Tag Archives: Desmond Tutu

| BDS: Alicia Keys Don’t Play Apartheid Israel!

Posted on by
1

| Alicia Keys Don’t Play Apartheid Israel! ~ YouTube.

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/alic…

People around the world are calling on Alicia Keys to join figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker and Roger Waters who are boycotting Israel’s human rights abuses.

In the spirit of the South African movement that helped end Apartheid, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) was called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005.

This film is inspired by the Palestinian women who every day nonviolently resist the illegal occupation of their land.

URL: http://youtu.be/yAuc2EFwd-A

Learn more & video sources:

http://www.bdsmovement.net/
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha…
http://adalah.org/eng/Israeli-Discrim…
http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/12/18/is…
We do not own the rights to this song:
“Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys.

| No rogue, criminal, pirate state is worth the trouble it causes!

Americans really should now give their heads a wobble and demand to cut the ziocolony loose to sink or swim as a well-behaved neighbour instead of funding more ethnic-cleansing and land-thievery with yet more impunity like a pandering parent with it’s spoilt brat.

European post-war holocaust guilt is no excuse to still raid the meddle-east or dispossess Semite Palestinians, whatever emotional-blackmail hissy-fit the Jewish lobby throws up.

Apathy is shameful, willful ignorance is worse.

The goals of the Palestinian Boycott, Divest & Sanction [BDS] campaign are crystal clear — to simply :

{1} End Israel’s occupation & colonisation of all Arab lands + Dismantle the Apartheid Wall;

{2} Engage & Secure the basic Human Rights of the Palestinian-Arab citizens of israel to Full Equality; Respect, protect & promote the inalienable Rights of Palestinian refugees to Return to their homes and properties & to ensure Full compliance with all UN Resolutions.

MORE HERE:
http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node%2F9
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-bran…
http://www.boycotisrael.info/
http://www.mylinkspage.com/israel.html
http://www.monabaker.com/
boycottisraeliproducts.h…

| No rogue, criminal, pirate state is worth the trouble it causes! http://wp.me/p1xXtb-2Lh

________________________________________________________________

BDS Map1

Related articles

| Desmond Tutu wins Templeton Prize for ‘affirming life’s spiritual dimension!’

Posted on by
Reply

Desmond Tutu wins Templeton Prize for ‘affirming life’s spiritual dimension’ ~ , Correspondent, The Christian Science Monitor.

____________________________________________________________

Tutu, the first black man to lead South Africa’s Anglican church, also headed the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He is a ‘living model of the benefits of religion,’ the Templeton Foundation said.

____________________________________________________________

On April 16 1996, South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chair Desmond Tutu sat listening as activist Sinqokwana Ernest Malgas described the torture he had been subjected to by the apartheid police force.

A 30-year veteran of the freedom movement himself, Reverend Tutu was no stranger to stories like this. But as Mr. Malgas talked, his speech mangled and slurred by a stroke he had suffered from a police beating, Tutu laid his head down on the table in front of him and began to cry.

The image of Tutu weeping quickly circled the globe, a reminder of the towering moral challenge South Africa faced as it strove to reconcile centuries of racial injustice.

Perhaps no individual more deeply embodied this national reckoning with forgiveness than Tutu himself, who on Thursday received the Templeton Prize, an annual award of 1.1 million pounds ($1.7 million) awarded to a living person “who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.”

“Archbishop Tutu exemplifies a new and larger, living model of the benefits of religion – especially when framed and tested in the context of real people – in real, everyday circumstances,” said John Templeton Jr., the president of the Templeton Foundation.

Tutu said he was “totally bowled over” by the award, which honored the retired Anglican archbishop for more than a half-century of spiritually grounded human rights activism.

Tutu joins the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Billy Graham among heavyweight activist clerics who have been honored by the Templeton Prize, the largest annual monetary prize for an individual in the world.

Standing just 5-ft. 3-in., Tutu has long occupied an outsized presence in South African politics. As an Anglican leader throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, he pushed for international divestment from South Africa, spoke out against police brutality, and led marches of tens of thousands against the white minority government. In 1984, his efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, and two years later he became the first black man to lead the Anglican church of South Africa.

“The [Anglican] church in South Africa fought in the struggle because we were called upon to find what it means to be the body of Christ in our time and place, and we believed that God is a God of all,” says Thabo Makgoba, the current archbishop of Cape Town. “Politics is part and parcel of where God’s people find themselves.”

And as the country transitioned from the rigid rule of a white minority to full democracy in the early 1990s, Tutu unrelentingly preached reconciliation. As head of the TRC, a restorative justice body, he guided the country through hundreds of hours of testimony from apartheid victims and perpetrators, and granted amnesty to hundreds who confessed to politically motivated crimes.

In the years since, the diminutive bishop has unflinchingly thrown his moral authority behind a variety of causes – not all of them popular – including the release of Wikileaks informant Bradley Manning, divestment from Israel, and an end to corruption and nepotism in the South African government.

Throughout his career, Tutu has always displayed a remarkable ability to use humor to incisively cut to the heart of social justice issues, Reverend Makgoba says.

“When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land,” Tutu explained in a video published on the Templeton Prize’s website. “They said, ‘let us pray,’ and we dutifully shut our eyes. And when we finished … lo and behold, they had the land and we had the Bible.”

Tutu also preaches an inclusive version of spirituality. In his 2011 book, “God is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations,” he wrote that no religion had a monopoly on truth about God.

“We should in humility and joyfulness acknowledge that the supernatural and divine reality we all worship in some form or other transcends all our particular categories of thought and imagining,” he wrote.

The Templeton Prize has been given annually since 1973. It was endowed by Sir John Templeton, a British-American stock trader and philanthropist. Tutu will formally receive the award in a public ceremony at London‘s Guildhall on May 21.

___________________________________________________________________

Tutu Aparth Ad

ApartheidRoadTo1

Related articles

ApartheidRoadTo1

apartheid1

| Trade not Aid: Now Gaza’s Ark prepares to dare Israel!

Posted on by
1

Now Gaza’s Ark Prepares to Dare Israel ~ Eva Bartlett, IPS Inter Press Service.

Palestinian fishers are hit hard by the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

Palestinian fishers are hit hard by the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

GAZA CITY, Mar 27 2013 (IPS) – “An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe,” say the group preparing ‘Gaza’s Ark’. But their ark, they say, is “a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade.”

An initiative by Palestinians in Gaza and international solidarity activists, Gaza’s Ark entails “purchasing a run-down boat from a local fishing family,” says Michael Coleman, a member of Free Gaza Australia and on the Gaza’s Ark steering committee.

“The refurbishing will be done by Palestinians in the port of Gaza, and the sailing will be with a mixed crew of Palestinians and internationals,” says David Heap, spokesperson for Gaza’s Ark in Canada and Europe. The sailing date has not been announced yet.

Pointing to a weathered fishing trawler with a ‘for sale’ sign painted on it, Mahfouz Kabariti, president of Gaza’s Fishing and Marine Sports Association, points to fishers’ poverty.

 

“Why sell?” he asks. “Because of years of poor incomes from Israeli restrictions on sea, many fishers have debts they cannot pay off. Fishers were optimistic when the Israelis re-extended the fishing limit six miles. We hoped that maybe it would be extended to 12 miles.”

The Ark initiative includes exporting a token amount of trade goods from Palestinian artisans, an act which Coleman admits is “symbolic” but necessary. Exports will include date goods, embroidery, and crafts from the Aftfaluna society for Deaf Children and other associations in Gaza.

The steering committee for Gaza’s Ark comprises mainly well-respected Palestinian scholars, doctors and rights activists from Gaza. International supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, various UK and Canadian former and current members of parliament, two former UN assistant secretaries general, and Hedy Epstein and Suzanne Weiss, both Holocaust survivors.

Since 2008 solidarity boats have sailed, or attempted to sail, to the Gaza Strip in efforts to challenge the Israeli-led siege on Gaza and bring awareness over it. The Free Gaza boats of 2008-2009 were followed by the Freedom Flotilla of 2010, and various non-violent attempts afterwards to bring an end to the naval blockade of Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla is most known for the Israeli naval commandos’ execution of nine and the injury of over 50 of the flotilla activists on board the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara while it was in international waters. The rest of the over 600 people on the flotilla boats were taken to Israel and deported home.

“It was a completely illegal act, Israel had no right to board the ship,” says Coleman.

“That has been the theme of how they stopped Freedom Flotilla 2, the Freedom Waves initiative and the Estelle which sailed at the end of 2012,” he says. “Israel has a long history of targeting peaceful, non-violent direct action with violence and sabotage.”

“Gaza’s Ark is the evolution of the flotilla movement. We’ve moved away from sailing into Gaza with aid,” says Coleman. “We now focus on sailing trade out, because it’s quite clear that if the Palestinians were able to trade, their dependence on aid would be diminished quite significantly.”

The Ark website emphasises the need for trade, their slogan is “trade, not aid.”

Aid, the website notes, “does not address the root cause of why the Palestinians of Gaza are in need: the Israeli blockade. We believe that aid provides a ‘cover’ for the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Gaza, alleviating the consciences of international powers while leaving the blockade in place.”

The Gaza’s Ark initiative aims to “challenge the blockade of Gaza from the inside out. By purchasing Palestinian exports from Gaza, buyers around the world can bring critically-needed public attention to the blockade while supporting Palestinian businesses in Gaza,” reads the Ark website.

The siege on Gaza, which was enforced by the Israeli occupation authorities shortly after Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, came into severe force in 2007 when virtually all exports were banned and imports severely limited.

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes that “it is common for the (Israeli) navy to open fire on fishermen, pursue them in Gazan waters, and destroy and confiscate their equipment, including their nets and boats. Such acts constitute flagrant violations of Israel’s legal obligations as an occupying power under international law, and violate the fishermen’s rights to life and work.”

Gaza’s fishers once numbered over 10,000, but under the Israeli siege and assaults, the vast majority have given up on a trade that was passed down to them by their fathers and grandfathers.

With the siege, Israel has also enforced no-go zones along the Green Line border separating Gaza and Israel, and in Gaza’s sea, to which Palestinians under the Oslo accords have the right to fish as far as 20 nautical miles from the coast.

Since 2008, Israel has unilaterally enforced a limit of between six and three miles. Although Israeli authorities expanded this limit back to six miles following the cessation of Israel’s November 2012 attacks on Gaza, in March 2013 Israel again unilaterally declared Palestinians can go no further than three miles.

Fishers and human rights groups report that the Israeli navy shoots on, harasses and abducts Palestinian fishers even within three miles, as close at times as less than a mile from Gaza’s coast. The Israeli navy has killed and injured numerous fishers while shooting at their boats.

_____________________________________________________________________

Gaza-conflict-day-003B

Related articles

GazaMath1

GazaPeace

| Stevie Wonder just called to say he’s pulled out of IDF Fundraiser!

Posted on by
2

Stevie Wonder Pulls Out of IDF Fundraiser ~ JTA.

 

Petition Called on R&B Star To Shun Israel Army Event!

 

Stevie Wonder is set to pull out of a performance at a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces, a source told JTA.

 

Wonder’s representatives will claim that he did not know the nature of the group, the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and that he believes such a performance would be incongruent with his status as a U.N. “Messenger of Peace,” according to a source who has read email exchanges between Wonder’s representatives and organizers of the event.

 

Wonder was scheduled to headline the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces annual gala in Los Angeles on Dec. 6. The event raises millions of dollars annually to support the Israeli military.

 

An official of Friends of the IDF, reached at its Los Angeles office, had no comment. Wonder’s agent at Creative Artists Agency did not return a request for comment.

 

The spokesman for the U.N. Secretary General also had no comment on the matter. The United Nations does not usually impose restrictions on its goodwill representatives. Wonder most recently performed at a U.N. concert commemoratiing its 67th anniversary.

 

Wonder had come under intense social media pressure to pull out of the event. An online petition calling on him to cancel his performance had garnered more than 3,600 signatures.

 

The petition was launched more than a day ago on the change.org website.

 

“You were arrested in 1985 protesting South African Apartheid, now we ask you: please remember that apartheid is apartheid, whether it comes from White Afrikaaner settlers of South Africa or from Jewish Israelis in Israel,” the petition reads. “Desmond Tutu has recognized that Israel’s Apartheid is worse than South Africa’s – will you stand with us against apartheid and cancel your performance at the IDF fundraiser.”

 

A second petition, launched by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, calls on Wonder to “(p)lease continue your legacy of speaking out for the oppressed. Please be a ‘full-time lover’ of justice by standing on the right side of history and canceling your performance for the Israeli army.”

 

Wonder performed at a 1998 gala honoring Israel’s 50th anniversary.

 

__________________________________________________________________

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles