Action Items

Letter campaign: Israeli apartheid deserves no amnesty



The following action alert was issued on 5 August 2009 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and groups around the world, urging Amnesty International to discontinue its involvement with a Leonard Cohen concert in Israel that effectively normalizes Israel’s violations of international law and undermines the worldwide movement to boycott Israel. 

Demand Israel release child held without charge or trial



Hamdi al-Ta’mari was arrested for the first time from the family home in Bethlehem at 4:00am, on 25 July 2008. He was woken by the sound of Israeli soldiers banging on the front door. Hamdi’s hands and feet were immediately tied and he was ordered to lie on the floor, as soldiers pointed their assault rifles and flashlights at him. While on the ground, a number of soldiers slapped, kicked and beat him with their assault rifles. His hands were tied so tightly that they began to swell. After 15 minutes, Hamdi was blindfolded and placed on the floor of a military vehicle. 

Organize for boycott Israel day of action



We call on all to unite our different capacities and struggles in a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel on 30 March 2009. The mobilization coincides with the Palestinian Land Day, the annual commemoration of the 1976 Israeli massacre of Palestinians in the Galilee in struggle against massive land expropriation, and forms part of the Global Week of Action against the Crises and War from 28 March 28 to 4 April. 

Queer activists call for boycott of Tel Aviv film festival



Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), a San Francisco Bay Area solidarity group, is calling on international Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer filmmakers not to participate in the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival this June. QUIT!’s call for filmmakers to respect the cultural boycott of Israel initiated by more than 100 organizations of Palestinian civil society. The call has been joined by members of South West Asian and North African Bay Area Queers and a founder of Trikone, the largest South Asian LGBT organization in the world. 

US academics: join us in boycott call



As educators and scholars of conscience in the United States, we fully support the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing scholasticide and to support the nonviolent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions. The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI) outline their mission statement. 

Gaza orgs: Silence is complicity



With the death toll in Gaza growing hourly, silence is complicity. It is imperative for concerned citizens to demand that their governments take immediate action in order to stop Israeli genocide in Gaza. Write your representative today and demand that Israeli war criminals be brought before the International Criminal Court or a Special Tribunal for war crimes committed in Gaza. (Remind your representative that the investigation, prosecution or extradition of those responsible for war crimes is an obligation of all high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions.) 

Boycott L'Oreal: Makeup for Israeli apartheid



In this holiday season, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee calls upon people of conscience all over the world to boycott all the products of the French cosmetics giant, L’Oreal, due to its deep and extensive involvement in business relations with Israel, despite the latter’s continued occupation and apartheid policies against the indigenous Palestinian people. 

Organize to stop apartheid dance troupe's North America tour



The Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv is touring the US and Canada in January, February, and March, 2009. A recipient of public financing since the 1990s, the dance troupe is clearly an Israeli apartheid cultural institution. Writing October 26, 2008, in The Independent of London, Jenny Gilbert reports that the dance company is “funded by Israel’s government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is ‘proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.’” 

Leeds University referendum threatens to silence Palestinian activists



Leeds University Union agreed last week, by a vote of 12 to 11, to send a motion to referendum which will label anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and silence pro-Palestinian groups on campus. The motion, shrouded in the language of combating anti-Semitism, is a reversal of a motion passed two years ago which gave Palestinian activists at Leeds University the rights enjoyed by their counterparts throughout the country. If passed, organizations which have an anti-Zionist platform, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will be prevented from receiving funding from the union and prevented from holding many of their events. 

Protest fundraiser for agency that abets Israeli land confiscation



Canada’s Museum of Civilization is part of Canadians’ acknowledgement and atonement for the colonial ethnic cleansing of First Peoples. By providing space for the Jewish National Funds’s Negev Dinner, however, the museum is aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing in Palestine and facilitating the celebration of these actions next to the exhibit of aboriginal culture in the Museum’s Great Hall. This discredits our nation’s understanding of its own egregious colonial past and raises questions about the sincerity of our apologies to aboriginal peoples in Canada. 

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