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Inthe long tradition of Jewish working class involvement in and supportfor liberation struggles, IJAN-Labor stands in solidarity with the HighFollow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the NationalCommittee of Local Authorities, and all parties, movements andinstitutions of Palestinian civil society in Israel, who have called ageneral strike for today, October 1, 2009.

This strike marks the ninth anniversary of the Jerusalemand Al Aqsa Day in October 2000 when Israeli authorities massacred 13Palestinian protesters. The killers have never been brought to justice.

IJAN-Laboralso welcomes the Trades Union Congress (U.K.) resolution of 17September, which endorses the growing movement for Boycott, Divestmentand Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, and calls forreconsideration of the TUC’s relationship with the Histadrut, theZionist labor federation whose latest crime was to support Israel‘s attacks on Gaza.

 

SOASPalestine Society &

the International JewishAnti-Zionist Network

Present

Jewish National Fund:
an NGO charity or para-statal instrument of apartheid?

Ameeting with

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta

Chairof the Palestine Land Society,historian, author of Atlas of Palestine, former member of the Palestinian National Council, andGeneral Co-ordinator of al-Awda– the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition.

and

Selma James

aco-ordinator of the International JewishAnti-Zionist Network

7pm.  Wednesday, 16 December 2009

Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS

(School ofAfrican and Oriental Studies)

Thornhaugh Street,Russell Square,

London WC1H 0XG

On Sunday, 13 December, about 60 people – Muslim,Jewish and other Palestinian solidarity groups – noisily protestedoutside, while some protested inside, against the JNF and invited speakerTzipi Livni – who did not attend for fear of being arrested upon arrival into the UK.  See the Indymedia report.  

IJAN, one of the organisers of the protest, was askedby.Al-Jazeera for an article– some of which is quoted in their report (in Arabic) . See article below for original.

And below that, a Guardian report of the arrest warrant for Livni!! Thereare also reports in Ha’aretz and the JewishChronicle.

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Tzipi Livni, current leader ofIsrael ’sKadima party, will be a star of the JNF 13 December conference, Creating A New Future For Israel in the Negev. Livni was constantly on our screens during last year’s bombing ofGaza , a chief apologistof the slaughter.  Shamelessly, she had said: “There is nohumanitarian crisis in Gaza .”[1]

Livni’s brutality has atradition.  Her parents were prominent members of the terroristorganisation Irgun – responsible for the 1946 bombing of theKing David Hotel inJerusalem . Ninety-one peoplewere killed: including 41 Arabs, 28 British, and 17 Jews. The Irgun announcedthat it would mourn Jewish victims, not, British ones [2]; there was not evenmention of the Arab dead.

In this one action the Zionists had killed moreJewish people than all the rockets ever fired fromGaza to Sderot.  But during lastyear’s onslaught Livni’s concern was for Sderot: “It isunbearable. Children cannot go to school, and the residents cannot live theirlives” [3]

The JNF conference that Livni willgrace is part and parcel of the ethnic cleansing of the Negev Bedouinpeople.  Discriminatory laws and practices have forced tens of thousandsto live under constant threat of seeing their homes demolished and theircommunities torn apart.[4]  Hundreds of Bedouin and Israeli Jewshave protested the state’s refusal to recognise Bedouin villages,depriving them of water, and the JNF’s theft of Bedouin land. [5]

By Aaron Lakoff

The Israel/Palestine debate has been a controversial topic atConcordia in recent years. However, there is a point when discussion ona controversial issue can be used as a pretext for censorship andrepression. With recent political manoeuvring within and beyondConcordia around this issue, I fear that we may be moving in thatdirection.

The presidents of some 25 Canadian universities were invited toOttawa this week to testify at the Canadian Parliamentary Inquiry Intoanti-Semitism, an initiative of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition toCombat anti-Semitism. Frederick Lowy, who was Concordia’s presidentuntil 2005, testified on Nov. 24.

As a Jewish student at Concordia myself, some might find it odd thatI would oppose such a forum and the participation of personalities frommy university.

I would be in favour of the CPCCA if its purpose were to fight realanti-Semitism, but a closer examination shows us that this isdefinitely not the case. The CPCCA is merely a tool to stifle debate onIsraeli apartheid at Canadian university campuses and elsewhere.

It’s hard to imagine now,but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president ofthe American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist idealof Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state — the Hitlerianconcept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionismwas a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel,anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jewslike Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious ratherthan political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as animpious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews — mygrandparents among them — tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as adistraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a memberof a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered.Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland ora right to self-defense that superseded anyone else’s. If they offered usanything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation bornof the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out atthe oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry outagainst the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. Toquestion not just Israel’sactions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too longbeen regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

We need your leadership!

With thelaunch of the network, we are hoping anti-Zionist Jews will take up the Charterand Call-to-Action in ways that are relevant to their location and inpartnership with existing Palestinesolidarity work. Share your current work and support the building ofinternational campaigns and strategies to collectively confront Zionism.

For the pasttwo years, we have been building an international network of anti-Zionist Jewsto support existing and seed new Jewish anti-Zionist organizing in solidaritywith Palestinian resistance. The enemy we face is international, and what wecan do is limited unless we find ways to work together across boundaries andregions.

We are buildingan international voice which challenges Zionism and its claim to speak onbehalf of Jews worldwide. As an international force, we can contribute to themovement to defeat Israeli colonialism. Click here to read more about the history of IJAN.

Charter of theInternational Jewish anti-Zionist Network

Weare an international network of Jews who are uncompromisingly committed tostruggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinianpeople and land is an indispensable part. Our commitment is to the dismantlingof Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of theIsraeli colonization of historic Palestine.

FromPoland to Iraq, from Argentinato South Africa, fromBrooklyn to Mississippi,Jews have taken up their quest for justice, and their desire for a more justworld, by joining with others in collective struggles. Jews participatedprominently in the workers’ struggle of the depression era, in the civil rightsmovement, in the struggle against South African Apartheid, in the struggleagainst fascism in Europe, and in many othermovements for social and political change. The State of Israel’s historic andongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land contradictsand betrays these long histories of Jewish participation in collectiveliberation struggles.

Zionism-the founding andcurrent ideology that manifested in the State of Israel-took root in the era ofEuropean colonialism and was spread in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide.Zionism has been nourished by the most violent and oppressive histories of thenineteenth Century, at the expense of the many strains of Jewish commitment toliberation. To reclaim them, and a place in the vibrant popular movements ofour time, Zionism, in all its forms, must be stopped.

This is crucial, firstand foremost, because of Zionism’s impact on the people of Palestine and the broader region. It alsodishonors the persecution and genocide of European Jews by using their memoryto justify and perpetuate European racism andcolonialism. It is responsible for the extensive displacement andalienation of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of African andAsian descent) from their diverse histories, languages, traditions andcultures. Mizrahi Jews have a history in this region of over 2,000 years. AsZionism took root, these Jewish histories were forced from their own course inservice of the segregation of Jews imposed by the State of Israel.

As such, Zionismimplicates us in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasementof our own heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with our fellow humanbeings. (Read more)

Call-to-Action

Our pledge in theCharter will be carried out through our commitments to: 1) solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, 2) participation in global movements toend imperialism, and 3) theextrication of Jewish history, politics, community, and culture from the gripof Zionism.

To these ends, in thishistorical moment, the IJAZ Network will be a clear anti-Zionist Jewish point of reference to set an ideologicalpole, open space for non-Jewish anti-Zionist voices, and broaden support forPalestinian liberation.

Towards fulfilling thisstrategic role, we are calling anti-Zionist Jews to take up the followingactions in the world. (Read more)

Below you will find various activities IJAN is organizing or collaborating onover the coming weeks in response to or in conjunction with the World Conference Against Racism,otherwise known as the Durban Review Conference (DRC). For example,IJAN is cooperating with the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, andSanctions National Committee in their sponsorship of the Israel Review Conference,a two-day conference in Geneva preceding the DRC. On April 18, therewill a mass demonstration in Geneva against racism and xenophobia. IJANis co-sponsoring this event and supporting coordinated demonstrations (see below)in cities around the world. IJAN’s campaign to resist racism, apartheidand genocide will also be kicking off at this time in both London andGeneva and will develop through the year. This participation reflectsIJAN’s understanding of Zionism not only as a form of racism andcolonialism in Palestine and the region, but as working hand in handwith racist policies and practices in the United States and Europe. Itis an expression of our commitment to working at the intersection ofPalestineliberation and broader anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles.

The Toronto-based Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) is urging people to write letters protesting the Toronto International Film Festival City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv. John Greyson, internationally renowned filmmaker, has pulled his film from the festival. Read CAIA’s statement, and the letter Greyson sent to TIFF’s organizers.

ISSUED BY: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, TorontoQueers Undermining Israeli TerrorismInternational Jewish Anti-Zionist NetworkQueer BDS activists from Israel On October10-16, 2009, the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) isplanning to hold a tourism conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, aimed at boostinglesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) leisure tourism to Israel. Theaudience of this conference is … Apartheid Israel is not for LGBT Leisure Tourism!