Pubblichiamo la lettera a sostegno del boicottaggio di Israele da parte dell'associazione canadese CUPE.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Dear Friends,
On May 27, 2006 CUPE Ontario (Ontario's largest Canadian labor union) decided to ?Support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.?
This followed in the wake of other CUPE Ontario actions in recent years, as, for instance, calling for the end of Israeli military action and withdrawal from the occupied territories. The executive of the Canadian Labour Congress, in a 2002 resolution, compared Palestinians in the occupied territories to blacks living under apartheid rule in South Africa.
Sid Ryan, the Canadian Union of Public Employees' Ontario president, said 896 members voted unanimously at its convention in Ottawa on Saturday, to support the campaign, and declared that the boycott ''is not an attack on Jewish people. It's (an objection to) the State of Israel's policies on Palestinians.?
Ryan's statement notwithstanding, CUPE is being accused of anti-Semitism and massively attacked by Jewish and other groups.
Israeli support for CUPE Ontario's act can aid the union to ward off the attacks and encourage the National union to adopt the Ontario policy. The following petition expresses Israeli support for CUPE's act and also furnishes the union with concrete material to counter condemnations of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism.
For the present we ask individual Israelis to sign the petition. Organizations are also welcome, and will be added later. Please inform me if your organization is willing to sign:
Individuals should send their full names and, if desired, titles, to:
The letter appears also at:
http://www.geocities.com/liveletlive2001/letter_to_CUPE.htm
Hebrew can be read at:
http://www.geocities.com/liveletlive2001/hebrew_translation.htm
Signatories (daily updated) at:
http://www.geocities.com/liveletlive2001/signatories_so_far.htm
Dorothy
[The complete CUPE statement : http://tao.ca/~CUPE3903/web/?q=node/372]
[CUPE National statement regarding the CUPE Ontario act: http://CUPE.ca/humanrights/CUPE_National_statem ]
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Letter of support from Israelis to CUPE
As Israelis we express our support of the CUPE boycott of Israel, honor your courageous initiative, and fervently hope that it will set an example for many others to follow.
We assure CUPE that it is no more anti-Semitic to criticize and oppose Israeli government policies than it was anti-American to oppose the Vietnam war or is anti-Canadian to oppose the present war in Iraq. It is never anti-Semitic to oppose injustice, destruction, gross inequity, and inequality. We also assure CUPE that Israel, having the 4th most powerful military in the world, is in no existential danger.
As citizens devoted to the promotion of peace and democracy in the region, we denounce the international community's continued economic investments in our country, which directly and indirectly support Israel's daily violations of international law and accelerated colonization of the occupied territories. We fear the potentially irreversible damage created by Israeli occupation, by Israel's unilateral plans, and by the international community's impotence in ending Israel's occupation. We realize that Israel's Occupation of Palestinians and their lands will very likely not end without international sanctions.
Israelis, as well as Palestinians, will benefit from ending the Occupation. Symmetry does not exist between occupier and occupied, oppressor and oppressed. Yet Israelis suffer from loss of life, increase in militarism, and a steady devaluation of human life. This latter is particularly evident from the socio-economic sphere and the affliction of post-traumatic distress.
Successive Israeli governments have spent enormous amounts of money on expansion, to the detriment of social benefits for the Israeli population. While it is true that had there been no Occupation, Israeli governments might not have spent the money on social benefits, the fact that expansion continues a pace reveals Israel's intention to rid the West Bank of as many Palestinians as possible and to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.
To this end, money is spent on maintaining a large military presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, on erecting the apartheid wall at 4 million dollars a mile, with 400 miles planned (twice the length had it been built on the ?green line'), and constructing 6,000 more units in highly subsidized settlements (this past year alone, some 12,000 new settlers moved into the West Bank, 4,000 more than were evicted from the Gaza Strip). Much money goes also for constructing super-highways for Israelis-only in the Occupied Territories, as well as for new lookout towers (that can double as sniper towers), and checkpoints galore (mainly separating Palestinian communities).
While all this is taking place at considerable economic cost, poverty in Israel has increased sharply. Israel now has the dubious notoriety of having the worst poverty level in the Western world. Over
