band annie's Weblog

A Vote for Israel’s Accession to the OECD is a Vote in Support of Israel’s War Crimes and Other Grave Violations of International Law and Human Rights

Palestinian civil society urges the peoples and governments of OECD member states to defer Israel’s OECD accession until it respects international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people and shows commitment to the fundamental values shared by OECD members.

BNC, Palestine, 15 March 2010 – The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is scheduled to convene in May 2010 in order to take a formal decision on Israel’s application for membership in the Organization. A vote for Israel’s accession to the OECD will be regarded by an overwhelming majority of Palestinians, Arabs, and people of conscience around the world as a decisive and far-reaching act of complicity in rewarding and perpetuating Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Furthermore, it will irreparably undermine the rule of law and further entrench the culture of impunity that has enabled Israel to escalate its commission of war crimes and what is described by some leading international law experts as a prelude to genocide against Palestinians in the illegally besieged and occupied Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) calls upon civil society organizations around the world to apply maximum pressure on their respective governments to ensure that Israel will not be admitted into the OECD, including by casting a vote against Israel’s accession in the final review of its application in May. Membership in the OECD will intensely fuel Israel’s militarism, belligerence and aggression, further destabilizing the entire region, undermining security as well as social, political and economic development and making the quest for a just peace an unattainable goal.

The BNC deplores the OECD’s persistent disregard of evidence submitted by human rights and civil society organizations in process of examination of Israel’s membership application [1]. The BNC further deplores the decision by the OECD to consider Israel’s inability to provide economic statistics which distinguish between the state of Israel and the Palestinian and Syrian territories it occupies as not constituting and obstacle to Israel’s OECD accession [2].

We affirm that the OECD becomes complicit in Israel’s unlawful acts, if the Organization fails to address – despite ample evidence – Israel’s reality as an oppressive occupying and colonizing power in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip and continues to ignore Israel’s system of institutionalized racial discrimination which is the root cause of the extreme poverty among its Palestinian citizens highlighted in OECD reports.

In light of the persistent refusal of many OECD member states to consider Israel’s violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, we call inparticular on OECD members that have voted in support of the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report) in the United Nations – Ireland, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey – to reaffirm their principled stand also in the context of Israel’s bid for OECD membership. We urge you to maintain and reaffirm your position that Israel, like all other states, is to be held accountable to the standards of international law and universal human rights and must respect them before it can be welcomed as a member in the OECD.

Respect and compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law is a requirement for members under OECD instruments. The 1960 OECD Convention, for example, affirms that “economic strength and prosperity are essential for the attainment of the purposes of the United Nations, the preservation of individual liberty and the increase of general well-being.” In the “Road Map for the accession of Israel to the OECD Convention” adopted by the Council in November 2007, the Council noted that in order for Israel to accede to the OECD it must demonstrate its commitment to “fundamental values” shared by all OECD members and meet related benchmarks. The stated OECD values include “a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights, adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development.”

Condemned as a state that is practicing occupation, colonization and apartheid by a recent authoritative legal study in South Africa supervised by international law expert and former UN human rights rapporteur, Prof. John Dugard, Israel is not in compliance with international law and OECD standards and benchmarks [3]. Israel has yet to comply with the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and investigate and prosecute where needed those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity that resulted in the death of more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the winter of 2008/9. Israel has yet to lift its illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip which has brought to the brink of starvation almost 1.5 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees Israel had displaced and dispossessed back in 1948. It has yet to dismantle its illegal Wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank in accordance with the 2004 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion. Israel has yet to end its almost 43-year-old occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, reverse its colonial enterprise and release Palestinians detained and imprisoned. It has yet to transform its political and legal system in order to provide reparation for millions of Palestinian victims, including return for the refugees, and allow full and equal participation of its Palestinian citizens. Only then will Israel meet the standards of pluralist democracies valued by the OECD.

The BNC reiterates the concerns expressed on numerous occasions to the OECD by human rights and civil society organizations and calls upon the governments and peoples of OECD member states to say no to Israel’s bid for membership in the OECD.

[1] See for example: Letter to Mr. Angel Gurria, Secretary General, OECD (22 human rights and civil society organizations), 28 September 2008: www.arabhra.org/HraAdmin/UserImages/Files/NGO%20Letter%20to%20the%20OECD.pdf;
Letter to the Foreign Ministers of Non-EU OECD member states (16 organizations), January 2009: http://www.badil.org/en/documents/category/36-regional-bodies; and Arab Higher Monitoring Committee to the OECD, 27 Feb. 2010: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1152638.html

By Reuters

The Dead Sea will be eliminated next week from a contest to choose the seven natural wonders of the world, because of a Palestinian boycott over the participation of an Israeli settler council.

The New 7 Wonders of Nature is a global Internet contest under the slogan: “If we want to save anything, we first need to truly appreciate it.” In 2007 it chose the new seven man-made wonders of the world.

Its rules state that if a nominee site is located in more than one country, all countries in which it is located must form an Official Supporting Committee (OSC) by July 7.

Israel and Jordan have both done so for the Dead Sea, which they share, but the Palestinian Authority has decided against.

For the Dead Sea, a win would highlight the environmental threat to a unique lake which has shrunk dramatically in the past 30 years due to human exploitation of the Jordan River feed waters and Dead Sea mineral extraction.

“We will not be forming a committee,” Palestinian Tourism Minister Khouloud Douaibes told Reuters, because the Israeli committee “has been consulting with settler councilmen on occupied land and this contravenes international law”.

“Therefore, we are not interested in the issue,” she said reflecting a view that renders the contest and its potential benefits insignificant next to the Palestinians’ long struggle against settlers in their midst.

Unless there is a last-minute rethink by the Palestinians, the decision means the famously buoyant lake at the lowest point on Earth cannot advance to the next stage of the contest.

That is when Internet voters worldwide narrow down the field of 261 to 77, from which the final shortlist of 21 will be chosen ahead of the final vote in 2011, in which N7W predicts one billion electronic votes will be cast.

The Palestinian refusal was no surprise to interested Israelis who predicted months ago that the involvement of the Megilot Dead Sea Regional Council — which governs settlements — would prove a major obstacle to Palestinian participation.

“It’s very sad,” Megilot Dead Sea Council spokeswoman Gura Berger told Reuters. “The Dead Sea is so unique it’s beyond politics. Neither my kids nor Palestinian kids will be able to enjoy it if nothing is done to save it.”

Jordan benefited handsomely after the ancient ruins at Petra were voted a man-made Wonder of the World in 2007. Visits have more than doubled since it won the contest.

The Dead Sea’s water level is shrinking by 3.3 feet a year, according to a World Bank study.

source

By Nadia Hijab, CounterPunch. Posted May 4, 2009.

“When companies begin to lose money, they start to listen.”

On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company’s losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to “Hang Up On Motorola” until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land.

Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of “consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits.”

Although Motorola executives deny it, such risks must have played a part in their decision to sell the department making bomb fuses shortly after Human Rights Watch teams found shrapnel with Motorola serial numbers at some of the civilian sites bombed by Israel in its December-January assault on Gaza.

The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

The British group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine teamed up with Adalah NY and others to exert public pressure on the British government regarding Leviev. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv recently cancelled plans to rent premises from Leviev’s company Africa-Israel.

There are other results. Activists in Britain have targeted the supermarket chain Tesco to stop the sales of Israeli goods produced in settlements. In a video of one such action — over 38,000 YouTube views to date — Welsh activists load up a trolley with settlement products and push it out of the shop without paying.

All the while, they calmly explain to the camera just what they are doing and why. They talk away as they pour red paint over the produce, and as British Bobbies quietly lead them away to a police van.

The result of such consumer boycotts? A fifth of Israeli producers have reported a drop in demand since the assault on Gaza, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.

The second reason boycotts are more effective is the visible role of Jewish human rights advocates, making it harder for Israel to argue that these actions are anti-Semitic.

For example, British architect Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew, describes in a passionate column in The Guardian exactly how Leviev tramples on Palestinian rights, and warns Israeli architects involved in settlements that they will be held to account by their international peers.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has led an ongoing campaign to stop Caterpillar from selling bulldozers to Israel, which militarizes them and uses them in home demolitions and building the separation wall.

The third, key, reason for the growing success of this global movement is the determined leadership of Palestinian civil society. The spark was lit at the world conference against racism in Durban in 2001. In 2004, Palestinian civil society launched an academic and cultural boycott that is having an impact.

In 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society coalitions, organizations, and unions, from the occupied territories, within Israel, and in exile issued a formal call for an international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) until Israel abides by international law. The call sets out clear goals for the movement and provides a framework for action.

In November 2008, Palestinian NGOs helped convene an international BDS conference in Bilbao, Spain, to adopt common actions. This launched a “Derail Veolia” campaign. That French multinational corporation, together with another French company, Alstom, is building a light railway linking East Jerusalem to illegal settlements.

The light rail project was cited by the Swedish national pension fund in its decision to exclude Alstom from its $15 billion portfolio, and by the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in its decision not to consider further Veolia’s bid for a $1.9 billion waste improvement plan. There were active grassroots campaigns in both areas.

Other hits: Veolia lost the contract to operate the city of Stockholm subway and an urban network in Bordeaux. Although these were reportedly “business decisions” there were also activist campaigns in both places. The Galway city council in Ireland decided to follow Stockholm’s example. Meanwhile, Connex, the company that is supposed to operate the light rail, is being targeted by activists in Australia.

The “Derail Veolia” campaign has been the movement’s biggest success to date. Veolia and its subsidiaries are estimated to have lost as much as $7.5 billion.

As one of the BDS movement leaders, Omar Barghouti, put it, “When companies start to lose money, then they listen.” Perhaps governments will too.