From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Gabriel Ash | Dissident Voice | 6 June 2006 The recent boycott resolutions of CUPE and NATFHE against Israel’s Apartheid predictably awakened Israel’s willing apologists, initiating a high pitched chorus of condemnation and self pity across the Western media, not to mention the blogosphere. Their arguments, however, are flimsy, not to say rotten. I’ll review them one at a time. But first a clarification. The boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) campaign is a very diverse campaign.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Mona Baker | Oxford Student | 1 June 2006 The recent vote by NATFHE in support of a boycott of Israeli institutions is the latest in a series of similar international decisions that signal the determination of civil society to put an end to one of the most brutal and racist colonial enterprises in recent history. Only a few days earlier, an overwhelming majority of delegates of the Ontario division of Canada’s largest union, representing more than 200,000 workers, voted to support the boycott campaign.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Alan Cowell | The New York Times | 30 May 2006 Britain's biggest association of teachers in higher education approved Monday a resolution urging its 67,000 members to consider boycotting Israeli academics who fail to renounce what it called Israel's "apartheid policies." The resolution by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, a victory for supporters of a boycott, raised the stakes in a contest among academics in Britain, the United States and the Middle East that has evoked questions of academic freedom and Palestinian resistance.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Alexandra Smith | The Guardian | 30 May 2006 An international lobby group formed last year after lecturers voted to boycott Israeli universities has vowed to oppose any renewed plans "through legal channels". The warning from the Israeli-led International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom, a body formed at Bar-Ilan University last year after the Association of University Teachers (AUT) attempted to impose an academic boycott on Israel, came as the international outcry over Israeli sanctions today intensified.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Richard Bagley | The Morning Star | 13 March 2006 TOP South African trade unionist Willy Madisha issued a white-hot condemnation of Israel’s apartheid policies at a London conference on Saturday. Addressing the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s trade union conference at TUC Congress House, the COSATU president declared that South Africa’s apartheid policies had been ‘a Sunday picnic’ compared to the state of Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) BURTON BOLLAG | The Chronicle of Higher Education | 7 March 2006 The United States has denied visas to all 55 Cuban scholars who had planned to attend an international conference of the Latin American Studies Association next week in Puerto Rico. According to the association, known as LASA, the Cubans were informed of the decision on February 23, just three weeks before the conference is scheduled to start, on March 15.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent | The Guardian | 7 February 2006 The Church of England's general synod - including the Archbishop of Canterbury - voted last night to disinvest church funds from companies profiting from Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. The main target of the plan will be the US earth-moving equipment company Caterpillar which has supplied vehicles used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Oliver Duff, Rob Sharp and Eric Silver in Jerusalem | The Independent | 10 February 2006 A group including some of Britain's most prominent architects is considering calling for an economic boycott of Israel's construction industry in protest at the building of Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in the Occupied Territories. Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, whose members include Richard Rogers and the architectural critic Charles Jenckes, met for the first time last week in secret at the London headquarters of Lord Rogers' practice.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) PACBI | 28 January 2006 The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has decided to omit from its 2004 Call for Boycott (enclosed below) an exclusion clause which has been justifiably misunderstood by supporters and misrepresented by critics as inconsistent with the institutional boycott advocated by PACBI. With this revision, PACBI sincerely hopes that, rather than being sidetracked by discussions on a formal and unintentional discrepancy in the drafting of our Call, the debate will once again focus on the very real grounds for this boycott Call, namely Israel’s military occupation and colonization, its denial of refugee rights and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) JANICE ARNOLD - Staff Reporter | The Canadian Jewish News | 5 January 2005 Twenty Quebec organizations, including the Fédération des Femmes du Québec (FFQ) and the provincial union of CEGEP teachers, have endorsed a new campaign to boycott Israeli products and companies deemed to be supporting the Jewish state’s “apartheid politics.” They are protesting Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territory, the security fence and alleged violations of international law.