In the last year, recognition of Israel as an apartheid state has grown in an unprecedented way. This international recognition is the first step to #DismantleApartheid, and countries of the global south have a special role to play.
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Last week, Israeli bulldozers as well as heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers stormed the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, in apartheid Israel’s latest round of Palestinian home demolitions. In Silwan, just as in Sheikh Jarrah and across historic Palestine, Israel is carrying out a decades-long policy of gradual ethnic cleansing through settlement expansion. At the same time, it violently represses Palestinians trying to save their homes and livelihoods.
During Israel’s most recent round of violent attacks on Palestinians, athletes from around the world and across sports spoke up for Palestinians rights in unprecedented numbers.
Puma recently claimed that it has been the sponsor of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) “since March 2021.” However, on Monday, June 21, the PFA issued a statement saying that it “has not signed any [sponsorship] agreements with any party, despite receiving offers from a number of companies.”
Anthropologists of the Middle East have voted overwhelmingly to support the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. In a special referendum held June 2-11 by the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, a boycott resolution passed 157 to 11, with 71% of the membership participating.
Montreal, June 18, 2021 — An emergency motion adopted by the CLC’s Canadian Council commits to support a ban on settlement goods, promoting divestment from Israeli military and security companies, and calling on Canada halt arms sales to Israel, among other measures. The CLC represents more than three million workers in Canada.
The Seattle Education Association (SEA) has passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Palestine and endorsing the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement (BDS). The resolution also demands an end to collaboration between the Seattle Police Department and Israeli military.
On Thursday night, the Delegate Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress [PSC]—the CUNY union that represents 30,000 members across the university system—passed a strong resolution in support of the Palestinian people. In addition to condemning the recent escalation of violence, the resolution calls out Israel as a settler-colonial and apartheid state. Furthermore, it says the union will “facilitate” chapter discussions of BDS in Fall 2021!
As a direct result of action taken by BDS Japan Bulletin (BJB), the group confirmed that Shimokitazawa, a branch of Ozeki, a famous supermarket chain in Tokyo, decided to stop selling wine manufactured in the illegal Israeli settlements. BJB sent a letter asking the supermarket not to profit from war crimes against Palestinians through the sale of illegal settlement products. Excerpts from the letter are as follows:
Israel's attacks against the Palestinian people, such as those we have seen in recent weeks, are not isolated or spontaneous episodes; they are part of a process of ongoing colonisation, systematic oppression and institutionalised discrimination intended to subjugate and dominate the Palestinian people. Today, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s leading human rights group B’tselem agree with Palestinians that Israel is guilty of apartheid.
For the last two months, pressure has been mounting on the Basque company CAF to end its business in apartheid Israel’s illegal Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) in and around occupied Jerusalem. A month before CAF’s annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders on June 5, 2021 Amnesty International Spain sent a letter to CAF shareholders urging them to end CAF’s violations of international humanitarian law and Palestinian human rights and drop its business with Israel’s illegal JLR.