FlotillaHyves1
  • Front Page
  • Home
  • UNRWA & Refugees
    • UNRWA & Refugees 2018 >
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2017
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2016
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2015
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2014
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2013
      • UNRWA & Refugees 2012
  • Palestinian Education
    • Palestinian Education 2018 >
      • Palestinian Education 2017
      • Palestinian Education 2016
      • Palestinian Education 2015
      • Palestinian Education 2014
      • Palestinian Education 2013
      • Palestinian Education 2012
  • Palestinian Economy
    • Palestinian Economy 2018 >
      • Palestinian Economy 2017
      • Palestinian Economy 2016
      • Palestinian Economy 2015
      • Palestinian Economy 2014
      • Palestinian Economy 2013
      • Palestinian Economy 2012
  • Palestinian water
    • Palestinian water 2018 >
      • Palestinian water 2017
      • Palestinian water 2016
      • Palestinian water 2015
      • Palestinian water 2014
      • Palestinian water 2013
      • Palestinian water 2012
  • Palestinian Gas
    • Palestinian Gas 2016/17
    • Palestinian Gas 2015
  • Internet
    • Internet 2018 >
      • Internet 2017
      • Internet 2016
      • Internet 2015
      • Internet 2014
      • Internet 2013
      • Internet 2012
  • Fire in and across Palestine
    • Fire in and across Palestine 2018 >
      • Fire in and across Palestine 2017 >
        • Fire in and across Palestine 2014
      • Fire in and across Palestine 2016
      • Fire in and across Palestine 2015
      • Fire in and across Palestine 2013
  • Palestinian New Buildings
    • Palestinian New Buildings 2018 >
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2017
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2016
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2015
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2014
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2013
      • Palestinian New Buildings 2012
  • Boycott Israel
    • Boycott Israel 2018 >
      • Boycott Israel 2017
      • Boycott Israel 2016
      • Boycott Israel 2015
      • Boycott Israel 2014
      • Boycott Israel 2013
      • Boycott Israel 2012
  • New Weapons
    • New Weapons 2018 >
      • New Weapons 2017
      • New Weapons 2016
      • New Weapons 2015
      • New Weapons 2014
      • New Weapons 2013
  • Jews vs Zionism
    • Jews vs Zionism 2017 >
      • Jews vs Zionism 2016 >
        • Jews vs Zionism 2015
        • Jews vs Zionism 2014
        • Jews vs Zionism 2013
        • Jews vs Zionism 2012
  • Breaking the Silence
    • Breaking the Silence 2018
    • Breaking the Silence 2017
    • Breaking the Silence 2016
    • Breaking the Silence 2015
    • Breaking the Silence 2014
  • Church
    • Church 2018 >
      • Church 2017 >
        • Church 2016
        • Church 2015
        • Church 2014
        • Church 2013
        • Church 2012
  • US America
    • US America 2018 >
      • US America 2017
      • US America 2016
      • US America 2015
      • US America 2014
      • US America 2013
      • US-America 2012
  • Syria
    • Syria 2018 >
      • Syria 2017
      • Syria 2016
      • Syria 2015
      • Syria 2014
      • Syria 2013
      • Syria 2012 >
        • Syria 2012 nov
        • Syria 2012 oct
        • Syria 2012 sept
  • Egypt
    • Egypt 2018 >
      • Egypt 2017
      • Egypt 2016
      • Egypt 2015
      • Egypt 2014
      • Egypt 2013
  • Lebanon
    • Lebanon 2018 >
      • Lebanon 2017
      • Lebanon 2016
      • Lebanon 2015
      • Lebanon 2014
      • Lebanon 2013
      • Lebanon 2012
  • Jordan
    • Jordan 2017 >
      • Jordan 2016
      • Jordan 2015
  • Iran
    • Iran 2018 >
      • Iran 2017
      • Iran 2016
      • Iran 2015
      • Iran 2014
      • Iran 2013
      • Iran 2012
  • Turkey
    • Turkey 2017 >
      • Turkey 2016
      • Turkey 2015
      • Turkey 2014
      • Turkey 2013
      • Turkey 2012
  • Freedom Flotilla
    • Freedom Flotilla 2016 >
      • Freedom Flotilla 2015
  • Mavi Marmara
    • Mavi Marmara 2015 >
      • Mavi Marmara 2014
      • Mavi Marmara 2013
      • Mavi Marmara 2012
      • Mavi Marmara 2011
  • UK-Britain
    • UK-Britain 2017 >
      • UK-Britain 2016
      • UK-Britain 2015
      • UK-Britain 2014
      • UK-Britain 2013
      • UK-Britain 2012
  • The Netherlands
    • The Netherlands 2018 >
      • The Netherlands 2017
      • The Netherlands 2016
      • The Netherlands 2015
      • The Netherlands 2014
      • The Netherlands 2013
      • The Netherlands 2012
  • Anti Semitism?
    • Anti Semitism? 2018 >
      • Anti Semitism? 2017
      • Anti Semitism? 2016
      • Anti Semitism? 2015
      • Anti Semitism? 2014
  • "Nice" Rabbis
    • "Nice" Rabbis 2017 >
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2016
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2015
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2014
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2013
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2012
      • "Nice" Rabbis 2009
  • Pictures/names of martyrs
5 july 2014
Sodastream, Company Based in Israeli Settlement, Closes UK Store
Picture
After two years of weekly protests in front of its store in Brighton, Israeli company Sodastream has closed the store. In addition, one of Britain’s biggest retailers has announced that it will stop carrying Sodastream, which is manufactured in an Israeli settlement built illegally on Palestinian territory.

The company produces a product that appeals to environmentalists – a do-it-yourself soft drink making kit – which saves money, water and plastic bottles. But the Sodastream kits are produced in an Israeli settlement, which has made the company a target of boycott campaigners.

The Ecostream store in Brighton, England, sold a type of recyclable bottle to go with the soda-making kit. The bottles are produced in Ma’ale Adumim, an illegally constructed Israeli settlement near Jerusalem. The store had been open for two years when it closed its doors this week – despite having reported a profit for each of the two years it was open.

The company did not mention the protest campaign against it as a reason for closing the Brighton shop.

According to the Jewish Chronicle of the UK, a company spokesperson stated, “Following a two-year test period, the company has decided to focus its business efforts on other channels. The business in the UK is on a high growth pattern, with over 20 percent year-on-year growth and rolling out to new retail stores across the country.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aims to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land through economic means. Activists are modeling the campaign off the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1970s and 80s, which used Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to pressure the South African regime to end its apartheid policy which discriminated against non-white South Africans.

Sodastream came under fire earlier this year when Scarlet Johannsen was selected as a spokesperson for the company. She was pressured by activists to end her role as spokesperson, but instead she defended the company, saying it “provides jobs” to Palestinians. The anti-hunger organization Oxfam decided to remove her as a global ambassador because of what they saw as the hypocrisy of trying to advocate for human rights while at the same time having a spokesperson who defended these violations by representing a company built on stolen land and benefiting from discriminatory policies.

Some of the Israeli policies that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists include: separate roads that discriminate against Palestinians, ‘absentee laws’ that allow the Israeli government to take over Palestinian property if the owner is absent for six months or more, laws that create ‘security zones’ that strip Palestinian owners of their property, and laws that prevent married couples of different ethnicities to live together. These are examples of over fifty discriminatory laws identified by activists as discriminatory against Palestinians.

In addition, as an Occupying Power since 1967, Israel is under obligations according to the Fourth Geneva Convention which include not transferring civilians into the Occupied territory. This and other obligations have been violated by Israel on a near-daily basis since Israel’s takeover of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem in 1967.

3 july 2014
Debate, dissent, and divisive politics: Boycott as academic freedom
Picture
Palestinians inspects the rubble at the Islamic university in Gaza City following an Israeli air strike, July 4, 2006

By Heike Schotten
Heike Schotten is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches political theory, feminist theory, and queer theory (her work is available here). She has been active in the Palestine solidarity movement since 2006.

It started out like every other university's response. Or, at least, that's how it seemed at the time.

As you may recall, last December, the American Studies Association voted to uphold the academic boycott of Israeli universities. Although the ASA was not the first professional academic association to do so, their much-lauded (and, admittedly, much-castigated) decision has been widely viewed as a tipping point in the United States, both for the BDS movement as well as the larger public discourse surrounding Palestine/Israel. (I have discussed this momentous event in this column previously; see here for an excellent roundtable on the ASA boycott decision and its aftermath.)

In the wake of the ASA decision, however, college presidents and university administrators across the United States publicly, officially, and completely on the record, went totally berserk.

First, there was the severing of institutional ties to the ASA, prominently led by Brandeis among other universities.

Then came the seemingly endless condemnations of the ASA boycott resolution by college and university presidents. (Conservative legal blogger William A. Jacobson was keeping track of all of them for a minute there.)

The icing on the cake was the attempt by local legislators in New York, Maryland, and Illinois to pass bills that would suspend taxpayer funds for public universities if their faculty or departments endorsed the ASA boycott vote. All of the bills ultimately failed.

Of course, administrative meddling in faculty members' professional activity has an obvious dampening effect on the very academic freedom to which these administrators were so noisily professing their fealty.

We could perhaps overlook this rhetorical hypocrisy were it not for the companion attacks on taxpayer funding of public universities. Because, of course, this is the real issue: money. University presidents are less like professors and more like heads of corporations whose job is to keep the institution profitable and its endowment ever-growing.

All those presidential statements of condemnation are, like those nasty legislative bills and Northeastern University's recent suspension of its Students for Justice in Palestine, an attempt to toe the Zionist party line when it comes to Israel and pre-emptively appease big donors.

Academic freedom, indeed.

In the wake of the ASA decision, the same thing happened at my own institution, the University of Massachusetts Boston. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed at the time.

Picture
University of Massachusetts, Boston

In late January, without prior faculty consultation, our Chancellor, Keith Motley, released a public statement on the university's website proclaiming that, "as an institution," UMass Boston "strongly opposes the boycott of Israeli academic institutions announced by the American Studies Association."

All of this was even more surprising given UMass Boston's generally progressive campus climate and its character as a public institution. Both seemed to militate against our administration taking any public position on academic boycott of Israel at all -- much less a condemnatory position that seemed to echo that of so many other mainstream campus administrator responses.

In some ways, this proclamation echoed that of other institutions by condemning the ASA resolution in the name of academic freedom, and being issued by a university administrator who purported to speak for the entire campus in his role as an administrator.

In other ways, however, it was different. Chancellor Motley acknowledged that not everyone on campus may agree with his statement. He explicitly upheld the right of campus community members to voice and advocate for different points of view.

And yet, it was difficult not to read this statement from within the context of the avalanche of condemnations that had preceded it. Hence, many faculty and staff wrote to the Chancellor to express our concerns regarding his statement. Some of us did so collectively, in a single letter. Others did so individually.

All of us, however, were uncomfortable with his speaking for the entire institution (even if his statement did acknowledge the existence of disagreement), and many emphasized the outrageous lack of academic freedom for Palestinians that is all too often overlooked in the discussion surrounding academic boycott of Israel.

To our enormous surprise, our Chancellor proved receptive to such concerns. Breaking with his administrative peers across the country, Chancellor Motley welcomed our response and even allowed us to post our own statement, in support of academic boycott, on the university website. (The statement has continued to garner additional signatories in the wake of its website publication.)

Most remarkably of all, the Chancellor agreed that the issue of academic boycott of Israel was what we often all-too blithely call a "teaching moment." As such, he proposed that the Provost host a panel discussion for the UMass Boston community to address the issue of the ASA resolution, the "facts and beliefs behind it," as well as "the whole thorny question of appropriate responses to it, whether by individuals or by institutions."

In other words, whereas campus administrators across the country had uttered various self-serving pieties about the importance of academic freedom, on our campus, these proved not to be empty words.

We held precisely such a panel discussion at the end of April. Four senior faculty members of varying perspectives gave their views with regard to the usefulness, importance, and legitimacy of academic boycott of Israel.

While everyone agreed that Israeli policies violate human rights and are counterproductive, there was disagreement as to whether a boycott was the right move strategically. The event was moderated by a professor of Dispute Resolution, and attended by a representative group of faculty, students, and staff, most of whom stayed for the entire 2-hour long event. We even broke into small groups to discuss the panelists' remarks, and came back together for questions for the panelists and a larger discussion about how to continue this dialogue on our campus into the future.

The event was a resounding success. I heard for many days afterwards from members of the campus community about how grateful they were to have had an opportunity to learn more about the boycott and hear what faculty members had to say about the matter. People from different perspectives on the matter shared a conversation with one another that likely would not have taken place under any other circumstance.

Picture
And the result was not rancor, hostility, or further polarization. In fact, quite the opposite -- those from different political points of view gained a greater understanding of each others' positions rather than demonizing one another, as so easily happens when we engage only from afar.

Enthusiasm for continued conversations about solidarity politics and Israel/Palestine was generated. And our campus' commitment to shared values of social justice, human rights, and academic freedom was re-affirmed.

These unprecedented events at UMass Boston make clear that the ASA resolution can open spaces for genuine debate, generate informed exchange, and help shift perspectives. Would that more university administrators had the courage to see the boycott resolution as a teaching moment, an opportunity for the exercise of real academic freedom.

Pushing a political agenda that challenges any mainstream consensus always faces the criticism of being "divisive." The standard left response to this attack is, of course, that this is precisely the point. Politics is divisive. Unity all too often masks and even perpetuates hierarchy, inequality, and injustice in the name of harmony or "peace."

What the events at UMass Boston reveal is that "divisiveness" can also be productive of camaraderie, learning, and intellectual and political exchange. "Divisiveness" can serve to move people and events closer to one another and to justice.

And "free speech" need not be a saccharine veneer covering the suppression of "divisive," critical, or left-oriented political agendas, but can in fact be a robust celebration of difference in unity, disagreement in a united front to end injustice.

Page:  11 - 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.