The creation of the state of Israel almost 60 years ago dispossessed and uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands. With their peaceful lives ruined, society fragmented, possessions pillaged and hope for freedom and nationhood dashed, Palestinian refugees held on to their dream of return, and Palestinians everywhere nourished their aspiration for freedom, dignified living, and becoming whole again.

There is no reason to celebrate!

The BDS National Committee (BNC), comprising over 200 Palestinian civil society organizations and including all major Palestinian workers' unions, salutes the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) for their decision to support the international campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli apartheid regime. This decision, the first of its kind at the national level of a union in North America, constitutes a major step forward in the global struggle for freedom and justice.

Yes, all prominent human rights organizations have recorded this terrible oppression by the Israeli military in occupied Palestine. Yes, these crimes and gross human rights violations are persistently committed by Israel, “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Even at the level of censorship and cultural repression Israel, throughout its four decades of occupation, has done everything in its capacity to destroy or marginalize Palestinian identity, history and cultural heritage. This is real censorship of the 21st century!

Delegates to the annual convention of the CUPW, representing over 50,000 postal workers, voted overwhelmingly in support of resolution 338/339. This resolution states that the union will work "… with Palestinian solidarity and human rights organizations to develop an educational campaign about the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and the political and economic support of Canada for these practices." Israel‘s apartheid policies and practices have resulted in the near collapse of the Palestinian economy, resulting in massive loss of work and livelihood.

It is ironic that your persistent affection for outsiders and misfits has often driven you to write in their voices.

Do not sing in Israel, so that your silence will prove to be more deafening.

The concert you plan to give in July in Israel will coincide with the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of this state over the ruins of another country, Palestine. With the creation of this state sixty years ago, three quarters of a million Palestinians were dispossessed and uprooted from their homes and lands, condemned to a life of exile and destitution.

Israel at 60 is a state that continues to deny Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes and receive compensation, simply because they are “non-Jews.” It still illegally occupies Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It persists in its blatant denial of fundamental Palestinian human rights, in contravention of international humanitarian law and human rights conventions.