Dave Lordan, Electronic Intifada 27 August 2010

Photo ActiveStills Oren Ziv The boycott movement threatens the visage of respectability and normality which the leaders of apartheid Israel so desperately crave.

I am proud to be among the many Irish and Ireland-based artists from across creative disciplines who have chosen to publicly support the growing campaign of boycott against apartheid Israel. Compared to the imprisoned Palestinian people themselves and to those taking part in flotillas and other perilous anti-apartheid activities in Palestine our contribution and risk may be justly considered small. At most we might lose the chance of lucrative invitations to read, perform or display our works in parts of the US where apartheid Israel’s supporters hold the power of censorship. Departments of foreign affairs and ministries of culture may also not include us among those artists they can rely upon to project a lying image of a harmonious, bon vivant and, above all, harmlessly apolitical intelligentsia. We are sure to be slandered and ridiculed by the hired bullies of the global media empires.

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Dominion August 2010 by Yavar Hameed & Jeffrey Monaghan

Photo Israeli soldiers patrol Dome of the Rock in occupied east Jerusalem.

OTTAWA—Canadian military officials have undertaken a comprehensive effort with their Israeli counterparts to “pursue deeper relationships,” to borrow from Israel’s weapons, war training, and counter-insurgency strategies, and to strengthen diplomatic ties, according to documents obtained through access to information (ATI) requests.

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William Parry, 3 September 2010, New Statesman

Photo Massive Attack performing in London.

The movement for a cultural boycott of Israel in response to its treatment of the Palestinians, modelled on the boycott of apartheid South Africa, could eclipse decades of disingenuous political charades in engaging western intellectuals, academics and artists. Internationally renowned figures such as Naomi Klein and Ken Loach have supported the call, and now one of Britain’s most successful bands, Massive Attack, is publicly backing the boycott.

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Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 23 August 2010

Photo: Palestinians selling items on Gaza street.

Gaza City – Just off Omar al-Mukhtar Street, Gaza City’s main thoroughfare, in a narrow, sandy alleyway is a little second-hand clothing shop. In the dimly lit store, with only intermittent electricity for some hours a day at best, sits a single battered and aging sewing machine.

This is where Khaled Nassan, a father of four children, tries in vain to eke out a living repairing and selling second-hand clothing. Nassan charges the equivalent of 25 cents on average to repair an item. Gazans can’t afford to pay the dollar it used to cost. Nassan is lucky if he takes home $20 a day.

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Jonathan Cook The National. August 17 2010

Photo: Palestinian refugees displaced via Israel in 1948.

History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.

That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country’s 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.

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Jerrold Kessel & Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service 19 August 2010.

Photo: Destroyed family home is Jeruslame

Jerusalem – On the eve of the start of Ramadan last week, Israeli police demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev desert. It was the third time within two weeks that the village had been razed.

Unfazed, the Bedouin villagers immediately began rebuilding.

“We have already put back up some twenty of our huts, and we’re putting up more every day — despite the fast,” village leader Sheikh Sayyah Abu Drim told IPS when reached by telephone a week after the last police action.

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statement Boycott Israeli Apartheid Coalition, Tuesday, August 24 2010

Photo Palestinians flag on fishing boats in the Gaza Strip.

Vancouver – Locally-based activists, called out by the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Coalition (BIAC), are mounting a picket line at the Port of Vancouver’s Delta Port facility at Roberts Bank, south of Vancouver, as part of a mounting international campaign to put pressure on the government of Israel.

The Israeli ship Djibouti, owned by Zim, one of the ten largest shipping companies in the world, is scheduled to land at Delta Port at 7:00 a.m. this morning.

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BADIL statement August 2010

Photo Remains of Palestinian home destroyed via Israeli demolition policies.

While President Barack Obama pressures Palestinians to re-engage in direct peace talks, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu loftily counsels President Mahmoud Abbas not to miss the opportunity, recent demolitions within the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel continue unabated and unaddressed.

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Hicham Safieddine, Electronic Intifada 18 August 2010

Photo Massel Cassel A weapon is positioned at a UN base in southern Lebanon.

The international coverage of border clashes between Lebanese and Israeli military forces earlier this month may have suggested the confrontation was a mere squabble over cutting a tree that went awry in a “trigger-happy” and “conflict-prone” region. Less than a week later, one of several recent speeches by Hizballah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah managed to get brief global media coverage. He presented visual and audio material suggesting that Israel may have assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005.

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Open letter, 18 August 2010

Photo: Protesters hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a rally to denouncing Israel’s attack on an aid ship bound for Gaza in New York, Tuesday, June 1, 2010.

The following open letter to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey, was issued by various Palestinian organizations on 17 August 2010:

Dear Mr. Prime Minister We are writing to you from under a brutal, hermetic siege now entering its fourth year to express our outrage against the nomination of the notorious former president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe Velez to the Panel of Inquiry into the 31 May 2010 Israeli brutal attack on the humanitarian flotilla to Gaza.

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