Thousands demand that Dunnes stop stocking Israeli goods

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Thursday July 29, 2010 16:54

by Freda H - IPSC

Today, Thursday 29th July 2010, at 1pm, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) delivered a petition to Dunnes Stores signed by 6,000 shoppers across Ireland. The petition demands that Dunnes Stores stop stocking Israeli products, until Israel respects Palestinian rights and international law. Present at the handing-in were Brendan Archbold, the trade union official at the centre of the 1980s Dunnes strike when workers refused to handle South African goods, Freda Hughes IPSC National Chairperson, Aengus O'Snodaigh of Sinn Fein along with supporters of the campaign and members of both the Palestinian and South African communities in Ireland.

Crowd assembled outside Dunnes Stores HQ

The petition has been signed by over 6,000 shoppers in a two-week blitz that has seen Palestine solidarity activists enlist the support of Dunnes’ customers across the country. Signatures have flooded in from Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry, Limerick, Galway, Kilkenny, Newry, Wexford, Waterford, Bantry, Gorey, Enniscorthy, and Sligo. In many locations around the country, solidarity activists presented their local Dunnes' managers with copies of the petitions they have collected.

This campaign comes a quarter-century after Dunnes was at the centre of a bitter two-year campaign of boycott and pickets, when it sacked a group of workers who refused to handle South African goods.

"Dunnes was on the wrong side of history, siding with the South African apartheid regime against its own workers," Freda Hughes, IPSC Chairperson, said. "This is a chance for it to put itself on the right side of history. Israel's treatment of Palestinians amounts to nothing short of Apartheid. We must not ignore the lessons of South Africa and how apartheid was ended there – essentially it jumped before it was pushed. The boycott campaign can, and should, be used to isolate Israel both figuratively and literally until such a time as it complies fully with international law and ends its Apartheid regime in Palestine. We are not asking consumers to boycott Dunnes Stores. We are asking Dunnes Stores, and consumers islandwide, to boycott Israeli goods and services. This campaign is not designed to negatively affect Irish jobs."

Ms. Hughes continued," We are delighted to see representatives from both the Palestinian and South African communities here today to show their solidarity and call for progressive steps to be taken in ending Israeli Aparthied and its abuse of human rights in the region. We are asking Dunnes to show its support for human rights and justice by refusing to stock Israeli goods just as the US chain-store Olympia Food Co-op in Washington State did last week."

Brendan Archbold said, "The parallels between the old Apartheid regime of South Africa and the state of Israel are quite striking. Just as South African forces shot and killed their own people in Sharpeville and Uitenhage, so too do the Israeli military adopt a shoot-to-kill policy whether it is in relation to the Palestinian people themselves or those peaceful supporters of the Palestinians aboard the international flotilla recently attacked by Israel."

Mr Archbold concluded with a call for a boycott of Israel, "Just as Israel models itself on the old racist regime in South Africa, so too must we must model our response on the boycott policy that contributed so much to the ending of Apartheid. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has adopted a comprehensive policy in relation to the isolation of Israel and it is now up to all trade unions and all trade unionists to ensure that this policy is implemented in full."

Aengus O'Snodaigh spoke of his support for this campaign and said,"Israel has a long history of human rights abuses against the people of Palestine, and it believes it is beyond reproach for its apartheid policies. Israel needs to understand there are political and economic consequences for its crimes, and a consumer and retailer boycott of Israeli goods is an important aspect of holding Israel to account. I support this petition, but also call on the Irish and other European governments to suspend Israel's preferential trading status with the EU under the Euro-Med Agreement."

The petition campaign is part of a coordinated international effort for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, which has seen actions take place in dozens of countries, including Israel and South Africa. Many South African organisations, and figures including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have endorsed the BDS campaign.

Freda Hughes IPSC Chairperson holding 6,000 signatures calling on Dunnes to stop stocking Israeli produce

Brendan Archbold calls for Dunnes to boycott Israeli produce

Members of the Palestinian and South African communities attended the hand-in today

Passer by stops to sign the petition before it is handed in

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Comments (46 of 46)

Well done

by Palestinian sympatiser

Thu Jul 29, 2010 18:15

Absolutely brilliant action! Very practical, educational and hopefully, effective.

Great initiative, well done to the IPSC

Misinterpreted as Ever

by Frank Adam - private citizen

Fri Aug 06, 2010 13:54

The South African simile is cheap and lazy thinking, especially in the country of Michael Collins and De Valera which exists out of making the best of a partition deal with those that do not wish to partake in spite of trans-border minorities of the other.

At any time from 1947 to 67 the Arabs of Palestine and the rest of the Arab World could have created an Arab state in the part(s) of Palestine they held then, and failed to do so - for Arab reasons. Since1967 there have been several occasions when the Arabs of the Districts of Gaza, Hebron and Nablus were offered most of the loaf they said then that they wanted - and rejected it.

Take your choice: if you are supporting a Palestine Arab State in Palestine your friends have not only won the wooden spoon but are the wooden spoon for failing to empathise wiith the people they have to agree boundaries with.

If you are supporting an all and only Arab state of Palestine then you are on the losing side of history and nation state sovereignty for the same reasons that Ireland and the US broke with Britain and that Canada and the Six Counties stayed with her at the time. Ditto Pakistan broke with India in 1947 - vintage year 1947 in more than one country. Have you ever considered what a guilty mistake the Palestine Arabs made by rejecting UN181 - and spending the summer and autumn 1947 declaring the Arab parties would reject any partition?

sorry, frank

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party

Fri Aug 06, 2010 16:57

The long strong links between apartheid SA and Zion racist bantustanification of their colonised region gives the lie to your comment.
Your refernce to the chance to create 'an Arab state' rests on the belief of some ethnic purity illusion, something alien to islam where general tolerance was the norm till 'the west' split the pre-nationalist caliphates into 'modern nations'(a recent invention for the convenience of corporate empires a la the east indian and west indian companies).An ethnic purity myth developed by a loony fringe of jewish historians in germany in parallel with their colleagues in academia who were developing their Aryan fairy tail to lull the twentieth century into ethical coma, which also makes the accusations of Zionist parallels to Nazi and fascist regimes valid.
And why should I accept a share of my loaf from you?Had you asked, I might have shared it.When you steal it I'm inclined to be unco-operative.

Physician heal thyself!

Sat Aug 07, 2010 19:47

Till 1948 all Jewish lands in Palestine were indisputably bought. For the rest of the have the cake and eat it nonsense: if the Arabs want to fuss about their rights under UN resolutions then they have to recognise their original sin in rejecting not only 181 but that they all voted against 194 (Return of etc) as well - and probably 242 - anything, however silly, not to recognise the fact of Israel.

The negativity of stealing by resort to violence was openly threatened by the Arab parties throughout the second half of 1947 and done by them as from the passage of UN resolution 181 so the fact that the Arabs lost in 1948 and suffered what they intended for the Jewish Community is down to Arab over confident and underprepared aggression backed by the invasion of the regular armies of the neighbouring Arab states from 15 May '48 which then hung on to the areas they robbed from Palestine and occupied for their governments. People get the Jews they deserve, even as capitalist corporations get the unions they deserve; and I do not remember that Ireland offered asylum to many European Jews when there was no Israel.

If Michael Collins and his colleagues could erect an Irish Government despite the partition why did the Palestine Arabs fail to do so if not because at that time - pre 1968 - they were not nationalist enough to do so? Further in June 67 Israel offered through US good offices to return there and then to the [1949] Green Line in return for a peace treaty turning that border into a legal frontier but no Arab government reacted to even say, "Thanks, but no thanks." If any leader of the "Palestine Arab nation" had any sense of: moral guts, constituency and opportunity they would have seized the Israeli offer to pull a fast one on the Arab rulers who had occupied Arab Palestine in 1948.

All the regressive hypocrisies about ethnic purity are superbly flaunted by the shameless PLO Hamas, Hizbollah and other Arab wannabes' insistence that their intended state of Arab Palestine is to have no Jewish minority at all; so there is tolerance for you - always a relative thing in medieval ie pre 1789 society when comparing the Christian and Moslem Worlds and gratuitous Lebanese and Iraqi assassins to ice your imaginary cake. Western political democratic tolerance was an outcome of the Protestant shattering of medieval cultural monocultures East and West of censorious clergy (which is why the East drags as the West races ahead) and the transfer of Calvinist congregational self government from Church to Government and then Marx transferred to economics - but it was the kibbutzniks who actually did it.

The Padraig Pearse GPO declaration of independence appeals to an Irish identity tacitly geographic, but the result was an Ireland partitioned by religious majority. It is quite incomprehensible that in a country coloured by a history of rebellion in the name of religious differences so many of our readers do not see that religion as identity is a substantive difference. So is language which is why Switzerland, Canada, Belgium and India give considerable language rights to their federal components; but - as Iraq proves - Arab society can not manage federalism - only centralised, "national security states," to maintain the current dictator or feudal monarch.

If Sunni Moslem Arabic speaking Palestine Arabs are entitled to rebel against being part of a Jewish majority Israel from The River to The Sea which was what Arab riots against the Mandate were about; then the Israeli Jewish Hebrew speaking majority have a right to refuse to be part of an authoritarian Moslem Arab state that along with the other Arab apologies for government can not operate peaceful democratic succession - because Mohammed and imams since, failed to provide that in his revelation. Just remember that Hamas and Hizbollah as fronts for the Moslem Brothers seriously intend to reduce the World to subordination to Moslem clericalism as Iran exemplifies and like the Nazis and Soviet Communists will only desist if resisted.

one sentence

Sun Aug 08, 2010 00:29

your first.

" Till 1948 all Jewish lands in Palestine were indisputably bought."

So, you indisputably agree that all the lands in question were, and remain, "..in Palestine "?

Distinguish Geography and politics

Sun Aug 08, 2010 23:33

In Metternich's pre - unification remark: "Italy is a geographical expression." For that matter so was India till its independence from which Pakistan opted out; so what is sauce for the Moslem goose is sauce for the Israeli gander. In fact Pakistan (30's acronym for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir) exists for the same political reasons in spades as Israel exists - with less ability and profit to its citizens and friends.

Palestine remains one of several geographical labels for the area inclusive of both banks of the River Jordan regardless of current political boundaries ref the books of Denis Baly and others inclusive TE Lawrence the direct witness to the genesis of the Arab states, who cover from the River Litani in the North to the Wadi El Arish in the South and from the Mediterranean coast to the desert edge which is roughly along the [Hejaz] railway and road connecting the desert ports of the East bank towns from Irbid to Ma'an in the South to Damascus and Aqaba/Eilat.

Palestine as a political unit was demarcated by the San Remo Conference 1920 to include all the area now covered by Israel, Jordan and the disputed ex-West Bank [of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan]. Israel might be within that area but so is the Irish state within the area of British Ireland within the UK till 1922.

By a quirk of 20's big power politicking to secure British contiguity to Iraq and pen Abdul Azziz into Saudi Arabia after his defeat of Hussein of the Hejaz, political Palestine, Mandate of, extends East of geographical Palestine into the Jordanian Eastern desert and "panhandle" and in 1965 or 66 Kings Feisal of SA and Hussein of Jordan (Great Grandson of Hussein of Hejaz) made major distinctive alterations to the Saudi Jordanian frontier as any comparison of atlases pre and post strikes the eye. So Arab World frontiers are not immutable qv the switch of the district of Alexandretta / Hatay from Syria to Turkey in 1938 - 40.

In the San Remo process the Franco - British 1923 Convention marked out the frontier between the French Mandates of Syria (& Lebanon) and the British Mandate of Palestine. This is the line that Syria overstepped by force of arms in 1948 - '67 and still tries to bamboozle everybody that its border altered by war without subsequent treaty is legal.

To quibble about the establishment of Israel without objecting to France hiving off Lebanon is inconsistent qv Syrian bloody mindedness to Lebanon refusing to recognise it till last year or was it two years ago they finally exchanged diplomatic missions and recognition? and to object to Israel being independent of Palestine is inconsistent with recognising the independence of Ireland from UK , Lebanon from Syria, and Pakistan from The Republic of India.

Objecting to Israel is to object to sovereignty of the people in principle; and it is time to castigate the obtuse negativism of the Arab parties in their vendetta with Israel for not accepting that the price of Palestine recognition and independence is to reciprocate which they have failed on at least on six occasions or opportunities since their rejection of the Peel Report inclusive, in 1937.

drift, waffle and ramble like a jesuit, frank...

Mon Aug 09, 2010 11:22

We are now a considerable distance from your original accusation of the South African apartheid analogy being '..cheap and lazy thinking'.

All your sophistry will not change the similarities and parallels, and (more important) the relevance of boycotting Israeli goods as a non violent means to pressurise Tel Aviv into easing its collective stranglehold and brutalising of both the Palestinian people, and themselves through the reciprocal psychological blowback.

Whence your right (echo of Tel Aviv's) to dictate '..the price of Palestinian recognition and independence..'?
Some marriage of Balfour and the Old Testament?
Sanctified by refuge for the post-Nazi survivors that Europe still rejected, but instead of Adolf's finale or the Madagascar option fitted in nicely with the evolving requirement to police the uppity Arabs who might not always be so compliant with western resource extraction in their increasingly oil dependent pyramids of the plundered wealth of the earth.

Still cheap, still idle, and still rude

Mon Aug 09, 2010 13:21

When you can not turn the argument, insult the author - old trick. To be called a Jesuit after all these years is a compliment that the logic & evidence is up to scratch so why do you flinch from it? so admitting you can not logically upset the premises that if other Moslem and not so Moslem countries can shift their political boundaries within their geography then the 1920 - 1948 Palestine Mandate is no exception to the praticalities of political reality. Politics comes in at the edges of the rules and power where you have to talk to those you cannot order about.

Devil's advocacy still has to stay onside the physical evidence. Israel's capital has been in Jerusalem since Jan 1949 and it is not your legitimacy nor your competence to move it. Similarly it is indeed not for me - nor you - to lay down the price of Palestine independence or any other nation's; but if you read the UN Charter it is up to all members to recognise all other members' self-determination and it is decidedly difficult to talk to and trust somebody who says you have no right to exist as in the poem: As I was going up the stairs/ I met a man who wasn't there / He wasn't there again today / Oh how I wish he'd go away.

Take your eyes out of the make belief that Israel polices the Arabs for anybody - unless yu can give examples. The Arab states and society have gone their own way to hell and fratricide. Without their oil and phosphates to sell they could not buy the stacks of tanks and aircraft they do to mostly plug themselves. Tot it up: more Arabs and Arab non-Arab Moslem neighbours have been killed by Arab wars with Arabs & Moslem "Brothers" civil or inter-state than by their brief wars with Israel which is a sideshow but politically convenient diversionary excuse to Western pols on election timetables. Try transferring across the genders Wilde's jibe that, "No woman calls another sister till she has called her a lot of other things before."

Finally ask yourself why you are so indignant about Israel and "Palestine" because you know perfectly well that on Arab precedent even if Israel fell into the Mediterranean tonight - or at least withdrew to the 1949 armistice "green" line - there would still be Arab wars galore and disorders across the Arab and wider Moslem Worlds. For proof look at that other bunch of Arab "refugees" scrounging aid from UN taxpayers as a result of an Arab state grab for a third party - the jetsam of the Moroccan defeat of Algeria in the take over of former Spanish Sahara. Now a wonder why they are not so "politico-genic" ? Probably because it does not involve kicking the US or US friends? After all when did you last do a demo protesting the Chinese occupation of Tibet? or the Indonesian attempts on Catholic East Timor? or the Saudi promotion of Eritreian independence from Christian Ethiopia?

and still wandering and obfuscating

Mon Aug 09, 2010 14:42

and I am not the least indignant, so drop the attribution ploy, you are not dealing with your bullied pupils.
You confuse(among other things) the Arab regimes, maintained and armed by the self-appointed 'west', for the Arab people.
Rude, is it?
Not as rude as phosporous shells raining on a civilian population incarcerated in the densest piece of polluted ground outside of Bhopal.
Jesuits are known for their manipulation of logic to suit their fixed belief, and denial or manipulation of evidence for covert ends, not a commitment to honestly lay out and compare arguments in a search for approximations to truth. The latter is the scientific, non-dogmatic, exercise, as opposed to your infallible pronunciations.
No insult intended. I just think you are dangerously deluded and blinkering yourself to the uncomfortable parallels between apartheid and exclusionist Zionism. I have opinions on Tibet and Timor, which I spent some time in before the Australians unleashed their collaborative oil raid with Jakarta for the resources under the Timor Sea. But this not the place for that discussion. This is about Israeli state crime and whether or not non-violent methods are of any use in trying to bring an outlaw mindset back into the international politics of human(as opposed to polished simian) conduct.Before things get any worse for all concerned.

friend of Israel

by Tim Johnston

Mon Aug 09, 2010 18:22

The apartheid analogy is not only lazy and specious reasoning, but represents an insidious attempt to delegitimise the Israeli state. The parallels are few, and the differences many, although even attempting to refute such reasoning is almost to accept the legitimacy of the accusation.
Firstly, black South Africans had to claim to any other state other than that they were denied membership of. They were also in the vast majority and had been for many decades. They were also indigenous in a sense, but only so in some parts of what is now South Africa.
Palestinians can vote and have rights in Israel, a point which should really be a truism at this stage.
Black South Africans had no imperialist past (by Western standards).
Apartheid - which means separateness - is simply not practised in Israel.
Black South Africans wanted to be a part of the white state, Palestinians do not want to be a part of Israel - except to destroy it.
To make such an analogy cheapens South Africans' struggle against tyranny and in fact rather goes towards delegitimising their claims for self-determination.

sure, tim

Mon Aug 09, 2010 19:10

But when I lived out there at the height of apartheid ('69-'70) I heard similar justifications from whites.Being white myself, they mistook me for a natural ally. Lotsa parallels, as with other colonial land-grab rationalisations.

'Black South Africans had no imperial past (by western standards)' ?
You imply the Palestinians have such a past?

Part of your dillema, Tim, is that we have access to Israeli media, so we know better than to give much credence to your defending of the indefensible.
A growing number of Israelis and diaspora Jews are seeing(as many always have)the contradictions at the heart of Zionist moral posturing.
Your 'facts on the ground' are rather publicly proclaimed for you to deny.
Shalom.

yup

Mon Aug 09, 2010 19:26

"You imply the Palestinians have such a past?"

how do you think the Arabs ended up in Palestine in the first place?
And that their religion is spread across half the world is not as a result of theological debate.
Ask native Egyptians about Arab imperialism and tell them it doesn't exist - indeed it still does, which is one reason we have the problems we do.
Part of your dilemma is that we would have to judge the actions of another people as morally questionable, which you can't do because that would undermine their 'victim status'.

Palestinian empire?

Mon Aug 09, 2010 19:55

That chapter, I missed.
I think you are conflating distinct entities into some fantasy 'other'. The modern Palestinian people have no responsibility for Ottoman, Assyrian or Arabian peninsula expansions. And if they did it has no place as justification for current Israeli rogue-state behaviour in the international theatre and vicious repression of the former possessors of the rights in the region.
Victim status?
Ah, yes, the exclusive preserve of the nuclear David confronting the children throwing stones at its tanks and bulldozers as they demolish their homes and crush human-rights defenders under their tracks.
Morally questionable?I'm sure the Palestinians have as many bastards per cubic foot as us Paddies.
Does that make the Israeli the chosen light unto the nations?
If so, I think he has dazzled himself.

two state solution

Mon Aug 09, 2010 21:03

I think you missed the whole chapter on Arab imperialism and Islamic expansion (which are not quite the same thing), the slave trade, etc, but that's a story for another day.
The Lebanese diaspora is testimony to the resurgence of that Arab nationalism to which a large part of the current conflict can be attributed.

And there's a reason Palestinians aren't allowed to have any tanks you know.

While there's no doubt that Israel's tactics have been heavy-handed at times, there is no excuse or moral justification for the one-sidedness of the debate, particularly in Ireland.

tanks, Tim

Mon Aug 09, 2010 21:42

Why would they want tanks. Israel has destroyed the infrastructure so they barely have polluted water to hold in tanks.A mix of crude small weaponry against the fourth greatest military power on the planet..Civilians persecuted for justifiable reaction to daily harassment.
One sided debate? Israeli media are less pro-Israeli than the Irish.
Are you going to claim the media have a plutocracy of Palestinian sympathisers?
I doubt so. The rebound might be embarassing.
Just because you read a 'whole chapter on Arab imperialism and Islamic expansion', dont presume I haven't opened a volume or two for a browse.
And the background to Zion and its variants.

tanks for the reply

Tue Aug 10, 2010 15:52

Opus, I don't presume you ignorant at all. Quite the opposite. The ability to draw parallels and analogies from other contexts is as much a drawback as an advantage because it ignores the specific realities of each individual context.
Which I why I believe 'apartheid' analogies -as well as drawing parallels with Northern Ireland (which may explain the vicarious Palestinian nationalism practised by Ms.Hughes and other Irish activists)- are inherently flawed.

The reason Muslim nationalists decry 'imperialism' is not the same reason Western socialists do. Muslim nationalists see 'Western imperialism' as an impediment to their own imperialism, and Israel - and formerly, Lebanon, etc - is merely the latest episode in that historical saga.

Do the media consist of Palestinian sympathisers? Yes, they largely do, and this was proven by the recent 'flotilla' incident.

Do you think the current State of Israel is that envisioned in 1947/8 by its founders? I don't, incidentally. For one thing they believed they had given over 'land for peace', and neither did they imagine having to defend themselves ad nausuem. And they certainly never saw themselves as becoming 'the fourth greatest military power on the planet'.

as I said, Tim..

Tue Aug 10, 2010 17:01

you tend to conflate and compound complex populations of individuals into simplistic shorthand abstractions.
Muslim nationalists have nothing to do with pre-school children and civilians who are too busy trying to rebuild demolished houses, wondering when the next F-16 is going to lay a ripe egg on their staggering medical facilities, to be overconcerned about political abstractions.
As for 'western socialists', from what I have encountered they are a very mixed bag of individuals with differing levels of concern. As an anti-ism-ist meself I let them on with it, as long as they dont present falsified facts or destructive attitudes; and try not to fall into the trap of doing either meself, in the sometimes heat of exchange.
Israel has the shekels to plant hacks in the media throughout the globe, as well as having plenty of actual Jewish journalists on call for set piece placement. The moneyed class do not as a whole tend to embrace such issues as refugees and injustice, possibly for the very good reason that their share portfolios might not stand up to too much ethical scrutiny. And globally more media, from Hollywood to Fleet Street, are in jewish hands than the hands of all Arabs combined.
I know this from trying to refute pro-israeli disinformation over several years and noting the print rate for refutations, as opposed to printed bullshit at worst and misunderstanding at best.I try to give the benefit of the doubt on the ground that you dont make peace with counter-lies. Part of the problem is the religious conviction of Zionists that is impervious to reason.Having been raised by Roman indoctrination I recognise a syndrome.
Our passports have been cloned and used for terror assassinations, our shipping, engaged in humanitarian work, has been pirated and impounded, our citizens travelling abroad endangered and placed under suspicion, and it was a nine hour wonder before our media 'moved on to the next "story"' while Michael martin vanished up the arse of the israeli embassador.
Bias, yes; fear of uncle sam shaking his big stick at FDI.
We are where we are, whatever the plans and wishes of 1947/8. We must agree to differ. Unless you persuade me there is a better way to signal Israel that its outlaw behaviour is unacceptable, I support the boycott.
And that 'land for peace' they offered was stolen land, for a peace the state of Israel broke by its mistaking a slice of earth for their God's design.

agree to disagree

Tue Aug 10, 2010 18:03

"Muslim nationalists have nothing to do with pre-school children and civilians who are too busy trying to rebuild demolished houses, wondering when the next F-16 is going to lay a ripe egg on their staggering medical facilities, to be overconcerned about political abstractions."
probably just as well, given their options. These civilians voted for Hamas, remember, the organisation that daily scuppers peace and murders political opponents.

I'm not sure about your claims that "the Joos" are placed throughout the world's media - I haven't read The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion - and 'control' it, but it seems in conflict with your own admission that the Jewish people (including Israelis) are divided over the subject of Israel. They are.
Saudi Arabia has a lot of money (their GNP is three times that of Israel), and spends it on ideology. One suspects the forces allied against Israel are far greater those those on-side.

As for our passports, we might be taken more seriously if we weren't giving them to activists such as Ken O'Keefe and sending our citizens on pro-Hamas missions. Personally, I'd like to burn mine (as he did his).

The thing about boycotts is, you have to be consistent. Or not, that's up to you. There're a lot of human rights violations in the world and a long list of countries to boycott - China might be top of that list but we can't boycott them because most of our stuff is made there. I might boycott Iran but that means oil and I have big car to fuel.
Singling out one country as a unique human rights abuser is bizarre - and criminal - not least because a) it isn't. b) it feeds both Islamic and European antiSemitism, and c) only further entrenches a state torn between its liberal democratic constitution and religious hardliners.

well...

Tue Aug 10, 2010 19:20

at least you admit Hamas was elected. More than the Irish media usually do.
Would you expect Gaza voters to be cheering for Likud?
You surround 'control' with quotation marks.And spell Joos strangely, as though, again, attributing attitudes I disown.Tendentious, at best.

Singling out?
By your logic no rapist should be tried because we should catch them all first.

Oh, and a lot of those Chinese factories are carpetbagging, western corporate, cheap labour, mobile capital, law dodgers and semantic dream weavers taking advantage of a cheap drive thru pillage(as with pre-OPEC saudi and current Iraq) and our tiger boom -times.Lotsa the small parts in your big car were probably fashioned and assembled in the same cheapshot sweatshops.

Burn your passport.
But burn it because we, as a state, have abandoned an ethical and constructive foreign policy; for complicity in the subjugation of civilian populations to facilitate the resource wars of a crop of global corporate pirates, whose purchasing power includes the'liberal democratic constitutionalists' that collaborate in their ethnic cleansing of indiginous peoples down through the centuries, and which our history , for a while, informed us was not really the civilised way to go.
Burn it because western civilisation is so retarded it fetes the idiocy of a 'clash of civilisations' as a revelation.
Savageries clash.Civilisation is the same everywhere.
For the Islamic branch all you have to do is hear the reports of Pakistani peasants opening their doors to those being displaced by floods in the Indus. For the Irish version witness an Iraqi doctor facing deportation from Ireland while we aid and abet the reduction of the shreds of his country to a poisoned dustbowl and the wolves howl 'mission accomplished'.
For Zion, see Gaza.

recognising israeli products

by siobhancarty - http://www.stopthewall.org/boycott/first/5.html#23

Tue Aug 10, 2010 22:12

ow can I recognize Israeli products? Are there lists of products to be boycotted?

All products packaged and exported by Israel bear a barcode that starts with “7290.” However, many products are packaged abroad or are produced by multinationals and companies supporting Israeli Apartheid – these products will be coded in other ways.

In order to orient boycott initiatives and consumers willing to make a choice against Israeli Apartheid, many websites offer comprehensive lists of products to be boycotted. These sites often make a division between companies and products “made in Israel” and companies and products supporting Israeli Apartheid.

Comprehensive lists and information can be downloaded among others from:
http://www.kate3.com/index.jsp, http://www.albadil.net/index.htm (Arabic)
http://www.bigcampaign.org/boycott.html (English)
http://www.nodo50.org/csca/palestina/campanya_boicot-20....html (Spanish)

(for more websites see “get involved”)
(Please note that the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign is not responsible for the accuracy of all the information given on these different websites.)

http://www.stopthewall.org/boycott/first/5.html#23

al jazeera...

Wed Aug 11, 2010 14:25

In todays 'Focus:Features, Analysis and Comment' section, has an update on Gazan adaptation to the siege/blockade and the premeditated methodology of Israel's white paper on 'Food Production in the Gaza Strip-Red Lines', setting out the intention to '..keep Gazans hovering just above malnutrition levels..'.
The policy message (hasbara) set out, by COGAT (Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) at press conferences is recorded as;

'No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis'.

More like '60's Pretoria every time I look. For Bantustan read Palistan. Only short of Zyklon Bibi and the Gaza chamber.

Very loose ends

Thu Aug 12, 2010 23:12

Nasserite Egypt and Bathist Syria and Iraq were not imposed by the West but sustained by USSR; and Syria has promoted civil war in all its neighbours and assassinated two Lebanese rulers. Iraq and Lebanon prove Arab governments are their own. The great democratic Western Left would not last five minutes in any Arab state let alone a brotherly Moslem one like Hamas or Saudi which breaks up Christian services held in private houses by its Western Gastarbeiter.

Hear! Hear! to laying out the truth instead of dogmatic ends [of Moslem supremacy] but note the Palestine conflict opened with an imperialist Arab grab at the proposed Jewish State in UN 181 and the lands of the Arab state were kept by other Arab states rather than erected into a Palestine Arab state. Besides so many Palestine Arab families have obvious place surnames from Egypt (Masri) and further West (Mughrabi) or from Syria (Halabi) and points North and East (Turki & Hindi) that claims to be Palestinian since the Canaanites are thin - and the Philistines never got off the South coast.

Lay off the cocky use of 'racist' and 'apartheid' because all the Arabs per media reports, and the Arabs in Palestine both state and non-state actors, wish to expel (PLO Covenant) or kill (Hamas Covenant) the Jews of Israel. More ignorantly Arabs persuade themselves that Israeli Jews are entirely European and forget that half the Jewish families of Israel came from Arab countries where the rise of Jewish nationalism made them cats to kick which as seen in the West did not have to follow had the Arabs in general and the Palestine Arabs in particular kept their powder dry and compromised with Peel accepted UN181.

Simlarly stop trying to have and eat the cake over 'apartheid,' which only applies to statutory discriminations within a common citizenship. Within Israel there is none and prejudices are not helped to disperse by the continued hostilities and bad mouthing of the Arab World. The Palestine lobby wants a Palestine Arab State ie a separation between the Israeli and Palestine citizenries and economies and therefore cannot complain about Israeli controls on the access of PA Arabs themselves or their trade and transit. Even the US and Canada maintain border posts, customs and passport checks.

I went to Israel both before 1967 when it was the Arab World that refused any trans-border movement apart from occasional tourists and diplomats at the Mandelbaum Gate within Jerusalem; and severral times since both before the security fences went up in 2003, and since. Before the fences and walls were provoked by Palestine Arab bombs, drive by shootings street knifings and other thuggery, there was indeed a lot of freer movement but not by right, least of all by citizenship, which Arabs refused when offered in Jerusalem.

Israel is NOT the 4th armed power on the planet; not even in the Middle East. The Guardian 25 May 2006 published a centrefold with every state's military personnel total and budget and Israel 18th on the planet. The US is top and currently spends half the World's "defence."

Given the amount of oil lobby money & politics leaning on the State Department and other foreign ministries grumbling about Zionist shekels in the media is funny pitiful. In an age of journals folding under internet competition, how does the Independent float? Where did the John Birch Society get its funds? and I remember the British Fascist being at least part financed by Nasser's military attache in the early 60's who was expelled for his misconduct.

Referring to Israel a rapist is insolent given the continual Arab transgressions: Egypt in Yemen as well as Palestine; Libya in Chad; Algeria and Morocco in ex-Spanish Sahara; Syria in all its neighbours; Iraq in Kuwait (2x) and Iran; Saudi in Ethiopia; if anything the Arab tried to rape Israel in 1948 and got their faces properly slapped; same again repeatedly given nobody would condemn the Arabs for upsetting UN 181 till at least Egypt and Jordan learnt that it is better to keep their wandering hands to themselves.

As regards the siege of Gaza the Gazans both Hamas government and people have declared war and waged war on Israel so why the fuss about Israel's raction by controlled food shipments or the incursion last winter, defeats me given that that is the point of siege war and Germany and Britain both had a go at starving each other twice over this late century. As Abba Eban put it, "The Arabs can have war; or the Arabs can have peace; but they can not have a situation where they are at war and we are at peace." [ie limited to peace time process and procedures while they are free to wage war with impunity].

dismantle apartheid Israel

by Josie D.

Thu Aug 12, 2010 23:26

Well done to the IPSC for doing this. The sooner the racist sectarian apartheid state is dismantled and their war criminal leaders brought to justice the better.

apartheid?

Fri Aug 13, 2010 01:04

Frank, just a footnote but using the word 'siege' gives credence to opponents of Israel. It implies that Israel is trying to conquer the territory when it does not, if anything the situation is the opposite of a siege. Likewise those who use the term 'occupied' should be aware that the territories are occupied only by Hamas and the PA.

As for 'apartheid', that's a different story, and users of the word have to do some verbal gymnastics to explain how Israel is in any way like the former South African regime.

yes, frank...

Fri Aug 13, 2010 11:11

Mind your language there.Stick to the hasbara hymn-sheet or you'll be letting the truth seep in.
Always remember, the situation is the opposite. The children of Gaza are terrorist extremists who threaten little nuclear Israel with their slingshots and their parents stole the holy ground from under the feet of Moses back in the early pre-cambrian.
As for apartheid, the racial division on grounds of falsified ethnic distinction and the reduction of the indiginous populations to overcrowded badlands while resources from soil to water are syphoned into the dominant propagandised elite is pure coincidence and dont you go letting anyone convince you otherwise.
Oh and the territories are extraneous to Israel proper, therefore we have no obligations to the civilian populations, wrongfully designated by the UN and other terrorist fellow-travellers, to be under our juristiction.
Got that, Frank?

newspeak alert

Fri Aug 13, 2010 17:44

Opus, I guess I just haven't internalised the Newspeak dictionary enough yet. But at least my yard is free from weeds.

so you're not in favour of the two-state solution then, whereby each self-identified nation has their own territory? I guess you'll be voting Ireland back in the United Kingdom then?

Your yard, Tim...

Fri Aug 13, 2010 19:34

has already been extended to a metre. Did you read the book at all?Whats it to us if you've smoked all the weeds out of your plot?Take it up with Ming.
Rejoining the UK?I didn't realise there was even a referendum running.How many times will we have to vote to get it right?
Two state solution?
My only interest, at the moment is to stop the tourniquet Dr Strangezion is applying to the throat of the kids in Gaza. Some chance.But, by the same token, the lives shredded by the IDF/Knesset idiocy (look up the Greek origins of that word for an interesting shard of Oldspeak) on the MV Maramara have at least eased the noose a fraction.Shalom.

Exhibition dancing?

Tue Aug 17, 2010 17:18

Tim Johnston skewered the Devil's Work to rights. If a variant within Christainity can justify splitting a state to make two, then how much more two languages and two distinct religions. Peculiar how when the Moslems did the exactly same thing in spades at the close of the Raj nobody has any objections despite the four wars and a dozen million refugees - in 1947 - and governmental incompetence of Punjab, Afghania and Kashmir.

Clever spin turns with terms and language do not change the facts that there are two individuals in the couple occupying the floor and that is at Arabs request who gum up a third of UN time with vexatious process on Palestine which could have been wound up and turned prosperous in the 50's given the petrodollars Arabs have since wasted on harrassing Israel.

In passing, those who wish to dismantle Israel had better plan for where they intend to put the Israeli Jews because the Palestine Arabs do not want them - and pre-1948 Ireland did not want European Jews.

extracting the skewer

Tue Aug 17, 2010 18:58

' Peculiar how... nobody has any objections despite....- in 1947 -...'

Not even I was born then.

Nice skewers. Did you attach all them heretics yourself. You and God, eh. Devil of a good job.Can I have onion and tomato and mushroom with your next best.
Drop the paranoid accusations. Not trying to dismantel Israel. Just get a pause in the ethnic cleansing of the indiginous peoples of the earth by the blade of the corporate empire's turbo-charged bulldozer.
Any mustard?Or can't you cut it?

indigenous?

Tue Aug 17, 2010 20:10

starting to see where you're coming from, OD

Who is to say who is indigenous to Palestine/ Israel/ Philistia/ Judaea/ Canaan, the most oft-trampled area in world history, where every major empire in the last six thousand years has left its footprint?

Arabs come from Arabia (that's why it's called that). Israel was carved out of the middle east as a home for the Jewish people. It was the 1940s, the age of dividing up territories under the auspices of the UN, to reflect a new, enlightened age of peace, whereas previously, warring tribes were left to slaughter each other until the last one standing took the land.
Naturally, this led to upheaval, and repopulation, similar to population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. Almost a million Jews have left Arab nations over the last 50 years to populate Israel. But you don't need a history lesson, rather a lesson in perspective.

I would happily support the complete freedom of Gaza, with their own independent government etc and cessation of all hostilities tomorrow if I believed, for just one second, that the rockets would not start up again the next day, and if Hamas would fully recognise the existence of Israel and its right to so exist as a Jewish state.
I would also be much less antagonistic to the whole boycott idea if I were convinced of two things;
firstly, that boycotts actually work. They don't. Contrary to IPSC doctrine, boycotts did not end South African apartheid, only the big banks pulling the credit plug did that, and
secondly, that the IPSC and their followers actually respect democracy and the right of both Israel and the Palestinian people to live in their own states which would be defined as they each saw fit and without claims on the other.

ta for the lesson...

Tue Aug 17, 2010 20:43

in YOUR perspective, Tim.
Boycotts do work. Recap your Irish history on the word boycott befor you lecture so loud.

We're trying to slow the ongoing 'carving of israel' out of the shanks of Gazan kids.Boycotts, including bank boycotts and pressure from account holders and shareholders added to the erosion of the racial barrier in SA. Much remains to be done there yet.
My perspectyive is incremental, not ideological. dont make false associations.The Palestinian kids are not the IPSC.
But, given the inertia of our elected 'reps', I'm behind the boycott as a non violent means to assist an increasingly hopeless situation.Putr me down as naive, but you have not convinced me of another means.

Indigenous !?!

Tue Aug 17, 2010 21:04

If the Devil's Work was not born in 1947 he must be one of the little ones Harry Pollit got to join the YCL..." and John Gollan there as well...." about whom the campus sang decades back; but the confession to not being a witness is OD's problem and all those who rely only on what they have seen recently of a long dispute and have not swotted up the history - from both sides to take a cross bearing let alone taken a session or two with the archive files and surviving witnesses. Try the Cruiser's "TheSiege."

Palestine Arabs with the name Masri/Misri are not sacredly indigenous as that name denotes family migration from Egypt. The same for Mugrahbi/ Mughrebi/Maghrebi all variants for the Arabic "westerner" ie some family from Libya and points West. Sirhan Sirhan who assassinated Robert Kennedy in the name of Palestine nationalism because he had failed to make anything of his migration to the USA came from Saudi Arabia - the Wadi Sirhan runs along the East of the Saudi-Jordan frontier. Arafat was Egyptian born and accented to the end. So was George Antonius the education officer and Copt as indeed was Edward Said, and the Palestine police inspector who did for Izzedin Kassem/Qasam who immigrated from Syria - but as Padraig Pearse born in Edinburgh and Sean Mcstiofan born in London knew , there is nothing like an immigrant for nationalism qv Boney and the Tudors.

The British recruited Egyptian camp and general labour for their middle Eastern armies in 1914 - 18 and again in 39 - 45. In each of 1918 and 1945 they demobbed in Palestine 20 000 such Egyptians who found that life in Palestine was more promising than demobbing back home in Egypt. under the Mandate 50 000 Arabs migrated to settle in Palestine according to the Mandate files - and that is only the legals. If it is OK for Arabs to migrate to Palestine because as any economics class manual will tell you investment attracts labour, then lay off objecting to Jewish immigration. To cap it all the reasson why Masri is BBC allegedly the most frequent name in the Gaza Strip is in all probability because their forebears in a hurry to get away from the 1948 fighting as all civilians flee battle areas, were trapped there when the Egyptian army having made a dog's dinner of its 1948 campaign shut the gates of Egypt to their own family returnees in outright political cynicism.

Finally it is not for anybody in Ireland to get too pompous about "ethnic cleansing" given the 35 million US citizens of Irish descent on native American lands - and then there is Australia to reckon too.

opinion

Tue Aug 17, 2010 22:44

Yes, in my opinion. Who else's opinion would I have?

I actually have slightly less of a problem with you choosing to boycott (i.e. voluntarily abtain from dealing with) countries you don't like than I have with IPSC attempting to force a major retailer to cease trading with it (which is NOT a boycott btw.).

The Palestinian kids - won't somebody think of the children! - have the misfortune to be born to Palestinian parents living in an Islamic state, a fate I'd wish on no-one so my sympathy is with them.

false premise, Tim..

Tue Aug 17, 2010 23:05

Its not about 'countries you dont like'. And save your sympathy for your peers.The kids were not ' born..in an Islamic state'.

'Finally ' ,
For frank,

For someone with considerable criticisms( which i will continue to consider) of nationalism and its derivatives, you seem defensive of the Zionist nationalist eneterprise.
Oiche mhaith.

Good News at last

by Sean Og

Tue Aug 17, 2010 23:38

Did you hear -it was on BBC World Service so it MAY be true

After 62 years Lebanon has decided to let the descendents of Arabs

who came from Palestine in 1948 to legally work in Lebanon

good news?

Wed Aug 18, 2010 11:05

another excuse for Israel to claim all right to return can be denied as your 'Arabs' have returned to the bosom of their 'Arab' neighbours, whose responsibility it becomes to mop up the consequences of IDF Knesset crimes.
Good news if you belief the racist bullshit of corporate ethno-geographic states as a basis for 21st century globalisation. A recipe for maintaining the structures of the last half millennium of imperial butchery and organised corporate crime.
a sticking plaster on the exit side of a dum-dum.

Less theology and more practical observation!

Thu Aug 19, 2010 17:45

If the Gaza Strip kids - and Gaza is half the PA population - are not born in an Islamic state, what sort of killjoy Cromwellian state is it that in the name of Islam bans women smoking hubble bubbles on cafe terraces, bans women riding motor bikes & even bans lingerie shops displaying their wares indoors?

The real World is so many nation states with warts and all - some with more, a lot more - than others. We have to inhabit and use them because there is no current alternative but that does not mean we need worship them and mark their blemishes to replace when valid means are invented.

Meanwhile it is improper to berate third parties for defending what - given Irish history you have fought for since Wolfe Tone if not before. Given the Irish "ethno-geographic" (idolatrous?) demands for the whole Island of Ireland and intended impositions of first one then another "establishment of religion."

Neither the bulk of Hebrew speaking Jewish Israelis want to be under a PA government nor thebulk of the Palestine Arabs to be ruled by Israel. On the eve of the Indian Mutiny as Viceroy Lord Dalhousie primed one of the triggers by dismissing the Begum of Oudh for misgovernment, Sir Henry Lawrence - who later relieved Lucknow - warned Dalhousie that, "People prefer to be misgoverned by their own than to be well governed by foreigners." Jews were misgoverned by others for too long and others - Ireland included - were not in a hurry to help. Since the creation of Israel we have not lost a Jewish community to "kick the cat politics."

As for crimes: all the troubles between the Arab World and Israel flow from the Arab crime of being the first to dump a UN resolution (181 in 1947) so Arab governments should mop up their mess and admit tha whatever else has happened the Arab parties did throw over the traces in 1947 and drop the brick on their own toes. As new teachers are warned "Whatever you do; don't hit the pupils ! it's like kicking dogpats."

thanks frank

Fri Aug 20, 2010 12:40

So now its mutated into a kill-joy Cromwellian state. More metamorphoses than Ovid on acid.

And let me get this straight, its because women cant smoke, ride motor-bikes or access French knickers as handy as in Grafton Street that you support the cutting off of supplies, the bullldozing of villlages, the constant harassment, the distortions of historic facts into factoids on the ground to dust bones of Rachel Corrie, the attacks on the humanitarian relief flotilla etc.
No doubt that logic would see you agreeing that no relief for the Pakistani flood casualties is the only way to get them to give up their heretical beliefs.

Can you blame me for reading no further? Your blinkered and, Frankly, idiotic, arguments are a danger to honest Jewish people (of whom I know a few), as those who know even less of the issue might well conclude all Jews and Israelis are of the same mind(lessness).
You double-jobbing for the taliban, by any chance?

Wash your eyes out before writing!

Mon Aug 23, 2010 15:16

No you are blinkered, inviting people to entrust themselves to a Taliban bunch who think government exists to impose puritianical observances rather than make peace with political compromises and build public facilities.

One reason for the floods in Pakistan is the waste of resources on imperial interference in Afghanistan and bombthrowing in India instead of building up education and primary public health.

Similarly in the British Palestine succession if the refugee relief money retailed to families had been spent wholesale on employing them to build schools clinics and decent sewerage then the conflict would have dissolved long ago. As it is some schools and clinics have been built with foreign charity but not a public spirited society which can only be done from within.

The proof is next door in Israel where by 1950 all Jewish refugees from the 1948 war had been re-established and UNWRA was wound up there - just as nearly a million Jewish refugees from Arab states champions in democracy, tolerance, and prosperity, arrived to be integrated. be honest there is a mighty amount of plain jealousy in the darker attitudes to Israel.

eyewash...??

Mon Aug 23, 2010 15:38

Your good at that, anyway. Lets recap that.

'..one reason for the floods...is the waste of resources...etc.'

These are the semantic somersaults of a born again fantasist. Now doubt them pesky A-rabs are behind all that global warming nonsense as well.

So Britannia was efficient in its instalation of its latest colony. No surprise. They practised here for a while, till they had an elite established they could trust to mimic a republic.

And any time the Palestinians (or Lebanese, for that matter) look like assembling a viable infrastructure and rising from their economic knees Zion clubs them back into squalor with its hi-tech drones and low-tech chanters of hasbara.

Was it jealousy of the Reich motivated ALL the criticisms of the Swiss watch efficiency of thirties Germany?
Shalom.

Why the cyclists? Why the Jews?

Thu Aug 26, 2010 00:34

As went the conversational joke in Wilhelmine & Weimar Germany; and perhaps the Arab sales of petroleum have started off global warming? Arab fantasists complain their oil was stolen - not the oil of course, for which the West paid good money - but its royalties by their sheikhs and "republican" dictators. Incidentally did not all British republicans go to the US? Fairfax County, New York State is so called because it was granted to Cromwell's old boss at the king's restoration to enable all concerned to retire honourably.

One day somebody is going to be terribly disappointed about Zionism in the same way the Germans and Eastern Europeans are now embarrassed by their forties frenzy over their Jewish citizens and those with cause to be wary of the Russians have seen their attempt at, then abuse of Comunism blow off like a smoke screen.

It would clarify understanding to drop the green tinted binoculars which like all bins have exceedingly narrow field, for the wider view of the region before turning the bins in turn on each of all the participants in the field. The Middle East has a surfeit of background green - religio political sort. In the first half of the late century before ground troops had radar, competent colonels or their Int-officer would find the most colour blind man in a regiment to be available to scan the front as even mild Daltonism can see through camouflage !

'...There are many here among us....'

Thu Aug 26, 2010 12:30

..who think that life is but a joke.

Haven't you strayed a wee bit from the issue of Israel's ethnic war agains the Palestinian population they are systematically displacing?

Yeah, get back to the topic of effectively boycotting Israeli products

by V for vendetta

Thu Aug 26, 2010 16:03

It is a success for Israeli hasbara if they manage to stop people talking about practical ways to hurt israel by boycotting their goods and instead get them confused and waffling about 1947.

The fact is Israel is behaving abominably to the Palestinians NOW and we can help stop that NOW by getting a list of Israeli products and Refusing to buy them and saying so and explaining why to store managers of large chains like Dunnes. Keep up the good work folks. Great action with Dunnes store. Everything adds up. This kind of boycott is what the Israeli state terrorists fear most. Have as many marches as you like, but these kinds of boycotts, if they take hold, can have very concrete effects on the amount of money in the pockets of the government concerned, as they found out in south africa.

dear V., and others

Thu Aug 26, 2010 17:45

would you be one of those who opposed sanctions on Iraq? That was quite a big issue in Ireland I recall, particularly among the anti-war brigade.
So why are you in favour of them now?

We are bigger than all your brigades.

Thu Aug 26, 2010 19:01

Does Ireland have a brigade of over a hundered thousand, gathering from the thirty two at least, ready to gather in Dublin at their own (often considerable) expense to aggitate as Pro War ?
The Good Friday referendum indicated the majority of our people are mature enough and intelligent enough to recognise, not least from their histories, the futility, waste, and counter-productive consequences of War. They may be religiously confused, but they do not worship Mars.
And I protested against Saddam when he was an staunch ally of 'The Glorious West' and was using those Rumsfeldt supplied chemi9cal weapons on innocent villagers, just as lethal as ther depleted uranium deluged on the villages of Iraq by the desert stormtroopers in their shock n awe blitzkrieg.
Bring your brigade.

compare like with like please Tim

Thu Aug 26, 2010 19:48

Please compare like with likeTim.I know muddying the issue and diverting the discussion is part of your hasbara remit but please!

Firstly, although yes, I am in favour of targetted sanctions on Israel, I am not proposing blanket sanctions here, merely a boycott on purchasing israeli products. There is a difference.

Furthermore, Iraq's water, electricity and sewerage infrastructure was greatly damaged by the war and this, coupled with the subsequent ill considered blanket sanctions (no parts / aid / meds etc), caused many poor children without access to normal infrastructure and resources to die from preventible conditions such as diarrohea etc. whilst not affecting saddam at all.

Israel on the other hand is a modern country and has not been bombed into submission and retains all it's US subsidised infrastructure so it's children have nice clean water, stolen from the palestinians and filtered / treated to drink, and adequate toilet facilities, electricity supply and a reasonable standard of living overall. A BOYCOTT on buying Israeli produce would serve to put the squeeze on profit making export enterprises who would pass their grievances about lost profits on to their friends in the Israeli government. It would not cause thousands of Israeli children to die from dysentry as happened in Iraq.

So..No reasonable comparison there at all. But then again you probably never considered bringing in Iraq was reasonable in the first place. Just a useful distraction to derail the thread and muddy the discussion. Hasbara 101..

Incidentally, South africa.was similarly not bombed into submission before the advent of sanctions. Sanctions were pretty effective there
Shalom Tim

The only concrete action ordinary folk can take from day to day to pressure Israel is not to buy Israeli goods.
Marching and petitions are largely ignored. This is the one concrete thing we can all do to hurt them So....

PLEASE SUPPORT THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI PRODUCE. BE VOCAL AND TELL THE MANAGERS WHY YOU ARE NOT BUYING IT.

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