23 sept 2019
The Right to Boycott
An Open Letter
It is with dismay that we learned of the decision of the City of Dortmund to rescind the Nelly Sachs Award for Literature from Kamila Shamsie because of her stated commitment to the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.
As a statement by more than forty progressive Jewish organisations says, ‘dangerously [conflating] anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s policies and system of occupation and apartheid … undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.’
In Germany, the attacks on BDS are among the most fierce. In May 2019 the Bundestag passed a motion labelling the movement as antisemitic. Yet on 13 September, the Administrative Court of Cologne became the third court in the country to rule in favour [pdf] of the right to boycott.
In its ruling the court wrote: ‘The motions of the Bonn City Council … and the German Bundestag (17 May 2019), do not constitute legislative acts but are political resolutions or expressions of political will. These motions alone cannot justify, from any legal perspective, the restriction of an existing legal right.’
Yet a few days later, the City of Dortmund chose to punish an author for her human rights advocacy while simultaneously refusing to make public the statement she wrote on learning of the decision.
So we publish Kamila Shamsie’s statement here:
In the just concluded Israeli elections, Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to annex up to one third of the West Bank, in contravention of international law, and his political opponent Benny Gantz’s objection to this was that Netanyahu had stolen his idea; this closely followed the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces – which was condemned as ‘appalling’ by the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process. In this political context, the jury of the Nelly Sachs Prize has chosen to withdraw the award from me on the basis of my support for a non-violent campaign to bring pressure on the Israeli government.
It is a matter of great sadness to me that a jury should bow to pressure and withdraw a prize from a writer who is exercising her freedom of conscience and freedom of expression; and it is a matter of outrage that the BDS movement (modelled on the South African boycott) that campaigns against the government of Israel for its acts of discrimination and brutality against Palestinians should be held up as something shameful and unjust.
What is the meaning of a literary award that undermines the right to advocate for human rights, the principles of freedom of conscience and expression, and the freedom to criticise? Without these, art and culture become meaningless luxuries.
Khalid Abdalla, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Nadia Abu el-Haj, Diana Abu-Jaber, Susan Abulhawa, Lila Abu-Lughod, Maan Abu Taleb, Ammiel Alcalay, Kazim Ali, Monica Ali, Nir Alon, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Carlos Manuel Álvarez, Suad Amiry, Tahmima Anam, Sinan Antoon, Lisa Appignanesi, Nicole Aragi, Arnold Aronson, Elsa Auerbach, Zeina Azzam, Kafah Bachari, Annie Baker, Sunandini Banerjee, Frank Barat, Mourid Barghouti, Josh Begley, Joel Beinin, Linda Benedikt, Phyllis Bennis, Susan Bernofsky, Omar Berrada, Dwayne Betts, Akeel Bilgrami, Nicholas Blincoe, Leah Borromeo, Brian Boyd, Victoria Brittain, Virginia Brown, Simone Browne, Jehan Bseiso, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, John Burnside, Margaret Busby, Diana Buttu, Carmen Callil, Juan Cárdenas, Zeynep Celik, Hayan Charara, Amit Chaudhuri, Anne Chisholm (Vice President, Royal Society of Literature), Noam Chomsky, Susannah Clapp, Jennifer Clement (President, PEN International), J.M. Coetzee, Teju Cole, Michael Collier, Irene Cooper, Cindy Corrie, Craig Corrie, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, William Dalrymple, Najwan Darwish, Angela Davis, Katy Derbyshire, Kiran Desai, Natalie Diaz, Laurence Dreyfus, Marlene Dumas, Hilda Dunn, Geoff Dyer, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ben Ehrenreich, Deborah Eisenberg, Inua Ellams, Annie Ernaux, Brian Eno, Nick Estes, Richard Falk, Rose Fenton, Sylvia Finzi, Erica Fischer, Richard Ford, Adam Foulds, Maureen Freely (Chair, English PEN), Duranya Freeman, John Freeman, Ru Freeman, Bella Freud, Esther Freud, Ruth Fruchtman, Tess Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Tomer Gardi, Suzanne Gardinier, Apoorva Gautam, Ashish George, Ralph Ghoche, Noelle Ghoussaini, Eileen Gillooly, Georgina Godwin, David Gorin, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Subhi Hadidi, Rawi Hage, Omar Robert Hamilton, Yasmeen Hanoosh, Jeremy Harding, Githa Hariharan, Joseph Harris, Rodrigo Hasbún, Iris Hefets, Jehan Helou, Mischa Hiller, Marianne Hirsch, Jane Hirschmann, Elizabeth Hodges, Rachel Holmes, Amy Horowitz, Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Jean Howard, Aamer Hussein, Kim Jensen, Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres, Lucy Jones, Fady Joudah, Louis Kampf, Remi Kanazi, Ghada Karmi, Brigid Keenan, A.L. Kennedy, Omar el Khairy, Mona Khalidi, Rashid Khalidi, Hannah Khalil, Shamus Khan, Naveen Kishore, Naomi Klein, Alexander Kluge, Nancy Kricorian, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Olivia Laing, Nick Laird, Laila Lalami, Léopold Lambert, Patrick Langley, Rickey Laurentiis, Paul Lauter, Paul Laverty, Kiese Laymon, Mason Leaver-Yap, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Ben Lerner, Alan Levine, Richard A. Levy, Ken Loach, Zachary Lockman, Claudia Castro Luna, Ruth Luschnat, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Lori Marso, Yann Martel, Dave Mason, Ahmed Masoud, Zeinab Masud, Diana Matar, Hisham Matar, Khaled Mattawa, Farid Matuk, Nyla Matuk, Colum McCann, John McCarthy, Tom McCarthy, Fiona McCrae, Sarah McNally, Askold Melnyczuk, Helaine Meisler, Maaza Mengiste, Ritu Menon, Christopher Merrill, Lina Meruane, Brinkley Messick, Claire Messud, China Miéville, Gail Miller, Pankaj Mishra, W.J.T. Mitchell, Nadifa Mohamed, Aja Monet, Jenny Morgan, Benjamin Moser, Michel Moushabek, David Mura, Jack Murchie, Nancy Murray, Eileen Myles, Karma Nabulsi, Karthika Naïr, Mary Jane Nealon, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, Marcy Newman, Donna Nevel, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Lulu Norman, Naomi Shihab Nye, John Oakes, Andrew O’Hagan, Richard Ohmann, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Susie Orbach, Ursula Owen, David Palumbo-Liu, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, William Parry, Shailja Patel, Ian Patterson, Ed Pavlic, Jeremy Pikser, Shahina Piyarali, Sheldon Pollock, Vijay Prashad, Paul B. Preciado, Alexandra Pringle, Pary El-Qalqili, Omar al-Qattan, Rania Qawasmah, Shazea Quraishi, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Cynthia Rimsky, Bruce Robbins, Sally Rooney, Constancia Dinky Romilly, Jacqueline Rose, Andrew Ross, Alice Rothchild, Pru Rowlandson, Bee Rowlatt, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco, Nayantara Sahgal, Mariam C. Said, Rebecca Saletan, Mohamed Salmawi, Preeta Samarasan, Sapphire, Shuchi Saraswat, George Saunders, James Schamus, Sarah Schulman, Felicity Scott, Stephen Sedley, Karen Seeley, Gamini Seneviratne, Rachel Shabi, Elhum Shakerifar, Anton Shammas, Solmaz Sharif, Adam Shatz, Raja Shehadeh, Farhana Sheikh, Jack Shenker, Adania Shibli, Ahmad Shirazi, Ann Shirazi, Avi Shlaim, Marc Siegel, Rick Simonson, Tom Sleigh, Gillian Slovo, Ali Smith, Nirit Sommerfeld, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Gloria Steinem, Amy Kepple Strawser, William Sutcliffe, Billie Swift, Janne Teller, Kate Tempest, Jacques Testard, Madeleine Thien, Colm Tóibín, T.C. Tolbert, Carles Torner (Executive Director, PEN International), Salil Tripathi, (Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee for PEN International), Monique Truong, Jennifer Tseng, Chika Unigwe, Tanya Ury, Karen Van Dyck, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Lawrence Venuti, Margo Viscusi, Gauri Viswanathan, Ocean Vinh Vuong, Dirk Wanrooij, Roger Waters, Marina Warner, Terry Weber, Eliot Weinberger, Irvine Welsh, Ben White, Mabel Wilson, Jeanette Winterson, Jacqueline Woodson, Jay G. Ying, Mona Younis, Dorothy M. Zellner, Alia Trabucco Zerán
An Open Letter
It is with dismay that we learned of the decision of the City of Dortmund to rescind the Nelly Sachs Award for Literature from Kamila Shamsie because of her stated commitment to the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.
As a statement by more than forty progressive Jewish organisations says, ‘dangerously [conflating] anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s policies and system of occupation and apartheid … undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.’
In Germany, the attacks on BDS are among the most fierce. In May 2019 the Bundestag passed a motion labelling the movement as antisemitic. Yet on 13 September, the Administrative Court of Cologne became the third court in the country to rule in favour [pdf] of the right to boycott.
In its ruling the court wrote: ‘The motions of the Bonn City Council … and the German Bundestag (17 May 2019), do not constitute legislative acts but are political resolutions or expressions of political will. These motions alone cannot justify, from any legal perspective, the restriction of an existing legal right.’
Yet a few days later, the City of Dortmund chose to punish an author for her human rights advocacy while simultaneously refusing to make public the statement she wrote on learning of the decision.
So we publish Kamila Shamsie’s statement here:
In the just concluded Israeli elections, Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to annex up to one third of the West Bank, in contravention of international law, and his political opponent Benny Gantz’s objection to this was that Netanyahu had stolen his idea; this closely followed the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces – which was condemned as ‘appalling’ by the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process. In this political context, the jury of the Nelly Sachs Prize has chosen to withdraw the award from me on the basis of my support for a non-violent campaign to bring pressure on the Israeli government.
It is a matter of great sadness to me that a jury should bow to pressure and withdraw a prize from a writer who is exercising her freedom of conscience and freedom of expression; and it is a matter of outrage that the BDS movement (modelled on the South African boycott) that campaigns against the government of Israel for its acts of discrimination and brutality against Palestinians should be held up as something shameful and unjust.
What is the meaning of a literary award that undermines the right to advocate for human rights, the principles of freedom of conscience and expression, and the freedom to criticise? Without these, art and culture become meaningless luxuries.
Khalid Abdalla, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Nadia Abu el-Haj, Diana Abu-Jaber, Susan Abulhawa, Lila Abu-Lughod, Maan Abu Taleb, Ammiel Alcalay, Kazim Ali, Monica Ali, Nir Alon, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Carlos Manuel Álvarez, Suad Amiry, Tahmima Anam, Sinan Antoon, Lisa Appignanesi, Nicole Aragi, Arnold Aronson, Elsa Auerbach, Zeina Azzam, Kafah Bachari, Annie Baker, Sunandini Banerjee, Frank Barat, Mourid Barghouti, Josh Begley, Joel Beinin, Linda Benedikt, Phyllis Bennis, Susan Bernofsky, Omar Berrada, Dwayne Betts, Akeel Bilgrami, Nicholas Blincoe, Leah Borromeo, Brian Boyd, Victoria Brittain, Virginia Brown, Simone Browne, Jehan Bseiso, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, John Burnside, Margaret Busby, Diana Buttu, Carmen Callil, Juan Cárdenas, Zeynep Celik, Hayan Charara, Amit Chaudhuri, Anne Chisholm (Vice President, Royal Society of Literature), Noam Chomsky, Susannah Clapp, Jennifer Clement (President, PEN International), J.M. Coetzee, Teju Cole, Michael Collier, Irene Cooper, Cindy Corrie, Craig Corrie, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, William Dalrymple, Najwan Darwish, Angela Davis, Katy Derbyshire, Kiran Desai, Natalie Diaz, Laurence Dreyfus, Marlene Dumas, Hilda Dunn, Geoff Dyer, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ben Ehrenreich, Deborah Eisenberg, Inua Ellams, Annie Ernaux, Brian Eno, Nick Estes, Richard Falk, Rose Fenton, Sylvia Finzi, Erica Fischer, Richard Ford, Adam Foulds, Maureen Freely (Chair, English PEN), Duranya Freeman, John Freeman, Ru Freeman, Bella Freud, Esther Freud, Ruth Fruchtman, Tess Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Tomer Gardi, Suzanne Gardinier, Apoorva Gautam, Ashish George, Ralph Ghoche, Noelle Ghoussaini, Eileen Gillooly, Georgina Godwin, David Gorin, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Subhi Hadidi, Rawi Hage, Omar Robert Hamilton, Yasmeen Hanoosh, Jeremy Harding, Githa Hariharan, Joseph Harris, Rodrigo Hasbún, Iris Hefets, Jehan Helou, Mischa Hiller, Marianne Hirsch, Jane Hirschmann, Elizabeth Hodges, Rachel Holmes, Amy Horowitz, Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Jean Howard, Aamer Hussein, Kim Jensen, Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres, Lucy Jones, Fady Joudah, Louis Kampf, Remi Kanazi, Ghada Karmi, Brigid Keenan, A.L. Kennedy, Omar el Khairy, Mona Khalidi, Rashid Khalidi, Hannah Khalil, Shamus Khan, Naveen Kishore, Naomi Klein, Alexander Kluge, Nancy Kricorian, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Olivia Laing, Nick Laird, Laila Lalami, Léopold Lambert, Patrick Langley, Rickey Laurentiis, Paul Lauter, Paul Laverty, Kiese Laymon, Mason Leaver-Yap, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Ben Lerner, Alan Levine, Richard A. Levy, Ken Loach, Zachary Lockman, Claudia Castro Luna, Ruth Luschnat, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Lori Marso, Yann Martel, Dave Mason, Ahmed Masoud, Zeinab Masud, Diana Matar, Hisham Matar, Khaled Mattawa, Farid Matuk, Nyla Matuk, Colum McCann, John McCarthy, Tom McCarthy, Fiona McCrae, Sarah McNally, Askold Melnyczuk, Helaine Meisler, Maaza Mengiste, Ritu Menon, Christopher Merrill, Lina Meruane, Brinkley Messick, Claire Messud, China Miéville, Gail Miller, Pankaj Mishra, W.J.T. Mitchell, Nadifa Mohamed, Aja Monet, Jenny Morgan, Benjamin Moser, Michel Moushabek, David Mura, Jack Murchie, Nancy Murray, Eileen Myles, Karma Nabulsi, Karthika Naïr, Mary Jane Nealon, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, Marcy Newman, Donna Nevel, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Lulu Norman, Naomi Shihab Nye, John Oakes, Andrew O’Hagan, Richard Ohmann, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Susie Orbach, Ursula Owen, David Palumbo-Liu, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, William Parry, Shailja Patel, Ian Patterson, Ed Pavlic, Jeremy Pikser, Shahina Piyarali, Sheldon Pollock, Vijay Prashad, Paul B. Preciado, Alexandra Pringle, Pary El-Qalqili, Omar al-Qattan, Rania Qawasmah, Shazea Quraishi, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Cynthia Rimsky, Bruce Robbins, Sally Rooney, Constancia Dinky Romilly, Jacqueline Rose, Andrew Ross, Alice Rothchild, Pru Rowlandson, Bee Rowlatt, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco, Nayantara Sahgal, Mariam C. Said, Rebecca Saletan, Mohamed Salmawi, Preeta Samarasan, Sapphire, Shuchi Saraswat, George Saunders, James Schamus, Sarah Schulman, Felicity Scott, Stephen Sedley, Karen Seeley, Gamini Seneviratne, Rachel Shabi, Elhum Shakerifar, Anton Shammas, Solmaz Sharif, Adam Shatz, Raja Shehadeh, Farhana Sheikh, Jack Shenker, Adania Shibli, Ahmad Shirazi, Ann Shirazi, Avi Shlaim, Marc Siegel, Rick Simonson, Tom Sleigh, Gillian Slovo, Ali Smith, Nirit Sommerfeld, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Gloria Steinem, Amy Kepple Strawser, William Sutcliffe, Billie Swift, Janne Teller, Kate Tempest, Jacques Testard, Madeleine Thien, Colm Tóibín, T.C. Tolbert, Carles Torner (Executive Director, PEN International), Salil Tripathi, (Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee for PEN International), Monique Truong, Jennifer Tseng, Chika Unigwe, Tanya Ury, Karen Van Dyck, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Lawrence Venuti, Margo Viscusi, Gauri Viswanathan, Ocean Vinh Vuong, Dirk Wanrooij, Roger Waters, Marina Warner, Terry Weber, Eliot Weinberger, Irvine Welsh, Ben White, Mabel Wilson, Jeanette Winterson, Jacqueline Woodson, Jay G. Ying, Mona Younis, Dorothy M. Zellner, Alia Trabucco Zerán
21 sept 2019
Author Kamila Shamsie stripped of her German prize due to her support of the Palestinian boycott of Israel movement, BDS
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) condemned today the decision of the Nelly Sachs Prize jury to withdraw author Kamila Shamsie’s award over her support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to a press release.
The British-Pakistani author has reportedly been participating in the boycott movement against the Israeli government for its Palestinian policies since 2014.
In a statement following the jury’s decision, Shamsie shared her disappointment and explained why she supports the BDS. “In the just-concluded Israeli elections, Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to annex up to one third of the West Bank, in contravention of international law, and his political opponent Benny Gantz’s objection to this was that Netanyahu had stolen his idea; this closely followed the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces - which was condemned as 'appalling’ by the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process," Shamsie said.
The Nelly Sachs Prize is a biennial literary prize awarded by the German city of Dortmund to honor authors for their contributions to the promotion of understanding between peoples. It is named after the German-Swedish Jewish poet Nelly Sachs.
The Israeli government has repeatedly contravened international laws and the United Nations’ resolutions when it comes to the Palestinian population and territories, said Euro-Med.
The BDS, a citizen-led movement, was started in response to international inaction and modelled on the South Africa boycott against the Apartheid regime. The BDS is not a violent campaign, and its supporters should not be discriminated against for their involvement, it added.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Right Monitor is concerned that this will set a dangerous precedent of a serious assault on free speech in Germany and other parts of the world.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) condemned today the decision of the Nelly Sachs Prize jury to withdraw author Kamila Shamsie’s award over her support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to a press release.
The British-Pakistani author has reportedly been participating in the boycott movement against the Israeli government for its Palestinian policies since 2014.
In a statement following the jury’s decision, Shamsie shared her disappointment and explained why she supports the BDS. “In the just-concluded Israeli elections, Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to annex up to one third of the West Bank, in contravention of international law, and his political opponent Benny Gantz’s objection to this was that Netanyahu had stolen his idea; this closely followed the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces - which was condemned as 'appalling’ by the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process," Shamsie said.
The Nelly Sachs Prize is a biennial literary prize awarded by the German city of Dortmund to honor authors for their contributions to the promotion of understanding between peoples. It is named after the German-Swedish Jewish poet Nelly Sachs.
The Israeli government has repeatedly contravened international laws and the United Nations’ resolutions when it comes to the Palestinian population and territories, said Euro-Med.
The BDS, a citizen-led movement, was started in response to international inaction and modelled on the South Africa boycott against the Apartheid regime. The BDS is not a violent campaign, and its supporters should not be discriminated against for their involvement, it added.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Right Monitor is concerned that this will set a dangerous precedent of a serious assault on free speech in Germany and other parts of the world.
20 sept 2019
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) / NetherlandsThe Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the largest coalition in Palestinian society that leads the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is calling for the boycott of DGTL Tel Aviv 2019 festival.
The festival is due to take place in Yarkon Park, also known as Ganei Yehoshua, built atop the ruins of Jarisha, an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village. Its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants were forcibly expelled in 1948 and never allowed to return by Israel’s apartheid regime.
Israel’s ongoing massacres in the besieged Gaza Strip, a short drive from Tel Aviv, have included the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists, medics, and children by snipers hundreds of metres away. UN investigators concluded that this “may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity”, yet Israel’s far-right regime has retained its impunity on the world stage.
It is these crimes, of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and occupation, that Israel seeks to art-wash through its association with otherwise progressive festivals and artists.
Peggy Gou withdrew from last year’s DGTL Tel Aviv festival, joining the scores of DJs and producers in endorsing the cultural boycott of Israel through the inspiring and artist-led #DJsforPalestine initiative. We urge all artists booked this year to cancel their shows, just as they would have refused to play a South African festival complicit in apartheid.
At BDS Official: Pacbi Welcomes Statement by More Than 500 Filmmakers Against “Close Up” Initiative Normalizing Israeli Apartheid
The festival is due to take place in Yarkon Park, also known as Ganei Yehoshua, built atop the ruins of Jarisha, an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village. Its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants were forcibly expelled in 1948 and never allowed to return by Israel’s apartheid regime.
Israel’s ongoing massacres in the besieged Gaza Strip, a short drive from Tel Aviv, have included the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists, medics, and children by snipers hundreds of metres away. UN investigators concluded that this “may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity”, yet Israel’s far-right regime has retained its impunity on the world stage.
It is these crimes, of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and occupation, that Israel seeks to art-wash through its association with otherwise progressive festivals and artists.
Peggy Gou withdrew from last year’s DGTL Tel Aviv festival, joining the scores of DJs and producers in endorsing the cultural boycott of Israel through the inspiring and artist-led #DJsforPalestine initiative. We urge all artists booked this year to cancel their shows, just as they would have refused to play a South African festival complicit in apartheid.
At BDS Official: Pacbi Welcomes Statement by More Than 500 Filmmakers Against “Close Up” Initiative Normalizing Israeli Apartheid
10 sept 2019
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“The UK has, for the first time, officially invited the Israeli government to participate in the world’s largest arms fair at DSEI, set to take place in London, this month.
I’m calling on UK citizens to make their voices heard.” – Amal Samouni For many people who have lived a life free from war and military occupation, the global arms trade may seem like a distant or even irrelevant issue. But, for Palestinians like me, it is an inescapable and painful reality. I am a 19-year-old who has spent my entire childhood in the Gaza Strip, a place sometimes described as the world’s “largest open air prison”. This is because of the crippling military blockade enforced on the region by the Israeli state, which denies us access to basic rights and resources every single day. Not only this, but Gaza has been the target of a number of major bombing assaults by Israeli forces during my lifetime. The attack during “Operation Cast Lead” took place over 22 days, in 2008-9, when I was just 10 years old, and changed my life forever. In the midst of the bombings on 4 January, 2009, Israeli forces stormed my family home, ordered my father out, and shot and killed him at our front door. Then, they set fire to our home and starting shooting at the rest of us, injuring my four-year-old brother Ahmed and two other children. Next, over 100 extended family members were rounded up and forced into the house of my uncle Wa’el al-Samouni, where we stayed for a day and a half, with only the food or water that was in the house. It was there where my little brother succumbed to his injuries, as none of the injured were allowed to leave, and one of my aunts gave birth during the ordeal. A cousin and two of my uncles were bombed and killed while looking for firewood, or standing at the door. The Israeli government denies that it ordered residents to gather in one house. Finally, Israeli forces bombed the building, killing 23 family members and leaving me trapped under rubble, next to their bodies, for three days. |
On 7 January, I was somehow found alive. Over 29 members of my extended family were killed over these days, with many others permanently injured. Shrapnel, which I can still feel, has remained lodged in my brain, which, as I grew up, left me to endure nose bleeds, pain in my eyes and ears, and headaches that continue today.
No human being should have to endure this kind of trauma and violence, let alone any child. Yet Operation Cast Lead alone killed 1,400 people, including more than 330 children.
My story is just one of thousands of others lived by Palestinians in Gaza -– and the deadly attacks against my people continue to this day.
A decade later, me and my family continue to resist Israel’s brutality and the oppression of our community.
Since March of last year, hundreds of thousands have been protesting at the Gaza fence, in a series of protests called the “Great Return March”. We are calling for an end to the siege and for the realisation of our fundamental right, as enshrined in international law, to return to the homes from which the majority of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.
In response, despite repeated denials that its troops intentionally target civilians, Israel has met our unarmed protests with brutal live fire, killing over 250 and injuring over 27,000. A decade on from Operation Cast Lead, Israeli bullets and bombs are still tearing our community apart.
So, how can any government or organisation that claims to uphold human rights condone these crimes? I would like to put this question, in particular, to the UK government.
The UK has, for the first time, officially invited the Israeli government to the world’s largest arms fair at DSEI, set to take place in London, this month.
This is despite my story, thousands of other Palestinian testimonies and even a UN Commission of Inquiry report, earlier this year, which found that Israeli forces had committed grave violations against protesters in Gaza, which, in the words of the report, may have constituted “war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
By welcoming Israeli arms companies which market their weapons as “battle-tested” –- due to them being tested on us Palestinians in Gaza -– the UK government is directly complicit in the Israeli government’s ongoing crimes against us, well-documented by all the major human rights organisations.
But, this is only half the story.
Since the bombing of Gaza, in 2009, Britain has also increased its arms imports and exports to and from Israel. Israel’s arms trade with countries maintains our systematic oppression –- and countries like the UK are directly profiting from it.
We are told that the UK’s own policy on arms exports, if applied consistently, would prohibit the sale of arms when there is a risk that they would be used for the abuse of human rights and grave violations of international law.
As such, the UK government is demonstrating a total disregard for Palestinian lives and for the memory of all those murdered by the Israeli state, including my own precious father and brother, whom I lost in front of my eyes, as a child.
I’m calling on UK citizens to show international solidarity with Palestinians by joining hundreds of human rights activists in taking action against the upcoming DSEI arms fair. I also call on the UK government to implement an immediate two-way arms embargo, between the UK and Israel, until it ceases its violations against me and my people.
A commitment to human rights means nothing if it’s simply words on a piece of paper. The UK government must act immediately, to end its complicity with the violent repression of the Palestinian people. Not just in memory of my father, brother and all the other victims of Israel’s regular bombing of our people, but to stop yet more tragedies happening to other families, like it did to ours.
This is a first person account of events in January 2009. Israeli authorities have always maintained that they were responding to Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. The Israeli military has announced that it is investigating what happened at Zeitoun.
No human being should have to endure this kind of trauma and violence, let alone any child. Yet Operation Cast Lead alone killed 1,400 people, including more than 330 children.
My story is just one of thousands of others lived by Palestinians in Gaza -– and the deadly attacks against my people continue to this day.
A decade later, me and my family continue to resist Israel’s brutality and the oppression of our community.
Since March of last year, hundreds of thousands have been protesting at the Gaza fence, in a series of protests called the “Great Return March”. We are calling for an end to the siege and for the realisation of our fundamental right, as enshrined in international law, to return to the homes from which the majority of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.
In response, despite repeated denials that its troops intentionally target civilians, Israel has met our unarmed protests with brutal live fire, killing over 250 and injuring over 27,000. A decade on from Operation Cast Lead, Israeli bullets and bombs are still tearing our community apart.
So, how can any government or organisation that claims to uphold human rights condone these crimes? I would like to put this question, in particular, to the UK government.
The UK has, for the first time, officially invited the Israeli government to the world’s largest arms fair at DSEI, set to take place in London, this month.
This is despite my story, thousands of other Palestinian testimonies and even a UN Commission of Inquiry report, earlier this year, which found that Israeli forces had committed grave violations against protesters in Gaza, which, in the words of the report, may have constituted “war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
By welcoming Israeli arms companies which market their weapons as “battle-tested” –- due to them being tested on us Palestinians in Gaza -– the UK government is directly complicit in the Israeli government’s ongoing crimes against us, well-documented by all the major human rights organisations.
But, this is only half the story.
Since the bombing of Gaza, in 2009, Britain has also increased its arms imports and exports to and from Israel. Israel’s arms trade with countries maintains our systematic oppression –- and countries like the UK are directly profiting from it.
We are told that the UK’s own policy on arms exports, if applied consistently, would prohibit the sale of arms when there is a risk that they would be used for the abuse of human rights and grave violations of international law.
As such, the UK government is demonstrating a total disregard for Palestinian lives and for the memory of all those murdered by the Israeli state, including my own precious father and brother, whom I lost in front of my eyes, as a child.
I’m calling on UK citizens to show international solidarity with Palestinians by joining hundreds of human rights activists in taking action against the upcoming DSEI arms fair. I also call on the UK government to implement an immediate two-way arms embargo, between the UK and Israel, until it ceases its violations against me and my people.
A commitment to human rights means nothing if it’s simply words on a piece of paper. The UK government must act immediately, to end its complicity with the violent repression of the Palestinian people. Not just in memory of my father, brother and all the other victims of Israel’s regular bombing of our people, but to stop yet more tragedies happening to other families, like it did to ours.
This is a first person account of events in January 2009. Israeli authorities have always maintained that they were responding to Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. The Israeli military has announced that it is investigating what happened at Zeitoun.
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