Tag: Neve Gordon

Netanyahu tries to stop boycott

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu told his government ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that in his recent visit to the UK, he discussed the calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel because of its military occupation of Palestinian land and Palestinian lives.

Netanyahu said:  “Regarding Great Britain, what bothers me is the spreading boycott policy, both academic and economic.  I received a commitment from him [Prime Minister Brown] that he would act vigorously against this.  I also spoke – by telephone – with Leader of the Opposition David Cameron, who was on vacation, and he underscored this”.

In an interview by Cecilie Surasky conducted probably in July but just posted on 1 September, Canadian author Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine) and Israeli publisher Yael Lerer explain that they think boycotting Israel will pressure the country to live up to international law:

Question (Surasky): You must have grappled with this idea of a cultural boycott. Many critics would say that it shuts down communication rather than opening it up. What brought you to take this step?

Klein: Well, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli government openly uses culture as a military tool. Though Israeli officials believe they are winning the actual war for land, they also feel that the country suffers because most of what the world hears about the region on the news is about the conflict: militarization, lawlessness, the occupation and Gaza. So the foreign ministry launched a campaign called ‘Israel Beyond the Conflict’, which involves using culture, film, books, the arts, tourism and academia to create all kinds of alliances between Western countries and the state of Israel, and to promote the image of a normal, happy country, rather than an aggressive occupying power. That’s why we are always hearing about film festivals and book fairs with a special ‘Israel spotlight’. And so, even though in general I would totally agree that culture is positive — books are positive and film is positive and communication is wonderful — we have to understand that we are dealing with a state strategy to co-opt all of that to make a brutal occupation more palatable.
…
Continue reading Netanyahu tries to stop boycott

Why are these soldiers laughing? "One can learn a great deal about a country from the way it treats its human rights and pro-democracy activists"

Neve Gordon wrote in a piece published on Wednesday 6 May in The Guardian’s Comment is Free section that “one can learn a great deal about a country from the way it treats its human rights and pro-democracy activists”.

Yes.

Neve Gordon’s article is about Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi, who is a member of Ta’ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership — a sort of Israeli Rachel Corrie (the American who was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza in 2003.

Except, fortunately, Ezra Nawi was not crushed — though he was arrested, Neve Gordon wrote, while he was “trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region”…

As Neve Gordon explains, “These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government’s blessing to do so. As chance would have it, the demolition and the resistance to it were captured on film and broadcast on Israel’s Channel 1. The three-minute film (above) – a must see – shows Nawi, the man dressed in a green jacket, not only courageously protesting against the demolition but, after the bulldozer destroys the buildings, also telling the border policemen what he thinks of their actions. Sitting handcuffed in a military vehicle following his arrest, he exclaims: ‘Yes, I was also a soldier, but I did not demolish houses … The only thing that will be left here is hatred’. The film then shows the police laughing at Nawi”.

As Neve Gordon explains in his piece, Ezra Nawi is a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent who speaks fluent Arabic. a gay man in his fifties and a plumber by trade [and well-known in Israeli human rights circles]. Nawi was accused of assaulting a policeman during the demolition shown on this film, and recently convicted in an Israeli court, He now faces a jail sentence that he is due to start serving in July. This article can be viewed in full here.