The statement below is being endorsed by a number of organizations that are part of the solidarity movement with Palestine in Catalonia, including the BDS coalition, the Gaza Flotilla (now called Gaza's Ark), a number of NGOs active both here and there, and Junts/IJAN.

We the social movements organise to fight against a system that throws us on the dole, that evicts a family every 15 minutes, that persecutes immigrants, that imposes worse working conditions on us, that exploits us. We want a dignified and just life for all, and against us the State organises to repress us, and responds to our desire for change with intimidation and violence.

We condemn the growing repression and violence used against the social movements in Catalonia. We protest that this strategy violates democracy and aims to maintain the current injustices.

We condemn the fact that the repression we are experiencing in Catalonia is strongly interconnected with the global repression suffered by the social movements and specifically, with the Israeli military and security infrastructure. The army itself, and private security and military companies that maintain Palestine under occupation, have used the Palestinian people as a massive training and research ground that has enabled them to create companies, industries , products and services that our governments buy and use to control and repress the social movements. These products are sold with the "guarantee" of having been tested in real situations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

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Dear Prof. Stephen Hawking, 

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) thanks you for taking the principled course of action: publicly refusing to participate in Israel's presidential conference, chaired by the notorious war criminal Shimon Peres. Our own recent history as Jews vividly presents to us the culpable role of those who merely stay silent in the face of state-organized racism and violence.

We further commend your decision to publicize the reasons for your withdrawal in a form that conveys your understanding that the primary obligation of people of conscience everywhere is to listen to Palestinians who suffer Israel's oppression and act in solidarity based on their analysis and demands. Your actions set an example for conscientious engagement as a scientist and as a public figure. We hope that your example will inform and in turn move more scientists, intellectuals, and artists to action. 

As with others who followed the same course, in the coming days many powerful people will subject you to a barrage of abuse. The primary purpose of this barrage is to frighten others who might want to emulate you but do not feel as confident in their ability to withstand the public attempts of character assassination. We therefore also write to you to encourage others. While those who appreciate what you did do not hold high office nor own newspapers and TV channels, we are the majority of humanity and we deeply appreciate you.

Sincerely,

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network  (read more...)

IJAN joins with the National Lawyers Guild, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and National Conference of Black Lawyers in rejecting the U.S. government's attempt to smear Assata Shakur as a "terrorist." The outrageous FBI designation of Shakur as a "most wanted terrorist" further lays bare the blatant politicization of the term.  (read more...)

We join the National Lawyers Guild in expressing support for the UN Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk, in his statement on the need for the U.S. to examine its foreign policy. 

Dr. Falk, in an editorial in Foreign Policy Journal titled "A Commentary on the Marathon Murders," appealed for the U.S. to be self-critical and examine the effects of "irresponsible and unlawful warfare [as the] centerpiece of American foreign policy." He lists some of the more egregious actions of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Abu Ghraib, drone attacks, torture, and rendition and says: "The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks..." Dr. Falk continues the essay with discussion of Barack Obama's abandonment of the Palestinians and any involvement in bringing about a just peace. Obama's recent visit to Israel, says Falk, was a "love letter to the Israeli public" and "obsequious diplomacy" rather than a serious attempt at achieving justice. 

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It was with great sadness that we received the news of the passing of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. As citizens of the world, we continue to draw hope and inspiration from the Bolivarian Revolution. It is a point of reference in the global resistance to the suffering imposed by governments, corporations and ruling classes - beginning with those of the United States and its massive military.

In the closing days of 2012, three members of IJAN had the privilege of visiting the Bolivarian Republic. They witnessed a people engaged in building a more just society and standing up to imperial domination. They saw the coming to fruition of a project of building nearly one thousand apartments for victims of natural disasters. This was in sharp contrast to the US experience in the aftermath of Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, when the government left the victims to fend for themselves, and treated as criminals those  trying to escape the floods, even shooting  refugees dead.

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The World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, Tunisia March 26^th - 30^th, 2013, is just around the corner and promises to be a critical organizing opportunity for our growing movements.

The forum will serve as the launch of a series of international popular tribunals against Israel entitled: "The Case against Israel: Exposing Israel's role in State Repression and Violence Worldwide" and organized by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), the United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN). Growing out of an assembly hosted at the World Social Forum Free Palestine in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in December of 2012, these tribunals seek to expose the role Israel and the Zionist movement play in repressing progressive social movements and attacking communities throughout the world.

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Researched, written and edited by members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the new exposé, "Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression," focuses on the role of Israel's government military, and related corporations and organizations in a global industry of violence and repression.

IJAN's 28-page booklet was officially released at the World Social Forum Free Palestine in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and has received widespread attention in recent weeks; it has been featured in Al Jazeera, Jacobin, La Rebelión and Jadaliyya among other publications.

The pamphlet is being used as part of a broader organizing project with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the US Palestinian Community Network to highlight the role Israel plays in the arms industry and political repression around the globe. The information in the pamphlet is not widely known, and given state-secrecy, censorship and limited organizational resources, the information we have gathered thus far is merely the tip of the iceberg in the push for accountability. We seek to continue to build awareness and gather testimony leading to popular tribunals in various locations impacted by the work of Israel and its related corporations and organizations.

The pamphlet is available on-line and print copies can be ordered in English, Spanish and Portuguese. We welcome translation of the pamphlet into other languages. We also urge the organizing of actions, campaigns or popular tribunals in the places where Israel, often with the United States, plays a role in the repression of our movements or in attacks on communities.

The pamphlets, source documents, research, ways to get involved and video from our first People's Assembly at the World Social Forum Free Palestine in Porto Alegre, Brazil, are available on-line at: http://israelglobalrepression.wordpress.com/.

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"There is no mystery why Canada acts almost blindly without critique or question in support of the State of Israel's colonial policies in Palestine: Canada and Israel's policies are marching in lock step because both Canada and Israel are colonial states."

-Robert Lovelace Address to Amnesty International, Toronto, November 01, 2011

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) supports Idle No More in its struggle for indigenous sovereignty and environmental protection. IJAN  is an international network of Jews who reject the premise that our own histories of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing justify the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. We are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of all colonized people and land is an indispensable part. We understand the destruction of indigenous people, land and ways of life as a threat to the survival of all people, living things and the planet.  We extend solidarity and continue our fight against colonization in the lands that we live and in Palestine.

 

Please also see the excellent statement: "Palestinians in Solidarity with Idle No More and Indigenous Rights" 

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The World Social Forum Free Palestine (WSFFP) took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at exactly the moment that Palestine was on the front page of every newspaper around the world. The United Nations had just voted (138-9) to grant Palestinians limited statehood observer status at the United Nations.  Meanwhile, people in Gaza had also just survived another brutal Israeli onslaught.

Despite our grief and rage at the latest attack on Gaza, the perseverance of the Palestinian people continues to be an inspiration. As has been true for almost a century, Palestine and the Palestinian people are in the stranglehold of a global negotiation for power and resources. And now, popular movements and uprisings throughout the region threaten the colonial hold of US, Europe, Israel and its collaborators with struggles against repression and mass exploitation of resources, land and people and for basic survival and freedom. In Syria, the death toll has risen to an estimated 40,000-57,000 over the past two-years as people's fights against repression are suffocated and infiltrated by the interests of these same forces.

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In Argentina, IJAN presented with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement at the Universidad Popular Madres Plaza de Mayo. The university was founded by those involved in the movement of mothers to identify and hold the government accountable for the "disappearance" of their loved ones during the military dictatorship of the late 70s and early 80s. In spite of a subway strike and the plumbing in the building not working, we had an audience of 50 who listened with rapt attention. We presented with and were hosted by the Department of Genocide and Social Forces.

In Venezuela IJAN and MXGM had the opportunity to learn from and share information with grassroots activists that are part of the revolution. Participants witnessed the opening day of apartments for almost a thousand people, spoke at a university in the heart of the Afro-Venezuelan communities, were interviewed on national and local radio, and spoke with social movement activists from a number of different organizations.  

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The first thematic World Social Forum to focus on Palestine took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 28 November - 1 December 2012. The Forum featured over 125 workshops and a large march and rally in support of Palestine. It was an important gathering of Palestinian and solidarity activists to continue to strengthen the movement for Palestinian liberation and self-determination.

IJAN sent a delegation of six to the forum including members from Canada, Argentina and the U.S. Most of us attended as part of the U.S.-Canada Joint Struggle Delegation - a delegation of 25 activists working in grassroots struggles for the liberation of people and land, which IJAN played a central role in organizing.

 

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Last year we sent a delegation to Palestine to document evidence and learn about the role of the Jewish National Fund in the on-going theft of Palestinian land and property land and cover-up of the displacement of the Palestinian people. 

Per the request of the Palestinian Farmers Union, Stop the Wall Anti-Apartheid Committee, the Palestinian BDS National Committee and the villages who have lost trees, agricultural plots, farms and homes to the Israeli military, this year we are sending another delegation to plant trees in villages that are welcoming the effort to replant a fraction of what they have lost. 

We are writing to ask you for your support for the January 5-14, 2013 Plant-a-Tree in Palestine delegation to build support for the Campaign to stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF). We are sending two delegates from the United States who will be planting trees and documenting the trip - taking photos and capturing video footage to create media and political education materials which we will use to grow the campaign.

The delegation will be planting 112 trees in 3 villages, one tree for each year the JNF has been colonizing Palestine. Many Palestinians have lost fruit bearing trees to JNF bulldozers- olive trees that had been tended for up to 1,000 years and citrus trees tended for generations. Members of the Palestinian Farmers Union and other local farmers will choose which kinds of trees they want to plant. Delegation participants will be actively participating alongside Palestinian farmers in resisting the goals of the JNF.

Please consider making a contribution to the delegation and/or planting a tree in Palestine. Each tree planted will go directly to one of the three villages and will contribute toward the delegation's expenses.

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The World Social Forum Free Palestine is approaching fast.  In just a couple of weeks, more than 10,000 Palestinian and solidarity activists from at least 36 different countries will arrive in Porto Alegre to learn from each other and organize together to build a strong movement to confront Israel and Zionism and the broader injustices they represent and support.

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network has been building with activists in the US, Canada and around the world to build and bring a joint struggle framework to the WSF FP.  Thanks to the support from everyone who has donated, we have been able to organize a delegation more than 15 strong. We were honored as a delegation to be invited to have a representative on a major panel.

The US-Canada Joint Struggle Delegation is in the process of finalizing our workshop offerings covering a wide range of topics including Israel's role in repression in the US and around the world, mass incarceration, environmental injustice, labor alliances with Palestine, and asserting an anti-colonial feminism and combating anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism.

In addition to working on many of the delegation workshops, IJAN is organizing a workshop on the Case of Jews Against Zionism and participating in workshops focused on Zionist backlash and the Campaign to Stop the Jewish National Fund. 

There are opportunities for participation in the exciting momentum and building happening at the WSF FP from your locations!  The organizing committee of the World Social Forum Free Palestine has called for international actions and media initiatives aligned with the social forum.

Finally, please continue to support IJAN's participation with your donations.

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On September 27, the Iranian Republic News Agency (IRNA) published an article involving the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), claiming that the organization met with Iranian president Ahmadinejad. It references ‘Spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, David Weiss.’ Other Iranian on-line websites have reprinted similar stories.

There is not and has never been a member of or a spokesman for IJAN by the name of David Weiss. IJAN has not met with Ahmadinejad. We do not know who is responsible for the misrepresentation, whether the journalist or someone impersonating a member or spokesman of IJAN, but the claim of IJAN having met with Ahmadinejad is false.

In November, 2012, social movements from around the globe will gather in Porto Alegre, Brazil to demand and organize for a free Palestine. The World Social Forum (WSF) Free Palestine is an expression of global social movements’ opposition to capitalism, colonialism, war, occupation and racism.

 

IJAN is part of organizing a US-Canada cross-movement delegation to the WSF Free Palestine. And we need your help to get there.

 

The delegation, initiated by the US Social Forum, includes Project South, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and the Muslim Defense Project among other leaders at the forefront of grassroots movements. Click here to see the growing list of endorsing organizations.

Our aim is to promote joint struggle for Palestinian liberation, indigenous self-determination, the rights of refugees and migrants, economic justice and labor rights, queer liberation and gender justice, the sustainability of the land and natural resources and the creation of a people’s economy. 

 

Coming together in Brazil will provide an opportunity to organize for Palestinian liberation in ways that strengthen all our struggles for justice. Donate now to support the Joint Struggle Delegation’s travel expenses to Porto Alegre. 

 

For more information on why confronting Israel and Zionism is so central to our struggles for justice, freedom from repression and war, ecological preservation and indigenous sovereignty, watch a presentation by members of IJAN, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Center for Constitutional Rights (all members of the Joint Struggle Delegation). 

 

Please contribute what you can to this unique opportunity to broaden the movement for Palestinian liberation. Click here for other ways to get involved.  (read more...)

The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), Palestinian and Arab community members and organizations - including the Arab Film Festival - prominent organizations and individuals in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community as well as progressive Jewish activists and academics call on the Center for Asian American Media to respect the boycott called for by Palestinian civil society and end their collaboration with the Israeli consulate and Zionist organizations on the China-Israel film fest.

The outpouring of support from the Asian American community for this initiative reveals the growing understanding of the interconnectedness of our struggles against racism, oppression and efforts to use progressive issues and organizations to advance reactionary agendas. The China-Israel film festival is part of an effort by the Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, the Israeli consulate and Zionist organizations to build support for the growing political and economic alliance between China and Israel and is part of the multi-million dollar effort to "brand Israel" and counteract the growing outcry against Israeli violations of human rights, international law and decency.

TAKE ACTION: send an email to Stephen Gong, the Director of CAAM, ( ) - ask CAAM to refuse participation in the China-Israel cultural festival.

Below read letters from Asian American community organizations, USACBI, the Arab Film Festival and progressive Jewish activists and academics.  (read more...)

Pulitzer Prize winning author and human rights activist Alice Walker has made a profound statement consistent with her life-long anti-racist commitment: she finds human rights abuses against Palestinians and violations of international law by the State of Israel intolerable. Thus Ms. Walker has refused to allow her book The Color Purple to be translated into Hebrew by the Israeli publisher, Yediot Books. 

Ms. Walker has worked for several years in support of Palestinian human rights. She participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla - attempting to break the illegal siege of Gaza, she has written and spoken up against the human rights abuses that Palestinians experience daily, and recently was a jurist on the Russell Tribunal for Palestine in South Africa. The Tribunal found Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid.

In her statement to the publisher Ms. Walker compared Israeli apartheid with that of both South Africa and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. “Indeed,” she writes, “many South Africans who attended [the Russell Tribunal], including Desmond Tutu, felt the Israeli version of these crimes is worse even than what they suffered under the white supremacist regimes that dominated South Africa for so long.”

Using the same tools of international solidarity that contributed to the struggle that ended Apartheid in south Africa, Alice Walker advocates BDS against Israel as a method of international pressure to compel Israel to comply with international law. She therefore refuses to allow her book to be translated into Hebrew by an Israeli publisher.

Of the several recent successes of the BDS movement, Ms Walker's action is particularly worrisome to Israel as it frantically tries to brand itself as a beacon of democracy and upholder of human rights. In particular, Israel and organizations in the United States that support it have poured vast resources into courting African Americans to support its false projection of itself as an equal and democratic society. Recent deportation of and race riots against Africans in Tel Aviv dispel that myth. Refugees from Africa were violently attacked by mobs incited by the Israeli government, including comments from the Interior Minister Eli Yishai that Israel “belongs to the White Man.” Israel is proceeding with deportation and detention of thousands of refugees from Sub Saharan Africa because they “threaten the Jewish identity of the Israeli state.”

Israel’s apologists can’t allow such a prominent figure in American culture to speak the truth about Israel without challenge. Alan Dershowitz immediately wrote a piece in the Jerusalem Post accusing Ms. Walker of being a “bigot” who enforces “censorship” against Hebrew speakers, comparing her to the neo-Nazi David Duke. The venomous absurdity of his piece only serves to give greater prominence and credibility to Alice Walker’s ethical and moral stance. His attack is a tribute to the successes of the BDS movement.

Ms. Walker ended her letter of refusal to Yediot Books with the statement, “In faith that a just future can be fashioned from small acts.” We, who believe in justice, in human rights, and in equal rights, applaud her for her courageous and moral actions. We will continue to make small acts of solidarity with the knowledge that together we will create a better and more just world.

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Recently the David Horowitz Freedom Foundation published a dangerous and slanderous ad in the New York Times. The ad invokes the Nazi holocaust in order to attack supporters of BDS including several professors. Jews of conscience and others who share a similar commitment to justice must speak out in defense of justice for Palestinians and against such defilement and misuse of the holocaust.

David Horowitz and his money have been involved in attempts to undermine the Palestinian struggle and promote hatred against Muslims and Arabs throughout the country. Whether through funding the campaign to oppose the Park51 Islamic Community Center in Manhattan or through alleging that the Muslim Student Association is an extremist group, Horowitz took upon himself to foster the climate of intolerance and fear that leads to dehumanization and ends in persecution, apartheid and racism across history.

We are alarmed that New York Times, in breach of its own decency guidelines, would promote such open bigotry and character assassination.

This slanderous attack on proponents of BDS reveals that our movement is gaining strength, and that the opposition to BDS recognizes this.

Help us reach out to the broadest possible audience with a clear statement that draws the true moral lessons of the holocaust, “Never again for anyone!”, and asserts our commitment to justice for Palestinians and all targets of racism.

Please sign the petition below.

After signing, please contribute USD    to publishing an ad carrying this petition’s text in a widely distributed, national newspaper.

Text of Petition

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Yesterday, March 30th, was land day, a day on which we remember the six Palestinian martyrs murdered by the Israeli forces in 1976, while protesting peacefully against the confiscation of land and the Judaization of the Galilee.

Land day is a signpost in the struggle against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that happens every day. Since 1976, over 50 Palestinians protesters were killed on Land Day alone. The confiscation of land and the effort to drive Palestinians out of Palestine and out of their homes and neighborhoods continue very day, and are particularly intense in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Palestinians suffer brutal oppression, their homes are subject to demolitions and confiscation, their right to live in their city is denied and the apartheid wall strangles their neighborhoods. The wall is another way in which Israel assaults life every day.

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network salutes the courage and steadfastness of the Palestinian people and stands in solidarity with the grassroots Palestinian struggle for land, liberty and selfdetermination. Yesterday was a day of unity, protest, anger, and resistance throughout Palestine. We stand in solidarity with the protesters. We condemn utterly the illegitimate use force by the Israeli army and police against unarmed protesters.

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In response to the recent debate regarding the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, we offer a view from a Jewish anti-Zionist perspective. We welcome debate as a part of the growth and success of an international movement deploying BDS against Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonization.

A claim has been made by Dr. Norman Finkelstein (known for his condemnation of Israel’s use of the Holocaust to justify and perpetuate Israeli atrocities both historic and current) that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign will not win over public opinion towards support of Palestinian rights because its goals imply destruction of Israel. This claim contradicts his own eloquent evocation of humanitarian and human rights law – which is precisely the basis for the Palestinian call for BDS.

South Africa was not ‘destroyed’ or ‘dismantled’ when apartheid ended; rather, the illegal nature of the state was transformed.  BDS does not call for the ‘destruction of Israel’; it calls for the enforcement of international law.

Meanwhile, a call has been made to Zionist American Jews to implement a “Zionist BDS” that isolates and condemns Israeli expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to “save Israel.” The Zionist “left” argues that Israel is a “flawed but genuine democracy” with an “ethnically-based non-democracy” beyond the green line (the land occupied in 1967), and that the latter threatens the existence of the former.

 

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