[E-rundbrief] Info 1945 - Israeli Apartheid Week 2020, 16. - 21.3.2020

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief Info 1945 - Israeli Apartheid Week 2020 - “United against 
Racism”, 16. - 21.3.2020.

Bad Ischl, 23.2.2020

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK

16. - 21.3.2020

Call out for Israeli Apartheid Week 2020

In March (16. - 21.3.2020), we will launch Israeli Apartheid Week 
(IAW) 2020 under the theme, “United against Racism,” advocating for 
Palestinian rights in the context of global struggles against racial 
oppression. It is more urgent than ever to join together our struggles 
for freedom, justice, equality and dignity and to recognize that 
Israel’s far-right regime is a key partner of authoritarian and even 
genocidal regimes worldwide, supplying them with deadly military and 
security technologies.


Israeli apartheid poses a serious threat not just to the indigenous 
Palestinians but also to oppressed communities worldwide. For example:


Through Israeli-US exchange programs, Israeli soldiers, police, border 
agents, are sharing worst practices of racialized and repressive 
policing with US police, ICE, border patrol and the FBI to criminalize 
asylum seekers and immigrant communities;

     Israel has been a key supplier of weapons and security systems to 
genocidal regimes from Rwanda to Myanmar, and its security/espionage 
technology has played a crucial role in grave human rights violations 
perpetrated by rogue regimes like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi 
Arabia, among others.

     Israeli “field-tested” military and surveillance doctrines and 
products, including drones, are used by the US and EU for the creation 
of militarized borders that prevent entry of refugees and migrants 
from the Global South fleeing armed conflicts, climate devastation and 
poverty;

     Israel sells India an average of $1 billion in arms per year, 
fueling India’s militarization and repression in Kashmir, training 
Indian police, and serving as a model for the Hindu nationalist 
government’s increasingly repressive measures targeting its Muslim 
population and other minorities.

     In Brazil, Israeli weapons and population control technologies 
fuel more militarization and racist police violence by the fanatic 
Bolsonaro government against blacks, indigenous communities and 
residents of the favelas.


Palestinians and progressives worldwide are resisting the 
Trump-Netanyahu “deal of the century” not only because it is designed 
to entrench Israeli apartheid and liquidate Palestinian rights. It 
also embodies a trend of undermining international law and, with it, 
world peace.

In this context, resisting anti-democratic attempts to silence and 
demonize advocacy of Palestinian rights, especially in western states, 
becomes crucial in defending universal civic and democratic rights, 
including freedom of expression.

 From Palestine and other Arab countries, and across wider Asia, 
Africa, Europe and North and South America, IAW 2020 will take place 
primarily between 16 March and the The International Day for the 
Elimination of Racial Discrimination on 21 March. This latter day 
commemorates the massacre committed in Sharpeville in 1960 by the 
South African apartheid regime.

IAW activities will raise public awareness and take to the streets to 
convey the message that what was unacceptable in South Africa under 
apartheid must not be accepted in Palestine today. Israel’s regime of 
racial superiority and segregation, settler colonialism, ethnic 
cleansing and expropriation of the indigenous Palestinian people, 
underpinned and “legalized” by a system of racist Israeli laws and 
military orders, is a regime of apartheid as defined in international 
law.

Governments worldwide and the United Nations have defined apartheid as 
a crime against humanity that must be suppressed and punished wherever 
it is perpetrated. Joining the Palestinian civil society-led BDS 
movement in global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns is a 
moral duty of citizens, and it is the most effective means for 
building pressure on governments to eventually impose sanctions on 
Israeli apartheid similar to those that helped end apartheid in South 
Africa.


IAW 2020 calls on progressive movements, groups and organizations 
fighting all forms of racism, racial discrimination, marginalization 
and oppression to join forces.

Join IAW 2020!

United against Israeli apartheid

United against all forms of racism and racial discrimination

The IAW 2020 Coordinating Committee

February 14, 2020

http://apartheidweek.org/


-- 

     Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, 4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
     fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
     Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at