23 nov 2019
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) / Australia
In keeping with its history of solidarity with global struggles for justice and equality, the Maritime Union of Australia’s Sydney Branch joined the international Boycott HP campaign in its meeting on 29th October.
Members pledged to not buy HP products and called for a complete boycott of HP products and divestment from HP companies until they cancel all contracts that aid Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights and international law. They also committed to raising awareness among union members regarding HP companies’ complicity with Israel’s crimes.
The union had in the past stood in solidarity with the South African anti-apartheid movement, and the same values of freedom, justice and equality are at the heart of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, of which the Boycott HP campaign is a part.
Paul McAleer, Branch Secretary of the MUA, Sydney said:
“We are calling upon HP companies, HP Inc and HP Enterprise as well as their spin-off DXC Technology to end all the contracts that supply Israel with the means – technology, expertise and equipment – to violate Palestinian human rights and international law. Until they do so, we call for boycotts and divestments against these companies.”Paul McAleer further added:
“We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice as we continue to stand with all exploited and oppressed peoples. Boycotts assisted in bringing apartheid to an end in South Africa and we hope to bring it to an end for Palestinians.”Bruce Knobloch from BDS Australia said:
“Don’t Buy HP Products is one of our key campaigns. We have been organizing actions and building awareness on how HP companies facilitate the occupation, apartheid and colonization of Palestinian people. We plan to take this campaign to more unions that stand for equal human rights.”
HP Inc is the sole provider of computers to the Israeli occupying forces. HP Enterprise provide the servers for Israel’s population registry that enforces apartheid. In the past, HP has provided the technology for the Basel system for biometric access on Israel’s checkpoints as well as database for Israeli prisons. The Palestinian BDS National Committee calls for boycott and divestments against HP companies until they demonstrate that they are no longer complicit in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Maritime Union of Australia, Sydney Branch, is among the growing number of trade unions that have joined the Boycott HP campaign and continue to strengthen it. Earlier this year, UK’s second largest union, Unite the Union, joined the campaign. The largest trade union of the Netherlands, Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV), dropped HP as a partner in their offers to their members in April.
In keeping with its history of solidarity with global struggles for justice and equality, the Maritime Union of Australia’s Sydney Branch joined the international Boycott HP campaign in its meeting on 29th October.
Members pledged to not buy HP products and called for a complete boycott of HP products and divestment from HP companies until they cancel all contracts that aid Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights and international law. They also committed to raising awareness among union members regarding HP companies’ complicity with Israel’s crimes.
The union had in the past stood in solidarity with the South African anti-apartheid movement, and the same values of freedom, justice and equality are at the heart of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, of which the Boycott HP campaign is a part.
Paul McAleer, Branch Secretary of the MUA, Sydney said:
“We are calling upon HP companies, HP Inc and HP Enterprise as well as their spin-off DXC Technology to end all the contracts that supply Israel with the means – technology, expertise and equipment – to violate Palestinian human rights and international law. Until they do so, we call for boycotts and divestments against these companies.”Paul McAleer further added:
“We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice as we continue to stand with all exploited and oppressed peoples. Boycotts assisted in bringing apartheid to an end in South Africa and we hope to bring it to an end for Palestinians.”Bruce Knobloch from BDS Australia said:
“Don’t Buy HP Products is one of our key campaigns. We have been organizing actions and building awareness on how HP companies facilitate the occupation, apartheid and colonization of Palestinian people. We plan to take this campaign to more unions that stand for equal human rights.”
HP Inc is the sole provider of computers to the Israeli occupying forces. HP Enterprise provide the servers for Israel’s population registry that enforces apartheid. In the past, HP has provided the technology for the Basel system for biometric access on Israel’s checkpoints as well as database for Israeli prisons. The Palestinian BDS National Committee calls for boycott and divestments against HP companies until they demonstrate that they are no longer complicit in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Maritime Union of Australia, Sydney Branch, is among the growing number of trade unions that have joined the Boycott HP campaign and continue to strengthen it. Earlier this year, UK’s second largest union, Unite the Union, joined the campaign. The largest trade union of the Netherlands, Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV), dropped HP as a partner in their offers to their members in April.
Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, hailed the U.K. Labor Party, the main opposition in the U.K., for vowing to suspend British arms sales to Israel, the Palestinian News and Info Agency (WAFA) reported.
Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn launched his new manifesto on Thursday, saying it was “the most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country for decades.”
In its section on internationalism and diplomacy, it commits a Labor government to “immediately” suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. “This is an important step towards providing international protection to our people from the flagrant and daily violations of the occupation state,” he continued.
The manifesto vows to “conduct a root-and-branch reform of our arms exports regime so ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians.”
Zomlot commented on the manifesto, “The announcement by the Labor Party of its intention to suspend arms sales to Israel for the first time, is a historic development and a victory for the just Palestinian cause.”
Ambassador Zomlot also praised the Liberal Democrat Party, whose manifesto incidentally pledged to “officially recognize an independent state of Palestine”.
He thanked the leadership and members of both parties for the growing support for the just cause of Palestine, saying that Britain’s recognition of the State of Palestine is a moral and legal duty for Britain, given its historic role in Palestine.
He called on all British parties to follow suit and “do what is right for the Palestinian people.” Zomlot added, “It is the duty of British political parties to align themselves with the right of peoples to freedom, justice and self-determination, and to defend the international order based on one law for all.”
Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn launched his new manifesto on Thursday, saying it was “the most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country for decades.”
In its section on internationalism and diplomacy, it commits a Labor government to “immediately” suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. “This is an important step towards providing international protection to our people from the flagrant and daily violations of the occupation state,” he continued.
The manifesto vows to “conduct a root-and-branch reform of our arms exports regime so ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians.”
Zomlot commented on the manifesto, “The announcement by the Labor Party of its intention to suspend arms sales to Israel for the first time, is a historic development and a victory for the just Palestinian cause.”
Ambassador Zomlot also praised the Liberal Democrat Party, whose manifesto incidentally pledged to “officially recognize an independent state of Palestine”.
He thanked the leadership and members of both parties for the growing support for the just cause of Palestine, saying that Britain’s recognition of the State of Palestine is a moral and legal duty for Britain, given its historic role in Palestine.
He called on all British parties to follow suit and “do what is right for the Palestinian people.” Zomlot added, “It is the duty of British political parties to align themselves with the right of peoples to freedom, justice and self-determination, and to defend the international order based on one law for all.”
22 nov 2019
A mother mourns over her slain son at a hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, on 12 November
by Orly Noy
Every drop of blood spilled is the responsibility of those who perpetuate the occupation - and those whose silence enables the status quo
Once quiet was restored to Israel’s cities after the deadly, targeted attack in Gaza earlier this month and the missiles launched in response, Israel’s citizens quickly reverted to a normal routine.
Politicians and the media resumed their nauseatingly familiar normalcy: wallowing in the eternal political swamp, the impossibility of forming the next government and incitement against the country’s Palestinian citizens. Gaza, as usual, will now disappear from the public consciousness in Israel until the next missile is launched.
In the much-battered Gaza Strip, life also reverted to routine: having buried the victims of the latest massacre, among them women and children, Palestinians may now find the time to remove the new rubble, amid ever-deepening poverty, while awaiting the next massacre. And it will come - we know that it will. The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza has increasingly become normalised.
Humiliated and dispossessed
But assuming that this fate is not inevitable, and that the Palestinian people were not created to be oppressed, humiliated, dispossessed and murdered by Israel, how can Palestinians resist this oppression, which has been ongoing for decades? Can anything be done to prevent the next mass murder of Palestinians?
You may say that negotiations could be conducted in an effort to bring an end to “the conflict”. Presumably, you would burst into bitter laughter before even finishing the sentence. Are Palestinians expected to rely on fair mediation by the White House, whose leader fully endorses all the injustices heaped by Israel upon the occupied territories?
Are they expected to rely on Israel’s good intentions, when a much more moderate prime minister than Israel’s present one sold them the Oslo lie, and then doubled the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while simultaneously leading negotiations - and who was, on account of the latter, subsequently assassinated?
Or, you may say they could engage in popular protests. Do you mean the kind during which photojournalist Muad Amarna was shot and lost an eye because he was documenting a demonstration by residents of Surif, near Hebron, against the settler takeover of their village lands?
Or the weekly demonstrations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, during which demonstrators have been beaten and arrested for raising the Palestinian flag - an act that isn’t even legally proscribed in Israel, despite all its racist laws?
International complicity
You may say, what about mass demonstrations? By that, do you mean protests such as the Great March of Return, which despair-ridden residents of Gaza have been holding for more than a year and a half now, every Friday, facing the Gaza-Israel fence?
Those demonstrations have already cost the lives of hundreds of participants and injured many more, as people protest against the life of suffering that Israel has decreed will be theirs inside the besieged Gaza Strip.
Or you may suggest appealing to the international community! Do you mean the international community that, in the best-case scenario, watches with utter indifference the slow death of the Palestinian people - or, more routinely, cooperates actively in that process by arming and funding Israel, and vetoing even the most symbolic gesture against the injustice thus caused?
This is the same international community whose most outstanding act against Palestinian dispossession was to thwart - temporarily, at this point - the expulsion of the residents of Khan al-Ahmar, while turning a blind eye to the accelerating ethnic cleansing being conducted by Israel in the Jordan Valley.
Or maybe you would say that Palestinians could conduct a nonviolent struggle, by bringing economic pressure to bear on Israel to end the occupation. Do you mean the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) that Israel has managed to brand as antisemitic - a branding so successful that even liberal circles condemn the work of its activists as illegitimate?
Power imbalance
The only legitimate answer to the question of how Palestinians should struggle against the oppression of their people is: in any way they deem appropriate.
The world has stood by and watched for more than half a century, doing virtually nothing to stop Israel from crushing the Palestinian people. The world has lost the moral right to criticise the methods of struggle chosen by Palestinians.
When Israeli citizens choose - over and over again, through their duly elected political leadership - to intensify the oppression, they lose the moral right to tell Palestinians how to conduct their struggle for liberation.
When the power relations between the two sides are so radically asymmetrical as to allow Israel to do whatever it pleases with Palestinian land, Palestinian property and Palestinian bodies, ordinary moral judgment loses its meaning.
When Israel consistently uses all possible means to thwart nonviolent resistance; when fully armed Israeli forces deem a Palestinian child clutching a pair of scissors to be a “terrorist” meriting execution; when even the most symbolic act of Palestinian resistance, such as the launching of burning kites from a besieged and dying Gaza across the wall towards Israeli territory, is termed a terrorist act posing an existential threat to Israel; when Palestinians’ determination to endure on their own land is repeatedly crushed by ethnic cleansing and expulsions, then the morality in whose name the world preaches to Palestinians loses all meaning.
Proportionality gap
In the decade between January 2009 and the end of October 2019, Israeli forces killed more than 3,400 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, not including the victims of the most recent Gaza massacre.
There is no morality anywhere that would require Palestinians to simply sit with their hands folded as this horrifying destruction of their people approaches completion.
Those who wish to impose normative moral principles in a reality where nothing is normal should strive to provide Palestinians with the same military means that Israel has - and then, with army standing against army, each with symmetrical technological and intelligence capabilities, we could demand that the two sides be judged by the same moral yardstick.
Then, perhaps, Palestinians could respond with “reasonable proportionality” after the assassination of an armed man and his wife, via a parallel assassination of an Israeli military leader and his wife, instead of launching missiles aimed at Israeli communities (which, fortunately, wounded no one).
Even better, they could act to end the illegal and lethally violent occupation imposed on Palestinians for decades - before the next massacre in Gaza. But meanwhile, every drop of blood spilled, on both sides of the barricade, is the responsibility of the people who perpetuate the occupation, and the people whose contemptible silence enables them to do so.
Orly Noy
Orly Noy is a journalist and a political activist based in Jerusalem.
by Orly Noy
Every drop of blood spilled is the responsibility of those who perpetuate the occupation - and those whose silence enables the status quo
Once quiet was restored to Israel’s cities after the deadly, targeted attack in Gaza earlier this month and the missiles launched in response, Israel’s citizens quickly reverted to a normal routine.
Politicians and the media resumed their nauseatingly familiar normalcy: wallowing in the eternal political swamp, the impossibility of forming the next government and incitement against the country’s Palestinian citizens. Gaza, as usual, will now disappear from the public consciousness in Israel until the next missile is launched.
In the much-battered Gaza Strip, life also reverted to routine: having buried the victims of the latest massacre, among them women and children, Palestinians may now find the time to remove the new rubble, amid ever-deepening poverty, while awaiting the next massacre. And it will come - we know that it will. The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza has increasingly become normalised.
Humiliated and dispossessed
But assuming that this fate is not inevitable, and that the Palestinian people were not created to be oppressed, humiliated, dispossessed and murdered by Israel, how can Palestinians resist this oppression, which has been ongoing for decades? Can anything be done to prevent the next mass murder of Palestinians?
You may say that negotiations could be conducted in an effort to bring an end to “the conflict”. Presumably, you would burst into bitter laughter before even finishing the sentence. Are Palestinians expected to rely on fair mediation by the White House, whose leader fully endorses all the injustices heaped by Israel upon the occupied territories?
Are they expected to rely on Israel’s good intentions, when a much more moderate prime minister than Israel’s present one sold them the Oslo lie, and then doubled the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while simultaneously leading negotiations - and who was, on account of the latter, subsequently assassinated?
Or, you may say they could engage in popular protests. Do you mean the kind during which photojournalist Muad Amarna was shot and lost an eye because he was documenting a demonstration by residents of Surif, near Hebron, against the settler takeover of their village lands?
Or the weekly demonstrations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, during which demonstrators have been beaten and arrested for raising the Palestinian flag - an act that isn’t even legally proscribed in Israel, despite all its racist laws?
International complicity
You may say, what about mass demonstrations? By that, do you mean protests such as the Great March of Return, which despair-ridden residents of Gaza have been holding for more than a year and a half now, every Friday, facing the Gaza-Israel fence?
Those demonstrations have already cost the lives of hundreds of participants and injured many more, as people protest against the life of suffering that Israel has decreed will be theirs inside the besieged Gaza Strip.
Or you may suggest appealing to the international community! Do you mean the international community that, in the best-case scenario, watches with utter indifference the slow death of the Palestinian people - or, more routinely, cooperates actively in that process by arming and funding Israel, and vetoing even the most symbolic gesture against the injustice thus caused?
This is the same international community whose most outstanding act against Palestinian dispossession was to thwart - temporarily, at this point - the expulsion of the residents of Khan al-Ahmar, while turning a blind eye to the accelerating ethnic cleansing being conducted by Israel in the Jordan Valley.
Or maybe you would say that Palestinians could conduct a nonviolent struggle, by bringing economic pressure to bear on Israel to end the occupation. Do you mean the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) that Israel has managed to brand as antisemitic - a branding so successful that even liberal circles condemn the work of its activists as illegitimate?
Power imbalance
The only legitimate answer to the question of how Palestinians should struggle against the oppression of their people is: in any way they deem appropriate.
The world has stood by and watched for more than half a century, doing virtually nothing to stop Israel from crushing the Palestinian people. The world has lost the moral right to criticise the methods of struggle chosen by Palestinians.
When Israeli citizens choose - over and over again, through their duly elected political leadership - to intensify the oppression, they lose the moral right to tell Palestinians how to conduct their struggle for liberation.
When the power relations between the two sides are so radically asymmetrical as to allow Israel to do whatever it pleases with Palestinian land, Palestinian property and Palestinian bodies, ordinary moral judgment loses its meaning.
When Israel consistently uses all possible means to thwart nonviolent resistance; when fully armed Israeli forces deem a Palestinian child clutching a pair of scissors to be a “terrorist” meriting execution; when even the most symbolic act of Palestinian resistance, such as the launching of burning kites from a besieged and dying Gaza across the wall towards Israeli territory, is termed a terrorist act posing an existential threat to Israel; when Palestinians’ determination to endure on their own land is repeatedly crushed by ethnic cleansing and expulsions, then the morality in whose name the world preaches to Palestinians loses all meaning.
Proportionality gap
In the decade between January 2009 and the end of October 2019, Israeli forces killed more than 3,400 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, not including the victims of the most recent Gaza massacre.
There is no morality anywhere that would require Palestinians to simply sit with their hands folded as this horrifying destruction of their people approaches completion.
Those who wish to impose normative moral principles in a reality where nothing is normal should strive to provide Palestinians with the same military means that Israel has - and then, with army standing against army, each with symmetrical technological and intelligence capabilities, we could demand that the two sides be judged by the same moral yardstick.
Then, perhaps, Palestinians could respond with “reasonable proportionality” after the assassination of an armed man and his wife, via a parallel assassination of an Israeli military leader and his wife, instead of launching missiles aimed at Israeli communities (which, fortunately, wounded no one).
Even better, they could act to end the illegal and lethally violent occupation imposed on Palestinians for decades - before the next massacre in Gaza. But meanwhile, every drop of blood spilled, on both sides of the barricade, is the responsibility of the people who perpetuate the occupation, and the people whose contemptible silence enables them to do so.
Orly Noy
Orly Noy is a journalist and a political activist based in Jerusalem.
15 nov 2019
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Over 100 pro-Palestinian law students from Harvard University, today, walked out of a lecture held by Dani Dayan, current Consul General of Israel in New York, at the Harvard Law School.
A video posted online, by the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (Harvard PSC), shows students participating in the silent walk-out of the event and holding signs reading, “Settlements Are A War Crime,” moments after Dayan began his speech, leaving the latter speaking to mostly empty seats. The students joined forces with the protest organized by the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, outside Austin Hall. Dayan is a vocal advocate for the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements |
into Palestinian territory. In a 2012 op-ed in the New York Times, he wrote that the international community should abandon its vain attempts at the two-state solution and accept the Israeli presence in the West Bank as “an irreversible fact.”
Israeli settlements are blatant violations of international law, and the Israeli settler movement is a violent project of settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine.
Activists online strongly criticized Harvard’s invitation to the Israeli Counselor to deliver a speech at a time the Israeli warplanes aggressively targeted civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli settlements are blatant violations of international law, and the Israeli settler movement is a violent project of settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine.
Activists online strongly criticized Harvard’s invitation to the Israeli Counselor to deliver a speech at a time the Israeli warplanes aggressively targeted civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.
12 nov 2019
This photo taken on August 6, 2019, shows the the Israeli settlement of Ma'ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank on the outskirts of Jerusalem al-Quds.
The European Union's top court has issued a landmark ruling, ordering EU states to label food products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement announcing its decision on Tuesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said EU countries must oblige retailers to identify products made in settlements with special labels to avoid misleading consumers.
"Foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by ... Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance," the Luxembourg-based court said.
Simply indicating that goods originate in Israel, when in fact they came from the occupied lands, could mislead consumers about the fact that the regime "is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity," it added.
The court also noted that the EU's 2011 regulations on labeling the origin of goods are intended to allow consumers to make "informed choices, with regard not only to health, economic, environmental and social considerations, but also to ethical considerations and considerations relating to the observance of international law."
The ECJ further underlined that Israeli settlements "give concrete expression to a policy of population transfer ..., in violation of the rules of general international humanitarian law."
The case came to court after an Israeli winery based in a settlement near Jerusalem al-Quds contested France’s application of a previous ECJ ruling on the labelling, which backed the use of origin identifying tags but did not make them legally binding.
Israel has in recent months stepped up its settlement construction activities in the occupied lands in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built illegally since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian lands.
In a bid to force the regime to withdraw its claim from the Palestinian territories, many countries have banned the sale of goods produced in the Israeli settlements.
The boycott is part of a larger international movement known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led international campaign launched more than a decade ago with the aim of ending the Tel Aviv regime’s occupation of Palestine.
The European Union's top court has issued a landmark ruling, ordering EU states to label food products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement announcing its decision on Tuesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said EU countries must oblige retailers to identify products made in settlements with special labels to avoid misleading consumers.
"Foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by ... Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance," the Luxembourg-based court said.
Simply indicating that goods originate in Israel, when in fact they came from the occupied lands, could mislead consumers about the fact that the regime "is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity," it added.
The court also noted that the EU's 2011 regulations on labeling the origin of goods are intended to allow consumers to make "informed choices, with regard not only to health, economic, environmental and social considerations, but also to ethical considerations and considerations relating to the observance of international law."
The ECJ further underlined that Israeli settlements "give concrete expression to a policy of population transfer ..., in violation of the rules of general international humanitarian law."
The case came to court after an Israeli winery based in a settlement near Jerusalem al-Quds contested France’s application of a previous ECJ ruling on the labelling, which backed the use of origin identifying tags but did not make them legally binding.
Israel has in recent months stepped up its settlement construction activities in the occupied lands in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built illegally since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian lands.
In a bid to force the regime to withdraw its claim from the Palestinian territories, many countries have banned the sale of goods produced in the Israeli settlements.
The boycott is part of a larger international movement known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led international campaign launched more than a decade ago with the aim of ending the Tel Aviv regime’s occupation of Palestine.
10 nov 2019
Yossi Shelley
Yossi Shelley criticizes leader of Brazilian Israelite Confederation, which is in charge of the event, in a local newspaper; citing the criticism made by him towards Bolsonaro as the reason for the boycott
Israeli ambassador to Brazil Yossi Shelley has reportedly decided to boycott the annual conference of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation (CONIB), due to criticism of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro from senior leaders of the local Jewish community.
Brazilian newspaper "Folha de Sao Paulo" said that General Consul for Israel in Sau Paulo, Alon Lavi, also decided to skip the event.
Shelly is a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a friend of Bolsonaro.
The report quoted Shelley as lashing out at CONIB President Fernando Lottenberg, accusoing him of attacking Bolsonaro for political reasons.
"Lottenberg has his own personal political agenda," Shelley reportedly said. "He spoke badly of Bolsonaro and the Jewish community doesn't like him for that."
He added: "Israel has such great relations with Brazil today, why spoil it?"
Lottenberg apparently slammed at Brazilian president for saying that the Holocaust can be forgiven although not forgotten and for calling Nazis left-wing.
According to the report, Lottenberg responded to the ambassador's absence by saying: "The Jewish community is pluralistic, and the organization strives to represent everyone. You cannot avoid to take a stand when Bolsonaro says the Nazis were a leftist movement."
The 14 Jewish confederations that make up the CONIB expressed their support for Lottenberg in a letter to Shelley in which they said they were proud of the multitude of opinions in their community.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that the ambassador absented himself due to a scheduling conflict.
"Relations between our countries are bettering every day. We are preparing to host the Brazilian congressional ministry of security and foreign affairs in Israel this month and will continue to deepen our relations with the South American state", the ministry said.
Yossi Shelley criticizes leader of Brazilian Israelite Confederation, which is in charge of the event, in a local newspaper; citing the criticism made by him towards Bolsonaro as the reason for the boycott
Israeli ambassador to Brazil Yossi Shelley has reportedly decided to boycott the annual conference of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation (CONIB), due to criticism of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro from senior leaders of the local Jewish community.
Brazilian newspaper "Folha de Sao Paulo" said that General Consul for Israel in Sau Paulo, Alon Lavi, also decided to skip the event.
Shelly is a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a friend of Bolsonaro.
The report quoted Shelley as lashing out at CONIB President Fernando Lottenberg, accusoing him of attacking Bolsonaro for political reasons.
"Lottenberg has his own personal political agenda," Shelley reportedly said. "He spoke badly of Bolsonaro and the Jewish community doesn't like him for that."
He added: "Israel has such great relations with Brazil today, why spoil it?"
Lottenberg apparently slammed at Brazilian president for saying that the Holocaust can be forgiven although not forgotten and for calling Nazis left-wing.
According to the report, Lottenberg responded to the ambassador's absence by saying: "The Jewish community is pluralistic, and the organization strives to represent everyone. You cannot avoid to take a stand when Bolsonaro says the Nazis were a leftist movement."
The 14 Jewish confederations that make up the CONIB expressed their support for Lottenberg in a letter to Shelley in which they said they were proud of the multitude of opinions in their community.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that the ambassador absented himself due to a scheduling conflict.
"Relations between our countries are bettering every day. We are preparing to host the Brazilian congressional ministry of security and foreign affairs in Israel this month and will continue to deepen our relations with the South American state", the ministry said.
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