Teachers voted to boycott Israel's Haifa and Bar Ilan universities. That decision was overturned only a month later under fierce international pressure.


US professors and students also have called for academic and cultural boycotts of Israel.


The moves have prompted sharp criticism. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz once threatened legal action that would "devastate and bankrupt'' anyone who boycotts Israeli universities.


The New York-based Anti-Defamation League described the British moves as anti-Semitic, arguing Israel was being singled out while human rights violators such as Iran, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe were ignored.


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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Boycotting Israel at the Co-op:

“If we can stop carrying products tested on animals...we can stop carrying products that violate human rights”



"No matzo, no peace:
"Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op debates Palestine politics"

By Lien Hoang
The SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW (Sacramento, California)
September 16, 2010



Matzo and bath salts are stirring up controversy over at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, where a fraction of its 12,000 owner-members is moving to boycott products that come from Israel.


The boycott is being pushed by the Sacramento Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions Working Group. The group says the boycott would end when Israel stops its Gaza blockade, exits the West Bank, grants Arab Israelis the same rights as Jewish Israelis and lets Palestinian refugees return.


More than anything, the controversy is a war of symbols, as the half-dozen Israeli brands that would be affected constitute less than 1 percent of SNFC inventory.


“If we can stop carrying products tested on animals, surely we can stop carrying products that violate human rights,” activist and Co-op member Maggie Coulter said at a meeting of the Co-op board on September 7.


That meeting drew two dozen people to the Co-op on Alhambra Boulevard, where boycott backers accused Israel of creating a system of apartheid for Palestinians. They said rather than support the nation by buying its goods, the store should do its part in pressuring Israel to make concessions to Palestine.


Opponents questioned the legality of a boycott, which would alienate Jewish customers and set a double standard for other human-rights violators, including China and countries in Africa and the Mideast. Besides, they said, the board should stick to managing SNFC finances and leave the politicking to President Barack Obama.


They also delivered a letter from California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who wrote that the protest would try to “delegitimize and demonize Israel … as a pariah nation.”

Those attacking the boycott option worried it targeted an ethnic and religious group, but supporters shot back that the target was a government’s policies.


When one woman at the meeting lamented a distorted news media funded by Jewish dollars, Barry Broad pounced.


“That’s anti-Semitic,” the chairman of the Sacramento Jewish Community Relations Council said, addressing the board. “You said you wouldn’t tolerate anti-Semitism.”


Coulter says 400 Co-op owners have signed form letters of support. But Len Feldman, director of the Sacramento JCRC, cited a study in which 80 percent of SNFC owners surveyed opposed boycotts for political ends.


“You have a small group of people trying to turn Co-op members into political pawns,” he said outside of the meeting.


The seven-member Co-op board will investigate the boycott request for three months before voting. A smaller Co-op policy committee has already recommended against the boycott.


In March, a similar effort at the Davis Food Co-op failed, while four months later, one at a natural foods Co-op in Olympia, Wash., succeeded.


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Sunday, September 12, 2010

200 Demonstrate at Dearborn City Hall:

"Stop U.S. Aid to Israel".



For the full article and photos, see the Arab American News, Sept. 11-17, 2010, at page 14:

"Demonstrators Rally for Jerusalem, Support Palestinian Rights".


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Saturday, September 11, 2010

If City Council cared about Muslims... The Council would tell Congress to stop spending trillions on killing Muslims.


Click on the flyer above to enlarge it.
It's from the 27-year campaign to get City Council to vote for sanctions against Israel, due to the Israeli massacres of Palestinian and Lebanese people.

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If the Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council cared about Muslims...

...The Council would tell Congress to stop spending trillions on killing Muslims, in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
...The Council would tell Congress to spend those trillions rebuilding Detroit and every inner city.

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Instead, Ann Arbor City Council is offering this crumb to the world's 1.6 billion Muslims (as they are massacred by U.S. and Israeli troops)--

A resolution favoring "tolerance" of Muslims:


"Ann Arbor community and faith leaders responding to 'anti-Muslim rhetoric' sweeping nation"

Sept. 10, 2010

ANNARBOR.COM, at:




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Saturday, September 4, 2010

Who will ask Dearborn City Council to boycott all Israeli products?


"U.S.-led Mideast peace talks have shown little progress"

By Hasan Newash
DETROIT FREE PRESS
September 3, 2010

At:


"...There is a role for Americans of conscience to make a difference, just as they helped bring down South African Apartheid. The movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel has been gaining momentum all over the world. It is also catching on in the U.S. The model that ended Apartheid in South Africa applies to the Israeli apartheid of which President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu have spoken."


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