Boykot Israel Denmark celebrates its 10 years of existence

Boykot Israel Denmark celebrates its 10 years of existence
Saturday October 27, 2012, we celebrated the ten years anniversary of Boykot Israel by a big festival in Copenhagen together with ISM Denmark (Palæstina Fredsvagterne). Here follows the speech delivered by Boykot Israel at this festival:

Resume of Boykot Israel speech at the conference (27.10.2012)

Boykot Israel was founded in April 2002, at a period when Ariel Sharon (the Butcher from Sabra and Shatila) was prime minister and the Jenin massacre was taking place. The aim of the Boykot Israel campaign was to create an international pressure at the state of Israel in protest against

– The Israeli occupation of Palestine
– The Israeli apartheid policy
– The Israeli refusal of the Right of Return of the Palestinian Refugees
–

We wanted to show that the peoples of the world are with the Palestinian people while the US and EU regimes are supporting Israel.

We decided that our boycott should be a general boycott, i.e. political, economic, cultural, sports, academic etc.

We were inspired by the succesful boycott campaign of the 1980’ies against the South African apartheid regime which started at grass root level with consumers’ boycott, but grew big and ended by the UN and the governments deciding sanctions and divestment against the apartheid regime.

During the first ten years we have made many and different boycott actions. (please se our exposition of photos, posters, flyers, t-shirts etc. in this room of 10 years of Boycott Israel in Denmark ) Regularly we have made super market action where we stand in front of the supermarkets with our orange boycott Israel banner and distribute flyers to the customers and tell them to boycott Israeli goods.

We have demonstrated and called for boycott of the matches when Israeli national teams were playing against Danish teams . We have called for the universities to boycott co-operation with Israeli universities which all work for the occupation. We are active in boycotting the Swedish firm H&M because they install shops in Israel, we are active in the boycott of the Danish-British multinational security company G4S –because it works for Israeli occupation in the jails, check points and settlements.

By the boycott we hope not only to weaken the state of Israel economically, but also politically – by setting focus at the occupation and apartheid and other crimes of the state of Israel.

We are part of the international campaign BDS founded in July 2005 by hundreds of Palestinian grass root organizations which call for

– Boycott – Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

The BDS-movement is rapidly growing all over the world where unions are calling for boycott of Israeli goods, where universities in USA are stopping their investment in Israeli firms or firms which collaborate with Israel, where artists and politicians cancel their visit to Israel and refuse to ‘act for occupation’. The BDS movement is growing so strong internationally that it gives nightmare to the Israeli state leaders who fear it shall be of South African strength. The Knesset has therefore voted a law which criminalizes individuals and institutions which recommend boycott of Israel!

We in Boykot Israel shall continue our boycott campaign until end of the Israeli occupation and end of apartheid and until respect of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees.

Boycott Israel – Free Palestine – Long live international solidarity