ANTI-RACIST ISRAELI CITIZENS: "the most effective way to stop the apartheid system is to deny its economic fuel and political legitimacy. Therefore, we strongly support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), aimed at ending these actions"

Israeli Citizens espousing Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (2016): “We are Israeli citizens, opposed to the Israeli government’s policies of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian people. Many of us are veteran human rights activists who have long worked against these policies. It's our long years of anti-racism advocacy that brought us to the understanding that the most effective way to stop the apartheid system is to deny its economic fuel and political legitimacy. Therefore, we strongly support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), aimed at ending these actions. We write to you to ask you to heed the Palestinian call for justice, and cancel your concert in Israel… Israel holds the Gaza Strip under hermetic siege, in which Israel conducts vicious major bombing campaigns on a regular basis. The latest one, in 2014, resulted in over 2000 innocent Palestinians massacred, 500 of whom were children. The Palestinians in Gaza live in constant anxiety, knowing that the next massacre is just around the corner. In the West Bank, Israel has massively escalated its home-demolition policies against Palestinians, while it continues to construct Jewish-only colonies on stolen Palestinian land. 2016 has seen a massive escalation in policy of extrajudicial executions, with an execution taking place almost every day, including women and children. Another oppressive policy seeing escalation is that of mass, arbitrary arrests, with currently 7000 Palestinians in Israel’s prisons. Over 10% of total prisoners are held without charge, trial, or release date. All prisoners are subject to systematic ill-treatment, medical neglect, beatings, and torture. Most disturbing is the fact that children aren’t protected, and in fact, Israel’s arrest of children has escalated in the past two years, despite United Nations pressure to end all forms of state child abuse. Within Israel itself there are no less than 50 laws discriminating against the Palestinian citizens of the State, while Israeli parliament members compete for votes, by exhibiting who can make the most genocidal statement ” (Israeli Citizens espousing Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, “From Israeli citizens to Peter Murphy – the answer is clear, boycott apartheid Israel”, BDS, 4 October 2016: https://bdsmovement.net/news/israeli-citizens-peter-murphy-answer-clear-boycott-apartheid-israel ).