BDS Scoring Goals Shedding Israeli Net
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
A team of dedicated Palestinians has been scoring “deadly” goals in the Israeli net all over the world gradually stripping Israel of its legitimacy as a ;democratic’ state. These dedicated Palestinians have been leading the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) grassroots movement in campaigns around the world against the Israeli colonial/ apartheid rule in Palestine asserting the rule of law embedded in all international conventions and agreements which guarantee human rights to all nations and communities. The movement has brought over to all civil societies the absolute proof of the apartheid state which the Zionist state has now acquired as the last colonial/ apartheid power left in our globe.
A recent example of the very encouraging scores achieved by BDS in Israel’s goal post is the recent stand taken by the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) which became the first academic union in Europe to endorse the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel. The Union in its motion refers to Israel as “an apartheid State” calling on “all members to cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as all cooperation in research programs”. This motion was proposed by TUI executive committee and TUI Dublin Colleges Branch. Dr. Jim Roche, a lecturer in the DIT School of Architecture, presented this motion saying it was passed with such a support “especially the day after the Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank yesterday. BDS is a noble non-violent method of resisting Israeli militarism, occupation and apartheid, and there is no question that Israel is implementing apartheid policies against Palestinians. Indeed, many veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa have said that it is worse than what was experienced there”. Dr. Roche pointed out that “education has always been a target of Israeli occupation, seeing forced closures of Palestinian universities, disruptions under checkpoints, closure and curfew regimes and killing of both students and teachers”. Furthermore, the motion calls on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions “to step up its campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel until it lifts its illegal siege of the Gaza Strip and its illegal occupation of the West Bank and agrees to abide by international law.” . In comments on the motion, David Landy, a member of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “undoubtedly apologists for Israeli apartheid will complain that such motions stifle academic freedom, but this is nonsense. Ironically, those who will jump to complain about this motion will have no words of condemnation for the de facto boycott imposed on the Palestinian education by Israel for its continuing attacks on Palestinian education, students and educators”.
After Israel’s bloodbath on the Freedom flotilla in 2010, Scottish world known writer Iain Banks, urged authors, artists and academics “to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing to do with this outlaw state”. This international figure was not alone in his condemnation of the present apartheid/ colonial state of Israel. Leading figures from around the world, including many Jewish figures like the late Stephen Hessel, a Holocaust survivor himself, Naomi Klein and Henning Mankell, have all reached the same conclusion. These Jewish figures of great conscience deeply believe that the apartheid state of Israel is making mockery of the legacy of whom were perished in the Holocaust by emulating the same racist/ apartheid methods of the Nazis who ignited it.
Ethnic cleansing has become a must to attain ‘a Jewish State’, especially when Judaism is not a nationality, but a spiritual/anti-materialistic message. Ashkenazi Jews who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and who rule Israel today have no Biblical connection to Prophet Abraham and neither to the Holy Land of Palestine, according to Encyclopedia Judaica, published in 2007 in the USA. The only “right of return” is reserved to the original inhabitants, the Palestinians who were forced by military force to leave their homes and farms to make a space for the establishment of the Zionist State in 1948. Eradicating Palestinian villages does not negate the legal rights of Palestinians in their homeland, nor can such actions ever negate the legal deeds which are still in the hands of Palestinians. A case in point is what happened in Iqrit which is a Palestinian Christian village located 25 kilometers north of Accre which was (like 530 other towns and villages) ethnically cleansed in 1948. Only the local cemetery and a church remain in Iqrit. Last August, a BDS group of third generation Palestinian youth returned to Iqrit to live -taking shifts- in two small rooms, built as extensions of the Church to maintain a constant Palestinian presence in the village. These Palestinians who have dedicated themselves to selflessly serve the righteous Palestinian cause are making achievements in Palestine and across the world. To such dedicated individuals, we salute their devotion to the cause and endeavors and in them Palestine will remain alive and shall endure.
