Updates from the palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
In a statement, the BNC said:
“We are appalled by the EU's blatant refusal to hold Israel to account for its persistent violations of human rights and international law … The EU is well aware of Israel's ongoing illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the massive colonization of the latter; after all, the EU member-states have regularly voted for UN resolutions condemning Israel's human rights violations, collective punishment and construction of settlements and the Wall.”
The BNC is calling on the EU to reverse the decision taken by the EU Association Cou
On the fourth anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel’s Wall is illegal, the BNC is calling on the EU not to upgrade its relationship with Israel and to suspend the EU Association Agreement. Today’s call is supported by 100 European civil society organizations. Join in the campaign for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement!
In a statement, the BNC said:
How can an artist whose name is prominently associated with this form of popular and freedom-based musical expression, rap, be apathetic to the monstrosity of Israel ’s current war crimes in Gaza, its Apartheid Wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague, or its continued violation of fundamental Palestinian rights?
Yet you are reportedly going to play a concert in a country whose government and army are even now inflicting similar cruelties on another people. Is it possible that when you agreed to play in Tel Aviv on July 17, you did not think what message this would send to the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, many of whom now live in refugee camps outside their homeland, or in exile across the world? They were driven out en masse in 1948 and 1967, and no Israeli government has ever allowed them, their children, or their children's children, to return.
We believe that it is shameful that Mohammad Asghar, or any other British public official, would call for a meeting with a representative of the Israeli state. Thirty-one Palestinians have been killed and eighty-five have been wounded by Israeli attacks over the past month in Gaza alone, where the Israeli-imposed siege has resulted in catastrophic shortages in fuel, food, clean water, medicine and other basic human needs.
To: Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, AM and Speaker of the National Assembly for Wales
Cc: Mr. Mohammad Asghar, AM
Call to support the first major student union in Quebec or Canada to back the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel
Montreal May 2008: Across the world grassroots movements struggling in opposition to Israeli apartheid are marking the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakba (”catastrophe”) – 60 years of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exile for Palestinians resulting from the creation of the state of Israel.