[Reader-list] "Ghosh: Do not undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom!"

Pheeta Ram pheeta.ram at gmail.com
Tue Apr 27 01:28:55 IST 2010


Here is the LINK to Atwood's reply:
http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:http://usacbi.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/margaret-atwoods-response-re-dan-david-prize/

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 1:13 AM, Pheeta Ram <pheeta.ram at gmail.com> wrote:

> Those of you who are interested can follow the issue and interesting debate
> on Kafila too.
> Link:
> http://kafila.org/2010/04/20/boycott-of-israel-would-serve-any-useful-tactical-purpose-amitav-ghosh/
>
>
> <http://kafila.org/2010/04/20/boycott-of-israel-would-serve-any-useful-tactical-purpose-amitav-ghosh/>
> Pheeta
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:19 PM, Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> At the risk of cross-posting...
>> For those who have been following the issue of Amitava Ghosh receiving the
>> Dan David prize.
>> This from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of
>> Israel.
>> best
>> Sanjay Kak
>>
>>
>> PACBI | 25 April 2010
>>
>> Ghosh: Do not undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom!
>>
>> Occupied Ramallah, 25 April 2010
>>
>> The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
>> (PACBI) was extremely disappointed by the recent statement you issued in
>> response to pleas from individuals and groups around the world urging you
>> not to associate your name with Israel’s efforts to white-wash its crimes.
>> Your acceptance of the Dan David Prize comes at a time when the
>> international movement to boycott Israel is gaining ground in response to
>> Israel’s flagrant violation of Palestinian human and political rights; we
>> appeal to you to reflect upon the implication of your acceptance of this
>> prize.
>>
>> You titled your statement 'It is not awarded by the state of Israel’, yet
>> the prize is administered by a university that is funded by the state and,
>> more crucially, is a leading academic partner of the state in developing
>> weapons and justifying war crimes. The prize ceremony is presided over by
>> the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, the architect of Israel's nuclear
>> weapons program, whose record boasts a series of war crimes and grave
>> violations of human rights. Only to cite one: on April 18, the Israeli
>> army
>> shelled the UN shelter in Qana, killing 102 civilians, mainly women,
>> children and the elderly. Many more were injured. Human Rights Watch, the
>> UN
>> and Amnesty International subsequently established that Israel's attack on
>> the UN base was deliberate, disproving Israeli propaganda to the contrary.
>> Shimon Peres said at the time, "In my opinion, everything was done
>> according
>> to clear logic and in a responsible way. I am at peace." The Qana massacre
>> led to Shimon Peres being denied the job he coveted at the time: that of
>> UN
>> Secretary-General.
>>
>> You will be receiving this prize from the head of a state that has for
>> more
>> than six decades imposed a colonial and apartheid regime on the people of
>> Palestine and has for the last 43 years militarily occupied the West Bank,
>> including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Despite the “peace process”
>> which began 17 years ago, Israel routinely violates the Palestinians’ most
>> fundamental human rights with impunity. Israel extra-judicially kills
>> Palestinian leaders and activists; keeps over 8,000 Palestinians
>> imprisoned,
>> including numerous members of parliament. As we write, Israel continues to
>> build illegal Jewish-only colonies on occupied Palestinian land and an
>> apartheid infrastructure of roads, blockades and the Apartheid Wall,
>> declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in
>> 2004.
>> Israel denies millions of Palestinian refugees their internationally
>> recognized right to return to their lands, as stipulated in UN
>> resolutions.
>> Moreover, Israel maintains a system of racial discrimination against its
>> own
>> Palestinian citizens that largely conforms to the definition of apartheid
>> in
>> the UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of
>> Apartheid and that is reminiscent of key elements of apartheid South
>> Africa.
>> In the latest Israeli war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip,
>> Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing,
>> condemned by UN experts and leading human rights organizations, particular
>> in the Goldstone report, as war crimes. This assault left over 1,440
>> Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children, and
>> injured another 5380. [1]
>>
>> Since much of your work considers how human beings survived dislocations
>> and
>> colonialism, you may be interested to know that Tel Aviv University (TAU)
>> has conspicuously refused to recognize and commemorate the Palestinian
>> village of Sheikh Muwannis and its ethnically cleansed population on whose
>> land the university was partially built. Despite sustained activists’
>> campaigning, TAU has so far rejected even mounting a plaque referencing
>> and
>> commemorating the village and its history, and has failed to acknowledge
>> the
>> moral debt for injustices caused to the indigenous Palestinian people
>> during
>> the establishment of the state of Israel. [2]
>>
>> Last year’s comprehensive report by the Palestine Society at the School of
>> Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) presents strong evidence of intensive,
>> purposive and open institutional cooperation of TAU with the Israeli
>> military establishment. TAU Professor Avraham Katzir observed:
>>
>> One of the things which helps the State of Israel […] is the fact that
>> each
>> one of us is both an Israeli citizen and working in these fields […] I’m
>> an
>> academic at university and I’ve also done my [military] service, and I was
>> also at [state arms manufacturer] RAFAEL for some years. All of those
>> things
>> come together; we’re helping one another – something which doesn’t happen
>> [elsewhere]; I’ve been in the US and Europe, and there is a disconnect
>> between the workshops and the army; they hate the army! [With us], I think
>> that we succeed by virtue of the fact that we help one another so much.
>> [3]
>>
>>
>> Additionally, studies by the Alternative Information Center (2009), Adalah
>> (2003), and Human Rights Watch (2001), among others, corroborate and
>> document accusations that Israeli educational institutions, including TAU,
>> pursue discriminatory racial policies that are meant to prevent
>> Palestinians
>> in Israel from enrolling. [4] These policies make it yet more difficult
>> for
>> Palestinian citizens of Israel to obtain faculty positions. Any encounter
>> at
>> an Israeli university thus nearly always excludes or marginalizes
>> Palestinian voices.
>>
>> You note in your statement that you object to boycotts and embargoes when
>> they concern matters of culture and learning. Aside from the crucial fact
>> that the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel
>> targets institutions, not individuals, [5] why should cultural and
>> learning
>> institutions be exempt from boycotts if they are implicated in the
>> atrocities as any other sector? Culture and learning were not exempt in
>> the
>> South African case. The Palestinian civil society campaign for Boycott,
>> Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which is a strategy endorsed by an
>> overwhelming majority of Palestinian unions, NGOs, cultural organizations,
>> among others, as a legitimate non-violent and effective means of struggle
>> against Israel’s oppression, has been largely inspired by the South
>> African
>> struggle against apartheid. When you reject our call for the academic and
>> cultural boycott of Israel, you undermine our struggle for freedom and
>> ignore the voices of almost all prominent Palestinian artists, writers and
>> other cultural workers [6] and the many international intellectuals who
>> have
>> joined our boycott [7].
>>
>> If you have any doubts that the situation of Palestinians is similar to
>> that
>> of black South African’s under apartheid, we urge you to read the words of
>> Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in a recent letter to Berkeley students
>> wrote:
>>
>> “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed
>> the
>> racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the
>> conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of
>> Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and
>> children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when
>> trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school
>> or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black
>> South
>> Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces
>> of
>> the Apartheid government. In South Africa, we could not have achieved our
>> freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who
>> through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment,
>> encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse
>> decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.” [8]
>>
>> As was the case in South Africa, where international solidarity played a
>> crucial role in bringing down apartheid by boycotting the economic,
>> educational and cultural institutions of the apartheid regime, we
>> sincerely
>> hope you will not accept any prizes offered by complicit Israeli
>> institutions, until Israel fulfils its obligations under international law
>> and fully recognizes the Palestinian people’s right to live in full
>> equality
>> and freedom in their homeland.
>>
>> We call upon you not just to be 'appalled’ by Israel’s actions, but to
>> show
>> real solidarity with us in our struggle for freedom by refusing to
>> associate
>> your name with Israel’s atrocities.
>>
>>
>>
>> PACBI
>>
>> www.PACBI.org <http://www.pacbi.org/>
>>
>> pacbi at pacbi.org
>>
>>
>>
>>  [1] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3
>>
>> [2] Tel Aviv University is asked to acknowledge its past and to
>> commemorate
>> the Palestinian village on which grounds the university was built,
>> www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=143
>>
>> [3] SOAS Palestine Society Report: "Tel Aviv University part and parcel of
>> the Israeli Occupation,"
>>
>> http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
>>
>> [4] Tel Aviv University’s Age Restrictions Discriminate against Arab
>> Students in Admission to its Medical School,
>> www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/jan08/4.php ;
>> Reference Material in Support of Palestinian and International Academic
>> Boycott Campaigns (2006) compiled by the Alternative Information Center,
>> www.alternativenews.org;
>>
>> Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Education
>> rights—Palestinian citizens of Israel, (2003), Shafa’amr, Israel;
>> Human Rights Watch. Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab
>> Children in Israel’s Schools (2001), www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/
>>
>> [5] See the PACBI Call for Boycott at:
>> http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869 and the Guidelines for the
>> International Cultural Boycott of Israel at:
>> http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047
>>
>> [6] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=315<
>> http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=315&key=filmmakers>
>>
>> [7] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=415&key=filmmakers
>> [8] *
>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
>> *<
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html
>> >
>>
>> Posted on 25-04-2010
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