In the News

THIS MONDAY SAY "NO TO THE REBRANDING OF ISRAELI APARTHEID"

August 25, 2008
What: Information Picket / When: Monday, August 25 @ 6pm / Where: Miles Nadal Center, south-east corner of Bloor/Spadina || Dear Friends and Allies: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has selected Toronto as a 'test market' for a million dollar re-branding campaign. The 10-month 'Brand Israel' campaign is being launched this coming Monday, August 25th at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Center in downtown Toronto.

What: Information Picket / When: Monday, August 25 @ 6pm / Where: Miles Nadal Center, south-east corner of Bloor/Spadina || Dear Friends and Allies: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has selected Toronto as a 'test market' for a million dollar re-branding campaign. The 10-month 'Brand Israel' campaign is being launched this coming Monday, August 25th at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Center in downtown Toronto.

CAIA is calling on its friends and community allies to come out on Monday and show that Torontonians will not 'buy' into a gimmicky Israeli advertising campaign that is based on cynically racialized marketing techniques. Just as Torontonians rejected attempts in the 1980s to ‘re-brand’ apartheid-era South Africa, CAIA is confident that they will do the same with attempts to normalize Israeli apartheid.

According to Israeli consul general in Toronto Amir Gissin, the campaign seeks to "fix negative images of Israel by "tak[ing] the emphasis off the politics and strife." However, the reality that escapes Gissin is that the Israeli 'brand' will continue to 'perform poorly' so long as the Israeli state continues to legislate racist apartheid laws that deny fundamental rights to Palestinians.

The campaign, designed as ‘an attack on all the senses,’ emphasizes ‘grassroots exposure’ with official Brand Israel logos and advertising set to "go up across the GTA in bus shelters, on billboards, on radio and TV starting in September."  According to the Canadian Jewish News, the re-branding campaign will target particular communities in Toronto, with an emphasis on 'opinion leaders' in the 'Asian' and 'East African' communities (singled out for exposure to Gissin's so-called ‘Brand Israel attack arsenal’). The racist and elitist nature of such ethnic and class-based marketing campaigns exposes why opposition to Israeli apartheid continues to grow.

CAIA is particularly concerned that the campaign will feature Israeli medical technology as a key ‘selling point.’ This contravenes the international campaign to boycott the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) until it takes a clear stance against the torture of Palestinians by the Israeli military and firmly condemns the numerous documented instances in which medical care is illegally denied to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Ultimately, the 'Brand Israel' campaign is a testament to the strength and breadth of the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid launched by Palestinian civil society in the summer of 2005. This desperate move by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the shallowness of the 're-branding' effort, highlights the crisis of moral legitimacy confronting the Israeli state and its representatives when attempting to respond to direct calls for accountability that people of conscience all over the world are increasingly raising about Israel's racist behavior.

Brick by Brick, Wall by Wall
Israeli Apartheid is Going to Fall!!

For more information visit the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) at http://www.caiaweb.org.

August 25, 2008
/

SHARE

Stay updated!

Sign-up for news, campaign updates, action alerts and fundraisers from the BDS movement.

Subscribe Now