BDS-BERICHTEN NEDERLANDS PALESTINA KOMITEE

Verschillende moties werden verworpen, maar een motie tégen elke vorm van boycot tegen Israel, maar vóór de drie doelstellingen van de boycotbeweging werd aangenomen met 8 stemmen voor en 4 stemmen tegen. De doelstellingen zijn: beëindiging van de bezetting van 1967 en ontmanteling van de Muur, gelijke rechten voor Palestijnen en joden in Israel, en terugkeer van de Palestijnse vluchtelingen.

Bekijk hieronder het artikel van Sonja Karkar van Australians for Palestine

The Australians for Palestine team arrived in Sydney on Monday to give support to Marrickville BDS and the Marrickville councillors. It was, we felt, an historic occasion for BDS. On Tuesday evening, the Marrickville Council Chambers was packed to the rafters with crowds of people outside wanting to hear the vote on BDS after months of savage attacks on the councillors who had supported its adoption last December. After hearing statements from 17 speakers, both for and against, and then the councillors themselves speaking to the resolution, the vote taken to rescind it resulted
in a tie and failed when the the mayor and chair Fiona Byrne used her
casting vote to defeat it. The mayor then proposed an in principle BDS motion that would have ensured boycotts undertaken would not impose any costs on the ratepayers of Marrickville. This was voted down. She proposed a second watered down version which was also defeated. The final motion resolved “not to pursue BDS against Israel in any shape or form” while at the same time maintaining the three tenets of the BDS call - to end the occupation of all Arab lands and dismantle the Wall, to ensure full equality for Palestinians living in Israel and to support the right of Palestinian refugees to return home. This was carried 8 votes to 4 against. None of the councillors who had opposed the BDS resolution seemed aware of the incongruity of now voting for a motion that included the very demands that BDS seeks, while refusing to do anything about it.

The councillors who voted against BDS couched their opposition in
outpourings of sympathy for the Palestinians which only made the hypocrisy of their vote all the more abhorrent. Some rejected even a symbolic gesture. They simply did not want to hear the voices of reason – the Palestinian voices like Samah Sabawi and Bishara Costandi and Palestinian civil society which has made the BDS call, the Jewish speakers like Antony Loewenstein and Dr Peter Slezak and the Jewish voices from Israel who had written in support, nor the long list of eminent persons who had endorsed the statement calling on Marrickville not to back way from BDS, among them Mairead Maguire, a Nobel Peace prize laureate, Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker and many more celebrated
academics, political and cultural leaders, nor the councillors and mayors of municipalities in the UK, Spain and Sweden who had sent statements in defence of BDS, nor the hundreds of letters from the Australian public that had come flooding in to Marrickville Council. The power of the Murdoch press, the pressure from senior Federal Ministers of the Labor Party and the warning by the newly-elected NSW premier of the Liberal Party that he would sack the entire council within 28 days if they did not overturn the BDS resolution, no doubt added to the mafia-like tactics of intimidation, threats and hysterical vitriol to which they had all been subjected. Yet four councillors stood firm, undeterred by the illogical reasonings and dire warnings that had swayed their colleagues. It is to them that we send thanks for their courage in the eye of the storm. It is they who will be vindicated when Israel is finally held to account for all the years of human
rights violations against the Palestinians. It is they who are the
champions of democracy in an age when our fundamental freedoms are being abused and undermined from all quarters.

Nothing was more apparent than the absence of the Palestinian voice in the fury of lies and misinformation that polluted our media. How is it possible that a subject matter arousing such overwhelming fear and loathing could not be challenged in our democratic Australia? How is it that the silencing of other opinions through bullying and threats was tolerated rather than sparking widespread outrage? That alone should have caused alarm bells to ring in the minds of Australians everywhere. Australians for Palestine public advocate Samah Sabawi had only three minutes to raise that in her statement and she did so speaking also to the BDS resolution while reminding everyone that BDS is rooted in international law. Her statement was particularly riveting coming from one who is a refugee herself and who still
has family in Gaza. “BDS,” she said “is a call from an oppressed people to the world to act against tyranny.”

If the forces lined up against BDS in Australia thought they had won the day, they will soon know that the global BDS movement is far more powerful than anything they are able to throw at it. Consider, that with all the weight of Murdoch’s empire blocking alternate voices, BDS is more well known today than would have been possible otherwise. It is certainly not dead and buried.

And, if anyone doubts the efficacy of BDS, see some examples below of resolutions passed and actions taken in other parts of the world:

NORWAY: government-run pension fund drops two Israeli firms involved in developing settlements (2009)

UK: the three million strong Trades Union Congress votes overwhelmingly to build a mass boycott movement, divestment and sanctions (2009)

IRELAND: the Irish Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU)
unanimously votes to “support boycott campaign of Israeli goods and
services and a policy of disinvestment from Israeli companies” (2010)

USA: the Presbyterian Mission Network votes at its annual meeting to join the international boycott of goods produced in illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories (2010)

GERMANY: Deutsche Bank sells its holdings in Elbit Systems (2010)

BELGIUM: Belgian Government stops exporting weapons to Israel (2009)

SPAIN: Spanish Government excludes a team from Ariel University from a prestigious international competition for sustainable architecture because it is located in the Occupied West Bank. (2009)

ITALY: two Italian supermarket chains announce the suspension of sales products from Agrexco, the principal exporter of produce from Israel and the illegal Israeli settlements