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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Divesting from Israeli Apartheid |
Current rating: -1 |
by Jamusa
Email: dsc (nospam) uofidivest.org (unverified!) |
15 Apr 2002
Modified: 17 Apr 2002 |
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Today income taxes are due in America. I turned mine in last week, knowing that I helped kill a Palestinian. Direct U.S. governmental and corporate support for Israel fuels a neo-apartheid system of oppression against Palestinians. However, groups like the Democratic Solidarity Committee at the University of Illinois call upon divestment from Israel to isolate it economically and socially. |
The situation in Israel/Palestine is not a new one. Palestinians seek liberation from an oppressive, colonial-settler regime. The anti-colonial struggle in Palestine is one of the last in the world involving direct occupation, using a neo-apartheid system seeking to control Palestinians legally, politically, economically, and socially. Israel has learned well from settler colonial regimes in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and most notiably South Africa. While the Israeli state has learned to appropriatesystems like Apartheid from South Africa, Palestinian solidarity activists must also heed the lessons of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The tactic of divestment was a prominent feature of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1970s and 1980s. By the mid 1980s, many U.S. universities and the U.S. Congress voted to divest from the white supremacist South African regime. This tactic is now being employed by Palestinian solidarity organizations like the UC-Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, Princeton University, the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Democratic Solidarity Committee here in Urbana-Champaign. The DSC has called upon the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to divest its nearly $30 million invested in corporations doing business in Israel. Many corporations specialize in weapons manufacturing or communications. The DSC expects the divestment campaign to be long and difficult. It took nearly 30 years for South African divestment to become a reality.
The DSC continues to raise the consciousness of ordinary Americans who are aware injustice is occurring in Palestine but may have misconceptions about the situation. The DSC encourages individuals to diversify their use of media by checking European, Arab, independent, and even Israeli media outlets. American corporate media continues a conspiracy of silence when it comes to Palestine. The DSC also conducts educational talks and shows films. A final component is marches and direct action. Today the DSC constructed a mock Palestinian refugee camp on the quad. Future events include a rally on Wednesday, April 17th to protest Israeli independence day, showing that their independence in 1948 resulted in the Palestinians' nakba (tragedy or explusion).
The Democratic Solidarity Committee is a principled organization with anti-racism, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism as its core values. It calls for an end to U.S. support to Israeli apartheid both politically and economically. DSC suggests Palestinian solidarity activists call for a one-state solution with a democractic society with equal rights to ALL its citizens(this is not the case in Israel where 20% of its citizens are Palestinian and are treated as second-class citizens). The proposed Palestinian state is nothing but a collections of bantustans where Arafat and the corrupt Palestinian Authority can reign as neo-colonial lapdogs to Israeli and U.S. interests.
The DSC and other Palestinian solidarity organizations know they hold the moral upper-hand. Racist, colonial regimes like Israel will eventually be defeated, relegating its supporters, both in Israel, Europe, and the United States to the trash heap of history. |
See also:
http://www.uofidivest.org
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Question -- |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Apr 2002
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"The DSC and other Palestinian solidarity organizations know they hold the moral upper-hand. Racist, colonial regimes like Israel will eventually be defeated, relegating its supporters, both in Israel, Europe, and the United States to the trash heap of history."
Am I correct to read this as a call for the end of the state of Israel, or did your rhetoric just sorta slip out of gear? In other words, does the DSC explicitly support UN resolution 1402 and the two-state solution it envisions, or does it prefer that Israel in its entirety be relegated "to the trash heap of history," as you seem to say above?
@%< |
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no moral upper hand |
by Joe Futrelle
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Apr 2002
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Doing away with an apartheid regime is not the same thing, necessarily, as doing away with a state. The analogy is to South Africa, where the apartheid regime was replaced with a democractically-elected government and regulatory framework for South Africa which essentially did away with apartheid -- rather than the creation of two states to accomodate white and black South Africans.
The analogy, however, is tenuous, to say the least. Relative morality aside, both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the international community, favor a two-state solution. The conflict is only nominally over how to achieve that solution.
We can wish ill on either side, but that won't move us towards the solution.
There is no moral upper hand. Both sides have proven many times over that they can mercilessly slaughter innocent people. Now it's time for the international community to step in, enforce a cease-fire, and get the sides to the bargaining table to make the concessions they must make in order to prevent more killing. |
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Does DSC have a response? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Apr 2002
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Joe, I agree with what you say, including how non-productive the South Africa analogy is. That plus the fact that there simply isn't any kind of support, from the US or any other member of the UN Security Council, or from Israel, or the Palestinians (unless you turn back the time machine and take the Palestinian National Charter at face value again, after all these years of Yassir saying, "we don't mean it, we don't mean it") for a one-state solution. Unless you're talking about Syria and Iraq, maybe.
I also didn't mean to imply that I thought the DSC was slavering for genocide, because I don't. I just think they're proposing a program packed to the brim with non-starter-osity, and they're going to pouring their energies down the drain because of it.
Is there a response from DSC?
@%< |
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Re: Divesting From Israeli Apartheid |
by Othman Hamed
othmanhamed.yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: -2
25 Oct 2003
Modified: 03:59:07 AM |
Without completely dismantling the racist entity some call Israel, there can be no possibility of peace in the middle east or even the world. The entity which consumed much of the world resources for its cancerous survival , and set the whole region ablaze since its inception, must be decisively dealt with by the international community.One starting point for the U.N is kick it out from all its agencies. The countries of the world must understand it is in their own self-interest to completely sever any connection to the entity. Fifty four years of deception is enough for the world to act.Mini-measures won't do the job.
If the U.S continues with its bulleying , bribing tactics, that too can be included in the struggle for freedom as a matter of principle. It may be painfull in the short term but in the end , this will pay along term divident in terms of peace and prosperity and better life for all.All peace plans to solve the question of Palestine introduced so far is nothing but bogus because they did not address the basic root of the conflict: the existence of a racist entity , which was responsible for all wars and destruction.
Othman Hamed |
