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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Upholding our rights, resisting the ongoing Nakba
Palestinians in the West Bank
city of Nablus take part in a rally to commemorate the 69th anniversary
of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias and
Israel, 15 May.Ayman AmeenAPA images
It is possible…
It is possible at least sometimes…
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear.
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers
It is possible at least sometimes…
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away…
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear.
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers
Today marks the 69th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba,
the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Between 1947
and 1949, Zionist paramilitaries, and subsequently Israeli forces, made 750,000 to one million indigenous Palestinians into refugees to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) calls
on people of conscience the world over to further intensify BDS
campaigns to end academic, cultural, sports, military and economic links
of complicity with Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
This is the most effective means of standing with the Palestinian
people in pursuing our inherent and UN-stipulated rights, and
nonviolently resisting the ongoing, intensifying Nakba.
The Israeli regime today is ruthlessly pursuing the one constant
strategy of its settler-colonial project – the simultaneous pillage and
colonization of as much Palestinian land as possible and the gradual ethnic cleansing of as many Palestinians as practical without evoking international sanctions.
Nakba continues – so does resistance
Following in the footsteps of all previous Israeli governments, the
current far-right government, the most openly racist in Israel’s
history, is heeding the words of the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky
who wrote in
1923: “Every native population in the world resists colonists as long
as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger
of being colonized. […] Zionist colonization must either stop, or else
proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can
proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is
independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the
native population cannot breach.”
Sixty-nine years after the systematic, premeditated uprooting and
dispossession of most of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs from the land
of Palestine at the hands of Zionist gangs and later the state of
Israel, the Nakba is not over.
Israel is intent on building its “iron wall” in Palestinian minds, not
just our lands, through its sprawling illegal settlements and concrete
walls in the occupied Palestinian territory, its genocidal siege of over two million Palestinians in Gaza, its denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return, its racist laws and
policies against Palestinians inside Israel, and its escalating,
violent ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Naqab (Negev).
It is sparing no brutality in its relentless, desperate attempts to sear
into our consciousness the futility of resistance and the vainness of
hope.
Raising the price of complicity
The present mass hunger strike by over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the grassroots support that it has triggered give us hope.
The growing support for BDS among international trade unions, including the most recent adoption by the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO)
– representing over 900,000 workers – of an “international economic,
cultural and academic boycott of Israel” to achieve comprehensive
Palestinian rights, gives us hope.
The fact that none of the 26 Oscar nominees offered a free, $55,000-valued trip by the Israeli government accepted the propaganda gift and that six out of 11 National Football League players turned down a similar Israeli junket gives us hope.
The BDS movement has succeeded in sharply raising the price of corporate
complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. It has
compelled companies of the size of Orange and Veolia to end their complicity and pushed global giant G4S to begin exiting the Israeli market.
Churches, city councils and thousands around the world have pledged to boycott Hewlett-Packard (HP)
for its deep complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid. This
gives us and many human rights campaigns around the world great hope.
The Barcelona municipality’s decision to
end complicity with Israel’s occupation, coming on the heels of tens of
local councils in the Spanish state declaring themselves “Israeli
apartheid free zones,” gives us hope.
The divestment by some of the largest mainline churches in the US, including the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ from Israeli banks or complicit international corporations gives us hope.
The spread of remarkably effective BDS campaigns from South Africa to
South Korea, from Egypt to Chile, and from the UK to the US gives us
real hope.
An international struggle
The growing intersectional coalitions that
are emerging in many countries, organically reconnecting the struggle
for Palestinian rights with the diverse international struggles for
racial, economic, gender, climate and indigenous justice give us
unlimited hope.
In 1968, 20 years after the Nakba but unrelated to it, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
“There can be no justice without peace and there can be no peace
without justice.” For seven decades, and against all odds, Palestinians
have continued to assert our inalienable right to self-determination and
to genuine peace, which can only stem from freedom, justice and
equality.
But to reach that just peace we realize that we must nourish our hope
for a dignified life with our boundless commitment to resist injustice,
resist apathy and, crucially, resist their “iron walls” of despair.
In this context, the Palestinian-led, global BDS movement with its impressive growth and
unquestionable impact is today an indispensable component of our
popular resistance and the most promising form of international
solidarity with our struggle for rights.
No iron wall of theirs can suppress or overshadow the rising sun of our emancipation.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest
coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global
boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Visit bdsmovement.net and follow @BDSmovement on Twitter.