2010 Mar 15: ISRAELI ACADEMIC SAYS “BOYCOTT ISRAEL”

Monday 15th March 2010

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Media Release

ISRAELI ACADEMIC SAYS “BOYCOTT ISRAEL”

An Israeli academic starts a UK speaking tour today that aims to encourage people to boycott Israel to fight “Israeli Apartheid”.

Professor Jeff Halper, who is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), will speak alongside Palestinian academic, Ghada Karmi, on the theme of “Fighting Israeli Apartheid: the case for BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions]”.

Halper was awarded Palestinian citizenship and a Palestinian passport in 2008 when he successfully broke Israel’s blockade on Gaza by entering the territory by boat. Israeli authorities subsequently arrested the Ben Gurion University professor when he returned to Israel.

Dr Ghada Karmi, who was expelled from Jerusalem as a child in 1948, teaches conflict resolution at the University of Exeter. “I am delighted to be speaking alongside ICAHD’s Jeff Halper. ICAHD was the first Israeli organisation to endorse the boycott as a means to save Israel from itself”, she said.

Mick Napier, chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which is hosting the Scottish element of the tour, said “People have been condemning Israel’s human rights abuses for years, but the politicians have done nothing. Boycott allows ordinary people to exert pressure on Israel as we did against Apartheid South Africa in the last century.”

Scottish dates include meetings at 1pm and 7.30pm on March 17th both at Glasgow University’s Boyd Orr Building; and March 18th in Edinburgh (1pm at Edinburgh University’s Old College; and 7.30pm in the Augustine Church on George IV Bridge).

Further details can be found on the website of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign: www.scottishpsc.org.uk

ENDS

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Notes for editors:

1. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign started in autumn 2000 in response to the Palestinian second uprising against Israeli occupation (Intifada).
For further information, contact:
Mick Napier: 0131 620 0052; 07958002591
Email:info@scottishpsc.org.uk
Website: www.scottishpsc.org.uk

2. Full details of Scottish dates:

Glasgow – 17^th March,

1pm - Boyd Orr Building, Glasgow University, Room 507 (Lecture Theatre C)
G12 8QQ (Map:http://tinyurl.com/BoydOrr)

7.30pm - Boyd Orr Building, Glasgow University, Room 611 (Lecture Theatre E) G12 8QQ (Map:http://tinyurl.com/BoydOrr)

Edinburgh – 18^th March,

1pm - University of Edinburgh, Lecture Theatre 270, Old College, South Bridge (hosted by Students for Justice for Palestine)
Map: http://tinyurl.com/OldCollege

7:30pm - Augustine Church, George IV Bridge

Map: http://tinyurl.com/AugustineChurch

3. Professor Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD: http://www.icahd.org/eng) and a Professor of Anthropology. He has lived in Israel since 1973, having emigrated from the US. Besides his years of involvement with the Israeli peace movement, Jeff has been active on issues of social justice within Israel. He worked as a community worker for ten years in Jerusalem’s inner city neighborhoods, where he helped start the Ohel social protest movement of working-class Mizrahi Jews.

He served as the Chairman of the Israeli Committee for Ethiopian Jews, building on relationships he had forged while researching the community in Ethiopia in the 1960s. Jeff has taught at Haifa and Ben Gurion Universities in Israel, and was the head of Friends World College, an international university program. He is also a member of several teams planning national parks in Israel. Jeff has written extensively on Israeli society. He is the author of the book Between Redemption and Revival: the Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Westview, 1991).

As the Director of ICAHD, Jeff has forged a new mode of Israeli peace activity based on nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to the Israeli Occupation authorities, forging a relationship of trust, solidarity and close cooperation with Palestinian organizations. He served on the Steering Committee of the UN Conference on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. The American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) nominated Jeff for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with Palestinian, Prof Ghassan Andoni.

During 2007, Jeff received the following two awards on behalf of his work with ICAHD: Olive Branch Award from Jewish Voice for Peace in the USA and the Rachel Corrie Peace Award from the Italian town of Ovada near Genoa. Jeff’s book, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israeli, was published by Pluto Press in February 2008.

In August 2008, Jeff was the only Israeli Jew to participate in the Free Gaza Movement when two boats sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, breaking the siege of over forty years. As a result he was awarded Palestinian citizenship and a Palestinian passport but then when crossing the Erez Crossing on his way home to Jerusalem, Jeff was arrested by the Israeli police and imprisoned in Ashkelon and awaits formal charges for entering Gaza. Along with Brazilian Bishop Dom Luiz Cappio, in May Jeff received the Kant-World-Citizen-Prize for 2009 in Freiburg, Germany.

4. Dr Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian academic and writer. She was born in Jerusalem, but was brought up and educated in England. Currently she is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, where she teaches conflict resolution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She is also on the Board of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Her major area of work has been on the Palestine/Israel conflict and she has published widely on this subject. She is also a well-known figure on British radio and TV. Her most recent and widely acclaimed memoir, In Search of Fatima; a Palestinian story (Verso Press, 2002), represents a rare example of Palestinian personal narrative writing in English. Her new book, Married to another man: Israel’s dilemma in Palestine, deals with the One-State solution in Israel/Palestine.

5. For details of the 9 July 2005 call by Palestinian Civil Society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights, see:http://bdsmovement.net