Should People Boycott Israel? An Interview by Omar Barghouti
“The main focus of the boycott campaign is to hold Israel accountable to international law by making it recognize our three basic rights. So it’s a rights-based approach. The three rights are ending the occupation, the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and other Arab territories, the Golan Heights and so on. The second is ending this system of racial discrimination within Israel. There’s an institutionalized, legalized system of racial discrimination within Israel that we’re calling for it to end.”
For more of this interview, click here.
Another Boycott Israeli Apartheid Flashmob from Holland
A Great Boycott Action from Holland
More from Holland – Why Boycott Ahava
Why Holland Boycotts
I am Denise de Jong from the Netherlands. I am one of the coordinators of the BDS platform in the Netherlands. This platform consists of 30 organisations that are concerned about Israels continuous violations of international laws and breach of human rights. We are from different backgrounds, ages, political views and religions but we all have in common that we want Israel to comply with international law.
Most of us have been to Israel and Palestine and have a very good knowledge of the history and situation in that region.
We feel it our moral responsibility to stand up against racism and the crime of Apartheid committed by Israel. We have seen that our government is supporting Israel no matter what it does or how it behaves. We have no more confidence in our government to put sanctions on Israel to make it comply with international law.
Therefore we chose for the non violent and very legitimate means of a boycott.
We use the boycott campaign as an awareness raising tool and we try to engage with the public in many different and creative ways.
A group of young women started the Bathrobes Brigade to protest against the stolen beauty products of Ahava Deas Sea products.
In at least ten different cities we have regular protests at supermarkets where we collect signatures from the public to ask the supermarket managers to stop selling Israeli produce. We have done several flashmobs that have been spread widely on the internet. Currently we are working on the Don’t buy Israeli dates for Ramadan campaign. We work together with several Muslim organisations. We also offered the vegetable stores to sell Palestinian dates instead. This campaign has had a lot of media attention.
Our news (in Dutch but with photos and videos) can be found on www.bdsnederland.nl
The Bathrobes Brigade on: http://mooiniet.wordpress.com
