10/01/10
The continuous violations by Israel of Palestinian human rights have reached an unbearable level both in Israel, in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OPT) and in Gaza. Besides the violations of international laws, defined in many United Nations declarations to which Israel has formally adhered, Israel is guilty of serious crimes against humanity. Recently the Israeli army has committed a horrible massacre of civilians, causing more than 1400 deaths, including many children and infants, well documented in the report of the United Nations Commission chaired by Judge Goldstone.A similar massacre was committed by Israel in Lebanon in 2006.The invasion of the OPT in the West Bank has continued and continues today, together with the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and from their lands. Condemnation from several United Nations Institutions has had no effect up to now: Israel did not listen to any injunction, being underwritten by the support of the United States of America, and the lack of sanctions from the European Union.
In this situation it is necessary to move to a new level of activism and of political action in support of the Palestinians. Important and long-lasting effects are to be expected from the initiative of nations respecting International Laws, sanctioning Israel both morally and economically. Such an initiative has been lanced, with the consensus of associations and individuals all over the western world, requiring boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) economic and political against Israel. This means to disinvest from economic, profitable activities in Israel ( or anyway to approve and support the disinvestment for those who are not capital investors) and to ask for political and economical sanctions against Israel, effective in abolishing any association with Israel in military and economic activities of the European Community and the USA. The USA indeed gives enormous contributions to the military of Israel ( the military assistance, renewed by the Obama administration, is 4.1 billion dollars for 2010). Europe contributes very relevant credits for the reconstruction of houses and structures destroyed again and again by Israel, without any sanctions other than verbal protests, systematically ignored by Israel. It should be noted that Israel benefits from special privileges in the cultural and cultural-commercial exchanges with Europe. Regarding this, we should take an attitude of severe sanction, such as to make clear to Israeli scholars, researchers, artists and academicians that they must realize that their position on the policies of their government towards the Palestinians cannot be neutral. They must declare openly their judgment on the actions of their country against all the liberties (including the one of keeping active the schools and the universities) of all Palestinians: those who are Israeli citizens and those who live in the POT and in Gaza. A similar declaration has been signed by 403 university people, out of a total of ca. 9000. Appeals to the courage of taking action, writing and speaking for the freedom and equality of the Palestinians, have been made by a number of Israeli women and men well known in the world of culture, information and of the academia, and in an excellent way by the young people refusing to serve in the Israeli army, participating in oppression.
We should abandon the term “boycott”, which is appropriate for commercial relations but not for cultural relations, and propose that Israeli scholars, artists and researchers who want to communicate in Italy and in Europe generally, should declare their opinions on the severe oppression of Palestinian human and civil rights, and on massacres such as those in Gaza and in Lebanon, which they are not justified to ignore.
Together with the European Jews for a Just Peace (EJJP), of which it is a member, ECO collaborates to the program BDS, and will examine in each case which actions to take, together with EJJP, in solidarity with that Palestinian organizations which have proposed the project PACBI.
Translated by Giorgio Forti and Dorrie Iten