Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Call for Action by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)

1 June 2010

Palestinian civil society calls for intensifying boycott and sanctions as Israel massacres humanitarian relief workers and international solidarity activists

Occupied Palestine, 1 June 2010 - The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) strongly condemns last night’s fatal attack by the Israeli navy on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. The BNC conveys Palestinian civil society’s condolences to the families and friends of those killed by the Israeli assault and warmly salutes the principled solidarity and moral commitment of all those involved in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

In response, the BNC calls on international civil society to:

· Mobilize for an emergency Global BDS Day of Action on Saturday 5 June 2010 -- the 43rd anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem

· Pressure governments to start implementing trade sanctions and arms embargos

We call specifically on transport and dock workers and unions around the globe to:

· Refuse to load/offload Israeli ships and airplanes, following the historic example set by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban in February 2009 and endorsed by the Maritime Union of Australia (Western Australia).

The Flotilla, which was attacked in international waters in violation of international law, was carrying relief supplies that Israel has persistently prevented from entering Gaza, including medical supplies, cement and food. Israel’s siege is considered a form of collective punishment, a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. All of the relief workers and activists on board the Gaza Flotilla ships were unarmed. In legal terms, Israel's military assault against the Flotilla is an act of aggression against the countries whose flags the ships were carrying; politically, it is an assault against human decency and all people of conscience around the world who support freedom and justice.

Israel’s impunity is the direct result of the international community’s failure to hold it accountable for its ongoing occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Israel’s most recent war crimes committed in Gaza and documented in the Goldstone report as well as crimes committed in 2006 against the Lebanese people did not trigger any UN or official sanctions, entrenching Israel’s feeling of being above the law. In fact, Israel’s grave violation of international law was recently rewarded when the OECD voted unanimously to accept its membership. The BNC urges international civil society to end this deep and fatal complicity.

The BNC also welcomes and affirms the call of the UN expert on human rights Prof. Richard Falk who stated, “It is time to insist on the end of the blockade of Gaza. The worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere.”[1]

The UN Security Council has, unsurprisingly, failed to hold Israel accountable for its aggression against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.[2] The BNC calls upon the UN General Assembly, the European Union, the Arab League and their member states to undertake practical measures which will end Israel's impunity for its massive and systematic violation of international law, including by:

· Immediately ending all collusion with Israel's unlawful blockade of the Gaza Strip and pressuring Israel's to guarantee unrestricted humanitarian access and freedom of movement of people and products into and out of the Gaza Strip;

· Bringing to justice all Israeli officials and military personnel who took the decision and/or implemented this latest massacre as well as earlier war crimes;

· Pressuring your government to immediately suspend arms trade with Israel, and to implement trade sanctions and arms embargos against Israel.

· In particular, we call on the EU to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the Mercosur to suspend the FTA, India to reverse decision to hold negotiations around an India-Israel FTA and to stop arms deals with Israel, and Turkey to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

The BNC also calls on people of conscience and citizen groups all over the world to intensify BDS campaigns against Israel as the most effective means of holding it accountable to international law and ending its fatal impunity.

For action ideas and updates, please see: http://bdsdayofaction.net/

For more information and coordination of action, please contact:


Ziyaad Lunat (Europe) Michael Deas (Europe)

ziyaad@bdsmovement.net bnc.europe@bdsmovement.net

+4412465822

http://www.grandestrategy.com/2010/06/call-for-action-by-palestinian-bds.html

The US WILL NOT go against Israel
The US will stay the course
and keep fighting Israels wars
Not for the cause of Freedom
but for the Middle Easts Vast oil reserves

Tell Oboma To Boycott Israel NOW!

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/tell-oboma-to-boycott-zionist-israel

Students Launch Boycott Israel Campaign

http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node%2F633

Monday, May 31, 2010

US / Israel Alliance Behind 9/11 Attacks

From the words of some one who knows and has been telling US for Years, just so it is clear, I'm running this old news by US again: Pay close aattention to the highlighted text;

Bin Laden Claims Responsibility for 9/11
Saturday, October 30, 2004


WASHINGTON — Usama bin Laden made his first televised appearance in more than a year Friday in which he admitted for the first time ordering the Sept. 11 attacks and accused President Bush of "misleading" the American people. (Blaming Iraq)

Injecting himself into the campaign four days ahead of the presidential election, bin Laden said the United States can avoid another Sept. 11-style attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims. (Supporting Israel)

In the portion of the tape that was broadcast, the Al Qaeda leader refrained from directly warning of new attacks, although he said "there are still reasons to repeat what happened."

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said, referring to the president and his Democratic opponent. "Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security."

Admitting for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden said he did so because of injustices against the Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel and the United States. In what appeared to be conciliatory language, bin Laden said he wanted to explain why he ordered the airline hijackings that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so Americans would know how to act to prevent another attack.

"To the American people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another Manhattan," he said. "I tell you: Security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security."

After the video was aired, President Bush said that "Americans will not be intimidated" by bin Laden. Sen. John Kerry criticized Bush for failing to capture bin Laden earlier and said that "I can run a more effective war on terror."

The political impact of the tape could cut both ways. It bolsters Bush's argument that the world is a dangerous place and plays to his strength as commander in chief in fighting the war on terror, but it also underscores that his administration has failed to capture or kill America's No. 1 enemy more than three years after the terror attacks on New York and Washington. (What about Israel?)

It was the first footage in more than a year of the fugitive Al Qaeda leader, thought to be hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, showed bin Laden with a long, gray beard, wearing traditional white robes, a turban and a golden cloak, standing behind a table with papers and in front of a plain, brown curtain.

His hands were steady and he appeared healthy.

The Bush administration said it believes the videotape is authentic and was made recently, noting that bin Laden referred to 1,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq -- which happened in early September. (What about Israel?)

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration did not plan to raise the nation's threat level for now. The U.S. official said the 18-minute tape -- which carries English subtitles, though not in the portion shown on Al-Jazeera -- lacks an explicit threat and repeats well-worn themes. (What about Israel?)

Multiple sources told FOX News that the tape is authentic and that it was made recently.
(What abou Israel?)

Al-Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, broadcast about seven minutes of the tape. The station's spokesman, Jihad Ali Ballout, said Al-Jazeera aired what was "newsworthy and relevant" and refused to describe the unaired portions, including whether they included any threats. Ballout said the station received the tape Friday but would not say how.

Before the tape was aired, the State Department asked the government of Qatar to discourage Al-Jazeera from broadcasting it, a senior State Department official said.
(What about Israel?)

In the video, bin Laden accused Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because Al Qaeda "hates freedom." The terrorist leader said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims.

"We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden said.

He said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

"While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women," he said.

"God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said.

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

"It appeared to him [Bush] that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

Excluding the hijackers, the Sept. 11 attacks killed 2,749 people at the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Pennsylvania.

In planning the attacks, bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed."

Bin Laden compared the Bush administration to repressive Arab regimes "in that half of them are ruled by the military and the other half are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents."

He said the resemblance became clear when Bush's father was president and visited Arab countries.

"He wound up being impressed by the royal and military regimes and envied them for staying decades in their positions and embezzling the nation's money with no supervision," bin Laden said.

"He passed on tyranny and oppression to his son, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the pretext of fighting terror. Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the (Mideast) region to Florida to use it in critical moments."

The image of bin Laden reading a statement was dramatically different from the few other videos of the Al Qaeda leader that have emerged since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the last videotape, issued Sept. 10, 2003, bin Laden is seen walking through rocky terrain with his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, both carrying automatic rifles. In a taped message issued at the same time, bin Laden praises the "great damage to the enemy" on Sept. 11 and mentions five hijackers by name.

In December 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape in which bin Laden is shown at a dinner with associates in Afghanistan on Nov. 9, 2001, saying the destruction of the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded even his "optimistic" calculations.

But in none of his previous messages, audio or video, did bin Laden directly state that he ordered the attacks.

U.S. authorities have long said they believe bin Laden is hiding in a rugged, mountainous tribal region of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan, but there has been no firm evidence of his whereabouts for three years.

The last audiotape purportedly from bin Laden came in April. The speaker on the tape, which CIA analysts said likely was the Al Qaeda leader, offered a truce to European nations if they pull troops out of Muslim countries. The tape referred to the March 22 assassination by Israel of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Retired Lt. Col. Bill Cowen, a FOX News military analyst, said bin Laden timed the tape deliberately.

"I think he's just trying to slap the president around a little bit and in my opinion is trying to influence the election," Cowen said.

Cowen said that while the tape showed that the most wanted terrorist was still at large, it also should be seen in another light.

"This tape is also a reminder of how we've decimated the top Al Qaeda leadership," Cowen said. "It took us 20 years to find Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, right here in the United States

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137095,00.html

Repression, Rebellion and The Red Shirts

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/05/24/rebellion-repression-and-the-red-shirts/

Boycott Israel NOW!

Tell Prez. oBOMBa to Boycott Israel NOW! Our cozy relationship with Israel is the Reason Behind Our Wars - The reason Islamics Hate US: We are Fighting Israel's War - Plans to take over Middle East. Can you spell O-I-L R-E-S-E-R-V-E-S?

http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/235

Listen to what Osama Bin Laden says about it;
http://thepeacebrigade.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-israel-alliance-behind-911-attacks.html