Various undersigned

We Gaza-based Palestinian Civil Society Organizations and international activists call on the international community and civil society to pressure their governments and Israel to cease the abductions and killings in Israel’s attacks against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla sailing for Gaza, and begin a global response to hold Israel accountable for the murder of foreign civilians at sea and illegal piracy of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza.

We wish to express our deep disappointment in your decision to accept the Dan David prize, administered by Tel Aviv University and to be awarded by the President of Israel. As a writer whose work has dwelled consistently on histories of colonialism and displacement, your refusal to take stance on the colonial question in the case of Israel and the occupation of Palestine has provoked deep dismay, frustration and puzzlement among readers and fans of your work around the world.

This morning at 3:10am, Israeli Security Agency agents accompanied by Israeli police raided Ameer Makhoul’s family home in Haifa and arrested him. Makhoul is a human rights defender and serves as the general director of Ittijah - The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations and as the Chairman of the Public Committee for the Defense of Political Freedom in the framework of the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the blockade of Gaza “unacceptable” on 27 December 2009. Palestinian civil society organizations in Gaza assert that this “constitutes a gross understatement of the actual situation which amounts to slow genocide. Such an understatement suggests that you are trimming your language to accommodate US pro-Israeli policy.”

A broad spectrum of Montreal artists are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and supporting the growing international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli state.

As geographers, faculty, students and people of conscience, we are profoundly dismayed by the International Geographical Union’s decision to hold its July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv, in violation of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israel.

Information and material available to date suggest that the parties responsible for investigating the violations committed during the Gaza conflict have not met the standards prescribed by international instruments. The investigations carried out by the Israeli military authorities fall short of complying with international standards of proper investigations into alleged violations of international law.

The Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, a not-for-profit organization created by Canada’s parliament in 1988 to encourage and support human rights around the world, recently voted, with substantial objection, to repudiate grants given to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, two well-known Palestinian human rights organizations located respectively in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Sixty-one years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Israel continues to pursue clearly discriminatory policies and practices and the violation of Palestinians’ human rights have persisted, and escalated. Israel’s persistent human rights violations would not be possible without the complicity or support of the international community.

On 4 November 2009, the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report) is scheduled to be tabled before the Plenary of the UN General Assembly in New York. Following the Report’s endorsement at the Human Rights Council on 21 October 2009, it now falls to the General Assembly to ensure that the Report is endorsed and its recommendations acted upon.