BDS Australia is joining groups around the world for the Global Day of Action on February 12 and regular rolling protests as we step up pressure on PUMA to ends its partnership with Israeli apartheid.
PUMA’s continued support for Israeli apartheid puts it squarely on the wrong side of history.
The year 2021 saw unprecedented support for Palestinian rights across the world of sports, as apartheid Israel escalated its violent oppression of Palestinians.
In record numbers, star athletes took courageous stands in stadiums and on social media to millions of followers, including footballers Riyad Mahrez, Paul Pogba, Mohamed ELNeny, and Benjamin Mendy, cricket stars Babar Azam, Rashid Khan, and Irfan Pathan, basketball players Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard and Layshia Clarendon, and boxing champs Amir Khan and Badou Jack, among others.
Olympic hopefuls Fethi Nourine and Mohamed Abdalrasoo renounced life-long dreams and withdrew from the games, refusing to compete with official Israeli representatives.
Teams, players, coaches and fans kept Palestinian rights front and center at the Arab Cup finals.
Let’s step up the pressure and make 2022 the year PUMA ends its partnership with Israeli apartheid.
Join the Boycott PUMA Global Day of Action, February 12.
PUMA sponsors the Israel Football Association (IFA), which governs and advocates on behalf of teams in illegal Israeli settlements.
In a leaked internal memo, PUMA admitted its celebrity ambassadors and business partners are increasingly questioning its support for Israeli apartheid.
More than 120,000 people have signed the SumOfUs petition urging PUMA to “stop its complicity with the Israeli apartheid state.”
A PUMA lawyer told us the #BoycottPUMA campaign is making their lives “miserable.”
Let’s help PUMA find its way over to the right side of history!
Join groups around the world calling on PUMA to drop the IFA.
Join rolling protests in Adelaide and Sydney – email [email protected] for details
PUMA has a window of opportunity to live up to its progressive image and stated “devotion to universal equality.” PUMA’s contract with the IFA ends in June of this year. Now is the time to act to convince PUMA to cut ties with Israeli apartheid.
The #BoycottPUMA coalition, which stretches from Auckland to Oakland, is launching regular rolling protests at PUMA shops, offices, and sponsored clubs. Vibrant protests at PUMA shops have succeeded in shutting them down. Join a protest near you or organize one in your area!
The declaration by Amnesty International that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, in its treatment of Palestinians, must lead to enforcement action by the international community, BDS Australia said today. The AI report, which echoes previous findings by Human Rights Watch, as well as two Israeli human rights monitoring groups, B’Tselem and Yesh Din, should end any dispute about the nature of Israel’s crimes against humanity, the group added – the only topic for discussion now should be how to bring them to an end.
“Australia must stop denying, minimising or excusing Israel’s criminal actions, and instead join with others in the international community in calling for an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, dating from 1967; the scrapping of the racist Nation State law of 2018 and the dozens of laws and regulations that discriminate against non-Jews, and for Palestinians to be facilitated in exercising their lawful right of return to the homes from which they were driven out at the inception of the State of Israel in 1948”, said Jake Lynch, patron of BDS Australia and Associate Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.
“We now have a comprehensive, evidence-based report, running to over 200 pages, from the world’s most respected human rights monitoring group, a Nobel Peace laureate in its own right, setting out exactly how Israel is in breach of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The oppression of Palestinians continues only with the collusion of international actors including Australia, which promotes trade including the sale of deadly weapons with Israel, as well as offering diplomatic protection from the consequences of its crimes. This must cease”, said BDS Australia convenor and Palestinian refugee, Hilmi Dabbagh.
“The tide is turning and no amount of spin from the Israel lobby and Zionist supporters in Australia can stop it. Desperate calls for anti-BDS legislation and claims of antisemitism from those organisations which support Israel’s colonialist and apartheid policies are falling on deaf ears and rightly so,” according to Dr Peter Slezak, Deputy Convenor of BDS Australia who is the son of holocaust survivors.
“Palestinians welcome this report, on top of those from Human Rights Watch and others, as long-overdue recognition of the reality we are living with every day.
Apartheid for us means constant violent attacks both by ‘soldiers’ of the Israeli occupation force and by armed racist thugs from the settler movement, driving us out of our homes and ancestral lands, denying our rights to freedom of movement and assembly. This is our struggle, but it is also a crime against humanity and a scar on the world’s conscience. The world now must take action to bring accountability, isolate apartheid and hasten its end”, said Hiba Farrar, BDS Australia committee member and Palestinian lawyer.
The BDS Palestine National Committee and the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign are calling for global mobilization in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their steadfast resistance against Israel’s forced displacement in Jerusalem’s neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, in Al-Naqab, the Jordan Valley, the southern Hebron Hills and beyond.
These Global Days of Action are in response to the call by the Bedouin-Palestinian community of Al-Naqab for international solidarity to support their struggle against Israel’s ongoing Nakba.
The last week has seen a dramatic escalation in the intensity and brutality of Israel’s relentless policy of expulsion that still threatens to expel thousands of Indigenous Palestinians more from their homes and lands. As Human Rights Watch and other international human rights organizations have said, this wave of forced displacement is yet another manifestation of Israel’s system of apartheid against all Palestinians. Apartheid is a crime against humanity in international law.
We call for intensifying our efforts to end international complicity by states, corporations and institutions in Israel’s policies of apartheid, settler colonialism and military occupation. In other words, we call for meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli attempts to dehumanize them and to criminalize their popular resistance to cultural erasure and the ongoing dispossession and displacement.
Let’s demand effective accountability for complicity in war crimes now.
Take the lead from Palestinians in Al-Naqab as they organize another mass protest this Sunday.
Be inspired by the sumud (steadfastness) of the Palestinian community in Sheikh Jarrah, and by the words of Mahmoud Salhiya: “We’d rather die in our land with dignity than surrender.” They embody the determined resilience of the entire Palestinian people, including Palestinians besieged in the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Palestinian women, men and youth continue to rise up for their rights, whether in their homeland or in exile, where they’ve lived as refugees ethnically cleansed from their homeland in the 1948 Nakba and denied their inherent and UN-stipulated right of return.
ACTIONS
On 28, 29, 30 January – the Global Days of Action to #EndEthnicCleansing, let’s:
Pressure our Federal and State government to take action, including lawful and targeted sanctions and military-security trade bans, and call out those who are complicit with apartheid Israel. – join our #StopElbit campaign to tell the Victorian state government and the Australian federal government to abandon any association with Israeli arms manufacturer and distributer, Elbit Systems and Elbit Systems Australia.
BDS Australia’s Don’t Buy HP campaign page is HERE – Take Action today against HP’s complicity with Israeli oppression.
Build support for the UN to investigate and end Israeli apartheid, as was done with South African apartheid.
Join us and the social media storm on FacebookInstagram and Twitter and use hashtags #EndEthnicCleansing and #UnitedAgainstApartheid as well as #SaveSheikhJarrah, #SaveAlNaqab, #UNInvestigateApartheid.
The Sydney Festival boycott over funding from Israel is now Australia’s largest and most successful boycott campaign since the anti-apartheid movement against South African apartheid and the Green bans of the 1970s, according to BDS Australia.
More than 40% of the Festival performances have been disrupted with some 100 artists, companies and arts workers withdrawing in solidarity with this community and artist-led initiative opposing Israeli art-washing of war crimes against the Palestinian people. BDS Australia is especially heartened by the strong solidarity and support given to this boycott by so many First Nations artists who so well understand the experience of colonisation and dispossession.
“The actions of so many artists, companies and arts workers in supporting the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions in light of Israel’s apartheid policies and ongoing human rights abuses against Palestinians, clearly shows the solidarity and intersectional nature of this struggle,” says BDS Australia patron, Associate Professor Jake Lynch of Sydney University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Studies.
“More than 10,000 people have signed the BDS Australia petition and written to the Sydney Festival Board. 1,000 artists and arts workers have publicly expressed their support for those who have withdrawn in protest from the Festival, and many Australian Jewish organisations and individuals have publicly stated their support for the boycott – this is a landslide of support for justice for Palestinians,” says BDS Australia convenor and Palestinian refugee, Hilmi Dabbagh.
“The tide is turning and no amount of spin from the Israel lobby and Zionist supporters in Australia can stop it. Desperate calls for anti-BDS legislation and claims of antisemitism from those organisations which support Israel’s colonialist and apartheid policies are falling on deaf ears and rightly so,” according to Dr Peter Slezak, Deputy Convenor of BDS Australia who is the son of holocaust survivors.
“The latest United Nations reports show the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is intensifying, with record numbers evicted and buildings being demolished every day in East Jerusalem, in the Naqab and elsewhere by the occupying Israeli authorities. The Israeli state is openly colluding with gangs of armed thugs from the settler movement to speed up the seizure and theft of Palestinian land”, says Hiba Farra, BDS Australia committee member and Palestinian lawyer.
BDS Australia has written to the Sydney Festival and to the Sydney Dance Company regarding their acceptance of sponsorship by the Israeli government. We are calling for this sponsorship to be rejected because of Israel’s ongoing crimes against Palestinians and its use of sponsorships like this to attempt to artwash these crimes.
TAKE ACTION AND WRITE TO THE SYDNEY FESTIVAL JOINING OUR CALL FOR THEM TO REJECT ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SPONSORSHIP SEND AN EMAIL – [email protected]or sign the petition
UPDATE:
BDSA meeting with Chair and Executive Director of Sydney Festival
Dec 18, 2021 —
As a result of BDS Australia’s recent letter and request to meet with the Sydney Festival due to their acceptance of sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy for one of the forthcoming festival performances, a BDS Australia representatives met with the Chair of the Sydney Festival, David Kirk MBE and Chris Tooher, Executive Director, Sydney Festival on Friday Dec 17th.
We presented information on the grave human rights violations and ongoing breaches of international law by Israel in relation to Palestinians and gave an overview of BDS and the PACBI (cultural and academic) guidelines.
We called on the Festival to review its sponsorship deal with Israel and to take a public and ethical stand in support of Palestinian rights.
In response, the Festival representatives explained that as a result of the concerns which had been raised with them not only from BDSA but also other Palestinian advocacy organisations and artists, they were seriously re-evaluating their processes for seeking sponsorships for festival performances . They expressed concern that this issue had caused a number of artists contracted to perform at this Festival, to threaten to withdraw from and boycott the 2022 Festival.
We asked that they use the human rights framework of the UN Global Compact when re-evaluating their processes. We also explained that BDS was not antisemitic.
They acknowledged our concerns and expressed their intention to review their approach to sponsorships which will be taken up in their next board meeting shortly
Letter from BDS Australia Dec 2, 2021
Letter to: Olivia Ansell Director Sydney Festival
cc: Lizzi Nicoll Deputy Executive Director Sydney Dance Company
We write to express our deep concern at the 2022 Festival of Sydney’s acceptance of sponsorship from the Israeli government via the Israeli Embassy, Canberra as a Star Partner and as a sponsor of the Sydney Dance Company’s festival event, Decadance.
The signatories to this letter are members of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Australia which supports the 2005 call by 170 Palestinian civil society organisations for BDS as a peaceful and non-violent means to pressure the State of Israel to end the illegal military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem from 1967; to end the crippling blockade of Gaza which has been in operation since 2006; and to allow the internationally recognized Right of Return to Palestinian refugees to the land and homes from which Israel forcibly expelled them in 1948; and to ensure equal rights for all Palestinians living in Israel according to international law and human rights conventions.
Arts, culture, and politics cannot be separated. Israel funds cultural events and ambassadors to ‘art-wash’ the human rights violations it perpetrates against the Palestinians by presenting itself as a normal ‘democracy’ and one which can be accepted internationally, despite its ongoing grave violations of human rights and international law. This is a conscious policy of the Israeli government. Nissim Ben-Shitrit, former Deputy Director General at the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry has said: “We regard culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the highest order, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture”.
Israel has progressively taken large tracts of land which are internationally recognized as Palestinian land – dispossessing successive generations from their rights and maintaining a brutal military occupation which imprisons thousands of civilians including children and condones the unlawful and frequent killing of civilians. It has maintained a blockade of Gaza which has destroyed the local economy and denied freedom of movement to millions of people. It has engaged in largescale attacks against civilians in Gaza, killing and maiming tens of thousands in the last 13 years. It practices apartheid against Palestinians in Israel and throughout the Occupied Territories and is subject to countless UN resolutions condemning these violations of international law which are documented by many international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations.
The apartheid nature of the state of Israel has been recently documented by Israel’s most prominent human rights organisation, B’tselem and also Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
We ask that you seriously reconsider the Sydney Festival’s association with the State of Israel and stand with the Palestinian people and with international law by refusing to accept any sponsorships from or collaborations with Israel until such time as Palestine is free.
We ask that you share this letter with the Festival’s Board of Directors, and we look forward to your response.
We would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and to discuss this matter further.
Yours sincerely, BDS Australia on behalf of the following member organisations:
This website is maintained by BDS Australia, which is affiliated with the coalition of Palestinian organisations that leads and supports the BDS movement and by the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a BNC member organisation.
